Viper's Pit (Diamondbacks Motorcycle Club Book 1) (5 page)

Lind remained silent for a few moments, his mind reeling. He really didn’t know this side of Alec. It was jarring and endearing all at the same time.

“It doesn’t sound stupid,” he finally said. “I understand.”

Alec nodded. “So, I need to find the son of a bitch who almost destroyed my family. And then destroy
him
.”

The dangerous fire was back in Alec’s eyes, the fire that Lind knew so very well. Alec was just but ruthless, and Lind had no doubt that his friend wouldn’t rest until he got his revenge.

“We’ll find them,” he said. “I promise you.”

Alec nodded. “Keep what I told you to yourself, all right? I’d much rather make them nervous than have them blab on to somebody about Linda and the babies.”

“Of course. My lips are sealed.” Lind grinned. “I think we should still have a toast. No one has to know what it is we’re toasting to.”

Alec smirked. He waved at a waitress and ordered a second round. A few minutes later, he was joining the others for a game of darts and leaving Lind to sit alone.

Lind watched them all from his safe distance. Things seemed to get messier by the minute, and he didn’t like that one damn bit. Time had just gotten to be more of the essence. Soon, Linda’s belly would begin to show, and then everyone would know. And if whoever had done this to the Diamondbacks was still out there, she would be in danger. Lind wasn’t about to let anything happen to his best friend’s babies. He needed to start closing in on somebody, and soon.

He thought about what Jacob had said. Did he trust Eve too much? Should he be warier of her? It just seemed impossible for her to be involved somehow, and yet it would also seem unfathomable to many people for the daughter of Harold Robinson to go by Trinity and spend her nights with her legs wrapped around a strip pole.

The thought of Eve’s legs around the pole sent an unbidden shiver down Lind’s spine. He had noticed her the minute he had walked in. He had seen his fair share of working girls, strippers, and dancers, but he had never seen anyone quite like her. There was a grace to her movements that he had not known before. Their eyes had met briefly as she danced, and Lind still remembered that thrill as if it had happened ten minutes ago. He had never been that enthralled.

He had noticed her again later that night when he went out for a well-deserved cigarette break. She had been at the bar, and she had watched him. Their eyes had met again, and once again he had felt like he had just been electrocuted.

Every day in the apartment, Lind had to pretend like he couldn’t see just how strikingly beautiful she was. How sexy. How smart. How funny even. He knew he couldn’t let himself be pulled in, but that pull was sometimes incredibly hard to resist. He was trying not to get attached, but the irrational surge of anger he had felt when Jacob had suggested that she might be playing them told him he was doing a poor job of it.

He couldn’t blame Jacob. The man was being sensible, a quality that Lind seemed to be well on his way of losing wherever Eve was involved. After all, what did they know about her? Sure, they knew her background, but what about
her
? What about Eve, the person? What about her motives? What about her allegiances?

And yet, the more he tried to take Jacob’s suspicions into consideration, the more absurd they seemed. Eve wasn’t a backstabber. She wasn’t a player. She was just a wild child who had found herself hanging with the wrong crew, on the wrong night, at the wrong time. Lind was certain she had nothing to do with what had happened.

He couldn’t help but smile as he thought back on the dazed look on her face when they found her sitting in the grass by his bike. He had been enraged at the time, but now that he thought back on it, it was one of the funniest sights he had ever seen. He was surprised that she had managed to take his beloved Harley that far, and even more surprised to later discover that the only reason she had tipped over was that she was drunk. Eve Robinson knew how to ride a bike. Who would have thought? Certainly not Lind, who had not believed her when she told him and had made her take them both to the supermarket on his bike. They had gotten there unscathed, and Lind had secretly been very impressed.

So, to sum up, Eve Robinson was sexy, smart, funny, and knew how to ride a bike. Lind Addams was screwed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eve sat at the kitchen table, hunched over the pictures of all the people who had populated her nighttime life. Some of them she could never suspect, others she kept in the backburner of her mind as real possibilities, and others were so glaringly obvious that she discarded them right away. Three weeks in, and she still had pretty much no idea who could have been behind the attack on the Diamondbacks. She would be lying, however, if she said she wasn’t beginning to enjoy the investigation.

She froze as soon as the thought entered her mind?

Christ. What’s wrong with me?

Why couldn’t she be happy with her life? Her daytime life, her
real
life. Most of the people she knew would kill for that life. She had a great job in an architecture firm; she was paid well; and, she had good credit. She had a loving family who had made sure she had never wanted for anything. She had a devoted boyfriend who was dying to marry her. What more could a girl want? What more could
Eve
want?

