Bound: Minutemen MC (19 page)

Chapter 26: I Want You Too Much

Camilla had no delusions about surprising Dirk; he had probably heard her coming when she was still in the kitchen. Still, she didn’t feel like knocking either. She was going to reclaim her balance, with no warnings or apologies. She took a deep breath and slipped into the room…

…and she froze when she heard an all-too familiar click. In the semidarkness, she could make out Dirk’s form, half sitting on the bed, supporting himself on one elbow while his other hand held the gun that was pointed at her. Apparently, Camilla wasn’t the only one who’d had the events from four nights ago get under her skin. For some reason, that realization made her feel better. She didn’t feel as fragile or as helpless anymore.

She held her hands up. “It’s me,” she said.

“Shit!” Dirk cursed loudly. He fumbled with the bedside lamp and glared at her in the subsequent dim light. “Are you crazy? I could’ve shot you!”

“No, you couldn’t have,” Camilla said, calmly. “I know you would’ve made sure of who it was first; you wouldn’t just shoot in your own house without asking questions first.”

Dirk grumbled something unintelligible under his breath; it sounded like more swear words. He shoved the gun back under the pillow on the empty side of the bed and glared daggers at her from his deep blue eyes.

“What are you even doing here?” he demanded, dragging a hand across his face to wake himself up. “What time is it?”

“A little past five in the morning,” Camilla replied absently. She had already started to move towards him.

Dirk watched her, a bemused expression on his face. “What are you doing?”

“You haven’t touched me in a while.” Camilla let the thin, cotton robe fall off her shoulders and onto the floor. “I’ve come to claim what’s mine.”

Dirk swallowed visibly. He had never been able to resist her, and they both knew it. The look in his eyes darkened and became hungry, as he watched her every move. He watched as she came up to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, straddling him with her knees. Her mouth captured his, and he sighed against her full lips. One of his hands reached up to tangle his fingers into the softness of her long auburn waves.

Camilla deepened the kiss and ground her hips against his pelvis, desperate for friction and contact and everything that Dirk had always given her that would drive the demons away.

“Don’t,” he finally mumbled. He broke their heated exchange of fiery kisses and frantic touches, and he pushed her back firmly.

Camilla frowned in confusion, her stomach tightening in disappointment. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t think this should happen. Not like this, anyway.”

She stared at him. To her surprise, he looked like he meant it. “What are you talking about?”

Dirk sighed. He dislodged her unceremoniously off of his lap and sat up a little straighter, running a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristic display of nervousness.

“Why are you here, Camilla?” he finally asked.

Camilla blinked, her confusion mounting.
What is he doing? Why isn’t he ravaging me like he has done so many times before?
“I told you,” she said. “I want you to touch me.”

“Why?” he pressed.

His scrutiny was so intense that she almost had to look away. Instead, she forced herself to stand her ground and stare right back at him.

“Because I like it,” she admitted candidly. “Because I need a distraction from all the shit that’s been going on.”

“Ah.” Dirk sighed heavily and gave her a small smile. “That’s what I was afraid of, and that’s exactly why I can’t do this.” When Camilla kept looking at him, clearly confused, he elaborated, “I can’t afford a distraction right now.”

Camilla frowned. To her, none of it made any sense. “What are you saying? You’re not gonna fuck me until this whole thing with the Tar Mongols is over?”

Dirk cringed visibly. “Probably not even after that,” he admitted.

It felt like a cold shower. She watched him in disbelief.
What is happening? Where is the Dirk who would take me with such intensity that I felt like the whole universe was exploding? Where is the Dirk who needed my body as much as I needed his?
She realized now with startling clarity that that Dirk was gone. He had been replaced with the soldier, the man who could only see and live the war.

Camilla pulled away further with deliberate movements. She got off the bed, went to retrieve her fallen robe, and put it on, wishing that it could hide her from his unbearable scrutiny.

“I see,” she said, and even she was surprised by just how cold her voice sounded. “I’ll let you get back to sleep then. Sorry I’ve disturbed you.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you.” His voice reached her when she was at the door. She froze, one hand on the handle. “It’s that I want you too much.”

Camilla turned around, slowly. There was a note of sincerity to his words that sent a shiver down her spine.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that,” she admitted.

