by Lane Hart
The worst part is that I was finally starting to regain enough confidence to start dating again, and after last night, I’m certain that it will be nearly impossible to believe anything that comes out of a man’s mouth anytime in the near future.
It’s one thing for a guy to use an old or misleading photo on his profile, but to pretend to be someone else entirely in order to steal from me? That level of betrayal blows my already apprehensive mind.
And makes me look like a complete fool.
Conducting background checks on potential suitors seemed a little extreme. Guess I was too naïve for my own good, and now that mistake is going to bite me in the ass. From here on out, I won’t even meet another guy until I’ve learned and verified their full name and date of birth.
“So, what’s the plan if you do see him?” Quincey asks in my ear.
“I’m just going to follow him and when I get him alone, I’ll politely pull him over and ask him to give my computer back to me to avoid criminal charges,” I say, like it’s that simple.
“And if he refuses?”
“Let’s hope that he doesn’t,” I mutter. Because if that happens, I’m fucked.
Before I left Raleigh on this insane mission, I put in a call to the CI who was trying to prospect for the MC before they figured out what he was up to a few weeks ago. The guy was evasive and shady, making it clear he wasn’t thrilled about answering any of my questions. But I was finally able to get names for the two blond members. Once I added in the smirk and the fact that he could also make a living modeling underwear, he was able to narrow it down to just one name—Dalton Brady.
Based on the CI’s intel during his few weeks prospecting, Mr. Brady is also an officer, the club’s treasurer, probably involved with laundering all of the dirty money through the club’s legit businesses, like the bar and strip club.
Surprisingly enough, Mr. Brady doesn’t have a criminal record. In fact, other than his driver’s license, there’s nothing else on file for him, not even a single speeding ticket.
How is it that this guy can be a member of a motorcycle club that’s caught up in so much violence it’s scary and be so squeaky clean?
In addition to his good looks, he must be pretty damn smart.
That doesn’t make me feel any better about how easily he was able to screw me over.
And don’t even get me started on the hit to my self-esteem.
The whole time we were talking and then…later, when we were doing more, I thought he was actually attracted to me.
How could I have been so stupid?
Guys like him don’t want women like me. They want beautiful, stick-thin, bikini models, not boring, plus-size federal agents with an overabundance of junk in the trunk.
So, not only am I pissed that he stole my laptop, but I’m also angry at the asshole for making me feel like an idiot.
Hopefully my threat of arresting him will be enough to get him to return my laptop. If he doesn’t, I could lose my job. And that is just not something I’m willing to give up because of one jackass biker.
Chapter Four
Dalton
I spot the familiar black SUV sitting about five hundred feet down the street from the clubhouse’s parking lot when I start to leave. So, it’s no big surprise when I pull out and then look down in my mirror to see the vehicle following me.
Fuck.
So, I guess Peyton’s already figured out who I am, and came to collect. The agent is really damn smart, I’ll give her that. Did she come by herself or does she have a partner with her? If she’s alone, then she’s either insane or incredibly brave to confront me on her own.
Since I don’t want any witnesses for this encounter, especially my MC brothers, who may get all worried and shit for no reason about an agent on my ass, I make a right turn off Highway 58 onto Canal Drive, a private wooded side road. Just as I expected, the blue light in her front dashboard comes on as soon as we’re out of sight from the main highway.
I pull over onto the dirt shoulder slowly to stop and kill the engine. After I climb off my bike, I remove my helmet and hang it on one of the handlebars to turn around and see just how angry the hot little agent is with me.
She’s even sexier than I remember from last night when she gets out and slams her door. Wearing a pristine white pant suit that I would love to get dirty, she struts up to me in her black heels with dark sunglasses covering her eyes. Her long blonde hair blows in front of her face, thanks to the coastal wind, which seems to piss her off even more when she has to bat it away.
“Good afternoon, Agent Bradley. What brings you to Emerald Isle on a such a lovely day?” I ask coolly with my patented smug grin.
“Cut the shit!” she shouts when she’s right in front of my face. She grabs the collar of my t-shirt from the opening of my leather cut and balls it up in her fist. “Where the hell is my laptop?”
Smirking at her beautiful, angry face, I blink innocently and ask, “What laptop?”
She chokes me with my own shirt collar a little more and I have to say, rather than intimidate me, I’m just turned on by her show of force. Badass women may have just become my new fetish.
“Give it to me now!” she demands, which only makes my smile widen.
Cutting my eyes sharply to the left and then the right on the empty road, I say, “You drove all the way here just to finish what we started last night?” I reach for either sides of her hips to pull her body closer to mine while licking my lips, remembering exactly how damn good she tasted. One of my thumbs strokes over the metal badge clipped to her waistband while the other caresses her gun holster. “Okay, baby, I’m in. But, badge or not, if you keep flashing your pussy around town like a bitch in heat, you’re gonna get both of us slapped with a public indecency charge.”
I was fully expecting her knee to slam up and into my balls, but that doesn’t mean it hurt any less.
