Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) (11 page)

She’d been quiet too long. He squeezed her hand and said her name. “Lilli?”

Something about the way he said her actual name resounded in her. The entanglement could indeed become a problem, but she wanted it. “Okay. I still want you to call before you come over.”

He smiled broadly. His teeth were even and white. Lilli realized that she’d never really gotten around to noticing that—she usually focused on his beard and his lips. “Noted. You never did answer my question, so I guess you don’t dance?”

“I dance. Country’s not my genre, though.” She got up to clear the table.

He grabbed her hand before she could pick up his plate. “From Texas my ass. Have you ever even
been
to Texas?” She didn’t answer; there wasn’t any point. He pulled her onto his lap, and she raised her eyebrows at the macho gesture. He only smiled back. “If you can move, baby, I can teach you the steps.”

~oOo~

Isaac got a call about half an hour later, after helping her clean up the breakfast dishes. Saying he’d be back for her at eight o’clock, he’d kissed her and headed out. Lilli was glad. She had things to do, and she needed some distance from him to do some thinking, too. She took a quick shower, then got on her laptop and logged on.

She didn’t have a new assignment, but she did have notification of deposits made to her accounts to compensate her for those she’d just completed. One thing about working this kind of contract work, with so much security, nothing got bogged down in “channels.” Deadlines were short, but payments came quickly.

She also had two messages from her side contact. One of them was simply coordinates. It was the update she’d been waiting for, so the rest of her day was now planned. Looked like she was going to get a workout after all. She memorized the numbers and moved to the other message: Intel on the Night Horde MC and on Isaac, whose last name was Lunden—probably good to know that if they were a “couple” somehow, so she should make a point to ask him. She scanned the attachments, printed them off, and made a file. Interesting. Definitely material that could give her some extra security with him, if she needed it.

She wasn’t surprised that the town was kept going by the meth trade—that was the sad state of rural towns across the Midwest. She was impressed, though, to see how Isaac and his biker brothers had managed to keep the town above it even as they were in the thick of it. He moved it straight through town without stopping.

Also interesting to see that there seemed to be virtually no crime in or around Signal Bend. Nothing—not even DUIs, another thing that tended to trouble towns like this. First hand, in the few days she’d been here, Lilli had seen vandalism, assault and battery, public drunkenness, among other things—hell, even attempted murder. But none of that had been reported or investigated. Looked like the MC was the only law that mattered. Lilli admired his commitment to keeping his town alive and safe.

Isaac was careful, but Rick, Lilli’s hacker contact and, well, accomplice on her little side project, was extremely good—among the best in the world. In one day, he’d connected some dots and found some trails. There was stuff here that could hurt the Horde badly—or at least look like it could. None of it would stand up, unless she got something first-hand, but it would give her leverage, if she needed it. She wasn’t interested in hurting them—him—at all, except in self-defense.

Her own feelings about things like laws were ambivalent. She saw law and morality as nothing more than human beings’ silly attempts to order a world made of chaos. In her experience, outlaws were no better or worse than any other person. Often, in fact, they were braver, more honorable.

Once she was done with her messages and had sent back the appropriate replies, she changed into hiking gear, filled a backpack with a packed lunch,
water, a camera with a long-range telephoto lens, her sat phone, the GPS, and her Sig with a couple of extra clips. Just to be sure. If the day went well, she shouldn’t need the firepower. But she always went prepared.

~oOo~

The day went as planned. When she got back to her little rented house around six o’clock, she downloaded the photos to her hard drive, then uploaded key images into a message to Rick. Hopefully, he’d be able to get confirmation to her soon. Her eyes told her that the confirmation was a formality. She had her guy.

She took another shower and got ready for her “date” with Isaac. She rarely wore makeup, but tonight she did—just a little; she didn’t have much. She didn’t have sexy clothes per se, that wasn’t really her thing, but she chose a pair of slim, low-waisted, straight-leg jeans and wore her tall Docs with the buckles up the side. She wore a fitted white button-up shirt and left a couple of buttons undone at the top and bottom. She was far too used to her hair being pulled back to be able to tolerate it loose and in her face for long, but she compromised and pulled a bit back from her face, braiding that part down the back of her head and leaving the rest loose on her back. Her silver hoops and rings—the only jewelry she had with her. She didn’t really know why she was making an effort to dress for a date, but it entertained her to do so.

When she heard his bike roaring up the road, she grabbed her leather jacket and locked up the house, going round the front to meet him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lilli was walking across the yard toward him as Isaac pulled up. Damn, she looked good. The sun hadn’t yet set, and as she walked, he could see flashes of belly where her shirt was open. Her hair was pulled off her face but still long and loose, and she looked fucking perfect. Pair of badass biker chick boots around her calves, too. She was going to look amazing riding bitch with him tonight. The thought made his balls twitch.

They had some shit to talk about, but it could wait. For now, he just wanted to take this woman out and let the town do w
ith that what it would.

“H
ey, Sport. You look damn good.”

She smiled
and walked up to his bike. “Thanks. You look exactly the same.”

