Their Ex's Redrock Dawn (Texas Alpha Biker)

by Shirl Anders

  Vincent started to say something, but Finn interrupted, continuing, “I pulled his financials over my phone and they looked jacked. I sent what I had to your secure fax, brother,” he said, nodding to Vincent. “We can run him off, that’s easy ... but—”

  Now Zeb interrupted. “That doesn’t catch him.”

  “Right,” Finn said, squinting in the harsh desert sunlight at Zeb. “You’re going to have to set him up and keep Carly safe while you’re doing it.”

  “I got that last part,” Zeb said.

  “But if he’s looking for money, and we all get he is, having his wife leaving him, divorcing him, and taking up with another guy is going to stall him,” Finn said.

  “Or speed him up,” Vincent muttered.

  Zeb nearly reached a hand out to caress the .50 caliber as he uttered, “Crazy, fucked-up shit.”

  “Yeah, happens every day, though,” Vincent said.

  “You have to scheme with Justice about getting Shaw to confess on audio or say what he is up to, while you boys figure out the motive and find proof,” Finn said.

  Finn shook hands with them both and held Zeb’s a second longer as they chin-nodded. His for saying thanks for Finn’s help, and Finn’s, Zeb guessed, saying he’d help if he could. Then Vincent and he watched Finn disappear into the desert, where they heard a motorcycle rumble and Zeb wondered how Finn carried his sweet .50 caliber on a motorcycle.

  On the way back from the meet with Finn, Zeb called Carly to check in and got her voicemail. He went inwardly ballistic.

  “Hit it,” he growled at Vincent sharply.

  But five minutes later, he was calmed slightly because Vincent got a text from his wife. It said Carly was visiting her and they were going for a drink so she’d be late.

  “Told her not to damn well leave WTSF without me,” Zeb muttered, feeling the driving need to be on his bike and rolling faster than a truck could go, while he was the not-in-control passenger.

  THIRTEEN] Badass Biker Babe

  After texting Tess she needed to talk to her, Carly found Tess at Rusty Harper’s amazing new gift shop, called the cute name Harper’s Bazaar. Carly was fully intending, when she got there, to blurt out that her cheating husband might be trying to get her hurt or incapacitate her so he could probably get hold of her bank accounts or sell the house to finance his hot new fling. It had to be money ... she knew it had to be. Her dad had always warned her that men would try to get it any way they could and she’d better be watchful.

  But when Carly grabbed the candy box and clicked her heels up to the gift shop’s front door, she knew she couldn’t tell anyone those horrible suspicions. But she was going to tell them about the affair and about meeting Zeb and the other things Rick was doing, so maybe she could find a way through the awful mess that was her life. However, just looking in the gift shop’s windows had her mesmerized, because Rusty had color-coordinated different sections of the store.

  So the front two windows of the store showed a blue side and a green side. Everything in the blue side had some shade of blue in it, from homemade quilts, candles, picture frames, several dolls, to just oodles of knickknacks, and craft items.

  It made Carly want to shop and it made the heartache inside her ease as she opened the door and smelled baking cookies and lemon.

  Wow, her new favorite hangout.

  An hour later, she, Tess, and Rusty were sitting on high stools at Lulu’s with a nearly empty pitcher of margaritas on the round table between them. It was the afternoon, so Lulu’s was thankfully quiet, except for a couple guys sitting at the far end of the bar looking like permanent fixtures.

  Carly took a bracing gulp of her margarita, while looking at the big pink bow in front of her where the candy box sat.

  “So your asshole gave you that candy? What are you doing with it?” Rusty asked. Both Tess and Rusty had been very supportive and nonjudgmental, which Carly really needed and was grateful for.

  “I was thinking about throwing it in his face or something, but Zeb wouldn’t like that.”

  “Girl, I cannot wait to meet this badass biker of yours, and I get the smashing the ex’s face into the candy box thing,” Tess said.

