BILLIONAIRE BIKERS: 3 MC Romance Books (31 page)

WOLF

"You know the Devil's Bastards aren't just going to take this lying down," I say.

              Bentley doesn't look up from the frame of his latest project, a stripped-down Harley. Hell, he doesn't even glance around it to give my warning the time of day.

              It's all right; I'm used to being ignored. Having Nancy around the Clubhouse was a breath of fresh air, to be honest—at least
she
took me seriously. Probably because she didn't know any better. As the newest recruit, and the youngest Baron at twenty-five, I don't find myself on the receiving end of a lot of respect with the other brothers.

              Ah, well. It doesn't get to me…
usually.
Right now I'm being earnest as hell, though, and I can't get our dear leader to throw a wrench at me, much less a bone.

              "Yeah," he grunts. A puff of smoke escapes from behind the frame of the Harley. I crane my head to look, and sure enough he's got a lit cigarette dangling down between his teeth.

              "Ben, should you really be smoking right now?" I ask.

              Bentley plucks the cigarette from between his teeth and stares at me for a long moment.

              "I'm serious, man. You're looking rough for thirty."

              I’m not being totally serious: Bentley is one handsome motherfucker. Problem is, he knows it.

              "The Devil's Bastards can suck my dick," Ben says finally. He's so damn handsome they just might do it—I don't say so, of course. "You think I give a shit about what beef they may or may not have with whom? They're not my problem."

              "Not yours.
Ours,"
I emphasize. "You should have seen the shit that went down at their warehouse."

              Bentley shrugs one broad shoulder. "Could have been a hell of a lot worse for them and they know it. They're pissed off, for sure, but they won't touch us. We've got the man they should be most afraid of as a member of our MC."

              "Yeah, but he's not exactly
here,
is he?" I grit my teeth. Usually, I'm an easy-going guy, and I can't let my temper rise up and snag ahold of me just because Bentley refuses to see it my way. "All right, Ben. You want to know the real trouble? The DBMC is encroaching on my turf. And you know I can't abide that."

              "Tell me more." Bentley surprises me by leaning back from his infinite tune-up and crossing his big, burly arms. "Now that I sense we're getting to the point of all this… I'm listening."

              "By my turf, I mean roads the Barons have already laid claim to. They're starting to press in on us, hard."

              "The Pacific Coast Highway," he supplies.

              "They're moving drugs. I don't have proof yet, but"—I tap my nose—"I gotta scent. Sometime tells me the increase in long hauls I've seen riding down there has something to do with it. The coastal roads are getting more and more dangerous."

              "For whom?" he asks me.

              I blink, and retract my finger. I wasn't expecting this question.

              "Not for you, surely," Ben presses. "You may be the youngest, but after Dash's accident, you might just be the best rider I have in the gang."

              "Well, thanks." I grin like my namesake at this.

              "You better not be fucking that rookie cop," Ben states.

              "Whoa whoa whoa!" I hold up my hands to back the conversation up. "First of all, you don't 'fuck' a lady of that caliber. And second of all… I have no idea who you're talking about."

              "Yeah. Right." Bentley snorts and sticks his cigarette back between his lips. "Get back out there, Wolf. You have my permission. Find out what the Dick Bag MC is up to."

              "Heh. Good one, boss." Might as well get points in while I can. Also, I kind of wish I had been the one to think of that nickname.

"And say hi to your girlfriend for me."

"…probably less doable," I say as I shoulder my bag and exit the garage. I mount my bike and pull my bandana up, hiding the lower half of my mug, and my identity, behind a black-and-white printed skull grimace.

I'm not sure what I'll find on the road back home. Maybe a flashing red light will find me first. I'm on the hunt for the Devil's Bastards, and my own angel in blue is on the hunt for me.

Catch me if you can, Officer Lane.

I wrench the handle of my bike and peel off into the night.

LANE

Undercover has never been easy for me. I'll cop to it.

              It's something I'm comfortable enough to admit now to myself, even if I'm not exactly comfortable admitting it to anyone else. But I fought long and hard with my supervisor, convincing him that as the lone woman in the precinct, I was his
only
option for this mission. The Devil's Bastards MC is a lot less likely to let some plainclothes guy with a conspicuous high and tight into the fold than they are a pretty woman.

              "
Pretty
?" I remember how the chief had snorted at my choice of words. Normally, I try to make myself look as androgynous as possible at work, but we both know how often I fail on the front; still, I can see how hearing that self-description coming from me might be funny. The last thing I want to be most days is a
pretty woman.
Pretty women don't get taken seriously, badge or no badge.
Pretty women
are too often seen as liabilities when they can—and should—be utilized for their outward appearances. Probably not a popular opinion, I know, but I'm not exactly a popular person.

