Page 2
Bullet
I had a feeling I’d need the business card that girl produced out of the bottom of her purse last night. Worn and wrinkled, it had the look of something either discarded or well loved. It wasn’t clear which it was.
I have it between my cuffed hands now.
It’s not just the biker in me who bristles at being caged like this. It’s the soldier. I spent the better part of my life, certainly the best part of my life, fighting to keep this country safe, only for these pricks to look at me like I’m the lowest filth.
It only took those bastards about four hours to show up at the motel the club has rented out. Of course, we were expecting them. I informed Tyrant and Raiden of what happened as soon as I got back, which took longer than I would have liked because I had to ride in a goddamn cab after the whole goddamn altercation over a goddamn babysitting job gone wrong.
I’ve been all over the world, and I’m really starting to hate Seattle.
I worry my thumb repeatedly over the already frayed edges of the thick cream cardstock. It feels more like fabric than paper, like a pair of jeans so washed and lived in that they’re buttery soft to the touch. The wear has caused the print to fade, but not so far that it’s unreadable.
Lucky for me, because I needed it to make a call when I got here.
The door to the small room opens and a tall, slender woman enters. She has the grace of a swan, but the unrelenting straightness of her spine suggests that under the surface, she’s all goose. Full of wrath, hissing and spitting. For all her elegance, there’s something in her caramel brown eyes, a hardness that hints she might look like a model on the outside, but on the interior, she’s as brutal as an underground fighter.
She’s wearing the typical business power outfit—suit jacket, skirt, pumps, white blouse, but she rocks the hell out of it at least. She sits down in the chair directly to my left.
I pictured her as a blue-eyed, streaky blonde, shorter, with plenty of curves. The girl last night, Willa, said she was her sister. Seeing as all I had was Willa’s image to go on, I conjured a sort of twin in my mind.
From her severe features to her chestnut hair with the coppery undertones, she doesn’t bear any resemblance to the girl I met last night. She’s likely somewhere in the neighborhood of five ten or eleven, and that’s without the heels. Her curves are streamlined under the no-nonsense suit. Not dramatic, but definitely there. She’s delicate and striking, whereas her sister’s beauty was in your face the moment your eyes fixed on her.
Willa was easygoing. She seemed to enjoy having a good time, at least before Donny grabbed her and we got in a wrestling match that ended with him breaking his face on mine.
If I don’t miss my mark, Lynette George is different from her sister in every way. She’s clearly far older than Willa, but where her sister was soft and lighthearted, this woman is hard, with the unmistakable aura of ambition. She has ruthlessly driven stamped all over her, that desire for success and recognition branded onto her features the same way my skin is fully inked.
She turns her neck with that swanlike grace and gives me a cursory onceover. If I’ve seen her as a powerful lawyer on the rise, she instinctively labels me as a dirty biker.
No, she made that judgment long before she got here. She’s already reviewed the files and done her research.
Women seem to go one of two ways when it comes to men like me. They either want me and aren’t afraid to show that the bad boy aura is like catnip to them, or they want nothing to do with me, assuming incorrectly that I’m involved with the usual shit that bikers embody. I don’t mind assumptions, but the way Lynette George’s soft brown eyes narrow and her lips pinch causes something sour to settle in my stomach.
“Why’d you agree to take this case if you’re going to sit there judging me, finding me wanting already?” I ask her evenly, without giving in to the urge to be waspish in my agitation.
I’m practically buzzing with unbridled energy beneath my skin. It’s taking all my control to stay calm and placid and not tear this damn room to shreds in my frustration.
Probably one of the reasons I’m manacled like a fucking animal.
“Shut up,” she snaps, opening up her sleek black leather case and pulling out a stack of crisp white papers. “You haven’t signed a retainer yet.” She casts her eyes around the room furtively. “Think about where you are.”
“Where I am? I’m pretty fucking aware of where I am.” I bow my head, indicating the cuffs at my wrists. “Are they going to remove them now that you’re here?”
She gives me a cold once over. “You’re resourceful. I’m sure you can scrawl your name and initials with them on.” Her face says she’d like to see me rot, and that if I did, I’d deserve every single second of my time, so asking for the cuffs to be removed isn’t something she’s going to bother with.