  “I think this town is cosmic or something,” Rusty declared. “First you and Vincent with the cheating ex’s”—she nodded to Tess—“then me and Cabe with a cheating ex.” She pointed to herself. “Now you, Carly—again with the cheating ex’s! It’s cosmic,” she declared.

  “It makes you believe in fate,” Tess said, while fiddling with her amazing silver wedding band that had a small diamond-crusted eagle on it and still looked chic.

  “Fate,” Carly mumbled, and maybe she did it with a little tear. Fate at meeting Zeb. It had to be.

  “Both our men’s ex-wives were hot in an irritating and I-wanna-smack-them-down way. But being a beauty queen wannabe ... that is not freaking fair,” Rusty declared.

  Carly felt Tess grab her hand. “I’ll get Vincent to take you off as a judge.”

  Carly squeezed Tess’ hand back. “No, really, that’s not the hardest part.” Sadly, it wasn’t. “She’s got fake boobs for brains, but Zeb didn’t look at her twice so I know he is into me.”

  “Boobs for brains,” Rusty spurted, and laughed.

  “Well, if you change your mind just ask,” Tess said. Then she said, “We have to do this more often, and when Rusty and I go out we usually dress up.”

  Rusty nodded. “It’s not slut-worthy, but close.”

  Now Carly found herself laughing a little, and it surprised her that she could. “I’d love to do that.”

  “Uh oh,” Tess exclaimed from Carly’s right side. “I might have texted Vincent we were going out and he might have told your Zeb, because there’s one really mad-looking man coming through the door that is major smoking hot with just a glance.”

  “Uh oh,” Rusty chimed. “Vincent too!”

  On an empty stomach Carly might have been a bit tipsy, and she exclaimed, “My badass biker babe! God, he is so hot.” Then she squinted at Zeb’s forced stalk toward her. He looked very lean and mean, in a glaring, hard-jawed way. At the last second, she squeaked, “Uh oh.”

  Zeb’s palm smashed the box of chocolates under Carly’s nose. “Your fucking dickwad give you those?” he asked, in a seriously hot, growled voice.

  Carly hadn’t seen this side of Zeb, but it was smoking in a dangerous and quiver-worthy way. But then she remembered something ... uh oh ... she wasn’t supposed to leave from work unescorted. She opened her mouth to tell him why she’d done it, but then Zeb blew her away completely, and she was tipsy, so that wasn’t hard.

  Looking at Vincent, who was curled around Tess’ back, Zeb growled, “You fucking got someone to test these?”

  “Yeah,” Vincent uttered back.

  “But—” Carly started to say.

  But then Zeb turned to her again and leaned in close. “Tell me you did not eat any of these.”

  He was so forceful she nearly blew backward, until she caught herself. How dare he talk to her like that, besides the implications!

  “No I didn’t.” Then she amended by his look alone, “None of us did.”

  “Thank God for fucking something,” Zeb muttered, in a not-nice way, while Rusty fanned herself, while mouthing the words “smoking hot.”

  Well, yeah, sure Zeb was, but he was also bossy and starting to piss her off. “You can’t just come in here and act like—” she started to say, but she lost the words when Zeb reached in and lifted her off her barstool.

  “Ladies. Vincent,” he growled. “Later.”

  He said that “later” sounding like much, much later. Then he was pulling her through the bar. Carly thought about screeching, but somehow in her tipsy mind she didn’t want Tess and Rusty to think she was letting Zeb boss her around like he was.

  So she called, “See you soon! Thanks so much. Really, thank y—”

  The last part was lost on her new friends, because Zeb had her through the door. Where she
decided one good thing was that now forced out of her friends’ sight she could yell at her pushy but really hot man.

  Her mouth opened to do the yelling, but over her attempt, Zeb growled, “Keys.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, falling against Zeb because she was tipsy, and then he was in her purse and had her keys ... then had her passenger door open and it looked as if he was going to throw her inside.

  Her mouth opened again to blast him, when he overrode her one more time. “What part of not going anywhere without me did you not fucking get, sweetness?”