“Motherfucker,” I croak. When she pulls away from me, I double over in pain. Bracing a palm on the seat of the bike to keep myself upright, my other hand grabs my boys through the crotch of my jeans, trying to help them descend again.
During my recovery is when Peyton stomps around my bike to look in the saddlebag that’s now empty. Coming back around, she pushes her sunglasses up to the top of her head to lean down and look at my face. That’s the first time I notice how pronounced the bags are under her eyes. Again, that stupid fucking feeling of guilt squeezes its fingers around my throat.
“Last chance to turn over my laptop, Dalton Brady, before I take you in and charge you with theft of government property and...and assault on a federal employee,” Peyton threatens me, but I know she’s full of shit. If she wanted to have me arrested, she would need the U.S. Attorney to take charges against me to the Grand Jury, and then have them indict me. The feds only assemble a Grand Jury once a fucking month and if I had to guess, it wasn’t today.
That’s right, I’m smarter than I look.
If I wasn’t in agony at the moment, I’d probably make another smartass comment, like I don’t consider a consensual pussy-licking to be an assault, just to get her even more riled up.
But I keep my mouth shut.
And I have to say it’s so fucking hot when she rough handles me. I don’t even try to resist when she spins me around, jerks my hands behind my back, and slaps the metal handcuffs on my wrists. She then shoves me over toward her SUV and hustles me into the backseat, right over the spot where she came for me not even twenty-four hours ago.
I’m not concerned about her little arrest. If I wanted to, I could run away, head back to the clubhouse, and have one of my brothers get the cuffs off. Instead, I’m curious to see just how far she’s willing to take this charade of hers. The only thing I’m currently worried about is my baby sitting abandoned on the side of the road, with the key still in the ignition.
“Can I call someone…to come get my ride?” I ask Peyton through the subsiding nut pain after she flops down in the driver’s seat.
> “No,” she answers, pulling her sunglasses back down over her eyes. “I hope it gets stolen!”
“That’s just wrong,” I tell her. “Did your laptop have sentimental value? I’m guessing it didn’t. But you see that bike right there? It’s a classic 1947 Harley Knucklehead. I helped my dad restore it before he…” I stop myself before I tell her my whole goddamn life story. “Look, it’s fucking priceless, okay?” I huff. “The only material thing I give a shit about in this world is that damn bike.”
Peyton freezes with her hands on the steering wheel at ten and two for several long, silent moments before she exhales, then thankfully, gets out to go and retrieve the key from the bike’s ignition.
Back in the car, she throws the key ring at me, hitting me in the face with it before it falls between my legs since my hands are restrained behind me.
“Thank you,” I tell her when she starts to drive away to who the hell knows where.
I begin to get an idea when she not only hits her turn signal to get on the highway headed west but makes a call to someone, simply saying, “I’m on my way back to Raleigh.”
Shit.
So, either she’s really taking me all the way back to Raleigh for questioning and holding until a warrant for arrest comes through, or this is all just one crazy, intense game of chicken. Since New Bern has the closest Eastern District of North Carolina federal building in our jurisdiction, not Raleigh, I’m gonna go with the chicken option.
“So, you’re pretending like you’re arresting me?” I ask Peyton as I scoot over toward the middle of the backseat until I can get a clear shot of her face in the rearview mirror, even though her sunglasses are hiding her eyes again.
She doesn’t respond.
“Fine,” I mutter. “Here, let me help you write up the arrest report.” I get comfortable and rest my head back against the seat. Clearing my throat, I begin narrating our steamy meeting. “Late on the night of October sixth, the theft is believed to have occurred sometime between the half hour when the victim was face down in the backseat of her government-issued SUV, screaming through her orgasm in the Main Street parking garage. She alleges that only the handsome suspect was in the vicinity, but the wrongly accused suspect assures authorities that there were plenty of opportunities for the theft to occur since the suspect was so busy shoving his tongue in the victim’s mouth and pussy that he was not aware of their surroundings…”
Peyton refuses to meet my gaze in the rearview during my narrative.
“Does that sound about right?” I ask.
“If it wasn’t you, it was one of your gang buddies while I was…distracted,” she huffs.
“Gang buddies? I don’t have gang buddies. At least not anymore,” I reply. “What I have are MC brothers. But they are upstanding gentlemen. None of them would ever steal from a federal agent while she was getting her pussy licked. That’s just plain rude.”
“So it was you,” Peyton asks, her cheeks now a nice rosy red that I imagine is similar to the one she was probably sporting last night.
“I didn’t say it was me. You just think it was me because I’m the easiest person to…finger for it,” I say, unable to prevent my snicker.
“Just tell me where the damn laptop is!” she yells.
“If I was stupid enough to steal a federal agent’s computer, I definitely wouldn’t cop to it. Giving up a location would basically be admitting guilt, wouldn’t it?”
“I have no idea why I ever found you attractive for even a second,” she mumbles to herself.
“You wanted me so badly that it never occurred to you, with all of your higher education and law enforcement training, that I could be a thief. Now, you’re mad at yourself for that lapse in judgment and you’re taking it out on me, a completely innocent man.”
