by Zoey Parker
“I’ll get it for you. You just stay put,” he said, but I quickly turned and ducked away from him.
Violence may not have been my thing like it was for all of the thick, broad bikers standing around joking about what they’d done to Coyote’s men, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t able to handle myself. Stealth and agility were among my tools. Even when I wasn’t trying to seduce my marks, I was using my body to get what I wanted.
I ducked into the shadows beyond the glow of the headlights.
“Come on, Sierra,” Duncan called out, throwing his hands up. “Dammit, you’re just like Gunner, aren’t you?” He shrugged and stared over in my direction.
He didn’t follow me as I glided through the shadows over beside the trucks that had come in carrying more of Coyote’s men, so I figured he couldn’t see me. I was going to find my former boss before Gunner, and I was going to persuade her to talk before he got there. I wanted to be the one who saved the day. I wanted to get the information for him so I could show him I could be trusted.
I owed him. After everything I had done to screw him over, I owed him big time, and I felt that getting the information we needed from Coyote was the first step in setting things right with him. I wanted to leave this situation with Gunner, not just standing by his side because I didn’t have a ride of my own.
Even though all of the cars and most of the motorcycles were still running, a thick, heavy silence fell around me in the darkness beyond the lights. I could hear my heart racing in my ears. I heard my breath as I stepped very carefully around the back of one of the trucks.
Then I heard someone else breathing. The breath was raspy and urgent, panicked. As I circled the back of the truck next to me, I saw Coyote sitting against the back of her sedan. The tail lights illuminated her, turning her face and whole body red. I was thankful for the red light because it cancelled out the blood that had to have been on her hands and arms from where she’d been shot. It kept me from having to see the full extent of her injury.
“Sierra,” she panted as I approached.
I knelt down beside her to act like I still gave a damn whether she lived or died. In reality, though she’d done a lot for me over the last three years or so, I was glad to see the smug look wiped off her face and to see her sitting on her ass trying to hold it together after being shot by someone she had such a low opinion of.
“Thank God you’re still here,” she said.
“You were going to shoot me, Coyote, so drop the bullshit,” I said plainly. “Where’s the diamond?”
She laughed until she coughed. It was a wheezing cough. She was exhausted, and her body was probably going into shock, but I needed to know where the hell that diamond was.
“What makes you think I would tell you?” she asked with a tired smile on her face.
“Because if you don’t, I can’t stop Gunner from getting it,” I said.
It was then that Gunner appeared alongside the car with his gun drawn. I looked up and met his eyes with mine to let him know I had it under control. Then I made like I was looking to make sure he wasn’t coming back there so that Coyote would trust me. He realized what I was doing and stopped where he was.
“I wouldn’t tell you where it was if my life depended on it,” she said spitefully.
“That’s a damn shame, Coyote,” I said. I shook my head and took a sharp breath as I reached for her hand and pressed my thumb and fingers against the wound where Gunner had shot her.
She screamed and grabbed my arm with her good hand.
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you,” she cried out.
“Good, where is it? I know you didn’t leave it in the pool,” I reminded her.
“You’re right,” she said with a laugh. “I had my guards hide it.’
“Okay, I don’t give a shit who hid it, Coyote,” I told her, grabbing her hand again.
I understood the look on the faces of Gunner’s men as they beat and killed their attackers. I felt the same perverse pleasure they must have felt as I crushed her wounded hand under my grip. Watching her writhe in pain and knowing that I had that kind of control over her gave me an adrenaline rush.
It also felt good to see the admiration on Gunner’s face as he stood behind her and watched me torture my former boss. We had already proven ourselves as a great team, I thought, with the way that we got along and the way we were so perfectly matched in bed. I couldn’t wait to end this nonsense and get down to planning our future.
First, I needed to get the actual location of the Sun Stone from Coyote, and the longer she held out, the more pain I was going to get to cause.
“Tell me where it is, or else I’m sure Gunner and his men will have no trouble tearing the place apart to find it before I do. Hell, I might even let them find it since you’re not talking,” I threatened her.
“Okay, okay. It’s in a secret compartment in my office,” she said. “There’s a button on my desk that opens one of the bookshelves. Not the one with the TV, but the one across from it, and there’s a safe set in the wall. It’s in the safe.”
“What’s the combination?” I asked.
“There isn’t one. I never lock it,” she said.
“You’re full of shit.” I squeezed her hand even tighter.
“Okay! If it’s locked, the combination is eleven, twenty-one, thirty-nine,” she said.
“Eleven, twenty-one, thirty-nine,” I repeated, cutting my eyes up to Gunner to make sure he was taking the numbers down somehow.