  Oh! Oh! Carly screamed inwardly, while noticing his use of the nickname he’d given her for those intimate moments when he wanted to spank her or boss her into doing things his way. Which always turned out giving her multiple, banging orgasms. But still! Then she wondered with alarm if he thought what she’d done was bad enough for a serious spanking.

  “Yeah, baby, you’re fucking in trouble,” Zeb growled, obviously reading thoughts off her revealing, tipsy face.

  Zeb knew he was fucked, because Carly was pissed at him and he wasn’t done making her feel that way about him that night. He still had the damn obligation to explain to her outright that her husband was trying to kill her. So he was popped on adrenalin, as if he was holding the trigger on his sniper rifle and maybe he was being overly edgy ... or maybe not.

  He just knew Carly was going to dislike him even more after he had his talk with her, so he was going to damn well edge his bets. Especially after she’d scared the hell out of him by taking Shaw’s damn candy and flowers, which would both be tested for poisons very soon by someone Vincent knew.

  “I need you to tell me where your lake house is,” he said, as he pulled the WTSF truck out of the bar’s parking lot, while side-glancing Carly.

  “No,” she snapped, only it wasn’t a cutting snap, but had a little slur.

  It was not lost on him his babe was feeling the alcohol and she was mad at him. He just wished his heartbeat would go back to normal after seeing her cute ass sitting at the tall bar table with that box of candy planted in front of her.

  “Babe,” he said in his seriously-I-mean-it, deeply growled voice.

  Her quick glance at him told him she’d felt the command, but she might be judging if she could outdo his dominant stance. And that was not happening in his new and better world, so he switched from driving the truck out of the bar’s parking lot to driving it back behind the bar into the darker edges.

  “Where are you going?” Carly sputtered.

  But the next second he had her pulled off her seat and over him as he kicked his door open and slammed the truck into park. Carly’s skirt rode up, revealing a lacy pink swatch as her legs straddled each side of his hips. One of her legs bent at the knee and the other landed straighter, because the door was open.

  “You going to test me?” he asked, with his nose nearly pressed to hers as his hands held her ass right where he wanted it, and that was with very wet panties over his hard cock under the zipper on his jeans.

  “You’re a bully,” she declared, pushing on his chest.

  “I’ll spank your ass right here, sweetness,” he warned.

  She stilled instantly, then her hands patted his chest. “Zeb,” she whispered.

  He did intimate things with her ass that started her squirming over his cock and got his hands under her panties from behind.

  “I want you to let me go,” Carly demanded; her full breasts were in his face from where she was wiggling over his lap. Her thighs were opened wide enough his finger dipped lower, and he found wet heat from behind. “Oh,” she added breathlessly.

  He blew hot air into her cleavage, before he growled, “I’ll let you up, sweetness, you tell me how to get to your lake house.”

  Carly started saying, “I don’t know why you need to know that—”

  But he got inventive, pushing her forward until his face was seated between her warm breasts as he slid a finger inside her from behind. It was damn sweet and so hot his cock bucked in his jeans, while his babe moaned that sound he was learning meant surrender and “more.”

  He rode her up his body with some even thrusts, then she started helping back with small mews that were sugar to his ears.

  “Yeah, baby,” he uttered, then he split her ass cheeks and fucked her harder with his finger, while dropping the finger next to it to rub her clit.

  “Y-you can’t. I-I shouldn’t,” she moaned. “I’m so mad at you.” She rode his finger harder.

  His voice was muffled between her breasts, but no less growled. “You can be pissed, sweetness, and still give me your pussy and your climax.”

  One crazy climax later, Carly glared at Zeb, then turned to look out the front windshield of the truck. Her pink thong was on the dash. Zeb had taken it, saying her thong was now his to remember the time she given up her sweet pussy to him and had come all over him in the truck.

  “Bastard,” Carly muttered under her breath.

  Because she was really mad at Zeb and he shouldn’t have been able to make her climax like that. It made her a slut. A slut for all things Zeb, and she’d never been a slut before.