Dirk grinned. “You’re supposed to just take my word for it and realize that me not wanting to have sex with you is actually a compliment.”

Camilla couldn’t suppress a snort. “It doesn’t really feel like a compliment.”

The intensity in Dirk’s blue eyes didn’t waver. It felt as though he was trying to convey some important message that Camilla just wasn’t getting.

“Do you know why I came after you the other night?” he asked.

Camilla smirked. “I didn’t leave you much choice,” she said. “I took your bike.”

Dirk dismissed that notion with a wave of his hand. “I could’ve gotten that back at any time; I knew you wouldn’t last long alone in the desert.”

Camilla shivered again, but this time the sensation wasn’t pleasant. It had been an awfully close call, but she was just beginning to realize exactly
how
close; if the Tar Mongols hadn’t shown up, she probably would have been in serious trouble anyway.

“I could’ve just waited for the Mojave Desert to claim you,” Dirk continued, oblivious to her mounting discomfort. “It probably would’ve made life a lot easier for everyone involved.”

“Except me,” Camilla growled through gritted teeth.

“Except you,” he agreed.

Camilla pushed down her mounting anger. She had the feeling getting to the bottom of this would be the best course of action. “So why did you do it?” she asked. “Why did you come after me?”

Dirk hesitated. Then, without warning, he said, “Because I care.”

Camilla blinked, taken aback. Of all the answers she had imagined,
that
surely wasn’t it. “Excuse me?” she said, stunned.

“You heard me,” Dirk said, his impossibly blue eyes boring holes into her. “I came after you because I care about you. Believe me, I tried not to. I tried to see you as nothing more than a nuisance and great sex—”

“Wow, thanks,” Camilla said dryly.

“—but you’ve somehow managed to get under my skin, Camilla. I never meant for it to happen; it just did. To be honest, I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.” 

Camilla took in his confession and tried to wrap her mind around it. She had not expected him to open up like this—or at all, for that matter. She walked back to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, all sexual intentions forgotten. She stared at Dirk and studied his features to see if he was making fun of her, but she saw no traces of lie on his face.

“Thank you,” she finally said. “For coming after me. I don’t think I’ve said it yet.”

“You hadn’t,” Dirk said, and he smiled, “but that’s okay.”

Camilla took a deep breath, preparing to say something she had refused to say ever since that night. Her pride would hurt for days, but she figured she could afford to be as honest with him as he had just been with her.

“It was pretty stupid,” she admitted. “What I did, I mean.”

Dirk seemed surprise by the admission, but he recovered easily. “Yeah, it was,” he said, his face darkening at the memory.

“I’m sorry,” Camilla said sincerely. “I put you and your club in danger.”

Dirk nodded curtly, dismissing the apology. “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“It won’t,” Camilla said quickly. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

The lesson was that she was as helpless out there in the desert as a newborn calf, and that what she had thought would be her gateway to freedom had turned out to be the fastest way to get herself killed.

“Good,” Dirk said.

Camilla hesitated. She wanted to ask so many questions, and she figured this was as good a time as any. Perhaps, this time, she would finally get some straight answers, something more substantial than
“It’s for your own good.”

“Why is it so dangerous out there, Dirk?” she finally asked. “What’s this feud that you’ve got going on with the Tar Mongols? Are you really fighting because of me?”

Dirk frowned. “What do you mean?” It was clear that he had a pretty good idea where Camilla was going with this, and that he didn’t like it in the least.

“I mean, I’m having a hard time believing you and your club are letting things escalate just because you don’t want Ruiz to kill a nosy reporter.”

Dirk stared at her. He visibly debated with himself for a moment, and then he sighed, defeated. “Fine,” he said. “You want the truth?”

“It would help, yes.”

Dirk exhaled slowly. He looked away briefly, and when he looked back up at her, his eyes were burning. “This war is not about you.”

Chapter 27: It’s About Territory

They found Stephan where Camilla had left him—sipping coffee in the kitchen. He had turned off the light that Camilla had turned on, and he was once more sitting in the dark, although dawn was approaching and the room was no longer pitch black.

