Hiding in Plain Sight (16 page)

He stilled after feeling her beautiful solid thighs grip his again.  He needed to think, there was something he needed to do before he could…

"Condom," he murmured against her mouth and he reached out a hand to blindly find his jeans.  Wasting no time, he smoothed the latex over himself and, using a hand, pressed his cock against her sodden opening.

"Careful, Bay," she warned.  "You're very big and could hurt a girl."

The glint of humor was in her eyes as well as her cheeky grin as he held her gaze while easing himself in.  "But you, my little beauty, take me so well."

"Oh, damn," she groaned against his mouth as he eased himself into her slowly.  "You feel so good, Bay."

Once fully seated, fully encased by her hot cavern, Brand began to move.  Their hips met softly at first, but it wasn't long before he was raised on an arm, her leg slung over his elbow and he was pounding, deeply and wetly, into her. The whimpers from her throat, caused by the lips she was holding between her teeth, let him know she was as much caught up in their passion as he was.

"Love me, my Reese," he moaned.

And he felt her stiffen when he spoke, though he knew it wasn't due to their shared pleasure.

It was, he admitted, like she was bracing herself against some kind of pain.

Chapter Fifteen

"She's trouble, brother," Atin said for the umpteenth time, his eyes on the tall pines that bordered the driveway to his home.

"No," Brand explained patiently.  "She's
in
trouble.  But as I've gotten to know her, she, herself, is
not
trouble." He felt the other man's eyes on him as he spoke.  They had been going back and forth on this same damn subject for a number of minutes.

"If the Milosevics are involved, then there's difficulty," Atin amended with a sigh.  And Brand couldn't disagree.  Having that family on you, their sights anywhere near you, meant the kind of danger that could see you dead.

"Even Niko said you need to cut her loose, this little bit of beautiful you've snagged."  Atin's voice had gone lower, deeper, in the effort to coerce him to change his mind in helping Reese.  He remembered the Skype chat with their other brother earlier.

Niko's black hair and light blue eyes, which every woman found attractive, had been more pronounced on the web cam.  But it was his sincerity, his single-minded fervency, that had gotten Niko's point across regarding Reese and her predicament, which now bled across the space inside Brand's heart. 

Niko had been the first of them, in their little circle of three, to leave.  Adopted by a childless couple living in Colorado when they were ten, Niko had cried copiously as he was led by the arm away from Atin and Brand in the dorm.  "Not without my brothers," he'd screamed, his cries a lonely echo in the hallway.  Brand had turned away from the sight but had been unable to close his mind, his heart, from the heart-wrenching calls of the boy he'd bonded with.

Niko was the softest of them, holding tight to the sweetness he'd known before his world had been ripped away from him that second time.  The first had been the single minded destruction of the people he'd held dear.  The second was being ripped from the other two boys he called family.  But he'd been the one that had made a point of staying in touch with both Brand and Atin.

"Deschames is determined to have his bride, Brand," Niko had said, his voice not matching the movements of his mouth, due to the delay between video and sound streams.  "Laza has assigned four of his best for the job of reuniting them."

Brand's heart had hit his knees at the news.  Four.  That was one more than the three he'd encountered in North Platte.  

"He paid her father, not her.  Plus, she's admitted to being subjected to his hand while under his care." Brand took the time, this once, to explain his actions and had felt Atin straighten at his admission. 

While under the sharp gaze of Niko's eyes through the webcam, Brand decided to get truthful at a level he knew Niko would understand.  "She's mine, brother."

He felt the tension from the man next to him as he'd watched Niko's shoulders straighten.  It was a bold statement and one he knew was held great importance between the three of them.  Offered in the same words Atin had given regarding Vana.  Words Atin had repeated before he'd dragged her off to stand before an American judge who proclaimed them married even before the poor woman had known, had understood, what the Anglicized words had meant.

"Fuck," Niko had drawled out the American curse word at Brand's bald announcement.  Even Atin had shot Brand a hard look at his disclosure.  "As for the other?"

"I spoke with Trey and advised him of my absence," Brand recapped his last conversation with the lieutenant of the motorcycle club he'd been assigned to infiltrate.

"But as far as you know, they have not changed their plans for the guns?" Niko asked sharply. 

"No.  The pickup is still on for Sunday," Brand confirmed with a nod. 

Niko's adoptive parents, Goran and Biljana Milosevic, were one branch of the crime family, although Niko admitted that his 'mother' was kept in the dark of most of her husband's activities in Utah and Colorado.  When Niko first joined them, along with an older brother Stojan (also adopted), they'd lived in Denver surrounded by other refugees from their country.  Goran moved the family to Grantham when Niko was fifteen, citing business issues which ripped them from their familiar neighborhood, language and culture. 

It was on a visit to Stojan at UC/Denver that Niko discovered exactly what type of business the family was involved in as well as what Goran expected of his 'sons' in the future.  As a child, Niko had lost everything at the hands of people just like the Milosevic brothers.  Men who defined the word greed and made no apologies in their thirst for power.  The thought of inheriting an empire supported by the selling of illegal drugs, running guns and owning women other men could rent for pleasure held not even a whiff of appeal.  And to be linked to Goran's family throughout the rest of the western U.S. in order to keep power, scared him shitless. 

But he could see no way out.

It wasn't until he met with Atin and Brand on a covert trip, after they'd all graduated high school, that the 'brothers' had determined the only way to bring the Milosevic family down was to connect them with America's fight against drugs and terrorism.   Two months before Nadia and her father's murder, Brand turned nineteen and had joined the ATF.  Six months later, Atin followed, but preferred to work behind a desk using his computer skills to contribute instead of going undercover as Brand had done.