She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she didn’t want
this
. Her life felt like a t-shirt several sizes too small. It felt tight and suffocating. On paper, Eve’s life was perfect, but she had long since realized that she didn’t want perfection.

What Eve wanted was passion and adventure. She wanted a life that kept her guessing, where not everything was already said and done and where her path wasn’t set out for her. She wanted a life full of surprises. She didn’t want a white picket fence. She didn’t want a corporate job. She didn’t want all comforts.

Comfortable. That was really the key word, wasn’t it? Eve didn’t want to be comfortable. She wanted to be alive.

The front door opened then, and she watched as Lind walked in, a tired expression on his handsome face. Still, even with that tension that kept his whole figure so taut, he looked hotter than any other man she had ever seen.

“How did it go?” she asked.

Lind shrugged. “Jacob is nowhere closer to narrowing down his suspicions than we are.”

He tossed his leather jacket onto the couch, and Eve did her best not to notice the way the white t-shirt fell on his torso, outlining every hard muscle. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and went to sit next to her at the table, peering over her shoulder to look down at the scattered pictures and files they had gathered over the past three weeks.

“Did you come to any new conclusion?” he asked.

His face was very close to her, so much so that his warm breath ghosted over her ear. Eve tried to suppress a shiver.

“Not really,” she said, doing her best not to show what his closeness was doing to her body.

Lind sighed in frustration and sat back. He casually leaned one arm on the back of Eve’s chair, almost encircling her shoulders.

“This is starting to piss me off,” he said darkly, taking a swig from his beer.

“Same here,” Eve echoed absently. She tried downing some of the now-cool coffee from the mug sitting next to the various papers, hoping that the blackness of the liquid would help keep her suddenly rising urges in check. “I’m really tired of being cooped up here.”

“I hear ya,” Lind admitted. “But guess what? I brought you another movie.”

Eve rolled her eyes. Lind brought her DVDs to watch from time to time. They would pop them into the player and watch them together, pretending like they were spending a normal evening together. Except that there was nothing normal about the situation, and the stillness of her predicament coupled with her rising attraction for Lind were really starting to take their toll.

“I don’t want to watch a movie,” she said curtly.

Lind nodded. “OK. What do you want to do then?”

There was something cheeky about that question. It was a barely discernible note in Lind’s voice, but it was there and Eve caught it. She stared at him, incredulous. Her heart pounded in her chest, sounding like war drums.

Lind’s impossibly blue eyes were boring holes into her. He leaned in closer, but she wasn’t quite sure he noticed. Instinctively, she also leaned a little more toward him.

“You are very beautiful,” he said, his voice quiet and soft and gravelly.

Eve watched, hypnotized, as he reached out with one hand and pushed an errant lock of her blonde hair behind her ear. She swallowed hard, unable to say anything. She couldn’t move. She hardly dared to breathe for fear that this might go away. That
he
might go away.

Lind’s hand cupped her cheek, and Eve’s heart did a wild somersault in her chest. Was this really happening? And if it was, could she let it happen?

His lips landing on hers a split second later completely short-circuited her brain and silenced all doubts and questions. Suddenly, it seemed just unfathomable to
not
let this happen. He tasted like beer and cigarette smoke, and it was intoxicating.

“Stop me if you don’t want this,” he said, the words vibrating against her mouth.

Eve shook her head. “I want this,” she heard herself say with a gasp, and she realized then and there just how true it was. She
did
want this. She wanted him. She wanted to feel his body against her, and she wanted him to make her moan.

He was all too happy to oblige. Before she even had the chance to realize what was happening, Lind was picking her up and carrying her to the bedroom. He had his palms spread firmly across her butt cheeks, as her legs wrapped around his waist.

He dropped her unceremoniously onto the mattress, but Eve didn’t protest at the rough treatment: this was exactly the kind of passion she had been longing for without even realizing. She realized it now, however, and the knowledge that the passion that she craved was literally at her fingertips filled her with electricity. She felt wired, electrically charged. She felt like her whole body was filled with a kind of raw, primordial energy that she never suspected she could possess.

She tugged at Lind’s t-shirt impatiently, and she helped him strip at record speed, all the while clawing at his flesh and fingering his muscles, clutching to him like she was afraid it would all disappear if she let go even for a minute.

When he was finally naked, Eve reached up to grasp the back of his neck and pulled him down for the hungriest kiss she had ever given anyone—including her fiancé. When they finally pulled apart, they were both breathless.

