Black Dogs Motorcycle Club: Full Series Box Set (55 page)

“Oh, fuck, Ghost, you’re
gonna make me cum so hard,” she pleaded.

“Bridget,” he said
breathlessly. He gripped her hips and thrust up into her, helping her rhythm
along, until they were both wracked with waves of pleasure, shuddering against
each other on the kitchen floor.

Bridget lay on top of
Ghost’s chest, both of them covered in sweat and breathing hard. Ghost pulled
her up until she was close enough to kiss, and he did so sweetly, deeply, and
slowly. He wrapped her in his arms and cuddled her next to him.

After some minutes of enjoying
the silence, Bridget said, “I think I have a plan.”

Ghost’s eyes widened and
he smiled. “Did my dick enhance your tactical prowess? Oh my God, I knew this
day would come.”

Bridget laughed and almost
argued, but instead she just tilted her head and shrugged. “I guess I can’t say
it didn’t…”

“You’re amazing. I’m
amazing. Let’s hear this amazing plan.”

“You’re right about
confronting Cary, and Toby isn’t responsible for any of this, so we should try
to keep him as much out of the way as possible.”

“Agreed.”

“So I want to try
something else.”

“Are you gonna tell me
what that something is? I’m dying here!” He groaned and rolled on his back
dramatically.

Bridget leaned over him
and rubbed his chest. She hovered over his lips. “Do you trust me?”

Ghost watched her for a
second, curious. He kissed her. “Yeah, I do. I just let you fuck me bareback,
didn’t I?”

She grinned wickedly back
him and winked. “Then get dressed. The plan starts right now.”

~ FOURTEEN ~

Bridget

Bridget had heard it from dudes before—“Sure, babe, I
trust you!”—and so rarely did they back it up. Whether it was jealousy from
another guy, or insecurity at the way Bridget handled everything in her life
without necessarily needing a man, trust only seemed to go as far as their weakest
foundational pillar. Then, like a sandcastle at high tide, it washed away under
the pressure of their own bullshit feelings.

But Ghost didn’t question
her, not once as they got dressed and loaded up in Bridget’s car. She drove,
and asked Ghost to look up the address for the Cary estate on his smartphone as
they backed out of the driveway.

“You should probably take
your cut off, too. No reason to get your club in trouble if this goes wrong,”
she suggested.

As he shrugged the leather
vest off his gorgeous broad shoulders, Ghost said, “I love it when you order me
around.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Don’t tell the guys,
though, they’ll like hearing it too much.” He leaned over and grabbed her face
for a deep kiss as she paused to change gears and head out. He looked down at
his phone and made a few movements. “Okay, it’s about ten minutes from here. It
will be faster if you take the highway.”

The estate was nestled on
the feet of the softly sloping hills where the mountain corridor ran at its
narrowest, and the rushing Spoke River made the soil verdant and the vegetation
lush. The best farmland in the area was here, and so were some of the mansions
of the richest families. Windows down, the warming spring air was full of
fragrance as Bridget followed the highway to the narrows and took the winding
country road at Ghost’s direction.

“Eww,” said Ghost as they
rolled up on the estate. “1980s faux Italian Renaissance with a squared-off
sandstone wall? Good God, I thought this guy was supposed to be some
high-rolling success.”

It
was
an ugly
set-up, but Bridget had to give Ghost an incredulous look and a laugh anyway.
“Bit of an architecture buff, are we?”

“Hey, a man’s gotta be
able to communicate his tastes,” said Ghost with a wink. “But this… this is a monstrosity.
Look at that wrought iron on the balcony; it completely clashes with the
spackle finish on that wall.”

“I didn’t realize the
Carys had been successful this long,” said Bridget. It was hard to see anything
above the sandstone privacy wall except the second floor of the villa-style
mansion. They passed by the closed front gate and she got a glimpse of the
finely manicured lawn, but no one was outside. Bridget pulled the car down the
road a bit and parked facing the estate before she turned the engine off.