She leans close enough that her intoxicating scent temporarily covers the unsavory aroma of this room. It had a distinct odor of piss when I walked in, but that’s not so strong anymore. The strange metallic smell hasn’t faded. I wonder if they beat people in these rooms, like they do in the movies.
“I agreed to take this case because my sister begged me. Not just this morning, but in the middle of the night. I told her I wouldn’t, but I knew I’d be left with very little choice if you called.” Her brows arc down as her eyes narrow. “She feels guilty and responsible, and well she should. I’ve dealt with her, and I’ll deal with you. I’ll win this because that’s what I do. I’m good at my job. It’s not a favor. We are not friends. I despise men like you and everything you stand for.”
She means her threat to be scary and scathing, but I find myself biting back the first urge I’ve had to smile in days. She’d look so fucking beautiful taking my cock with that same ferocity she’s displaying now.
Jesus fucking Christ. Not the time or the place, asshat.
I don’t just go around blasting thoughts like that off in my head. Ever. I might belong to a biker club and plenty of my club brothers indulge in the club whores, but I guess I’m not a very sexual person. Quite possibly, twenty years as a soldier fucking broke something in me.
I’m generally a hard man to offend and I know what it takes to hold my peace, but beautiful and fierce or not, getting judged and immediately found wanting is a burr up my already irritated ass. “Do you hate your freedom?”
“Excuse me?” She shoves the paperwork across the rectangular metal table, twists one of those fancy, heavy pens, and pretty much launches it straight into my hand. I draw back before the nib stabs my palm.
Now that I think about it, maybe they do beat people in here. Why does the table look like something from a morgue? Fucking hell, all the years I spent in Special Ops were nothing like what city police have to do every day. There was none of this bullshit.
“It was men like me who fought for you to be free. They’re still out there, still fighting.”
If anything, her face hardens further. When her lips flatten out like they’re doing now, the high slashes of her cheekbones are highlighted further. The poor lighting in the room casts shadows over her face. I think she knows that when she’s scowling, she’s even more beautiful. While her sister would bat her eyelashes and smile, flirting sweetly, Lynette is far more intriguing because she would never do that.
“I know all about the Special Ops business. Apparently, so does everyone else. It was leveled in the charges that you’re a violent man. You’ve sought no help for your past and suffer from PTSD. You’re known for starting fights, abusing women, and causing general chaos where you live, which is Hart, Washington, a small city an hour from here, where your clubhouse is located. You own the only gun range in Hart. You’re obsessed with weaponry. All in all, you’re a dangerous man, a walking grenade waiting for someone to pull the pin. You beat a man badly this time. Next time, you might kill someone.”
I can’t help it. The flabbergasted chuckle seeps from my lips like sunlight coming in under the crack of a closed door. What the actual fuck? Who came up with that nonsense? I could get further offended and give in to my urge to be butthurt, or I could laugh about it, because what else am I supposed to do?
Lynette does not smile, and she certainly doesn’t laugh. “What about this do you think is funny, Mr. Aberdeen?”
Damn, she’s pulling out all the stops. Hamish Aberdeen isn’t a name I’ve heard in many years. Even long before the club, I was Bullet.
“They want felony charges,” she continues. “You won’t just be fined. If they have their way, you could be facing years in jail.” She drops her voice, leaning in even closer. “Need I remind you that the man you assaulted is the son of your own club’s lawyer? Attorney-client privilege only goes so far. This man will want to make an example of you and your little outlaw boys’ club now that he thinks you’ve wronged him. Not even the threat of snitches getting stitches is going to deter him. The fact that you’re sitting here now should make that abundantly clear. As I said, I’ve read the charges, and they want to crucify you. The law here, unlike in Hart, which your club no doubt has in their pocket, will only be too happy to comply.”
I pick up the pen she tried to launch like an arrow. It would be much more convenient for Lynette George, Attorney at Law, if I just dropped dead on the spot. Unfortunately for her, I’ve always been a contrary bastard, and loathe to do anything that people expect of me. The one caveat being my club. I’d do anything my prez asked of me, hence why I’m sitting here.
I flip to the last page of the contract and scrawl my name on the bottom line. It’s not like I have to read the thing. Cost isn’t an issue. The club will pay whatever it takes.
“The bail they’re going to set will likely be outrageous.”
“We’ll pay it.”
