Under Fire (Winged Enemy MC Romance) (3 page)

The next page to the right showed a man just past his prime. Brown hair started to turn silver at the temples. He was similarly adorned as the man in the other picture, but his jacket wasn’t as faded. The name on the bottom of the page read
Nathan
.

The third poster held the image of a much younger man. This was someone full of the vibrancy of life, his dark features and strong cheekbones gave him an air of danger and mystique. His jacket was worn but not nearly to the degree of the others, and it hadn’t yet settled into the state of constant familiarity where it wouldn’t be surprising if he wore it to bed every night. The jacket hid his well-shaped physique, but it was impossible not to guess its presence by the way the leather draped over his shoulder and the very way he held himself. His page was labeled
Jed
.

The last poster broke the trend. A bright brunette smiled at the faraway camera, unsuspecting of the menace that lay on the other side of the lens in the future. Brown hair flowed free down past her shoulders and a cowboy hat capped her head. She looked earnest and care-free in a way the men did not. Just below the full cleavage of her photo read the name
Leslie
.

“You’re going to pay,” said the voice, emptied of emotion. “Sooner or later, all of you are going to pay.”

Three more shots fired from the old rifle, and each of the remaining pictures joined Frank’s in sporting a smoking hole for an eye.

Wham!

My back slammed into the wall. Breathless from the impact, I ignored it and went right back to what I was doing.

And what I was doing, is finally getting Jed out of his pants.

I worked my hands rapidly on his belt, ripping it out of his jeans and throwing it across the room. Jed’s mouth was hard at work on my neck, fastening on and swamping me with delirium.

Oh god, it’s finally happening. I need this so fucking badly.

Jed’s hands came up and cupped my breasts through my shirt. I had skipped the bra that morning, and I was glad I did as the sensations burst through my body. “Oh, yes, right there Jed.” I encouraged him to ravage me as I struggled to take his pants down.

He grabbed my hands in one of his and forced them above me, pinning me to the wall even more completely. His other hand grabbed onto my cheap t-shirt at the neck and ripped it open, freeing my tits.

“Oh, shit. Yes, baby, take it! Take what you want!”

I was hornier than I had ever been in my life. In the past three weeks since we had come home from the hospital we hadn’t had sex a single time. After the torrid pace of the affair we had maintained before the incident the sudden cessation of all sex confused my body and left it desperate for attention. Every time I had gotten Jed alone he had backed away or gone cold on me.

I’m not going to let that happen this time.

His hand took my bare breast into his palm. He squeezed it gently and rubbed the rough skin over my nipple. I gasped. My panties dampened as his assault on my body continued, revving me up even higher.

“Let me take your pants off, Jed. Let me suck that big cock of yours.” I said it in a sultry of a voice as I could muster, writhing under his mouth and hands so that he couldn’t possibly miss how much I needed it.

“Mmm, I don’t think so,” he growled. “I need to taste you first.”

Yes!

Jed’s tongue was a pleasure I had been yearning for, even dreaming about. But for that matter so was his fingers, his hand, his rippling muscles, and his hard cock. I wanted it all, hard, and often, but I hadn’t gotten it. I had lost all ability to think straight in his presence, lost in my need.

His powerful hands scooped me up and cradled me against him. I took the opportunity to run my hands under his shirt and lift it over his head. I let my hands run across his abs, marveling as always at his level of perfect fitness. My left hand wrapped around his shoulder while the right pulled his head down towards mine. A kiss connected us, passionate and fierce, the kind that we used to share. It had been almost three weeks since I had felt him kiss me like that.

The kiss broke when he reached my bedroom and threw me onto the bed.

“Ahh!” I shrieked and flailed my arms as I landed on the firm mattress and bounded upwards. I didn’t wait to come to a stop before I started to take my own pants off. I impatiently ripped the fasteners open and started to shimmy the tight denim down my thighs.

Why the hell did I have to wear such tight pants?

I was so used to being disappointed lately that the seconds-long delay felt like it might give Jed time to come to his senses and bail on me as had become the norm. Any time we started to get intimate, he recalled my betrayal, and he had to leave.

I kicked frantically to shake the fabric loose from the death grip it held on my ankles. It would have been funny if I wasn’t so turned on and longing for my lover’s touch.

“Come here, Jed, let me take care of you,” I patted the bed beside me.

The rugged biker stood at the foot of my bed, staring at me. His eyes traced my lithe legs and found my heaving breasts. Despite the promising path his gaze took, I could see the tightening of his face that signaled bad memories coming to the fore.

“Jed, please?” My voice softened with entreaty. “Come to bed with me?”

He stood there, staring, and didn’t say anything. I could all but hear the battle going on in his mind.

“I don’t… I can’t… sorry, Leslie, I can’t do this.” Jed turned away and walked out the door.

“Jed! Jed, come back!” I shouted after him, but his shadow didn’t darken my bedroom door any longer.

I sank back against the pillows. From experience I knew that running after him wouldn’t change anything, and it would just cause both of us to get hurt.

I let him go.

This has to end. I know he cares about me. I know I want to be with him, too. He just can’t get past what I did to him.