“Well, I’d’ve gotten pretty for you if I’d known you were dressing u
p. Nice boots.” He handed her a helmet, but before she could put it on, he hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. With his other hand on the back of her neck, he drew her head down for a lingering kiss. “Mmmm. Nice. I assume you know how to ride bitch?” She gave him a look that said it was a stupid question. “Okay, let’s give the people a thrill.” He swatted her ass and released her, and she mounted the bike behind him.

~oOo~

Isaac didn’t often ride with a passenger. It was an intimate thing, riding with a woman wrapped around him—more intimate, in his mind, than sex. Lilli rode well, moving with him smoothly, instinctually. They seemed to be physically in sync in all sorts of ways. He was well on his way to a boner by the time they approached No Place.

As usual on a Saturday night, Tuck’s was packed. The music was blaring th
rough the walls and out into the parking lot. There were a few clumps of people drinking around their trucks, not having yet made it into the bar. Isaac pulled up in front, noting that most of the Horde were already inside. He liked the club to keep a strong presence here, especially on Saturday. Live music and a larger number of women tended to make the men extra scrappy.

They dismounted, and Lilli handed him the helmet he’d lent her. She passed a careless hand over her hair, and that seemed to be the extent of her concern about it. Damn, he loved
that, a woman who just was who she was, looked like she looked. He’d noticed that she’d primped some tonight, but he couldn’t even tell for sure what she’d done. Her beautiful grey eyes stood out more, and he liked that just fine, but they weren’t buried under black crap, like a raccoon. Whatever fuss she’d gone to tonight, it was working.

He took her hand—she flinched a little, but didn’t pull away—
and he led her inside.

Didn’t take long for them to have the attention of the room
, despite the dim lighting and the live band. It was too early yet for the dancing to get really started, so people were arrayed at the tables, which had been pushed along the walls to make more room for the dancing that would come. The wags had had a couple of days now to get the word out. Isaac nodded and smiled as he led Lilli through the room, shaking the hands that were extended, but not stopping to introduce her. He wanted to get to the bar and have her meet his brothers first. They all had opinions about her and about his interest in her. They would be her toughest audience.

Looked like almost all of the Horde was lined up at the bar. Before they’d arrived at the bar side of the room, the band—
Jesse’s Wild Bunch, one of the regular acts that cycled through, playing shit-kicking country with a little bit of blues mixed into the third set—announced its first break, and the sound of the room shifted down to conversation level, at least until somebody got around to feeding the juke.

With his hand at the small of her back, Isaac gently pushed Lilli to step in front of him. Then he just went down the row. “Lilli, I’d like you to meet my MC brothers: Showdown, Bart, Havoc, Dan, Len, and
CJ. Down there at the end is Rover, he’s prospecting for the club.” Each man nodded cordially when his name was called. Lilli stood in place while he named them. Then, when he was done, she walked down the line with her hand out, shaking each man’s hand. She smiled prettily and said something low to each; they leaned down to hear and then came back up with a smile.

Holy fuck. She was flirting.
She hadn’t even flirted with
him
. By the time she got down to Rover, who was fucking
blushing
when she was finished with him, she’d won the whole crew of idiots right over. She walked back toward Isaac with a little pop in her sway. Minx.

She turned back to his brothers. “You boys fancy doing a couple of shots of tequila with me?”

Havoc piped up from his seat halfway down the bar. “Never leave a lady drinkin’ alone. My daddy taught me that.”

Lilli leaned over and caught Rose’s attention—actually, she’d had Rose’s attention for that whole show, but now the bartender came over with a dry smile and a wink. “That’s shooters for the line, then?”

Lilli winked back. “Yes, ma’am. The good stuff. And we’ll probably go a few times.”

Rose nodded. “The whole show?”

“Absolutely.”

Isaac stared at Lilli in bemused awe while Rose lined up nine shot glasses and expertly filled them with Patrón and set them in front of the Horde and Lilli. She dealt cocktail napkins like playing cards and put a wedge of lime on each one. Then she handed Lilli a shaker of salt.

“There you go, sugar. You get it started.”

Lilli grinned at Rose and then at Isaac, who had not picked up his glass. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was a different, vastly less guarded version of the woman he’d been spending time with. His brothers, all of them, were staring at her hand as she licked the space between her thumb and forefinger. She did it slowly, her tongue extended just enough and sharpened to a firm point, fully aware of her audience.
Then she shook salt over the wet spot.

Isaac’s cock pulsed and swelled.

She offered him the salt shaker but he shook his head. Shrugging, she slid the shaker to Showdown. Every man salted his hand. Isaac couldn’t believe that, either. These were men who drank their booze straight. Fuck, they hardly bothered with glasses. And here they all were, salting their hands, with little lime wedges on napkins in front of them.

Their hands salted, Lilli raised her shot glass, and they all did the
same. Isaac took his, now, too. They all watched as Lilli licked the salt off her hand—doing that sensual little thing again—and tossed the tequila back. She picked up her lime, and the men watched as she slid it into her mouth and sucked it. When she set it back on her napkin, the meat was almost entirely gone. She’d sucked it clean.

