Blaze: Kings of Hell MC (3 page)

Julia

Somehow, Gage had managed to calm and steady my nerves, though I wasn’t sure if it was anything he’d done or just my fear of what would happen if I didn’t play along. Straightening my back and mustering up my resolve, I walked across the lower level of the garage to the steel door of the room where he said he was holding the man he needed me to talk to for him, Dimitri.

As I watched him walk over to me from the opposite end of the room, I realized I’d never met a man quite like Gage Noll before. Most of the men I’d known were academic types—quiet, mild-mannered, studious, and the antithesis of everything Gage seemed to be. Gage was commanding and authoritative. He took charge, and he didn’t take no for an answer once an order was barked.

The men I knew would have killed for his body, but only after calculating the risk of getting caught for the crime. Then, only if they felt the risk was worth the payoff would they have gone through with it. Needless to say, none of them ever seemed to really work on their bodies, not to the point that this man had.

When he walked over and opened the door into the concrete interrogation room in the basement, I was tempted to refuse to go in. I wanted him to grab me again. I couldn’t shake the desire to have his arms around my waist one more time and have him forcefully take charge of me. There was something so sexy about that. It made no sense to
want
him to manhandle me, but I did want him to, and I thought I saw the desire in his dark, mysterious eyes as he opened the door and let me walk into the room.

“Dimitri,” he said loudly as he closed the door and locked it behind us, “I’ve got Dr. Danvers from the university to help us talk.” He spoke slowly, and his voice boomed in the little room, as if that would help break through the language barrier. Unfortunately, that tactic never seemed to work as well as people thought it should.

“I don’t think that helps,” I told Gage as I looked around the room. The room was essentially a concrete cube with one dim light bulb hanging down from the ceiling over a small wooden table. Other than a small pool of light directly under the hanging bulb, the rest of the room was almost completely dark.

The man he called Dimitri sat in what looked like a metal chair. It was hard to see in the dim light, but it looked like he was tied to the chair. He was also a thick, muscular man a little smaller than Gage. His features were distinctly Russian. He wore his hair cropped closely, almost a buzz cut. He looked up at me as I took my seat across the table from him, and I saw blue eyes that were probably once beautiful, but now they looked tired, defeated.

“Dimitri,” I said, leaning across the table to make sure he was looking at me, “my name is Dr. Danvers. Gage has asked me to come in so you could have someone to talk to.” I spoke to him in Russian.

His eyes focused on me. He glanced quickly at Gage standing behind me, then jerked his head back to me. “You speak Russian?” he asked me.

I nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

“What’s he saying?” Gage asked eagerly.

“Nothing yet. We’re just making our introductions,” I told him.

“Well, tell him he better talk or else I’m going to start breaking his fingers.” I decided to ignore the perverse pleasure Gage seemed to take in making his threat.

“Are you okay?” I asked him, refusing to repeat Gage’s threat of violence.

“I don’t want to talk with him in here,” Dimitri told me.

I cut my eyes to Gage, wondering if I could bring myself to ask him to leave us alone. He glared at us, at me in particular, from just beyond the pool of light surrounding the table. The darkness fought with the yellow glow of the light to conceal his features. The effect was a sinister play of light and shadow on his face. I didn’t feel I could ask him any favors while he looked like that. He didn’t look human anymore. He looked demonic, as if he really was a King of Hell sent to torture poor souls like Dimitri’s.

“He doesn’t know what we’re saying,” I assured Dimitri in Russian. “He asked me here because he can’t understand a word of Russian.”

“You’re talking too much,” Gage barked. “I need you to get him to talk.”

I turned to him. “I know I’m not making threats and being aggressive, but let me work at him my way. What do you want me to ask him?”

“Ask him where I can find Ivan.”

I didn’t ask who Ivan was. I figured there were things I didn’t need to know, and the less I knew, the better. I shifted my weight in the chair and leaned across the table. “He wants to know where he can find Ivan,” I told Dimitri.

He looked at me with his cold blue eyes.

“You know who he’s talking about, don’t you?”

“I’m not telling him anything,” Dimitri said, cutting his eyes to Gage.

I rubbed my brow and sighed. “He’s not talking,” I told Gage.

The behemoth stepped into the light and leaned over the table, bringing his face within inches of Dimitri’s. “You tell him that if he doesn’t start talking, we’re going to make his life a living fucking hell.” Though he looked Dimitri in the eye, he spoke to me.

“He said if you don’t cooperate, he’s going to make your life a living hell,” I told Dimitri.

The Russian laughed in Gage’s face, and I saw rage darken his features even more. I was surprised when he stood up and refrained from hitting the man. “You’re not helping,” he told me in a threatening tone. “If you don’t start getting answers, you could find yourself in trouble with him.”