  Maybe she’d been too much of a good girl and now her inner slut was busting to get out after being imprisoned so long. She just couldn’t figure out how Zeb got her so hot so fast. In her entire life, she’d never come that easy—before, it had taken work.

  But within a week of knowing her, Zeb had her clit on speed dial. One touch and she was his. And she’d given him the damn directions to her lake house. Without knowing why. The owner of her clit was very edgy, dark, and silent about why the hell they were going out to her lake house, instead of back to Rowdie’s. Zeb’s ice-blue eyes would glance at her with sharp intent. Then he’d look away.

  She wasn’t going to like what he was thinking, she decided as she tried to work out how she could get back to being royally pissed at him right after she’d come all over his talented fingers.

  “Hell,” Zeb muttered.

  Carly looked over at Zeb, then followed his gaze, looking out at her sprawling lake house. It was a teensy extravagant, in a very over-the-top resort way. The only way she’d ever justified its existence and outrageous expense was that there was a separate compound on the property used as a safe house for the really desperate girls that WTSF took in that needed to disappear.

  “What’s the gate code, sweetness?”

  Carly turned in her seat, tightening the seatbelt across her chest. Zeb’s gaze dipped, and she swallowed back the fact that she liked him looking at her chest.

  Instead, she gave him her most stubborn look. “Do you know that was my very first attempt at a girl crew?”

  She’d really expected him to burst out laughing, not look serious and lift his arm across the back of the seat so his big hand could cup her nape. Then his thumb traced a shiver there.

  “Sorry, Carly. If they’re good for you, baby, they’ll get that events are running hot and they’ll cut you some slack.”

  Events were running hot? Carly really wanted to know what those were, and did Zeb really and seriously think something was up with that candy?

  She started to part her lips to comment, but Zeb squeezed her neck, and interrupted. “Code, babe.”

  Maybe she didn’t really want to know about “events heating up,” because she gave him the code and went back to being mad at him, which was way easier than facing her life.

  FOURTEEN] You’re So Bossy

  Zeb’s head turned. “You have a tennis court, babe. Do you play tennis?”

  Carly blushed, then shook her head.

  She watched Zeb’s light blues, outlined by dark lashes that made his eyes pop in an intense way, looking over her resort spread. It was a multi-level sprawl of over five thousand square feet, with six bedrooms, five baths, four outdoor decks, ten acres, and a quarter of a block walk down to the lakeshore. She could have gotten closer on the ten acres, but she’d wanted that wide, grassy yard before
you hit the beach-like shore, then the lake.

  Most people would twist their heads back and forth looking it all over, but Zeb just swept his gaze with an immobile jaw that had her not knowing what he thought. Like, did he think it was too much? It was really embarrassing, but she’d built the house, lakeside dock, and patio, with sheltered boulder grotto, and lighted water features—had a blast doing it, and she’d especially loved decorating it once it was done, but then after the builder was gone and every throw pillow was placed to perfection, she’d looked around and realized she’d built a freaking estate. But for whom? She was on her own then.

  Then she’d decided it was for a husband and children someday. But any man she’d dated she’d been hesitant to bring out to the lake house. It had just seemed so over the top—well, it really was over the top, and what did that say about her? All kinds of things she felt uncomfortable with, the first being “I’m loaded and have way more money than you.” The second was “I’m loaded and therefore you could either be very uncomfortable about that fact or you could instantly become gold -digger guy.”

  Then there was the other thing she could feel, the thing she felt with Zeb looking over her place: did he think all that luxury defined her, making her arrogant and frivolous? Because the damn place really took a lot of work to keep up, and she’d bought another house in town so Rick had never known about the lake house. She rarely got to come out to it.

  It was all twisted with something to do with her childhood, and not having a mom growing up or a permanent home because her dad, while wonderful, moved a lot, following business, which he did a lot.

  “The best damn house I’ve ever seen,” Zeb said.

  Carly sucked in a breath, startled at the feelings rushing through her. She wanted to lean forward and ask him, “Really?” She couldn’t believe he thought that. Did he really think that?