“Is this a stakeout?” said
Ghost excitedly. “Ooh, should we make a bet how long until we’re naked in the
back seat?”

She giggled and slapped
his leg. “This is serious business, c’mon.”

“Are we waiting for
something specific?” he said with eyes on the house.

“For someone to leave who
isn’t Mr. Cary,” said Bridget.

It took less than an hour.
The gate swung slowly open and out pulled a topaz-colored luxury sedan with a
woman at the helm who was not Mrs. Cary. Bridget had met the woman several times,
and so this was most likely one of the family’s housekeepers. Bridget twisted
the key in the ignition and, after giving the car enough space, pulled after it
onto the country road and followed.

The housekeeper drove into
town and toward one of the more upscale shopping centers, where the natural
food store was always bustling with local health nuts and rich people who could
afford their produce organic. Cars and people moved in a continuous stream
around the parking lot. Bridget carefully found a parking spot while Ghost kept
an eye on the sedan.

“There,” he said once she
was parked. He pointed out a short Latina woman in her early forties who was
calmly adjusting her beautiful leather purse as she headed into the store.
“That’s her.”

Bridget got a good look at
the pattern of her outfit before she disappeared inside. She looked at Ghost.
“Okay, I’m going to go talk to her.”

“What do you want me to
do?”

“I think this will go
better if I’m alone. A woman approaching her is a lot less intimidating without
you around,” she said.

“I don’t want to leave you
alone,” he said. “How about if I tail you, just in case? I’ll keep my distance
and let you do your thing. I just don’t want to be out here holding my dick if
things go wrong.”

Bridget smiled. She wanted
to gush emotions all over him at that moment, but instead she just kissed him
again. “Deal. Watch my six.”

“I want you to know that
this is seriously the hottest date I’ve ever been on,” said Ghost against her
lips. “Afterwards, how about we make it a perfect day and you sit on my lap in
your cutest undies while I clean my guns?”

Bridget laughed and kissed
him again. “I think we can make that happen.”

“Fuck
yes.
”

Bridget hopped out of her
car and headed into the store, dodging carts and people and wheeling around
food displays. She tried to look casual as she wandered around the aisles until
she spotted the Cary’s housekeeper in her high-waist seafoam slacks and powder
blue blouse. She scanned the aisles carefully, purse in the child seat, glancing
back to a paper list in her hand every few moments before she threw something
in the cart. Bridget gave a quick look around; she could feel his eyes on her,
but she couldn’t see where Ghost was watching her from. Even though she wasn’t
expecting trouble from the housekeeper, somehow Bridget did feel better knowing
he was out there.

Before she could lose her
nerve, Bridget walked down the aisle and straight up to the woman. The
housekeeper didn’t notice her right away, but when she looked over, her face
went blank like she was surprised, or worried.

“Hi,” said Bridget.

The woman looked around,
as if checking to see if Bridget was speaking to her. “Hello,” she answered
carefully.

“Look, you don’t know me,”
said Bridget. “But you work for the Cary family, right?”

The woman thought a moment
before she gave one silent nod. Her eyes darted around to every passing
shopper.

“I’m not trying to get you
into trouble,” said Bridget, speaking softly and taking a few steps closer.
“But I know what’s happening in the house. I’ve seen the marks on Toby.”

The housekeeper went
white. Her jaw fell open. “No, please,” she said with a thick accent.

“Stephen Cary is beating
them, isn’t he?” said Bridget. Anger started to rise in her gut. “He’s beating
his wife and child on a regular basis.”

“No, miss, I am not
speaking to you about private things!” said the housekeeper with a firm shake
of her head. “This is inappropriate! No.” She tried to wheel her cart around
Bridget with her eyes down, but Bridget impulsively put a boot on the bottom
rack and slammed her hands down on the cart. The housekeeper gasped.

“You have to help me,”
said Bridget. “I’m not going to sit by and watch Toby get hurt or killed.
Please, give me something, anything that I can use to get him some help and get
him the hell out of there.”