I looked at Dimitri, whose eyes met mine, and for a brief moment it looked like he understood the threat Gage had just issued. Maybe he’d just picked up on the tone of his voice.

“What did he just say?” Dimitri asked me.

“He threatened me if I can’t get you to talk,” I told him in a flat tone. “I need you to give me something I can use.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Dimitri told me.

I shook my head.

“What is it? What did he say?” Gage asked, his voice growing more and more frustrated.

Emotions were starting to run a little too high for my comfort, and I was stuck right in the middle of it all.

“He’s not talking,” I answered.

Gage let out a frustrated groan. “Tell him if he doesn’t start talking, I’m going to kill him. Then, I’m going after his family.”

I sat back and looked at Gage, shocked. “You told me I wasn’t doing any such thing,” I protested.

“I told you before we walked in here to follow my lead and say what I told you to say,” he reminded me. “Now, if you can’t do that, I’ll find someone who will, and you might find yourself in a chair like Dimitri’s,” he threatened. He leaned down, bringing his face down beside mine. I could feel the heat of his anger radiating from his face and hear his deep, hard breathing.

“Except, what I’ll do to you will be far worse than Dimitri’s fate,” he whispered in my ear.

Dimitri sat upright, bound to his chair, and watched our little exchange with concern in his eyes. I gave him a sidelong glance.

“Tell him we know he’s working for Ivan,” Gage said. “Ask him again where Ivan is.”

I turned to face Dimitri again. “He says he knows you’re working for Ivan.”

A smile spread across the Russian’s face. “Of course he does. That was never supposed to be a secret. Tell him congratulations.”

“Where is your boss?” I asked him. “Dimitri, where is Ivan?”

He laughed then. “I’m not going to tell you anything, Dr. Danvers. He needs the information too much to seriously hurt me, so I’m going to keep my mouth shut. Once I tell him where Ivan is, he’s going to kill me.”

“No,” I argued. “No. He told me he’s going to let you go. He’s just trying to find Ivan.”

“You have no idea what you got yourself into, do you?” Dimitri asked, realizing that I really had no idea what this was all about.

I was starting to get pieces of the puzzle, though, and I didn’t like what I was seeing. Dimitri was being held against his will, tied to the chair in this dank, musty old room. All this talk about bosses and where to find them was straight out of the movies. I was beginning to think I’d been pulled into a conflict between two rival mob factions.

“Why don’t you go back to your university, doctor?” Dimitri continued. “This isn’t the place for a woman like you.”

“What’s he saying?” Gage asked me.

“You’re in over your head, Dr. Danvers.”

I shook my head. “He’s not talking.”

“I ought to bash his skull in right here and now,” Gage growled. “Tell him I’m threatening him again.”

I stood up and looked back and forth between the two men. “He understands violence,” I told Gage. “Just raise your fist at him. He’ll know what you mean.” I started towards the door. “He’s not talking to me.”

“Where are you going? You can’t get out of here without the key.” Gage pulled the key out of his pocket, and I considered stepping back over to him to snatch it from his hand, but I feared his hand would meet my face in a bad way if I tried anything like that on him.

“Listen, I’m not getting anywhere with him,” I said, frustrated. “He told me he’s not going to talk with you in the room, so we need to figure out a different approach.”

“He’ll talk no matter what,” Gage threatened. “If the dumb bastard knows what’s good for him.”

He raised his hand, but the Russian just calmly looked up at him, his face not even registering anticipation. It was as if he didn’t even expect Gage to make good on any of his threats.

“I think we need to talk,” I told Gage. “This isn’t working.”

Gage kicked over the chair I’d just been sitting in. He slammed his fists down on the wooden desk and leaned across it again, coming face to face with Dimitri. He didn’t issue any threats. He just stared into the Russian’s blue eyes, his face seething with rage.

“Gage, that’s not helping.”

Dimitri stared into the hateful expression on Gage’s face and said to me, “Tell him that if he harms me, he won’t have to look for Ivan. Ivan will find him.”

“Gage, we need to go. We need to talk. In private,” I urged the biker. I couldn’t believe I was willingly offering to examine other options to get through to the Russian, but something told me my ass was suddenly on the line, too.

“Fine. Let’s talk.” He pushed himself up from the table and walked over to the door, unlocking it to let us out and locking it again once we were out, to keep Dimitri inside. Alone.

He grabbed my arm and walked me away from the room, toward the steps leading back up to the garage.

“Talk,” he said. “What was all that about in there? You two talked a lot for your answer to be that he wasn’t telling you anything,” he accused me.

