Burning Desires (Blue Bandits MC Book 4) (6 page)

He needed to let this go, damn it. He didn’t know why he couldn’t seem to move away from the couple even when he knew it was for the best. Hammer wasn’t like the Headhunters; he wasn’t going to rape or beat her for fuck’s sake. He needed to get a grip. His body was tensed and he felt a knot forming between his shoulder blades because he held himself rigid, trying to stop himself from attacking Hammer over the woman.

Burner forced himself to turn away, staring out into the night wondering what the hell was going on with him over the last week. He’d been struggling with his role in bringing down the mole again and he didn’t know why. He thought he was past it, that he’d come to terms with his part in the drama.

Over the past few weeks he’d felt more mixed up about his place in the club and what his stint with the Headhunters had done to him than he had been when he’d first gotten back. He wasn’t sure if it was the raids they’d been breaking up or if it was seeing Glenda in that last shipment a week ago. He was helping the men settle the women when she’d begun screaming her head off and he’d been unable to deal with his issues since.

Glenda hadn’t calmed down until he’d left and Bull had promised that she was safe and he’d make sure Burner didn’t come back while she was there. It wasn’t a pretty memory. Burner didn’t want to think about the rescue or the night he’d had to frighten her in order to prevent them from finding out he was not who he pretended to be.

It ripped him up that he’d had to do it but he hadn’t had a choice and he’d made sure she didn’t get hurt. It didn’t clear his conscience but he knew that nothing ever would. What he had chosen to do for his club had scarred something inside him and Burner knew it. Choices had consequences and you faced them head on; there was no hiding in the dark pretending that it never happened.

He glanced back towards the couple that had held his attention for the last half hour, finding them no longer dancing where they had been. Burner pushed off the tree, his eyes panning the area searching for her. His eyes took in the darkened faces, not finding her or Hammer. His chest pounded with the frantic beat of his pulse and his fingers twitched. His blood burned through his veins pulsation in time to his racing heart. He needed to find them before that idiot did something stupid. Yeah, he was completely rational about this too.

Letting out a snort of annoyance, he began walking around looking for them. He wasn’t about to allow Hammer to take off into the darkness and sully her. She was pure and by God she was going to stay that way even if he did have to beat the fuck out of Hammer to make it happen. He found them at Hammer’s bike. Kelsey was already on the back with her arms around Hammer when Burner saw them. As they roared away from the clubhouse, Burner debated following and likely would have if Reaper hadn’t walked up to him.

“What’s up with you? I haven’t seen you all night and Sarah was asking where you’ve been lately.” Reaper watched him in the darkness, making Burner uneasy.

“I’ve been around,” he replied, glancing back at the retreating bike, which was almost out of sight, before he shifted from one foot to the other, his hands shoving into his pockets to hide the way they curled tightly.

“Huh,” Reaper grunted, still staring at him.

“What?”

“You should come to dinner tomorrow night. Sarah’s making your favorite. Stir-fry with rice.” Reaper moved a step closer, his eyes watching Burner.

Burner knew that Reaper could guess what was wrong with him but the other man stayed silent and didn’t push him to reveal anything, which was one of the things that made him a good vice president for the club. Most of the time he minded his own business and let his men come to him when they were ready to talk, unless it was something that needed to be dealt with in order for the club to run smoothly.

“Fine. I’ll come to dinner, but I’m heading out for a ride. Not feeling the party tonight.” He really just wanted to see if he could catch up with Hammer and Kelsey to make sure that son of a bitch didn’t try to touch her. Why the fuck he was so adamant that didn’t happen was beyond him. He just knew that he didn’t want her pure sweetness twisted up by Hammer. He wasn’t a bad guy, Burner supposed, but that didn’t mean he should be anywhere near her. Sweetness like hers should be protected at all costs and that meant neither him or his fucking crew should get close to her.

“Sure, let me just call Sarah and I will head out with you,” Reaper said, pulling his phone out of his jeans.

Burner wanted to tell him he didn’t need a fucking babysitter but he didn’t want to deal with the bitching he would surely unleash on himself if he did. He felt the seconds tick by like hours as he waited for Reaper to hang up. Burner realized he wasn’t going to get to chase down Hammer and assure himself the bastard didn’t try anything with Kelsey like he wanted to. It made his movements jerky, almost uncoordinated, as they climbed on their bikes.

He didn’t wait for Reaper to start his bike, he just kicked it into gear and was off burning rubber into the night. The wind slipped past him stinging his face with its cold touch but he didn’t care because riding was the only time the voices seemed to fade and the screams didn’t echo as loudly. Tonight he needed that or he was going to go insane, mostly because he couldn’t assure himself that Kelsey was safe and that made him wonder what the fuck was wrong with him. Why he was so focused on this woman was beyond him. It must be her purity that held him tightly in its grip because that was the only thing that made a lick of sense.

Kelsey climbed off the back of Hammer’s bike about two hours after the run-in with Burner feeling relaxed and a little less pissed off at both Burner and Hammer.  She tugged her skirt down to better cover her thighs smiling. She’d had fun dancing with Hammer for the last hour and despite his leaving her alone, she wouldn’t call it a bad date. It wasn’t one of the best but still not one of the worst either.

