Bounty (65 page)

“
H
ow
… how is that even… possible?” I bite my tongue again before I add,
You’re a fucking criminal!
I’ve already spoken more candidly during this interview than is proper, and although there’s no way I plan on working here, and Bash doesn’t seem to mind, that doesn’t mean I have to continue to act unprofessionally. That’s not me, that’s him, and I won’t stoop to his level.

Bash’s dark eyes bore into me, just as they did on Saturday night. I can feel him probing and pushing, but I have no idea what he’s searching for. It was his eyes that I recognized right away. As soon as the door opened. It’s just the rest of him that doesn’t look familiar.

If I passed him on the street looking like he does now, but he was wearing dark glasses, I would have just walked on by. Well, I probably would have sneaked a peek at his ass or something, but that’s it. I’m not blind, after all, and even the sport jacket and tie combo he’s wearing can’t hide how well-built he is. But I never would have known that this man had his cock buried to the hilt inside of me just two nights ago.

Gone is the razor-sharp stubble that covered his jaw. Gone is the leather, the jeans, the messy hair. The tattoos are all covered. He looks the part of a true corporate exec. Where the hell is Bash?

Oh. Right. Bash is gone. This is Sebastian. Whatever. Split personality much?

He finally nods, as if answering a question to himself with something he finally found in my eyes. “I didn’t start off wanting… this.” He motions around himself. “I still don’t. But it is what it is. Shit happens.”

Shit happens?
He’s explaining away founding a billion-dollar company that he doesn’t really want with
shit happens?

“I assume you’re going to elaborate?” I prod. I may not really be interested in working here, for him, but that doesn’t mean I’m not curious now.

Sebastian lets out a heavy breath and lays one of his big hands down onto the wooden tabletop of his desk. There are papers everywhere, and more than one coffee cup, but he seems to find the one spot where he won’t knock anything over.

“The reason you had to sign an NDA, why anyone that is going to work with me has to sign one, is that the fact that I run this company is a secret. One that I intend to keep. I let Hans run the day-to-day, but every major decision goes through me first. He’s the public figurehead, but I call the shots.”

“Why?” After spending so much time with Edward, the entire notion of someone running a company and not wanting all of the glory is completely foreign to me. I can’t imagine a scenario where Edward would want someone else taking the credit for anything he did.

Sebastian stands up and stands next to the huge floor to ceiling window behind his desk. He’s looking out and quiet for a moment. When he starts to talk again, his deep voice almost startles me.

“You can’t even see the bar from here,” he says. “We’re on the complete opposite end of the city. I picked this location specifically for that reason. So that the two parts of my life would have the least chance of meeting. And now you appear.” He turns and shoots an accusatory glare at me.

“Excuse me?” I think back to what he’d just said, trying to replay it to find something I missed, but then he just shakes his head and turns back to the window.

“Never mind. I know I have a few things to explain. Things I wasn’t planning on getting into today. Or ever, really. But here we are. Understand that I’m forced to tell you things here that I’ve never told anyone, which means I have to trust you. I know you’ve signed the NDA, but this goes deeper than that. The NDA means I can come after you financially. But if you break my trust in what I’m about to tell you, your finances will be the least of your concern.”

The edge in his voice is back, the one he used when I first arrived, and my heart begins to pound just as hard as when he used it that first time. I don’t want him to think he can intimidate me, but at the same time, I can tell he’s serious, so I just nod.

“This whole thing started about ten years ago in my garage. At the time I was a biker only, and part of the same club that I’m in now, although at that time, just a new recruit. We didn’t have a lot of money, as we were fairly new on the scene, but I’d been around bikes my whole life and had been fixing them for years on my own. I started to just fix them for the crew, eventually needing to make a few parts that I didn’t have access to. Things just grew from there, and eventually I was machining more and more parts for a greater variety of people.” He’s gazing out the window as he speaks, not paying attention to me. That allows me to watch his face. His jawline is strong, but tight, like he’s stressed. Even the hand that was resting on the table earlier is clenching down now.