              Anyway, it was an opinion that worked on my supervisor. He gave me twenty-four hours to stake out this ramshackle biker bar and report back with information valuable to the case we're investigating—and even, perhaps, provide breaks on
several
cases at once. It sure as hell beats ticketing parking violators and traffic stops, which are both mind-numbing pursuits I'm sure to get saddled with if I come up short tonight. For this reason, now is not the time to appear outwardly uncomfortable in my tight dress and pumps. I have to go all-in.

I can let my hair down. Sure I can.

              I can also attract a lot of unwanted attention when I do it.

              "This seat taken?" my current—recently acquired—seatmate asks me.

              I fight not to offer what my immediate reaction is:
yes,
or,
get lost,
or some more cleverly venomous articulation of either. This is why I'm bad at undercover: I'm not always good at being someone other than me. And who I am naturally is not exactly charming, or so they tell me.

              "Looks that way." I decide is the better choice given the situation. The man who just sat down is clearly occupying a seat in my immediate proximity, after all. I pluck the beer in front of me off the counter and take a lazy sip, trying to appear confident as I analyze this latest development.

              The
development
is an attractive man in his mid-twenties. He has a sort of roguish unkemptness about him, and I can't decide if it's a deliberate look—especially not in our current environment. Mal's Dive is exactly what it professes to be—a dive—and aside from the ancient neon sign buzzing in the window, the lighting isn't especially good. It's shadowy enough to make me think I wasted my time doing my makeup, anyway. Maybe, just maybe, it's dark enough to make the man beside me seem tolerable.

              His hair is long compared to what I'm used to seeing around the precinct, but not
surfer long,
and I've definitely run into my share of boarders up around Third Beach. This guy seems to have the same effortless, almost reckless ease about him, and his body type…well, I can't speak for that yet. I'm doing the best I can to size him up in my peripheral without his knowing that I'm checking him out. His jeans are filthy, but they seem to hang well on him, and he wears a thin white T-shirt beneath an old road-worn bomber jacket. The V-line of his shirt collar hangs low, whether by design or by deliberate efforts to stretch it, I'm not sure. The slice of bronzed chest I can see, in contrast to his thick curls of dark hair and the raised stubble of his beard, is naked of any chest hair. He wears a silver chain necklace around his throat, and I think I see the black outline of an enormous tattoo beneath the thin material of his shirt, but confirming that info would require closer inspection—or even requesting the removal of his shirt altogether, which I am obviously not going to do.

              Don't even know why I thought it.

              I can feel the man's indolent smile on me, almost as if he
knows
I'm looking, even though my eyes are trained steadfastly forward. I lower the bottle from my lips and fix him with a bored, expectant look. He can try whatever he wants with me, but he's going to strike out hard. If he's a biker, which I'm beginning to doubt considering how unsafe for the open road he's dressed, then he isn't patched in with any club. He's of absolutely no use to me at best, and an impediment to my investigation at worst.

              "Just moved to the neighborhood," he jokes. I'm not sure if he's referring to life outside the little barroom, or to the fact that he's encroaching on my deliberately maintained space. "Next round on me?"

              "No. Thanks."

              "What?" His eyebrows lift in surprise. "Are you working tonight?"

              I wonder if he thinks he's being clever. I wonder too, what will happen if I answer
yes,
and then go on to imply that I'm a prostitute to throw him off the scent. Will that make things better or worse for me?

              Either way, he's too close to the truth of why I'm here. I need to reevaluate my tactic, and play a longer con in shutting down communication.

              After a moment, I allow my lips to twitch in a defeated smile. One more drink shouldn't endanger my operation. I graduated from police academy in the mountains—I can handle more than a few drinks down at sea level. I follow up my smile with a nod of agreement, and let him do the honors. I can tell the bartender has as many reservations about this patron's place in his bar as I do.

              "Good deal," he says. "I came into some cash not too long ago. It's been burning a hole in my pocket."

              "I appreciate it." I don't even try to sound convincing as I raise the beer in front of me once more to my lips.

              "You got a name?" the man asks me conversationally. "Or would you like me to guess? Now
that
could be a fun game. Here I go: Betty? Blondie? Barbie? Stop me when I'm getting close."

             
Is your vocabulary limited to the letter 'B'?
I wonder as the bartender returns with our drinks.
Did I track the Devil’s Bastards to this bar only to find myself in some hellish episode of "Sesame Street"?

              "Goldilocks?"

              "Lane," I say finally, curtly. "And I get it. I'm blonde." I toast him sarcastically with the Blonde Ale he's just placed in front of me.

              "You're more than that," he assures me. I don't rise to the bait even if the veiled compliment does come across as unexpectedly sincere.

Anyway, how can this man I met only a minute ago know anything substantial about me? Like I told the chief, all I amount to undercover is a pretty face. That's all I
want
anyone to think at the moment. There's really no reason to unpack the honey until I'm certain I have a Devil’s Bastard in my crosshairs.

              "Thank you." I'm like a deliberately terrible actor reading from a script.