He wasn’t surprised. Lilli had an extremely talented mouth. But his men were transfixed.
None of them had drunk but him. When Lilli slammed her glass back on the bar, it shook them out of their pornographic fugue, and they did their shots.

Isaac knew what she was doing. It was brilliant; he simply hadn’t expected it. As beautiful and feminine as she was, she was so
not
girly, she confounded his expectations of women in so many ways, that he hadn’t even considered that she could play the sex kitten. But she’d read the situation, caught the vibe of mistrust his men were sending her way, and she’d played their expectations against them. She’d made herself a hot piece of ass.

Well, she couldn’t help but be that. But now that was all his men saw. They were disarmed.

They ran that line three times, her treat. She looked no worse for doing three quick, generously poured shots of top shelf tequila, but Isaac wanted a long, pleasant evening, so he thought it best to get some food into her before she got it in her head to make any more friends. He stepped behind her, pressing his body to hers, and whispered low in her ear, “Share another burger with me?”

She turned her head slowly, tucking into his neck a little. “How do you make a boring sentence like that sound so hot?” Maybe she was feeling the shots a little, after all.
He grinned and kissed her nose.

“That a yes, then?” She nodded, and he caught Rose and ordered.

They took their food to a table that emptied as Isaac led Lilli to it. Soon enough, they had two more tables pushed to theirs, and all of the Horde were sitting with them, stealing fries until Isaac ordered three more baskets of them. The Horde didn’t, as a rule, pick up women at Tuck’s. They drank and they kept the peace, in their way. They usually headed back to the clubhouse, where women were primed and waiting and didn’t need sweet talk. So Lilli had their full attention.

They had
a few beers with the food, and Isaac—who drank daily, was big, and thus had a very high threshold for drunkenness, so high that he rarely breached it—watched Lilli mellow, her focus soften. There was something underneath her buzz, though, that he couldn’t quite read. He’d caught her giving him sly, almost greedy looks, and when he touched her, she reacted strongly. Not enough for the dolts sitting around them to notice, but he definitely did.

Then he got it.
She was horny. Here in the middle of the bar. Well, wasn’t that interesting.

The band started its second set while they were eating,
Isaac and Lilli sharing the burger with each other, the fries with everyone. People all over the bar started getting up this time to dance, and Isaac saw Lilli paying attention.

The second song came up, and the dancers immediately lined up.
The band was covering Trace Adkins’ “Ladies Love Country Boys.” Oh, Isaac couldn’t pass that up.

He brushed her hair from her shoulder and leaned in close. “C’mon, Sport. Let me show you how to dance.”

“I know how t’dance, asshole. Tol’ you that already.”

Was that a lit
tle slur he heard in her speech? Nice. Lilli off her guard. He was looking forward to that, but he wanted to play it slow, so he needed to make sure she paced herself. Plus, she had to ride back with him. “Well, let me show you how we dance around here, then.” He stood, bringing her up with him. She let him lead her to the dance floor, and Isaac taught Lilli the Electric Slide.

She was right. She could really move. Even tipsy, she picked up the steps quickly—not that they were all that hard—and she was loose right off the bat, her body instinctively, flu
idly moving with the beat. He watched her hips sway. That ass. Damn. Just  . . .
damn
.

He was glad when the dancing shifted into pairs and
he get could get his hands on her. He taught her the two-step, another easy dance, and she took to it immediately. He was surprised to find that she willingly let him lead. He put her in a spin, and she came back beautifully. He did it again, though, and she looked a little woozy. Drunk Lilli. Isaac was charmed.

With a saucy smile, she went up to her tiptoes and leaned close. Reading that she had something to say, he bent toward her,
and she said in his ear, “Your music sucks, but you’re a great dancer. It’s really hot.” He laughed and brought her even closer.

But being so close to her, her hips moving against him,
was driving him crazy. And it was increasingly apparent that drunk Lilli was extremely horny Lilli, because she was all up on him, making the most she could of the closeness and movement while they danced. She was working up a sweat, too, and he found the way tendrils of her hair clung to her face and neck, and the way her
white!
blouse was dampening, and the way she smelled—all of it, everything about her—was just too fucking much.

He danced her to the edge of the floor and growled in her ear, “We need to sit down and get a drink, or I’m gonna drag your
amazing ass to the restroom and bend you over the sink.”

She tipped her head back and grinned at him, her bright grey eyes hooded. “You see me stoppin’ you?”

Jesus Christ.

“I’m not jokin’, Sport.”

She only raised her eyebrows, challenging him. Knowing full well the show they were putting on and not giving a starving rat’s ass, he leaned down and kissed her ravenously, exulting in the eager movement of her tongue with his. Her arms looped snugly around his neck as she opened her mouth wide and let him have his way. He grabbed her thighs and pulled her up, hooking her legs around his hips. And then he walked them back toward the restrooms, ignoring the hoots of his brothers at their table.