Their Ex's Redrock Dawn (Texas Alpha Biker) (20 page)

Carly shook her head as Caval chuckled, and she wondered what he meant by being crazy. She found out a couple seconds later.

“Seriously, you two, let me go commando on Shaw and take him out. They’ll never find him, I promise you,” Caval offered.

Carly was still glued to Zeb’s side as she looked up at Zeb’s hard jaw. She could tell he wasn’t going there. “Thanks for the offer, Caval, but we want him to suffer in jail a long time.”

Caval took his toothpick and tossed it off to the side. “I can see that’d be good too, but I’m there if you need him to disappear. A little night vision, a black bag over his head—tagged, bagged, and gone to any one of the foreign shitholes I operate in—”

Wow. Carly shivered, trying for it not to be a fearful shudder. “Really appreciate your help, but no,” she said softly.

Caval’s gaze pinned hers for a full five seconds, and she saw the strange light in the depths of his light -colored irises. He
so
would do it. “Okay, ma’am,” he finally said. “We’ll keep it proper.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

Caval gave them a burner cell phone, which he said Rick was supposed to call at midnight that night. “So far he has asked for a job done, no specifics exactly, just hinting,” Caval said. “I’d come right at him, say you do assassinations and extractions from foreign soil. That last part is to make it look legit.”

“Might scare him off,” Zeb muttered.

“Beauty of this world I created, brother, is I know all of the mercenary outfits. If our boy skips, I still get him when he skips to another buddy of mine.”

Zeb nodded. “Okay. But I should tell him no specifics on the phone.”

“Yeah,” Caval answered. “So you can get him on audio at a physical meet. I’d do Big Mama’s. It has the right vibe. Vincent will get you wired.” Caval stepped closer and lowered his head, looking Zeb in the eye. “This creep is a civvy, ranger, he don’t know shit. You take control, you lead the talk.”

Carly had her face in Zeb’s bicep by the end of Caval’s advice. It was so hard to hear it and plan it. She felt a hand squeeze her shoulder briefly, and she turned her cheek against Zeb’s muscle.

“It’s his shit, ma’am, not yours,” Caval said, letting go of her shoulder. “Do not go down into his lowlife crap. Your lights need out in this world helping those broken doves.”

Carly was surprised and touched, and it dawned on her where she might have seen Caval before: it was his use of the word “doves,” but she kept her mouth shut, because the Ghost Warrior was as much an Indian myth as real. He’d helped free women from the shadows on the reservation several times, but his identity had been masked, so she’d only heard his voice. Maybe she’d ask Vincent if Caval was the Ghost Warrior ... or maybe she’d just wonder.

That night, after they’d left Caval, Carly had made sure Cabe got Tula settled in a safe house several towns away. Then she and Zeb had sat on the couch in the great room at the lake house and waited for Rick to call. She was a split personality about it: dread at being there so much it nearly made her skin crawl, but needing to be there because this was her mess.

In the end, she stayed for Zeb—to maybe somehow strengthen him, but she kept on her end of the long couch, staying strictly quiet.

––––––––

Z
eb had closely considered ordering Carly away, but she needed closure on this, and she wouldn’t be there for the takedown so maybe listening to one side of the setup would help. She’d come home and gotten out of her fancy dress and shoes, scrubbed her face clean, put her hair up in a loose ponytail, and put on a long nightshirt that hit her mid-thigh. She looked good, maybe better than earlier. She looked innocent, and sweet, and at home with her man even though she was curled up on the other side of the couch.

He liked it. He liked her getting comfortable with him. It showed him how it was going to be and what he was going to get, and he wanted it—every inch of it.

Then the burner cell rang and her gray eyes shot to him. Zeb sat forward on the couch, elbows to his knees. It kept ringing, and he saw Carly take a deep breath—

Then he answered, “Yo, you got me. What you want.”

The part Carly couldn’t hear was her husband stuttering, “M-mercenary Inc. gave me this number.”

“Yeah, I work for them,” Zeb responded, putting more deepness in his voice. “I don’t talk specifics on the phone, dude. But I’m fully geared for extraction and assassinations. You want that shit, we meet.”