“I figured. Clubs like yours always have the means.”
“You keep saying ‘clubs like yours’ and ‘men like me’.” I initial the bottoms of all the pages on the tiny little blank, then throw down the pen and watch as it rolls dangerously close to the edge of the table. I skewer her with a hard glare. “You might have heard things about other clubs, but I don’t appreciate you assuming that me or any of my brothers are the same way. We don’t stand for that kind of thing.”
She snorts, rolling her eyes, totally unaffected by me. She’s not the least bit intimidated or afraid. Not of me, and not of the situation. She displays a steely confidence that has my cock kicking violently in my pants.
“Of course not. Every client I defend is innocent,” she mutters sarcastically.
“If you already think I’m guilty,” I say through gritted teeth, “then why are you so intent on being here?”
“I already told you. This is a favor to my sister, nothing more.”
“Really? I think you get off on defending monsters like me. Beasts that can pay. It doesn’t matter to you where the money comes from. It doesn’t even matter if someone is innocent or not. All that matters is that you win cases and make a name for yourself so you can get ahead. Isn’t that the way the system works? And a case like this? High enough profile? Expensive retainer? This is the kind of thing your firm likes to see. Take enough cases like this and win, you won’t just make a name for yourself. You might just make partner one day.”
She remains impassive, deaf to my barbed insults. I wonder if I’ve called her bluff. This is a nothing case. All that stuff she just spewed was only meant to scare me. Wasn’t it?
“No doubt.” Her clipped admission is the only response I get before she snatches the paperwork back up. She tucks it away, then stands and smooths wrinkles out of her skirt that don’t exist. “Just so you know, there’s not going to be bail. I’m going to see about your release. They didn’t have nearly enough evidence to even get a warrant for your arrest.”
My dick pulses. Of all the women it could choose, why her? Why someone who has already decided they hate me. I’m not the kind of man who likes a challenge. I haven’t noticed or wanted a woman in a very long time. I like my own company. I have my club. I have my range. I like the peace, quiet, and solitude of living in a city with that small town feel. I have my club brothers as family, and I made a sort of peace with my life. It wouldn’t be much to some, but it’s everything to me.
Why her, then? Probably because Lynette George isn’t like other women. Not professionally, and certainly not personally.
Her eyes lock with mine, cold and hard, as distant and deadly as any adversary I’ve ever faced in my life. Despite the fact that I’m taller than her, that I outweigh her by at least a hundred pounds, that I’m hardened, muscled, and have lived on the wrong side of the law for quite a few years now, and that was after nearly two decades as Special Ops, a shiver rolls down my spine.
She drops her voice to a whisper as she leans in, her sweet breath fanning over my cheek. “I’m going to break all my rules and stick my neck out for you. Do you know what happens to people who accuse judges of corruption in any form?”
It doesn’t seem like that’s the kind of question that she needs a response to.
“When I come back into this room, you’ll have a court date set. I’ll get all of that by being utterly sweet and charming and skirting around the issue that your club’s ex-lawyer, Harold Jacobs, clearly called in a favor for you to be sitting here right now.”
“Why did you ask me those questions about bail if you knew I wouldn’t need it?”
Her eyes spark, and something like a taunt flashes across her face. She doesn’t give me a response. Her silence tells me she doesn’t owe me one. She backs up and exits the room, heels clacking against the cheaply tiled floor.
All I can do is sit and wait.
The club had the best lawyer in the state before I definitely did not assault his son. The one thing that Lynette was absolutely right about is that Harold Jacobs knows every single one of our secrets. If he uses them to come after me—and by extension Satan’s Angels MC—then our prez might just change his mind about violence not being a solution.
After forty minutes, the heavy steel door bangs open, admitting Lynette alone.
“You’re free to go,” she snaps like she’s almost disappointed in the outcome of her doing her job so well. “They’re coming in to release you right away.” She stands there as a triumphant ice queen, yet somehow brimming with fire and fucking brimstone.
I can’t stop myself from picturing her at the range, feet spread in those heels and that prim and proper fucking suit, stance frigid, pointing a gun at the target. I bet she knows her way around the business end of a gun, for all she likes to pretend she’s a white-collar princess. She strikes me as the type to not let personal defense slide, and in her line of work, it’s probably wise to know how to keep the creeps away.