“I kept it secret from the club, how big things started to get. I didn’t want them to think I had sold out and gone corporate. But they began to notice that I was spending less time with them. Eventually, I realized that in order to be a part of both the club and the business, I would need outside help. Not only that, but honestly, I was in over my head.” He snorts a little, bullishly. “I wasn’t cut out for all this,” he mutters, gesturing to the office and its accoutrements, and even his magnificent view. “I was just a guy with a big idea. A grease monkey, at heart. I didn’t know the first thing about being a CEO, and honestly? I didn’t want to.”

Bash—or, rather, Sebastian—wets his lips. The way his tongue darts over them, just the tip, brings a thrill to my core I’d rather not admit to. It’s all I can do not to squirm, but like a bloodhound scenting its prey, somehow Sebastian seems to know. His gaze flicks to mine briefly before dipping to my skirt as I uncross, and then recross, my legs beneath it. The corner of his lips quirk, I think, though it could be my imagination. Either way, my cheeks flush.

“You should know, Evelyn, based on how we met the other night, that I’m not exactly cut out for corporate niceties. The social order of running a business. The pussy-footing, the brownnosing. All that shit.”

I’ve heard far worse words than “shit” exit Sebastian’s mouth in the short time I’ve known him, but here, in his office, the curse ricochets like a gunshot. My blush deepens, not because I’m some kind of goody two-shoes—I think our time in his MC’s back room proved that—but because I can’t get a fucking
read
on him, no matter how hard I try. He keeps trying to convince me that Sebastian and Bash are two separate entities, at least here, in his ivory—or, rather,
chrome
—tower, but it seems like the snarling biker just can’t be contained. I’ve caught a glimpse of him more than once since I arrived here, and it’s throwing me off something fierce.

Pull yourself together, Evelyn,
I chide myself, although it does no good. My thoughts keep drifting to the way Bash took control of me, and the small, fingertip-shaped bruises on my hips throb in reply. Great. Like I need another reminder, or another distraction from the story he’s trying to tell.

Sebastian lets out a little breath, somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. It’s a sound I’ve heard before, an intimate one, and as soon as I hear it, the poppy-red tinge to my skin spreads to my throat, swathing me in a prickling heat that makes it hard to breathe. I swallow thickly and wonder, does he have me all figured out? Can he see the battle I’m waging inside? And goddamn him—why isn’t he struggling the same way I am? What
was
it with these types of men? Not that Edward and Sebastian are anywhere
near
being in the same league, but it does occur to me that they’re both powerful, in their own ways. I could be developing a type—an emotionally unavailable one that could ruin my career just as easily as it could ruin my dating life.

You aren’t dating him
, I remind myself.
And you don’t want to.
That last part sounds more like a question than a statement, even in my own head.

“By this time, I had employees,” Sebastian continued, pulling uncomfortably on his tie, as if to emphasize his frustration with the noose that running a legitimate business had become for him, “but I needed someone to run the day-to-day. That’s when I hired Hans, the current CEO. I let him take over the public side of running it, but had lawyers draw up complicated legal papers that ensured that I would always be the real head of the company and all major decisions had to pass by me. Although for the most part, I just defer to Hans. He knows far better than I do how to run this place. In the end, all the legal shit just means that I’d continue to own a majority stake, but one obscured through untraceable holding companies.”

“Why?” I blurt. Sebastian finally looks at me. He seems confused by the question. “Why go to all of that trouble? Why not just quit the club and do this full-time?”

“If I’m going to quit anything, it would be this.”

He’s hinted at as much before now, but I still don’t get it, and he can tell. He elaborates: “This? This is just money. It’s how I pay my bills. The club is my life. It’s my family. If I had to choose between my job or my family, I would choose my family. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, of course, but…”

“Never mind,” he says again. “I don’t expect you to understand, and I don’t care to explain. The only reason I’m telling you this is because you happened to meet me there. At the club. As Bash. And now you’re here. As I said, I’ve spent considerable time and resources keeping these two lives separate. In this life, I’m known as Sebastian Redding. In the club, I’m only known as Bash. Most guys don’t really use their last names, anyway. A few who did know it back in the day have all long since moved on or died. But I don’t need to explain shit to you any further than I already have. It’s already more than anyone else knows. Which is why I expect you to keep your mouth shut about all of it.”