“Either tell me where the laptop is, or I’ll gag you, so you can’t talk,” she warns.
“Isn’t it bad enough that you’re kidnapping me?” I ask. “I mean, we both know that you’re not taking me in and admitting what happened last night. If I had to guess, you already have a tough time making the men you work with take you seriously without adding the tongue-fucking in the public parking garage to your resume.”
“Stop talking about that!” Peyton yells at me. “Believe me, I regret it. I’ll regret that half hour for the rest of my life. I’m trying to forget it—you should too.”
Her words sting, but I tell myself they’re coming from a place of anger and not actual regret. She sure didn’t sound like she was regretting anything at the time…
“That’s not the whole truth, though, is it?” I question her since I was there, and she loved every second of what I did to her. “The problem is that you know you won’t be able forget that the best sexual experience of your life was with an outlaw.” When she doesn’t answer, I go on to add, “And you can’t help but wonder how good fucking would’ve felt if I hadn’t walked away on you…”
“I’m gonna pull over and gag you,” she threatens again.
“With what? Your tongue? You shoved it down my throat like you couldn’t get enough…”
My words are cut off when she growls and then reaches to turn up the volume on the radio. “Sex Type Thing,” the absolute last song I would expect to blast from her radio, erupts at ear-deafening levels from the speakers.
I’m sure that my laughter is still loud enough for her to hear before I shout, “Didn’t peg you as a Stone Temple Pilot fan! You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
Chapter Five
Peyton
What the hell am I doing?
That’s the question that I’ve asked myself way too many times since last night in the bar.
I was blinded by one man’s good looks and now I’m screwed. Not getting any sleep is wreaking havoc on my common sense.
But there are hundreds of confidential documents on my stolen laptop. In the wrong hands, someone could breach the entire federal network!
And while I wish it were as easy as taking the asshole in and having him locked up, I can’t even begin to prove he took it. Sure, I could request the surveillance video from the parking garage, but only if I get a judge to sign off on a warrant, which means my superiors now and for the rest of my career going forward, would know that I fooled around with the suspect in our parking garage! If I admit to all of that, my career will be ruined. Not that it won’t be if I can’t get him to tell me where the hell he’s hiding my laptop.
If I had to guess, it’s probably back in the MC’s clubhouse. I’m not stupid enough to try and go into the lion’s den on my own, or in this case, the Savage Kings’ den. We may not be able to prove that they’ve done anything illegal, but it’s obvious that they’re not just a bunch of good ole boy, motorcycle enthusiasts. The club president’s pregnant wife was murdered in cold blood, so they no doubt enacted some sort of vengeance for that heinous crime. A normal man would kill for that, so I can only imagine the wrath of an MC gang leader who lost a loved one.
So, while I was happy that I was able to track down the bastard this morning and identify him leaving the clubhouse, now that he’s handcuffed in the back of my car, I have no freakin’ clue what I’m going do with him. And he won’t shut the hell up!
Of all the songs that could’ve been on the satellite radio, why did the first one that came through the speakers have to be about the physical act I’m trying so hard to not think about?
The last thing I need is him throwing last night in my face over and over again. I feel stupid enough about it as it is. What I did was crazy and reckless, and I know better.
So why did I do it?
Because Henry, I mean Dalton, is ridiculously hot and irresistible.
At the time, I thought he was attracted to me too. But now I know that he was playing me all along, and I fell right into his trap.
My plan was to start driving in the direction of Raleigh and hope that he would panic, then confess before telling me to turn around so that he could return my propert
y. Unfortunately, he didn’t fall for my ploy.
I guess that means that my new plan is to hold him hostage and offer to exchange him for my laptop.
It’s not the best idea, but it’s all I have right now.
Besides, it’s too late for me to do anything else.
I’ve already kidnapped him.
It feels like I’m sliding down an extremely slippery slope on my ass and I can’t seem to stop myself.
Rather than make things better, I keep making them worse.
Dalton
“Get inside and don’t think about trying anything,” Peyton threatens when she stops the SUV in front of a row of nice, new townhouses and holds open the rear passenger door for me.
She brought me to her house? Why the hell would she do that? Guess she really is freaking out about my theft even more than I expected.
I hope that she’s a more cautious agent than she is with strange men she meets on Tinder. If not, she’s gonna find herself in all sorts of trouble. Why I give a shit about her safety, I’m not entirely sure.
“Can you put my bike keys in my pocket?” I ask, nodding to where they’re still sitting on the seat.
With an annoyed huff, Peyton grabs the key ring and stuffs them in my front jean pocket. Then, she pulls her fucking gun on me, like that would stop me from overpowering her if I wanted, and motions for me to walk up the steps to her place.
Peyton unlocks the door and then shoves me inside with a push to my back. For some reason, she thinks she has all the power in this situation of ours because I’m restrained in her apartment. But actually, it’s the opposite.
I have all of the power.
Only I know where her laptop is, and only I can give her that information. She can’t go to the authorities now that she’s illegally kidnapped me against my will. And if Peyton was suicidal enough to go marching into the clubhouse full of my brothers searching for it, she would have done so already.