I did some basic research last night before I made the call today. I would have thrown the card in the garbage if Lynette George wasn’t a criminal lawyer and didn’t work for a firm that is very well known for taking on even the worst cases and winning. She’s built her career off the scum she hates.
The only possible answer I have as to why my brain is spoon feeding me this bullshit fantasy is that I’ve starved myself, ignoring the needs that every man has for far too long. Now that it’s started, it can’t stop.
In my head, at my range, Lynette George would get in position to fire that gun, but then she’d turn, her eyes darkened with banked flames that she’s so afraid to let burn unchecked. She’d tell me that she has no idea what to do. She’d want me to show her. I’d tuck in close, press our hips together, wrap my arms around her. She’d hesitate at the unexpected and unwanted feeling of safety, but she wouldn’t shake me off. Not even when she’d feel the hard outline of my cock pressed against her lower back.
I shake off the fantasy before I get a mental image of her climbing me like there’s a bear chasing her and I’m the tree that’s supposed to save her. She’d beg me to pin her arms above her head with one hand while I edge her skirt up with the other, higher and higher, until I’d find her ruined panties, soaked with her arousal.
Fuck .
By and large, I’ve had only myself to depend on for my survival. The club is a brotherhood, but I find it almost impossible to share the deepest parts of myself. I’m not closed off, but I’m not forthcoming either. Sex feels like the same thing. Like peeling back a part of myself and letting someone touch the innermost layers. I haven’t found a person I’d want to do that with, and maybe it’s odd, but I want it to mean something. I’ve found other outlets when I need them.
It’s all the more annoying to me that now I have an exceptionally rare raging hard-on when these assholes come to get me out of the cuffs and show me the hell out of here.
Great time and great place for this to happen.
“What are you staring at?” Lynette demands, but her voice is dead and flat. I’m not fooled. She’s forcing her calm.
“You.”
She stares right back, boldly, to the point of rude. Her attempt to dominate the situation is so hot that my cock throbs.
“I’m going to get the surveillance video from the nightclub. That should be enough to exonerate you. If you didn’t beat that guy, or even if you did, but you were trying to defend yourself, that will be enough.”
“He headbutted me,” I insist, the memory scalding like acid at the back of my throat. It’s fucking humiliating that I didn’t see it coming.
I knew Harold’s kid was bad news, but I had no idea what a piece of spoiled shit he’d be. I was at the club to watch him and make sure nothing got out of control. To make sure he was okay. Tyrant asked me to do it, and so I did. We should have made the asshole go alone. If he had, maybe he would have gotten the ass kicking he deserved. Then again, maybe he would have been drunk off his face the way he was, assaulted a woman, or got himself killed in some accident or by antagonizing the wrong man and Harold would have held us responsible all the same.
“Will that be clear from the video?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to where the club had their cameras. I was too busy babysitting.”
“Why on earth did you go out to a club with someone like that?” She says club like it’s the last place she’d ever want to be. Other than here with me right now, that is. I can just imagine the tongue lashing her sister got when she had to ask for this favor. Poor girl.
“We were down here for a ride. It’s a long story, but Harold lives in Hart and his kid is going to law school here. He wants to be a hotshot lawyer like his dad. I was asked to watch him so that he wouldn’t get himself in trouble. He couldn’t convince any of the guys from the club to go with him, so I got tasked with him as a job.”
She looks at me like that’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. Honestly, I’m starting to think it might be. She glances at her watch, a real one, not that digital crap that everyone wears now. It’s dainty, a little oval face with a ring of diamonds and a gold band. It looks antique, maybe something passed down in her family. “I have twenty minutes. I’ll wait for you outside.”
She stalks from the room, the door banging shut behind her again.
Christ. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t straight up blown away by this woman. I still have a boner problem that I’m also blown away by, so I actually hope those assholes take a minute to come get me.
Alas, I’m definitely on the universe’s shit list because the same douchebag cops who manhandled me this morning even though I was perfectly cooperative, walk through the door muttering under their breath, digging for a set of keys.
Lynette George is waiting outside for me. In a legal capacity. To go over details of my court date and the case, no doubt.
Logically, I know this weekend could get worse. There’s still all of Sunday to get through. I’m not going to jinx myself by asking myself what else could go wrong, but that little snarky voice inside my head whispers it all the same.