Zeb heard an audible gulping sound, and he couldn’t say it was not giving him great pleasure to yank the asshole’s chain. “A-ah, yeah. Definitely. I need one of those. You do it like here ... in the U.S.?”

“Dude,” Zeb snapped. “I do
not
discuss on the fucking phone.”

“O-okay, okay,” Shaw stammered.

Zeb overrode him. “We meet or what?”

“Yes! Definitely.”

“Big Mama’s, eleven o’clock tomorrow night. I’ll have on a green bandana, you fucking be at the booth on the back wall next to the rear exit. You get me, man?”

“I do,” Shaw exclaimed. “I get you. I’ll be there. This is ... I
need
this.”

“Yeah, right, whatever,” Zeb muttered. “Down payment on any of this shit is always five thousand. We don’t start without it.”

Then Zeb thumbed the call off before Shaw could say any more.

“Ohmygod!” Carly exclaimed, looking at him with wide eyes. “You were freaking amazing, baby.”

There were tears in her eyes, and Zeb knew she was conflicted, but she went with the right call—override the hysteria by latching on to better stuff. 

Zeb didn’t make love to Carly that night—being together wasn’t always about that, and Carly had so much bad going on, he’d wanted to fill her up with the good. Show how they could be together, close and in love. Yeah, definitely love. And he felt it deep.

So he held her tight against him. He was in his boxers and her in that nightshirt, while he whispered to her about stuff that meant something to him: his music, his army buddies, and meeting her. She whispered back about wanting babies someday, and him meeting her dad, who was hard to pull away from the work that absorbed him. They kissed in between, made out a little, but he always pulled back and held her as close as he could get her, until they drifted off to sleep.

In the huge master bed in the morning he made sure she was awake, and then he grabbed her and pulled her on top of him to kiss her until her eyes turned that certain color that he knew should he touch between her legs he’d find her hot and wet.

He lifted his mouth from her swollen, kissed lips. “Try to make a date today, you and your girls go out tonight, party and dance. I’ll find you.”

“Zeb,” she whispered, with her legs siding down on either side of his hips. “You’ll find me?” He nodded. “After?” His eyes nodded. “You’ll be safe. It’s not worth you getting hurt.”

His fingers worked in her hair against her scalp. “I’ll be safe. I promise.”

Her hand moved over his chest right above his heart, and he felt it like a warm stamp. “I’m falling in love with you,” she whispered.

Carly found herself flipped over onto her back, with Zeb’s big body on top of her and the hard ridge of his cock pressed deep into her mound. He cupped her head on both sides, with his gaze going deep on her. “Say that again,” he ordered.

His entire aura, pinging from him to her, was saying he was into it, so she got brave enough to say what she really meant, without holding back that piece of herself, afraid she wasn’t going to get it in return.

“I love you,” she said, grabbing the back of his neck. “All of you, every inch of you, and everything about you.”

“Baby,” he breathed against her mouth, with his eyes going into deep flame mode. “Love you, Carly. Never felt this way before. Like I fucking know you’re the one.”

Later that morning, Carly watched her sizzling hot biker man swing his leg over his hog and start the motor rumbling, with her heart so full. She couldn’t decide if she should melt over how hot he was or melt over how good he loved on her or melt more over the fact he’d said he loved her. But that morning, after they’d told each other they were in love, Zeb had made slow, deep, and intense love to her until she’d freaking cried she’d come so hard for him.

Then while she was still coming, he’d flipped her onto her stomach, grabbed her wrists down on either side of her hips, and he’d plunged into her hot, thick, and long—making her climax revive and shudder higher. He’d thrust into her so deep and fast that the huge master bed had shook. But what turned her on so high was his hold on her wrists and the sound of his stomach slapping her buttocks, while his shaft filled her fuller than she’d ever felt. She’d never been taken so thoroughly before, and she wanted more—so much more.

Now Zeb was going out to fix her life and take on the horrible mess with Rick. Zeb was being her shield and her protector. It felt so amazing to have a man like him on her side, but still scary that anything could happen to him, because of her messed-up life. But she wanted to live up to him, so she’d go do what he’d told her to do, and leave him with one less thing to worry about.