“Yeah, it’s my grandmother’s birthday,” she said in an almost sad tone. Now that was a story I wanted to know. It was too bad I knew she wasn’t going to be around long enough to tell it to me.
“That’s sweet,” Gunner said, stepping around to grab her arm.
“You bitch,” she hissed at me. Her eyes were full of rage all of a sudden.
“Did you really think I was going to try to do you any favors after you point two guns in my face, Coyote? Come on, even you’re smarter than that,” I told her.
“Well, you’d better hope that’s the right combination,” she said spitefully, though I was pretty sure she’d given us the right one.
“That’s okay. We have people who can crack your cute little safe,” Gunner chimed in with a condescending tone. “Come on.” He pulled her up to her feet and started walking her back up in front of the cars.
I followed behind.
“Did I do a good job?” I asked him, trying to sound nonchalant and not like I was looking for a compliment.
“You did a great job,” he said. “I’m very impressed with the way you handled that, Sierra. I saw a lot of potential back there.”
His words satisfied two purposes. First, it was just good to hear his praise. I felt like we were connecting again after being separated all night. Second, I knew it was eating Coyote alive to hear him talk me up the way he was.
She had been prepared to throw me away, but little did she know, I had already been working my way in with someone who truly appreciated everything I had to offer. Bitch.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gunner
Sierra never ceased to amaze me. She had been impressing me since the night we met for the first time. It started before she even approached me boldly at Eden, when I spotted her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. That was when she had first impressed me, with her beauty.
Then, it just continued, until the latest moment when she’d amazed me, when I found her kneeling behind the car with Coyote. She was working on getting the location of the diamond for me, even as she told her old boss that she was trying to get to it before I did. She’d shot me a look to let me know that she was just using that line to get the information she wanted. She was good at working people, and that was exactly what she was doing with Coyote. She worked the hell out of her to get her to believe that somehow, after everything, she was looking out for Coyote’s interests.
I also saw something else that impressed me. When she grabbed Coyote’s bloody hand
to use her pain to persuade her to talk, it seemed to me like a huge step in the right direction for her. If Sierra wanted to come with me after everything was said and done, I needed to see more of that kind of determination and less of the shock and terror I had seen on her face after dropping the body of my fallen brother to the ground.
“Someone get Coyote bandaged up,” I said as we emerged from between the cars. I shoved her forward and watched a couple of guys grab her. I didn’t know where I expected anyone to find bandages, but someone would be able to rig something up. We always did.
“So what’s the plan?” Sierra asked as we stood between the cars and the bikes.
“We get her bandaged up, and we get back on the road. We get to the house, neutralize any threats there, and we find the damn diamond. After that, I don’t know what we do.” I wanted to take her in my arms, but I felt like the tension between us was all that was holding us both up at that point. If we had allowed ourselves a moment’s comfort, we might have collapsed. I didn’t want to risk it. There was still much to do.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “How are we getting out there? Who am I riding with?”
I smiled and threw an arm across her shoulders. I pulled against me and gave her a quick kiss.
“I think we’re going to have to get creative with the rides,” I told her. “I’ve got to get someone out here to clear the road.”
“Already on it,” Luther said, overhearing me. “Already called the cleaner and told him to bring a crew.”
“Excellent. Luther, have you met Sierra yet?”
“No.” He held out one of his massive hands to her, and her hand disappeared in his grip. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” she said with a smile on her lips but shell shock in her eyes. It was all a bit overwhelming, and I could see that even though she’d been around all of this for a long time, she had only seen one aspect of it. She only knew what her job was. She didn’t care for the rest of it.
“Sierra, we sometimes call Luther The Boulder. His last name is Stone, which is convenient, and he is our muscle,” I explained to her.
“So if you ever need anyone to back you up or handle someone for you, give me a call.” He winked at her and went back to helping a few of the guys with their bikes. It seemed that some of them had been damaged in the melee.
While I watched several of my men kick their bikes over in disgust over the damages they had sustained, I decided it was time to have a quick talk to let everyone know what we were doing. I waved my hands and whistled to get everyone’s attention.
“Okay, we’re taking Sierra and Coyote back to Coyote’s mansion to find the Sun Stone. Sierra here was able to get the location of the diamond from the boss lady, so we know where it is. Now, that doesn’t mean we should expect this to be a walk in the park. It’s very possible there are men waiting for us at the house. If your bike is running, ride it. If it’s not, we have a cleaning crew on the way to clear the mess. There are plenty of cars and trucks behind me that you can use if you need to.”
I turned around and looked at the cars.
“In fact,” I said to myself, “I think I have an idea to make it even easier.”
