by Evelyn Glass
He was watching her with his arms crossed over his powerful chest. He wore a pair of black mechanic’s gloves, filthy with grease, and he didn’t seem to care that he was leaving black streaks over his bare forearms. His blue eyes studied her from behind errant strands of brown hair that fell over his forehead.
There was a cutting kind of edge to him, a destructive sort of jadedness that just could not be ignored. Camilla silently took in his tattoos—the MC one on his right forearm and the tribal crow on his left shoulder—and marveled at how few there were compared to the number most bikers had. She couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there were other designs hidden underneath his clothes, to be discovered through an exploration of his formidable body.
She took in his scars, which were a more widely spread presence than his ink. There was a knife scar on his left forearm, and one that looked like it came from a burn on his right clavicle. There was a scar that ran from right underneath his left eye all the way down to his chin. While she couldn’t be sure about his clothes concealing more tattoo designs, she was fairly certain that there were more scars on his gold-tinged skin.
“Who are you?”
His voice startled her. He did not yell. He did not even speak particularly harshly. And yet, every word felt like ice shards leaving cuts on her skin.
Camilla swallowed. She briefly considered lying, but then she realized that would probably be the quickest way to get herself killed.
“My name is Camilla Hernandez,” she said, and she forced herself to meet his gaze straight-on and not look away from those blue eyes that had such a cold fire burning within them.
“You Mexican?”
“I’m from New York.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
It wasn’t, and she knew it. And he knew that she knew it.
Camilla focused on her breathing. She wasn’t going to show these men just how afraid she was. “My dad is Mexican,” she admitted.
“He with the cartel?”
Despite her fear, Camilla couldn’t help but burst out laughing. She tried to imagine her fruit vendor father smuggling meth for the Mexican cartel.
“He’s too jittery. He sweats when he lies.”
The men laughed raucously, and the shadow of a smirk even crossed Dirk’s impassible, gorgeous features.
“Are you with the cartel?” he asked, bullet-fast, almost without giving the laughter any time to die down.
Camilla lifted her chin a fraction. “No,” she said firmly.
Dirk took two steps forward. He was close enough that she could smell him now; he smelled like sweat and red desert dirt, and it wasn’t a bad smell.
“Then what were you doing with Tobias Alvarez?”
Camilla licked her dry lips. His proximity was doing strange things to her, things that she had no business thinking about in her current pickle of a situation.
“He was my informer…or so I thought,” she corrected herself bitterly. She still couldn’t believe she had fallen for Tobias’ tricks. She was no rookie; she should have known better. “He was supposed to be my contact.”
Dirk’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and confusion. “For what?”
Camilla hesitated. He was never going to believe her, but then again, her truth was the only truth she had. “I’m a journalist,” she said. “I was working on a story.”
Dirk recoiled as though he had been struck. The men looked at her with such disgust that she found herself squirming. Perhaps they would have preferred it if she actually was working for the Mexican cartel.
“A story on biker gangs of the California desert?” one of the man asked, and from his voice, Camilla recognized him as the man who had first spoken when she and Tobias had been attacked. He was a man in his late forties, with a strong build and a face whose round features had been hardened by the life he had chosen to lead.
Dirk shot a quick look at him, and Camilla was amazed to see the man lower his gaze and clamp his mouth shut. One single look and Dirk’s message had been heard loud and clear: “I ask the questions here.” Camilla was more and more intrigued by this man who ruled with a quiet voice and sharp eyes.
Dirk focused his attention back on her, and she knew that he was waiting for an answer.
“No,” she said after a moment.
“On what then?” Dirk demanded.
Camilla’s brain was working a mile a minute, but again she knew that the truth was her only chance of getting out of this alive.
“I’m an investigative reporter for TIME; I have been covering drug violence stories on the Mexican border for years. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that violence has been migrating up north in recent times. We know the Mexican cartel is involved, and we’ve come to learn that the Tar Mongols play a pretty major role in the game.” Camilla hesitated. She didn’t feel right telling all this to these men, but what other choice did she have, really? It wasn’t like her story would be of any interest to them, after all. “Tobias offered to be my link and assist me in uncovering everything I needed for my piece on how the Tar Mongols have brought the cartel’s violence past the border. He said it was his way of making things right.”
“He told you he was repentant?”
Camilla nodded, feeling stupid.
The men laughed.
“Alvarez repenting!” a young man cackled, and she recognized him as the second man who had ambushed her. “That’s rich!”
Camilla glared at him. “He was very persuasive.”
“Oh, he was a persuasive son of a bitch, alright.”
“Enough,” Dirk said simply. And the young man shut up. He looked at Camilla with an almost pitiful expression on his face. “So you’re here to expose the Tar Mongols?”