Camilla felt nervous. Dirk had agreed to explain everything, but he refused to do it without Stephan’s presence; he said it would be a much wiser idea to let the MC’s president be there for this kind of conversation. Camilla was still unable to judge Stephan Walker’s character, but one thing she knew was that she wasn’t a huge fan.

He looked up when they entered, and she could tell immediately by the hardening of his handsome features and the steely glint in his hazel eyes that he knew something was up.

“You’re up early in this house,” he commented.

Dirk shrugged. “Camilla told me you were here,” he said. “Since when do you take guard duty?”

“Since it’s you,” Stephan replied easily. “And since my hands have been itching for Tar Mongols’ blood for quite some time now.”

Dirk nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

Camilla watched the exchange, and she wondered about the relationship between these two men. It was clear they cared deeply about each other and shared their own language. They couldn’t be any more different from each other, and yet their bond was deep and strong.

Dirk didn’t go for the coffee that still lay waiting and fresh in the pot. He took a seat right across Stephan at the table and gestured for her to do the same.

Stephan watched them curiously. “What?” he said. “Are you getting married or something?”

Camilla was surprised to feel herself flush at the words, and she was never happier for the lack of light in a room as she was then.

Dirk snorted, but he didn’t dignify that with a comment. Instead, he said, “I want to tell her.”

Stephan stiffened instantly. He sat up straighter and narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Tell her what?”

“Everything. What we do, how the territory works, what this feud with the Mongols really is about.”

Stephan stared at him in disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?” he all but exploded. “You want to tell our business to an investigative reporter?”

Dirk snorted again. “I won’t go into
details
, Stephan,” he said, huffing in annoyance. “I’m not an idiot.”

Stephan arched a blond eyebrow. “I swear, these days I wonder.” He cast a pointed look at Camilla, who glared right back.

“She thinks what’s happening is her fault,” Dirk said. “That we’re going to war with the Tar Mongols because of her.”

Stephan snorted. “That’s mighty presumptuous of you, Miss Hernandez.”

Camilla’s glare sharpened. “Well, you didn’t give me many reasons to think otherwise.”

“Fair enough,” Stephan said. He brought his attention back to Dirk. “But no, Dirk, I forbid you to go spouting off about our business to this woman.”

“But she feels—”

“I
don’t care
how she feels!” Stephan snapped. “This isn’t a fucking therapy circle! It’s not my problem if she feels guilty, and it’s not
your
problem either. You are
not
going to give her any information.”

His eyes burned. Camilla did her best not to recoil. She had never seen Stephan Walker’s infamous cold anger firsthand, but she was getting a glimpse of it now, and she didn’t like it one bit.

“I just want to tell her what’s going on, Stephan,” Dirk said with remarkable calmness. “Like it or not, she’s smack in the middle of it, and I think she deserves to know.”

Stephan looked from one to the other in disbelief. “I think we’ve done more than enough for her,” he said after a moment.

Camilla was getting annoyed at their referring to her as though she weren’t there, but she bit her tongue and kept her mouth shut; there was a time and a place to complain, and this was neither.

The silence that followed was tense and heavy. The two men glared openly at each other in silent challenge.

“Do me a favor and get out of here,” Stephan eventually said, “before I shoot you both.”

Camilla winced; she wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t serious. She followed Dirk out of the room and back up the stairs.

“Well, that went well,” she muttered.

Dirk flashed her a grin from over his shoulder. “As a matter of fact, it did.”

Camilla frowned. He didn’t sound ironic at all. “But he said—”

“He said I can tell you.”

Camilla’s confusion mounted. She watched as Dirk closed the door of his bedroom behind them. He took her hand and led her to the bed, and they both sat on the edge of the mattress.

“I’m not sure we were having the same conversation back there,” she said.

Dirk laughed. “Probably not. That was my way of asking Stephan for permission to tell you as much as I can without overexposing the club, and that was his way of giving me the go-ahead. If he didn’t want me to tell you, he would have separated us.”

“Then why didn’t you just tell me in the kitchen?”

Dirk grimaced at the thought. “Stephan is giving me permission to have this conversation with you, but he doesn’t necessarily approve of it. He doesn’t want to have to listen.”

Camilla nodded. She couldn’t say that she fully understood the dynamic of what had just happened, but she figured it was best to just concentrate on the matter at hand.