On Sunday, Brand would be part of the Hellion's team accepting delivery and providing the distribution of fifteen hundred guns supplied by Niko's adopted father.  Working with the Hellions was only part of his ATF assignment.  Linking the motorcycle club to the Milosevic family was the other.

"I've met with Trey, so I don't think you have to worry about any suspicions on his part regarding Grantham," Niko advised.

"But" Atin interjected.  "What are you going to do about Reese?"

"What do you mean?" Brand asked, confused.  He thought he'd put Niko under the gun by mentioning Grantham in his telephone conversation with Trey.  What did Reese have to do with anything?

"You told him you went to Grantham for your sister, but now you're going to show up in Montana with a girl on the back of your bike," Niko explained, his mouth hitched in a one-sided grin, showing his dimple.  A dimple that matched Brand's and had helped convince the relief agency of their fabricated family connection.

"From the way you look at her, talk to her and touch her," Atin took up the explanation.  "They're not going to believe she's your sister.  Unless you want them to think you're more jaded than even
they
can imagine."

Brand's eyes moved from the monitor to Atin and back as he thought.  "I planned on stashing her at the cabin.  If they come nosing around, I'll pass her off as my latest piece of ass."

Niko laughed, the sound echoing through the speakers.

"Good luck with that, brother," Atin mumbled, shaking his head.

"As just another piece, they'll expect you to share her with the club," Niko said, the signs of hilarity slipping from his face.  "You better come up with another plan."

"She can stay here with me and Vana," Atin proposed.  This was a good offer.  Brand knew Reese would be safe and off the radar with the young couple, tucked away on the farm.

But he wanted her with him.

"Uh-oh," he heard Niko say.  "He's jutted out his chin."

"Shit," Atin mumbled, glancing at Brand.  "Stubborn to the last."

"I'll find a way," Brand vowed, not realizing his face had settled into lines of determination, eyes giving steely evidence to his pledge.  "But Reese stays with me.  If I need to, I'll bring her back.  But for the moment, she remains in my care."

Atin sighed deeply and Brand watched Niko's gaze lower in the picture on the monitor.  The tension in the room was so thick, you could almost touch it.

"I'll lay all of my cards on the table, Brandimir, as they say," he heard come through the speakers and saw Niko was now looking directly into the webcam.  "By taking her with you, you'll be bringing Laza's men into the club's territory.  Putting your life and hers at risk on two different fronts.  Not to mention the possibility of blowing your cover, even if the threat is low.  I know you've taken precautions, brother, by changing her appearance and your own.  But none of these players are stupid or without skills.  Deschames is determined to get his little virgin back, and Laza is more of a bulldog than my father when it comes to accomplishing a goal."

Brand nodded knowing all that Niko said was true.  He glanced at the man sitting beside him to see Atin, too, was nodding his head in agreement.

"What should I do?" Brand finally asked. 

"My vote is to get shut of her as soon as possible," Niko announced firmly, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms on his chest.

Atin's eyes moved between the monitor and Brand.  "Leave her here with me and Vana."

Brand scrubbed a hand over his face.  Neither solution was what he wanted.

"I will need to think about it," he said finally, breaking the silence between the three of them.  After signing off, Atin had taken Brand outside to the porch where they could be alone but where the conversation could continue.

"Brand?" Atin's voice called the other man out of his reverie and back to the here and now.  "Niko said, 'Deschames' virgin' But last night…"

"Yeah, brother," Brand admitted, dropping his eyes to his fists resting on his knees.  "I didn't get to have that particular pleasure either.  She already had already lost that bit of herself before I came along."

"But he obviously didn't know that she was no longer pure when she left," Atin stated.

"True.  I'm guessing she never shared the info with her family or, if they did know, then it wasn't shared prior to the exchange of money."  Brand knew this was going to be a huge problem if she was caught.  There was no way in hell Laza's men would believe he hadn't taken her maidenhead, and that Deschames wouldn't make him pay for the privilege of having had her.

Silence again descended between the two men, both caught up in their own thoughts.

"Marry her," Atin murmured, and Brand's eyes shot to his friend.

"What?" Brand blurted on a loud voice.

"If you marry her, you take away the chance for Deschames to do so, and it automatically becomes a given that she is no longer a virgin," Atin explained calmly.  "It does, however, put you fully in the crosshairs as the man who 'stole' a bride from a friend of the Milosevics."

"And it prevents her from becoming a member of HMC's shared corral of women." Brand was working the idea through, trying to see any other reason to cast the suggestion aside.  The group he'd penetrated were lawless and had a moral code so loose as to blur the lines of society's ethics, but one thing was true:  they would never touch the wife of a member without both the husband and wife's consent. 

He turned the idea over and over, doing his typical pro-and-con list in his mind.

The only thing he didn't consider was Reese's response to the idea.

*.*.*.*.*

I woke alone in our nest on the floor, a sheet draped up over my shoulders which I knew was Bay's doing before he'd exited the bed.  It was a sweet gesture, and I felt my heart fill as his thoughtfulness settled over me.

Nadia.

All it took for the wind to be taken from my sails was the thought of that three-syllable name.

Rising, I wiggled into my panties and camisole before slipping into jeans and snagging my backpack.  I made my way to the bathroom and showered, getting ready to meet the day. 

I watched a blush move up my face and neck as the images of last night ran through my mind.

Was it too soon?  I hadn't even known the man a full week and I was, I admitted to the 'me' in the mirror, giving it up to a man I knew couldn't, and wouldn't, ever value me as much as he did a woman that had come before me.  But he treated me so well, so much better than anyone ever had before.