“Yes.”
“Well, lady, let me tell you, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day.”
Chapter 3
“Wait! You don’t believe me?”
Camilla’s heart was racing as two men escorted her—wrists still bound and muscles still aching—to one of the sheds that made up what she understood was a Minutemen camp in the middle of the desert. This shed was slightly larger than the others, and it was directly connected to a warehouse that was used as a garage for the men’s motorbikes; Camilla could see them through the open door, shiny and fierce and ready to roar up a storm.
Inside, the shed was frugally but surprisingly cozily furnished, with a bed, a table, a couch, an armchair, a coffee table, and a paper-littered desk that stood in front of the window in the far wall. The men led her to the couch and pushed her unceremoniously onto the cushions. Camilla glared at them and shifted nervously, sitting as straight as she could, given the tired, aching muscles in her lower back.
“Leave us,” Dirk said, and once again his voice was calm, but Camilla still shivered at the underlying note of menace she could hear in it.
The men didn’t even hesitate. They gave Dirk a short nod and departed as though it was nothing, as though they weren’t leaving a woman at the complete mercy of a man who she could tell was as unpredictable as he was soft-spoken.
Camilla did her best not to adjust her position again so as not to betray her mounting tension. She looked up at Dirk, who was standing on the other side of the coffee table with his arms once again crossed over his chest.
“I believe you,” he said.
Camilla watched him. Somehow, his words didn’t bring her the relief that they should have. “Do you?” she asked.
Dirk nodded curtly. “It would be pretty stupid of you to lie to us, and one thing I can tell about you, is that you’re anything but stupid. Besides,” he grinned, “my men found your purse in a saddlebag on Alvarez’s bike. We found your press badge.”
“Oh.” Camilla hoped they wouldn’t contact Kurt, asking for a ransom or something equally humiliating; her boss would skin her alive for having been so unbelievably stupid as to get herself into this situation. Speaking of which… “So are you going to let me go now?”
Dirk stared at her as if she h
ad just spoken in a foreign language. “What?”
She met his implacable blue eyes and forced herself not to look away. “You know who I am and what I’m doing here. You know I pose no threat to you. So why don’t you just take me to the nearest bus or train station and I’ll take it from there?”
A half-derisive, half-amused smirk stretched across Dirk’s lips. “Apologies, my liege,” he said sarcastically. “Shall I command for a carriage to bring you back to your kingdom?”
Camilla couldn’t help but glare at him for his mockery. And she also couldn’t help the way her stomach clenched in anxiety. “My liege.” With just two words, Dirk told her a lot about himself, and it was information that she wasn’t sure she liked. His words told her that he was a man of culture rather than of violence, and that was usually a formidable combination.
“I don’t get it,” she said after a moment. “What’s it to you if I go free? I wasn’t here for you in the first place.”
“I know. But you are here, and you’re an investigative journalist. It’s not a combination of factors that I feel particularly comfortable with.”
“I’m not investigating you!”
“Yeah, you’ve said that,” he said, unfazed. “But you’re still investigating. Within our borders. I don’t like it. Besides,” he reached inside his back pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes and a battered Zippo lighter, “it’s not my call to make.”
Camilla watched as he lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag. There was a calm, impassible demeanor to this man that gave her the chills. Every movement was calm, every gesture was calculated. He held the cigarette pack out to her, and she shook her head.
“Then whose call is it?”
“Stephan’s.”
“Your president?”
Dirk arched a dark eyebrow. “See? You know too much about us already.”
Camilla huffed impatiently. “Everyone knows who the Minutemen and Stephan Walker are.”
“Everyone in the area, sure. A New Yorker isn’t supposed to know. But then again”—he took another deep drag and exhaled spirals of smoke into the air—“you’re not just your regular New Yorker, are you?”
Camilla bit her lip nervously. “I guess not,” she said. She could admit at least that. “So take me to your president then,” she said after a moment. “Let’s sort this thing out.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that just yet.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“Stephan isn’t in California. He’ll be back in three days. In the meanwhile, you’ll stay here with us.”
Shit. “You want me to be your prisoner for three days?”
Dirk shrugged. “You could see yourself as a guest, if it’ll make it easier on you.”
“You keep all of your guests bound at the wrists?”
He smirked.
***
Although she didn’t exactly feel like a guest, over the next three days the Minutemen treated her surprisingly well. They fed her, let her shower regularly, and gave her new clothes to replace those that had been ruined during their unwelcome run-in with each other.
But they still kept her bound at the wrists. It wasn’t with thick ropes this time—it was with handcuffs, and at the very least, she was able to move her fingers and her circulation wasn’t being cut off.