“Let go!” said the
housekeeper, wrenching the cart. She was searching the aisles now with
frightened desperation, leaving Bridget to wonder if she had somehow spotted
Ghost in the crowd.

“Please,” begged Bridget.
“Don’t you want to help him? You have to care about him!”

“This is none of your
business!” said the housekeeper. A crowd was starting to get curious as the
confrontation escalated. She picked up her big beige purse with a huff and left
her cart, contents and all, swerving around Bridget in a quick-footed hurry for
the exit.

Bridget followed on her
heels as the housekeeper walked right out to the lot without looking for
traffic. She heard the blare of a horn and ignored it. “Don’t walk away from
me! This is a child we’re talking about; you can’t just ignore what he’s going
through!”

The housekeeper only
quickened her pace back for the sedan. Bridget broke into a jog, trying to
catch up and stop her from getting into the car, when a huge man in a fine
tailored suit got out of a big black town car parked two spots down from the
housekeeper’s sedan. Bridget came to a skidding halt; the man was staring right
at her, a white earpiece dangling from his right ear and down his neck.

The housekeeper’s
expression told Bridget she both recognized and feared the man. She stared at
Bridget for just a moment before she ducked into her car and fired up the
engine.

It had been a long time
since Bridget’s lizard brain lit up like it was lighting up now. But the way
the huge man in the suit was coming around from the driver’s side of the car,
everything about it was flashing red lights of danger. She stood frozen there
in the parking lot with cheery, oblivious people moving around her. She and the
man almost existed in their own world, staring at each other, and about to have
a whole different kind of conversation than the people around them.

As her fists clenched, she
saw the distinguishing bulge of his suit coat that told her he was armed. The
look on his face as he came closer chilled her to her core, knowing he had a
deadly weapon on him.

Pieces began to fall into
place. She realized this was Cary’s security detail, trailing the housekeeper.
Neither she nor Ghost had noticed them, and now here he was to do his job, and
protect the Cary family secrets. Rage quickly bubbled up to replace the fear in
Bridget’s gut.

“Are you fucking kidding
me?” she yelled at the man in the suit.

Whatever he was expecting
out of her, it wasn’t that, and he took an actual pause in his walk.

“You’re gonna get the fuck
out of that car and come up to intimidate an unarmed woman who is trying to
save a child from a
wife-beating psychopath?
” she said loudly, taking
two hard steps forward toward the security guard.

He frowned in angry
surprise, but he wasn’t scared of her. And why should he be, with a foot of
height and probably a hundred pounds of weight on her, even without the gun? He
could kill her in a heartbeat and probably find some legal loophole to slide
right through when he did it, courtesy of his rich, amoral boss.

Bridget was playing with
fire. But she couldn’t stop herself. All she could see was the bruise on Toby’s
arm, and that soft, sad look in his eyes. She could still hear his quiet crying
in her head at night.

“You fucking coward,” she
spit at him. “Do they seriously pay you enough to let you sleep at night,
knowing what you’re protecting?”

“You got a fucking mouth
on you, bitch,” said the guard in a deep, ugly voice. He wasn’t stopping his
advance on her—in fact, there was a shine in his eye that told Bridget he was
actually excited for it. His big hands reached out toward her, fearless of the
lot of eyewitnesses.

Bridget used her
self-defense training to toss his hands away and shove the security guard hard,
away from her space, but even with her regular exercise, his weight was like
pushing a boat away from a dock. He stumbled back three hard steps, gasping
like he was out of breath. His face turned beet red, anger boiling in his eyes.
He straightened up and advanced.

She took a side stance and
braced for his attack, hoping she would stay conscious.

From behind her right
shoulder, a bag of artisan ciabatta rolls flew through the air at the security
guard. They made hard impact on his face and spilled out of the brown paper
bag, dusting his fine suit with flour on their way down to the ground. The
guard hollered and sputtered curses.