Lind grinned down at her. “Wow,” he said. “You
really
want this.”

Normally, Eve would feel embarrassed. She would feel ashamed at letting her desire show so wholly and wildly. But nothing about her recent situation was normal, not even this.
Especially
not this. So, instead of feeling embarrassed, Eve lifted her chin a fraction and proudly owned her lust.

“Yes,” she said, with the confidence and firmness of voice of a woman who finally came into her own. “I really want this.”

Once again, he didn’t leave her hanging.

“Darlin’, you don’t need to ask twice,” he said, his voice a rough whisper that shot straight down to her groin.

His mouth descended on hers once again, both his hands reaching into her hair, his fingers getting lost amongst the long golden locks. She felt him press against her and she responded by arching up into him, her hips grinding against his erection. His enlarged cock was so firm and proud against her thigh that she almost came from the knowledge that she was the one responsible for his arousal.

“I’m going to do things to you nobody has done before,” he growled into her ear.

Eve gasped in surprise at the sudden, thrilling chill that ran from her chest down to her belly and then all the way to her vagina. If just his voice was able to do this to her, she didn’t dare to imagine what his full touch would do. She knew she didn’t have to imagine. She knew she was about to find out, and that knowledge filled her with an all-consuming anticipation.

“I’m counting on it,” she all but purred back.

She caught a flash of his grin before he pulled away from her mouth to guide his lips on a full exploration of her body.

As it turned out, her imagination could have never done this experience justice. Lind’s lips were a thing of magic. They kissed and licked in all the right places, at the right pace, at the right moment. His teeth would tease from time to time, delivering small bites that brought on small pinches, which in turn sent electric waves of pleasure running through her whole body in the sweetest ripple effect.

When he finally reached her sex, Eve was already so far gone that she feared one more well-placed kiss would send her over the edge.

He looked up at her and smirked. “Don’t fight it, sweetheart.”

But Eve couldn’t do otherwise. She didn’t want to come just yet. She wanted to prolong the sweet torture of hovering on the brink of orgasm for as long as possible.

“Just touch me,” she said, her whole body taut with the beautiful tension of holding on. “Please.”

Lind’s smirk grew wider. “You got it,” he murmured, kissing the inside of her thigh.

His tongue found her engorged lips then, and it gave all its attention to her aroused clitoris.

Eve soon found out that he was not boasting; he truly did things to her that nobody had ever done before. His tongue traced swirls and pattern that were unlike any other man who had ever touched her. It was like Lind knew her body in a way that even Eve didn’t—a profound, intimate, deeply sensual way.

Eve had never come from oral sex. She had dreamed about finding someone, someday, who would upturn her whole world enough that she would. Someone whose lips and tongue would be skilled enough to send her into the throes of pleasure with no need to involve the action of hands or cock.

Lind’s lips and tongue gave her two orgasms so close to each other that she almost didn’t have the time to recover from the first one before the second came rippling through her body like lightning through the ground during a thunderstorm.

He’s thunderstorms.

The lyrics to the Arctic Monkeys song came unbidden to her mind, and she finally understood it. Lind was thunderstorms.

He gave her just enough time to recover from the experience before he finally took her—wholly and completely. She felt him slip past her wet entrance and inside of her with a gentle and yet determined push, and she spread her legs a little wider still to accommodate him. God, but she had never wanted anyone more.

She gave in with a small gasp, pressing the back of her neck into the pillow, as he pushed deeper into her. She took a moment to admire his figure hovering above her—his sculpted chest and shoulders, his narrow hips. She reached out to pull him closer and felt the strong muscles of his perfect back underneath her fingertips. It was like having sex with a Greek god.

Lind’s thrusts were tentative at first—not from lack of confidence but, Eve realized in surprise, from gentleness. He was finding his pace,
their
pace, the rhythm and pressure that wouldn’t hurt her. He was showing a consideration that Eve didn’t think even existed in casual sex.

She threw her head back and moaned when he hit just the right spot.

“Ah, there we go,” he murmured in satisfaction.

The sureness came back to his movements then, and soon he was setting up the rhythm of a wild dance that Eve was only too happy to dance to. He thrust into her repeatedly, alternating slow, languid strokes to fast, frantic ones. In both cases, he moved like he couldn’t get enough of her.

On her part, Eve couldn’t get enough of him. She couldn’t get enough of this. She wanted it to go on forever. She never wanted Lind to stop and for the outside world to creep back from the sexy cocoon they had just created for themselves.