I just nod, unwilling to trust what might come out of my mouth if I speak.

“Fine. So around here, only Hans and the board know the true nature of my relationship with the company. No one else needs to, except my EA, of course. That was the purpose of the NDA: to fill you in about who you’d really be working for without worry that it would leak. But consider the rest of it even more top secret. The club stuff. No one here knows that. Not the board, not Hans, no one.”

“I would never divulge any of your secrets,” I say, doing my best to keep my voice even as my eyes flit over to the door. There’s a good chance I’m sitting in this office talking to a crazy person. Dual personalities, secret CEOs, holding companies—none of it sounds real. And even if it is, that doesn’t make him sane. Who goes to such lengths just to keep being a criminal? Why bother, unless you really love that lifestyle, which makes Bash even scarier. He dismissed Catherine pretty fast. Am I even safe here? Was that just him getting rid of a potential witness?

What was I thinking, screwing a complete stranger? Oh, right. Look at him.
Can you be that hot and still crazy?

A knock at the door makes me jump.

“Come,” he barks.

A young man sticks his head in. “Oh, excuse me, Mr. Redding. Mr. Peterson asked me to inform you that there’s a strategy meeting in ten minutes up in Bearing.”

“About what?”

The man’s eyes shift to me, and then back to Sebastian. “Uh…”

“It’s fine, Evelyn here is good with secrets.”

“The parts, the missing shipment,” the man says. As soon as he does, Sebastian scowls.

“Of course. That’s all anyone wants to fucking talk about today, isn’t it? I thought we were just going to get a replacement. Didn’t Hans call Germany?”

“That’s just it, sir. They can’t get them to us for at least a couple of weeks, and—”

“That’s bullshit. We need them in days.” Sebastian’s voice is raised now, and his fists are clenched again. Much harder this time, the knuckles already turning white.

“That’s what the meeting is about. They said they can’t deliver that quickly and Mr. Peterson would like your help coming up with a plan.”

“Fucking hell. Fine. Tell him I’ll be there as soon as I finish up here.”

The man left and Sebastian’s lips tightened around his teeth before he exhaled loudly and looked up at me with his dark and focused gaze. “So, look, Catherine thinks you’re a good candidate. Your résumé seems fine to me, and like I said, the very fact that Edward doesn’t want you here is just an added bonus. The fact that you know about my… other life… is a pain in the fucking ass, but the more I think about it, the more it can work to our advantage. So, do you want the job, or not?”

Sebastian is staring at me again, waiting for me to respond. He’s not as much of a jerk today as he was on Saturday, but what does that even mean? Even if everything he says is true, how does that make a damn thing any better? Not to mention I slept with him.

In my book, that just makes the situation worse.

Can I remove that from the equation? What if I hadn’t got to Axle’s that night? If I had never met Bash. Never let his weird sense of chivalry lull me into ignoring his attitude and fucking him in the back room. What if I ignore all of that? Would I take this job? Of course I would. I need the money, and my résumé needs something on it that I can use as an actual reference. There’s no doubt that if I hadn’t met Bash, I’d take this job in an instant.

But I did meet him. And I did fuck him. And I know what kind of a person he is. How different is his cocky attitude from Edward’s? Maybe it’s true that money isn’t that important to him, but he still runs a company worth a billion dollars. It has to carry some weight. He might be more like Edward than he thinks. And can I ever look at that chiseled face and the sharp contours of his body through his jacket and not think about the bliss we’d shared? Even now, despite everything, I can’t help but feel physically attracted to him.

How would I work side by side with a man that makes my panties wet just by being in the same room with me, yet infuriates me almost every time he opens his mouth? And that’s not even considering the fact that he’s a biker. I don’t even want to know what sort of illegal shit that must mean he’s into on the side. Will I end up dead if I accidentally misfile something?