“He was just telling me he wasn’t going to talk. At first, he said he wasn’t comfortable talking with you in the room. Then, he said he felt like you were going to kill him once he did talk,” I explained to Gage. “I think I should go back in there alone,” I added.

“Good. And you’ll get the chance, because you’re staying with us until you get him to talk,” he said matter-of-factly before taking me by the arm and leading me upstairs.

His grip was firm and forceful, but it didn’t hurt. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, just to make sure I understood my place.

Gage

Julia pulled back from my grip on her arm as we reached the stairs. “Let go of me,” she snapped. “I can walk on my own, thank you.”

I raised my eyebrows. She was a feisty one. It just made me want her more. I wasn’t sure if she was old lady material, but she was definitely worth a go.

“Alright,” I said, letting go of her arm and stepping aside. “Ladies first.” I held my arm out, indicating I expected her to take the stairs in front of me.

She walked in front of me meekly, hurrying to get past me. I smiled to myself. I figured she probably thought I was going to try to hurt her after what she saw in the interrogation room with Dimitri. As long as she played by the rules, she didn’t have anything to worry about, short of teasing me too much by swaying that pretty little ass of hers as she climbed the stairs in front of me.

Once we were back in the shop, I led her into the office so we could go upstairs to the clubhouse. We renovated the second floor of the building, taking out all of the offices and opening it up from one end to the other, creating what was essentially one large lounge. We had pool tables, dart boards, weight benches, a large flat screen TV mounted to the brick wall with a few couches in front of it, and a fully functional kitchen with a stocked bar. Sure enough, when we walked through the door to the clubhouse, we found where everyone was hiding out.

“How big is your operation?” Julia asked when we walked in.

“You don’t need to know all that,” I told her. “You just need to know what you’re here to do. The less you know, the less you learn, the easier it’s going to be for you to return to your quiet academic life when all of this is over.”

I led her to one of the round tables at the bar and pulled a chair out for her. “I’ll be right back. Is beer okay?”

“Wine?”

I looked her up and down again. I pictured her as a red wine kind of girl. It was probably her guilty pleasure, like the things she did to herself at night when no one else was around. “Wine it is,” I told her, turning to the bar to grab our drinks.

I handed her a glass of red wine and sat down with a pint of Guinness.

“So, what did you learn?” I asked.

She took a sip of her wine and closed her eyes. I knew that look. That glass of wine was exactly what she needed after talking to Dimitri. “He’s not going to talk with you in the room,” she answered. “I don’t know if he’s intimidated or what, but he insists on talking without you. He’s convinced you’re going to kill him.”

“I am if he doesn’t start talking,” I teased her, but she didn’t seem to find it funny. She tensed up on me. “I’m kidding. He has too much information I need. If I could get it another way, he wouldn’t even be here.” What I failed to tell her is that we would have killed him instead of bringing him in. It seemed important to her for this just to be a simple procedure and not part of something bigger and uglier than I was letting on.

“And what is this about staying until I get something out of him?” she snapped after another sip of wine.

“You agreed. You came along.” I took a long drink from my beer.

She shook her head. “I didn’t realize I was getting into this at the time,” she said.

“Well, once you get him to talk, you can go back to your quiet, boring life a little wealthier and forget any of this even happened.”

“I don’t know about being able to forget,” she said as an afterthought.

“It’s easy to do. You just push it back and out of your mind, until one day, something comes up to remind you, and you realize you’d forgotten all about it.” I gave her my best warm smile.

She just shook her head. “Well, I guess if I’m going to be working on him for a while, I need to go ahead and meet with him alone. I might be able to get something out of him if I approach him alone.”

“Just don’t get any ideas,” I warned her.

“What do you mean?”

I looked at her over my glass as I took another long drink, finishing off the dark beer and relishing the deep flavor of it. “Just, before you go in there alone, you have to agree to tell me everything he says to you. I don’t think you understand what all is at stake here. In fact, for your sake, I hope you don’t.”

She set her glass down on the table and sat back in her chair, uncrossing her legs slowly—or maybe that was my imagination slowing time down to let me stare at her delicious skin in an attempt to see what was hidden up her skirt—and re-crossing them, switching which knee was on top. “I’m starting to get an idea of what’s going on here, and I don’t like it.” She leveled her eyes on me, forcing me to look up from her legs.

“Well, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but all you need to know is that I need you to get information from Dimitri. I need to know where his boss, Ivan, is and what his next move is. You don’t need to know why. You just need to get that information for me if you want to go home,” I told her plainly.

“Oh, so now you’re going to hold me against my will? Just like you’re doing to poor Dimitri down there?” She tapped her fingers impatiently on the table.