“What’s that?” Sierra asked.
“I’m going to need someone to drive at least one of the cars in front. Shit, why don’t you do it?” I asked her. It was so obvious.
“Me?” She balked at first and started to step back.
“No, it’s a great idea,” I said, reaching for her to stop her from walking away. “Look, I can put a few of my guys in the car with you, but you drive in front of the pack. You already know where we’re going. You should be able to find it easily, right? Then, when we get there, the guards recognize you, so they don’t give you any problem when you go in. They’ll recognize the car and let you in. Then, we storm the place as we enter behind you.” It was a brilliant plan, I thought, and I was proud of myself for it.
She nodded as she considered it, looking at the sedan in front of me. “Yeah, okay, but what about Coyote?”
“She’s riding with me. I want to keep a close eye on her to make sure she doesn’t trying anything else stupid.” I gave her a smirk and nodded.
“Alright. Let’s do it.” She brushed my cheek with a hand as she walked by and blew me a kiss.
“Let me get someone to ride with you,” I told her.
“Sure.”
I turned around and raised my hands again, trying to get everyone’s attention. It was hard to whistle and shout over the engines roaring to life or sputtering and trying to come back to life.
“Luther,” I shouted. He had a voice that could be heard over the crowd.
“Boss,” he said, backing away from the bike he was tooling with.
“Tell them that if anyone needs a ride, I need to see them up here.”
“Got it.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at our other brothers to come up to the front if their bikes didn’t work.
Several guys came forward. I put three in the car with Sierra and explained that they were riding in front. I grabbed the other five and walked them over to a pickup truck that was purring as loudly as one of the motorcycles. Two climbed in front, and the other three got in the back.
Venom walked up and handed them guns. “In case you need them, these will come in handy,” he said.
“Good idea,” I agreed with him. “Let’s get as many of these in Immortal hands as we can,” I told him as I picked up a couple of assault rifles at my feet.
We walked through the crowd passing them out as I made my way back to my motorcycle. I drove up the shoulder of the road and pulled in front of the line of motorcycles, where Luther, Bryce, Venom, and Duncan straddled their bikes, waiting for me.
Sierra backed up, and the truck followed. They turned around up ahead of us and started driving towards the mansion. Duncan helped Coyote get onto my bike and put her arms around my waist so she could hold on.
“I’ll be careful,” I told her.
I didn’t know where my helmet was, and I hadn’t brought an extra one with me. Then again, it was the middle of the night, and we were handling official MC business. I didn’t really give a rat’s ass about a helmet as we started to pull through the wreckage of the running cars and dead men littering the highway.
The cleaning crew would come through soon and clear all of it away. By the time we were driving back from Coyote’s mansion, there would be no sign of the conflict left. And the cleaners would probably already be gone as well. They did excellent work, but no one ever wanted to be around when they showed up. From what I had heard, they were worse than the rest of my guys when it came to depravity. They did not care one way or the other, as long as there was no trace of what had happened when they were finished.
I tried to ignore the fact that I had one of the toughest bosses in the underworld on the back of my motorcycle. She had her firm arms around my waist and pulled herself tight against me. Her frame was narrow like Sierra’s, but she was a little shorter and much harder. Her body was all muscle and bone. It matched her cold, professional demeanor, and it made her current position really fucking erotic as far as I was concerned.
I had taken this woman with immense power and brought her way down, to the point that she wouldn’t even speak to anyone. She had a hole in her hand with a makeshift bandage wrapped around it. It was just a folded bandana one of the guys had in his back pocket. I felt her hands pressing against my stomach.
Apparently, her position wasn’t lost on her either. She let her hands slowly slide down over my belt. I felt her thumbs hook themselves over the top of my pants, holding her hands at about my hips, though it seemed like she wanted to let them sink even lower.
I shook my head and laughed to myself. She wasn’t as smooth as Sierra. It was obvious that Coyote had crafted her attitude and demeanor to do for her what Sierra’s body had done for her. In other words, if she had reached any lower, it wouldn’t have done anything for either one
of us. It might have done something for Sierra later in the morning when I finally got her alone, but it wouldn’t have done anything for Coyote right then.
Still, I couldn’t deny that it felt really good to have a powerful woman under my thumb. I controlled her, and if I had wanted to, if I hadn’t been convinced that there was a future waiting for me with Sierra on the other side of everything, I knew I could have taken anything I wanted from her at that point, even sex. That thought inevitably led to my mind wandering and considering what she must have been like in bed. I wondered how that tight, firm, muscular body of hers would have felt underneath me, but I decided it wasn’t worth the energy.