Hammer took her arm leading her up the walk to her door, his large hands gentle as they held on to her. When they stood before the door, he looked down at her with a smile showing those white teeth she was becoming very familiar with again. Hammer took her keys unlocking her door and pushing it open slightly before he turned, looking down at her again before returning them to her.

“I hope you don’t hold my leaving you alone for a little while against me. I really didn’t mean for that to happen and I hope that you’ll agree to go out with me again.” Hammer grimaced a bit when he talked about leaving her alone.

“Well I wouldn’t call this my best date but I wouldn’t be opposed to letting you try to make it up to me,” Kelsey told him, a tiny grin turning up the corners of her mouth as she smiled up at him.

“I can live with that,” Hammer chuckled, his hand coming up to cup her cheek.

Kelsey felt her heart race a little as his head lowered, his lips coming closer to hers. She couldn’t seem to find her wits as his lips slowly took hers, his tongue teasing her lips into parting for his invasion. It was a nice lazy kiss that she enjoyed for the brief time he pressed his lips against hers, his tongue exploring her mouth. She felt him pull back before he stepped back a few steps.

“I’ll call you sometime this week.” And with a slight wave, he headed over to climb on his bike. Kelsey was pressing her fingers to her lips watching him, waiting for him to start the bike and leave. After a moment she realized he was waiting till she went inside so she turned and entered the apartment, locking the door behind her.

She leaned back into the door with a little sigh because although the kiss had been nice, it hadn’t lit her on fire the way it should. She didn’t know if they would work out and that made her a little sad because she actually liked Hammer. Pushing off the door, she headed into the kitchen to get a snack. She was feeling a little hungry for something sweet to soothe her disappointed libido.

Burner leaned the chair he was sitting in back, hearing it creak a bit in protest at his misuse. He watched Reaper hand the map over to Iron who was marking the spots he and Pansy had information on after their little trip a few days ago. Iron was chomping at the bit to get this meeting over with, he thought with a little inner smirk. He’d been away from Roz, his old lady, too long. Since she’d come back into his life a little over ten months ago, he didn’t like being away from her for more than a minute.

It was amusing how the formerly cold-hearted man he knew was now acting like a addict needing a fix every time he was away from Roz for more than five minutes. Burner took his enjoyment where he found it these days because he didn’t get much of it out of life anymore. That thought soured his mood a little because it was sort of pathetic that he couldn’t let go of the shit he’d seen and done. He watched Reaper grab the map and curse loudly, his hands crinkling the edges of the paper as he stared at one place they’d marked. Burner set the chair down, leaning forward to get a closer look at it too.

His eyes searched the areas they’d marked looking for the one that had Reaper’s temper twisted into knots. He found it on the outskirts of their territory near the location where church was. They’d already known that the Headhunters were moving in near there from the meet a few months ago with the Red Devils but this time Iron and Pansy had been marking out all the hideouts that had larger than fifty men housed in that location and the fact that they had a group that large in that area wasn’t good. Not good at all. Burner ran a hand down his jaw feeling the stubble scratch against his palm, his head spinning at the news they’d just gotten.

“You’re sure about this location?” Reaper asked them, pointing to the red circle Burner had been focused on.

“Yeah, unfortunately. We weren’t too happy to discover it either,” Iron grunted, his face grim as he looked at the map. “It’s about sixty men that we saw while we watched the place for two days. We spent the longest time there because of its location.”

“Yeah, not fucking great, is it. I’ll need to call Death about this and Lock needs to be brought up to speed on what’s going on when he gets back. Damn, we’re going to have to let everyone know. Fuck, this is all I need right now,” Reaper growled, sitting down for the first time since they entered the room.

Burner knew what he meant; although they had been making steady raids, they were no closer to stopping the kidnappings. Reaper was already having issues keeping some of the less savory members of their club in line and if they didn’t get a handle on this shit soon, it was going to get nasty. Not that they couldn’t handle it but none of them wanted to see their friends and brothers choose to betray them.

“What did it look like they were doing?” Burner asked, wondering if they were setting up another base there.

“It was odd actually.” Pansy spoke from his place near the door. “They didn’t have any women there. Well, they had a few women who came and went that first night but none that were forced to be there that we could see while we were watching the place.”

Burner raised a brow at that because it was odd for a group of Headhunters that big not to have women at their clubhouse. It worried him that they didn’t. They had to be working on something big because they were sick fucks who always had to have several women they could abuse on a regular basis. The fact that they had no women at this safe house was bad news.

“Are you sure that they didn’t just have them tied up inside and you didn’t see them?” Burner asked, looking at the larger man.

“Maybe so but like I said, the women who showed up, and I’d guess about twenty came in that first night, all left the next day. No one stopped any of them that I saw. We didn’t do a head count so it’s possible they kept some of them and no one noticed.” Pansy shrugged his shoulders, his arms crossed and his face impassive.

Burner was surprised by this new development because normally they wouldn’t have let any of the women leave. It was odd, almost shocking, that they’d let that happen. He couldn’t wrap his head around it for a few minutes because the entire eleven months he’d been with the Headhunters the one constant was the way they treated women, and now they were letting them just come in for a party and leave when it was done. Normally they would have locked them up to beat and abuse them.