They kept her in Dirk’s shed. The Minutemen’s lieutenant and vice president—she had learned that was his role—refused to let her out of his sight and preferred to keep her at close distance. He gave her the bed and slept on the couch, a chivalrous gesture that surprised her.
But that was pretty much the end of his gentlemanly manners. He never touched her, but she could see the way he looked at her, and she knew he was impressed by what he saw. Once, she even caught the hint of an erection concealed by his pants. For all that, her situation was less than a desirable one; the knowledge that Dirk found her sexually arousing made her feel pleased and fearful at the same time.
She knew he was a man who was used to get what he wanted, and the look in his eyes at times was the look of a hunter watching a prey. He never acted on it, but it was there, and it was unsettling. Still, there was also something thrilling about knowing that she held such power over such a formidable and otherwise unbeatable man.
Camilla would be lying if she said she also wasn’t stealing certain less-than-pure glances at Dirk when he wasn’t looking. The awe-struck effect that his sculpted body and impressive features had had on her the first time she had laid eyes on him did not go away with time—if anything, it increased. She had seen him bare-chested a few times when he emerged out of the shower with just his jeans on, and the view had been spectacular to say the least. Just as she had suspected, there was no further ink on Dirk’s upper body, but there were a few more scars. One of those, on the upper part of his chest, looked like a bullet scar.
There was just something about the way Dirk moved, some inner, lethal grace that Camilla couldn’t help but admire…it attracted her. Even in her current situation, she had caught herself—more than once—fantasizing about what it would be like to have sex with a man such as Dirk. She had been ashamed each time she had caught her thoughts heading in that direction, but then again, it wasn’t like she had much else to do, other than let her mind wander and daydream.
Sometimes she read. Dirk had an impressive collection of books in his shed, ranging from a few of Shakespeare’s work to legendary American novels, to modern novels and essays on the world. He even had a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. She had been stunned when she had discovered it, and she had asked Dirk if he had really read it. He had said yes, and Camilla had had no trouble believing him.
She had been with the Minutemen for three days, and over those seventy-two hours, she had learned that Dirk Coleman was truly a remarkable man. She knew that made him even more dangerous than she had first thought him to be—and that was saying something. Somehow, however, instead of scaring her, that knowledge intrigued her all the more. Just what was it about Dirk that kept her up at night with thoughts of naked bodies and sweaty, golden-tinged skin?
Chapter 4
Dirk Coleman was a man of many things. He was a man of action, first and foremost. He was a man of violence, from the war in Afghanistan to the war in the California desert. He was a man of loyalty—who would sooner have a limb cut off before he betrayed Stephan Walker. He was a man of culture, so in love with his modest personal collection of assorted literature.
He was not a man of lust. He simply wasn’t interested—not anymore, not after her whose name he still couldn’t bring himself to think of, let alone say out loud. Sure, he had his fair share of women, but that was just part of the lifestyle, something that came with the job description and that was expected of him. He had casual—sometimes wild—sex with women because that was what his men expected him to do, but he didn’t particularly enjoy it. He would orgasm, sure, but it was more of a physical reaction, an automatic reflex than the result of overwhelming passion.
He supposed that was one of the reasons why he and Stephan got along so well. Dirk was the only one who knew that the Minutemen’s president was secretly gay; the others would probably skin their leader alive if they ever found out. Stephan, too, had sex with women…because that was what a MC’s president was supposed to do. Under the sheets, they both played a stage role; it was a weight they shared and it had cemented their bond and friendship.
Dirk had not been genuinely aroused by a woman in what felt like a lifetime, but something about Camilla Hernandez seemed to push just the right buttons. Maybe it was her curves, or the way her eyes never stopped sparkling with defiance ever since he took the hood off of her—even in her current, helpless situation. Maybe it was her full lips. Maybe it was her long, luxurious hair.
Camilla Hernandez was an unusual beauty. Because of her mixed origins, she had Latina curves and olive skin, and Caucasian green eyes and auburn hair. She was breathtaking, and the combination of her smoldering loo
ks and indomitable spirit was driving Dirk mad in ways that he had not experienced in ages. Over the past three days, he found himself having to suppress the urge to reach for her more often than not, and his subconscious had surprised him with some very vivid, very wet dreams.
He was sure she was noticing, too. As an investigative reporter, he knew Camilla was noticing many things in the short time she had been with them. It made him nervous, and he couldn’t wait to take her to Stephan and be done with it. He knew she was well aware of his attraction for her. What was even more disconcerting was the fact that he also noticed the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. He had caught more than a few glimpses of lust in her green irises, and every time he had to restrain himself from acting on their mutual, unspoken fascination with each other.