“So tell me,” she said. “What’s going on with the Tar Mongols? How can you say it’s not about me?”

“I told you, Camilla,” Dirk began, “you’re a pretext. We’ve been at war with them for a long time. It was bound to escalate sooner or later. You’re just the perfect excuse.”

Camilla scowled. She wasn’t sure she liked to be the “excuse” for a bloody conflict. “So what
is
it about?” she asked.

“Territory. We’ve been fighting over the Mojave Desert for years.”

“I thought you said the desert
is
your territory,” Camilla said, recalling the very first day that she had met the Minutemen. They had stopped her kidnappers, claiming that they were crossing borders.

“In bits and pieces, yes,” Dirk said. “Speckles, more like. Neither the Tar Mongols nor us have ever managed to win a good chunk of it. We want them gone, they want us gone.”

“Why?”

“Business,” Dirk replied. “We deal in two different areas, and both are bad for the other.”

Camilla swallowed nervously. Despite her best efforts to remain as detached as possible, she had begun to think of Dirk as a good guy. She wasn’t sure she was ready to review her evaluation once she found out about his deeds.

“What’s
your
area?” she asked.

“Guns,” Dirk replied candidly. “We smuggle weapons to the other clubs in California.”

“Oh.” Camilla didn’t like it, but she figured it was better than selling drugs to innocent people who didn’t know better…like the Tar Mongols did.

“We also don’t like the cartel sniffing around the area. We don’t like them crossing. We just plain don’t like them. We got here shortly before the Tar Mongols did, and once they appeared, it became immediately clear that one of us would have to obliterate the other in order to survive.”

Camilla bit her lip. “Um…can’t you just…I don’t know…move?”

Dirk blinked at her. He laughed, loud and raucous. “Are you serious?”

Camilla thought about it. It was a very naïve way to look at the matter, and she should have known better than that, given her professional background. “I suppose I’m not,” she admitted with a grimace.

“Over the years, things have gotten worse,” Dirk continued, “and Herman Ruiz revealed himself for the scumbag he is. It’s not just about territory anymore. The Tar Mongols are ruthless scum, and we don’t want them here.”

His eyes burned as he spoke. Camilla thought about Eleanor, Dirk’s fiancée who was kidnapped, raped, and killed by the Tar Mongol’s godawful president.

“So what about me?” she asked after a moment. “What do
I
have to do with any of this?”

“Nothing,” Dirk admitted. “To the Tar Mongols, you’re a nuisance that needs to go away. To us, you’re nothing.”

Camilla couldn’t help but wince. She hated the thought of being “nothing” to him, but she didn’t stop to wonder why she hated it, and she knew better than to voice her disappointment.

“Then why am I here?” she asked instead. “If I’ve got no value to the club, why are you guys keeping me here? Why did you even take me in the first place?”

Dirk thought about it. He shook his head and gave her a small smile. “Because, Camilla, as much as we don’t like to advertise it, and as much as I’m sure you don’t like to think about it, even though we’re outlaws, we’re not monsters. The monsters are out there, and we couldn’t leave you at their mercy. We don’t let innocents die if we can help it.”

His features darkened, and Camilla knew they were both thinking about the same thing; they were thinking about Alex Hurley and his family, who had been slaughtered in their own home by the Tar Mongols a mere week ago.

“So this is a war zone,” she said after a few moments—during which she let herself take in all the information.

Dirk nodded. “It has been for quite some time now. Police won’t even come here.”

Camilla shuddered. She knew what that meant. It meant that whoever had the misfortune to accidentally wander into the Mojave Desert was on their own—like she had been until the Minutemen came along. She realized now—even though she didn’t like to admit it or think about it—Dirk and his men had saved her, and they were continuing to save her every day that they kept her with them.

“So you’ll really let me go once all of this is over?” she asked.

Dirk gave her a reassuring smile. “You have my word.”

Camilla decided that was good enough for her. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

“You must be counting the days,” Dirk said. “I’m sure you can’t wait to be home.”

Camilla watched him. There was a darkness in his eyes that she knew all too well. She shivered, her body responding to the scalding look in his blue irises.

“I’m not in
that
much of a hurry,” she said, huskily.

Dirk took the hint. He leaned in, cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her.