It sucked, but I knew that there wasn’t much I could do except wait for him and hope that time would heal that wound. He knew there wasn’t anything I could do to change the past, and how we met.

Becoming an undercover agent was the defining moment of my life in many ways, but it was easy to regret that it had caused such a serious rift in my budding relationship with this man that I cared for so much. I didn’t dare let myself even consider the L word just yet.

My womanhood twinged, a reminder that it had been promised some action and then yet again been ruthlessly denied.

I’m going to have to take care of this myself. Again. Goddamn it Jed, I know you have your reasons, but you’d think a man would be able to turn his brain off to get laid.

I woke after a night of restless dreaming. Flashbacks from the ambush three weeks ago haunted me, and I saw Jed get shot time after time. In the dreams he was hit much worse, and bled out in my arms. I had to watch him die, unable to do anything about it, and then after having my heart wrung out the entire dream sequence would start again with only a slight variation.

The third time that I awoke in a cold sweat I decided enough was enough.

What time is it? Four o’clock? Fuck it.

I had enough of watching my lover die again and again. If my mind was going to torture me with visions of awful things, then I wasn’t going to just sit there and take it.

My running pants and a tight shirt were all I tossed on. Five minutes later I was headed out of town, legs pumping as I breathed in the cooler pre-dawn air. The eastern horizon glowed pink as the sun made ready its morning appearance. Birds chirped, already greeting the day.

It was beautiful enough that I was able to put the nightmares out of my mind and just let the beat of the run flow through me. My feet pounded rhythmically on the pavement while I tried to beat my fastest time in the loop I had taken to running around town.

Jed and his mates in the Winged Enemy MC experienced the roads and the countryside with the immediacy of a motorbike, but I hadn’t yet gotten one of my own. The way that I learned the roads, learned the secrets that driving a car wouldn’t tell you, was with my feet.

I smelled a fire halfway through the jog at the furthest point of my loop, but my mind automatically categorized it and filed it away as the remains of a campfire. Nothing to be concerned about. My agent’s subconsciousness was constantly on the look-out for anything outside of normal, anything that needed to be noted and remembered.

It had been three weeks since the Winged Enemy had been ambushed in a weapons drop by Mexican mobsters from Las Cruces and surrounding areas. The club’s old leader, Frank, had been cutting out the middle men in the gun and drug trade, and they weren’t happy about it.

Having gone undercover as a new girl in town applying to be the bartender at the Devil’s Roost, the gang’s home bar, I had learned through my sources that the ambush was coming but the only way I could convince Jed that he and the group were in trouble was by telling him directly and blowing my cover. The burgeoning romance between us was severely damaged, set back further than square one in some ways by the deception that had formed the base of our relationship.

As it so often did, my mind played through all of the things that I had done and had happened over such a short period of time three weeks ago. There were times that I thought I was crazy for trying to stick with a man I had only known for less than a month, but every time I was close to Jed I felt a magnetic pull in his direction that I couldn’t explain.

I had never been in love before, and I was loath to use the word before I knew for sure, but it felt like I was caught up in a ridiculous tale of a damsel and a dark and handsome hero.

The sun rose and beat down upon me for the last leg of the run, and by the time I returned to the apartment sweat had beaded up on my firm skin and started to pour down my body. The dirty clothes hit the floor as I stripped naked.

I ran my hands along my skin. I had been in excellent condition before, as an agent should, but taking my frustrations out with running had raised my fitness to all new levels. Despite that, Jed didn’t seem to want to get any further than second base and it killed me.

Under the pounding heat of the shower I took care of my needs again. And then, because I had more than enough time and I couldn’t get Jed’s dark eyes out of my mind, I did it again.

It’s a good thing that going blind from masturbation is a myth, otherwise I would have lost my eyes completely over the past three weeks.

A drought that had started out of necessity due to Jed’s injury had continued once his strength had returned enough to move around. It was enough to drive me to distraction, and the almost constant contact we maintained while trying to get the bar up and running again and go through all of Frank’s files didn’t help me cool off any.

Somewhere in Frank’s notes should be a record of what exactly he had been up to, and with what criminal groups. He had mentioned his ambitions to Jed, his former vice president, but had been careful never to reveal enough for Jed to know exactly what was going on. In a group of men that traditionally acted as a big family, Frank had operated solo in the most important matters, the powerful patriarch who never let anyone get remotely close to the information he held.

Jed and I had searched everything and everywhere we could think of, but had come up empty-handed. Somewhere there had to the information that would help Jed and I take down more criminals for the DEA, but it was hidden very well.

I left the apartment after getting dressed and eating a sparse breakfast. I smiled as I heard the welcoming beep from my new car.

It was nothing fancy, but compared to the complete piece of junk I had driven before as part of my cover, it was heaven. The old car had become so riddled with bullet holes due to its role protecting Jed and me in the ambush that it was impossible to salvage.

Now that my cover was blown within the gang itself, it was deemed allowable to give me a bit of an upgrade in the car department.

The Devil’s Roost was across town, but the town was so small that I pulled up to the outside in a mere five minutes. The bar shone like new, a sharp departure from the musty heap that it had been the first time I walked through the doors.