“No one is being held against their will,” I told her. “I’m just not letting anyone leave.”

“How the hell is that any different? And besides, I saw the straps and ropes on Dimitri’s arms and legs holding him to that chair downstairs. You’re holding him here, and now you’re not just telling me to stay, you’re telling me you’re not going to let me leave.”

“Right. And the restraints on Dimitri are for his own good. I don’t want him roaming around in that room down there. It’s dark. It would be a shame if anything happened to him,” I responded.

She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m involved in something like this.”

“I know it’s got to be quite different from what you’re used to. You’re used to the quiet academic lifestyle, aren’t you?” I tried to sound reassuring. I figured I’d try to distract her by getting her to talk about herself, and that way I’d learn a little bit about who she was as well.

She narrowed her eyes at me, suspicion all over her beautiful face.

“What made you so interested in Russia to begin with?” I asked her, not backing down. I was determined to break through her walls.

“I think we need to focus on the matter at hand,” she said, dodging my question.

“Help me out, then. Tell me a little about who you are.” I looked at my empty pint glass and thought about getting Ricky to pour me another.

“I think the less you know, the easier it will be for you to let me go back to my quiet academic life when all of this is over,” she fired back, using my words against me.

“Ouch. You know, I didn’t have you pegged for being a smart-ass,” I told her.

“Oh? Did you think I was this sheltered little nerd because I have obviously devoted my life to scholarly pursuits?”

I had her. “Well, yeah,” I admitted. “I expected a quiet, naïve woman I could easily trick into doing whatever I wanted, but that’s obviously not you.”

“No, it’s not. And thank you for noticing,” she said.

I fought back the grin trying to spread across my face. It would have given me away. “I couldn’t help but notice. You made it very clear you’re not completely clueless like so many other professors and researchers.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time out in the field,” she said. “You gain a lot of worldly experience that way. It gets you out of your head and out of your books.”

I’d obviously struck a chord with her. She wasn’t above flattery, and I was going to use that fact to get what I needed from her.

She finished her wine and stood up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked, trying to sound like I was teasing. My deep, husky voice had a tendency to always sound menacing. I wanted her to realize when I was being playful. It didn’t help that I was a little suspicious that she was going to try to leave again.

“I figure I need to go ahead and sit back down with Dimitri for you,” she said, stretching. “The sooner I get some answers from him, the sooner I get to leave, right?”

“Sure.” I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted to keep her around so I could figure out what made her tick. Plus, I didn’t trust how willing she was to help me. Something didn’t seem right, like she was playing along just to find a way out. “Let me walk you back down there,” I told her.

“No, I’m fine,” she insisted, starting to walk away from me.

I got up from the table and followed her, cornering her at the top of the stairs. I grabbed her by her hips and pushed her against the wall, positioning myself between her and the staircase. I could feel the curve of her hips under my hands. I stood close, almost touching her.

I could feel her anxiety growing like vibrations emanating from her body. I heard her breath quicken. She was scared and nervous, and her fear was delicious. I leaned in to whisper in her ear, and she pulled her hands up to block me from getting too close.

I smiled at her feeble gesture. “I’ve got the key,” I reminded her. “You’re not getting in that room without me.”

She laughed nervously. “Right. I forgot.”

I couldn’t explain the hold she had on me, but every time we were close to each other, I felt my desire for her growing. She didn’t fit the description of the hellraising women I normally went after—the free-spirited women who wore their sexuality on their sleeve, usually inked up with dark eyeliner, in blue jeans and leather. Julia wasn’t any of that. She was a good girl, but there was something under the surface that my primal senses picked up, something that wanted to be set free.

Normally, pushing someone against the wall and holding them there was simply an effective way to intimidate someone. Instead, I was just torturing myself by putting this prim and proper college professor in a compromising position, giving myself the perfect opportunity to take advantage of her.

“You weren’t thinking of trying to get away, were you?” I asked.

She winced at my words and pushed against me with her petite hands. I grabbed her thin wrists and pinned them against the wall, fighting myself back, resisting the urge to plant myself against her and let her feel the desire growing between my legs for her.

“You’re not leaving until I say so,” I said forcefully. “Get used to that idea.” I let go of her, backing away, not because I was finished with her but because if I’d stayed like that, I would have taken advantage of her.

I watched her hurry away from me, heading downstairs. The ache in my crotch convinced me I had to have her, but I was going to do it right. I wasn’t going to just take it; she wasn’t the kind of woman who seemed receptive to that sort of aggression. If I wanted her, I was going to have to seduce her and make her want me.

I followed her downstairs.