              "You're right," he intuits. "That was bad." He seems to meditate on the direction he wants to take with his next response. "But you're giving me nothing to go off, so I'm afraid I'm coming up empty. To replace a cliché with another cliché, what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?

              "I'm looking for someone. Someone who
isn't
you," I amend quickly, shutting the window before he finds a way to leverage himself in.

              "You sure about that?" He eyes me curiously. I try not to notice the way his fingers wrap themselves around the neck of his own bottle as he thinks. His fingers are long, and thick, and strong despite his boyish (and arguable) charm, he's clearly a well-built man. "I mean, you haven't even asked me my name yet," he continues with a grin that easily forgives my rudeness. I notice that one of his eyeteeth has been chipped to the level of his other, admittedly perfect, teeth. Somehow, this only serves to pronounce his remaining canine more. The look it lends him is strangely charismatic, almost wild. I doubt if there are many women who have held their ground against a smile like that in the past.

I try not to snort too audibly at his claim. I try not to notice the heat of alcohol in my blood; it's progressed from more than just a pleasant tingle, but there's no way it's enough to affect my judgement in any way.

"Unless your name is Houdini, then yeah. I'm sure."

"Houdini, huh? Isn't he a magician or something?" My new friend grins. "Isn't he dead?"

              "He probably should be," I mutter as I pick up my beer.

I've been hunting the stunt biker we call Houdini ever since I made it through academy. I'm not even sure he calls himself
Houdini,
although surely he's heard us reference him by that handle by now. I suspect he is able to access our radio frequency. More than that, the chases he leads us on make it into the papers sometimes. The media eats this shit up.

I don't like the tones of those papers, personally. They make him sound like some folk hero native to the Northwest, and not like the dangerous madman he actually is. Not that Houdini's been particularly destructive in his antics, but he's never been
constructive,
either. And continuously flouting the law and making my department look bad doesn't make me feel particularly forgiving when it comes to him.

So far, Houdini seems to be unaffiliated with any MC…at least, with any MC that my department knows of, and there's really only one calling the shots in the underworld around here recently. I have my suspicions, but I'm not sure the Devil’s Bastards are the answer I'm looking for. That's primarily why I'm here tonight: to gather the evidence for or against Houdini's involvement with these gasoline-streaked goons and take it back to the chief.

And if an unacknowledged part of me hopes that Houdini isn't involved with the murky shit the DBMC has going on? I keep it to myself.

"Anyway, we aren't talking about the same person," I say finally, returning as much of my attention as can be spared to the annoying man beside me.

"Why should he be dead?"

I can see now that this conversation isn't ending any time soon.

I growl, but the sound softens into a sigh of frustration. "Because he puts himself and others in danger with his stupid,
stupid
stunts. He should probably be dead a hundred times over, but…he's fine," I admit finally, grudgingly.

"This is starting to sound personal," the man says, lacing his hands together encouragingly. I can see that he's all ears.

              "It's not."

I realize my hasty deflection also opens a pretty significant crack in my cover. What other reason would I have to complain about another man at the bar? I need to start acting more like civilian and less like a cop.

"I mean, it doesn't matter." I don't need to explain myself to this barfly looking to get more than his lips wet. "If it
is
personal, I certainly don't have to discuss it with you," I add.

"On account of us being strangers." Is it just my imagination, or does his mouth twitch? For someone so eager to lay it all out there, I'm having a hard time reading his signals—they come and go fast enough to give me whiplash.

Now I've done precisely what I told myself I wouldn't do: I've diverted my attention to someone unrelated to my mission.

"Wolf Larson," he introduces himself.

I meet his eyes and find I can't easily look away again. I watch the strange smile dwindle thoughtfully. I shift, uncomfortable to find myself looking at his lips. I don't want to call the tension between us what it is. I
won't
call it what it is. If there is an annoying awareness of him suddenly localized between my legs, then it's just because the seat is uncomfortable and my tiny dress is ridiculously restrictive. That tingling feeling? Bad circulation.

              "Going back to something you were saying earlier," Wolf interrupts my thoughts, effectively severing the tension between us. "What's this Houdini guy good at, exactly? Besides driving you crazy?" He leans toward me on the bar, and I hear the creak of his jacket sleeve. It's not a bad look, actually, his…appearance. But he clearly doesn't fit in here. I find myself shifting once more, this time toward him almost unconsciously; I freeze before I allow my body to carry me further.

"Clearly he's gotten into your mind," Wolf continues, a sudden twinkle entering his eye courtesy of his new favorite subject. "But has he gotten into anything else, I wonder?"

              I feel my face flame at the implication. I manage to convince myself it's my temper acting up once again, and nothing to do with thoughts of my phantom biker crossing the line of the law and having his way with me. I only had that dream once. That I can remember. All it means is that I'm fixated on finding Houdini, which is something I will readily admit to. An obsession is only something you can't admit to yourself.