Still torn at not being a part of what was going down, Carly forced herself to swing away from where Zeb had been on his hog, rolling out her extra-long, probably too long and overly done driveway, and she went to see if she could round up a girl crew to go out that evening.

At six that evening, Tess, Rusty, and Carly were all gathered at Rusty’s house, when Rusty, from inside her closet, said, “The taxi’s coming in thirty minutes, babes; we need to get dazzling quick and I need a freaking bigger closet.” Rusty’s head angled out of the closet, as she added, “That new taxi driver I hired is working out. You should see him—all twenty-something lean muscles with half Goth and half rocker going on. Piercings and tats all over, and I thought Justice was too young to drool over.”

“I’d become a cougar for Justice!” Tess exclaimed from the far side of Rusty’s bed, where she was zipping up a to-die-for red-beaded, shortly flared club dress that left her shoulders bare and her tits barely cupped in red. “In another life that doesn’t involve Vincent, that is,” she added with a cheeky smile and a hip roll.

It made Carly laugh as she smoothed down the light pink silk of her multilayered sheath dress—she would never be able to outdo Rusty and Tess on club dresses. They rocked it.

“Any woman with breath in her in this town fantasizes about that man at least once in their life,” Carly declared.

Rusty hooted from the closet. “Damn straight!”

Then she swung out the closet carrying Ziggy Black Label Leopard booties with four-inch heels, obviously to go with the black tube sheath dress that clung to her curves. It was sleeveless on one side and had a cutout almost to her tailbone in back, which showed the super-sexy arch of her bare back. But what really made it hot were the slashes of tiger stripes across parts of the dress.

“Ohmygod, those shoes will be perfect with that dress, Rusty!” Tess exclaimed.

Rusty’s eyes grew wide, with her head nodding and a look as if she’d been smacked with awesomeness on her face. “I know,” she whispered, in awe.

Carly giggled; they were so much fun. How had she missed this about them?

She reached for the shoebox she’d brought with her that had the label “Valentino” on it, and she instantly had both Rusty’s and Tess’ gazes locked on. So maybe she’d decided she wanted to be a bit of a shoe whore too!

Once she’d lifted the lid, both Tess and Rusty sounded like they’d just seen the biggest jewel in the world, when it was only a pair of really hot—

“
Rock
studs,” Rusty whispered.

“Ankle boots,” Tess whispered. “
With
leather stiletto.”

Carly so agreed, because she’d been petting them ever since they’d arrived the day before. They were so hot, they smoked. She’d never in her life worn a pair of Valentino heels ... she didn’t know why, but she never indulged in stuff, except for the pure porn that was her lake house.

God, they were beautiful. Her fingers trembled as she stroked the shiny leather and drew her fingernail over one of the studs, and then she gulped, forcing out the words she had to say.

“Rusty, you should wear them—”

“Are you completely insane, babe,” Rusty whispered, but when Carly looked at her she saw there was a bit of moisture in her eyes; Tess’ too. “After six months you wear them, I’ll take you up on that for one night with Cabe, but right now you, those shoes, and that freaking hot biker man you got so need to be in the same room at the same time.” Rusty walked over and took her hand. “Amazing of you to offer, though, I’m really touched.”

Carly gave her a wobbly smile as they squeezed hands, and then they all hurried getting ready, which included lots of hairspray, lipstick, and sparkles of all things. Tess said they sprinkled sparkles on their skin and it made them twinkle when they danced together.

Rusty’s new taxi driver was named Jaggar, and he showed up in a jean vest, no shirt, ripped jeans showing his boxers, a piercing in at least one nipple, plus an edged smile that showed he liked driving older babes around that were dressed hot.

“Ohmygod,” Carly whispered in the back seat of the taxi filled with competing perfumes. “With that black hair, piercing eyes, and all that brooding goody-ness going on, all the girls at WTSF would be at his feet.”

This got agreeing nods from both Tess and Rusty.

But then Rusty scooted forward and put her hand on the open security portal. “Jaggar, honey, you have to wear a shirt or my insurance will not cover the heart attacks you could give any woman sits in your taxi.”

Laughter erupted in the back seat as Jaggar gave them a dark-eyed look back. “Yes, ma’am,” he rumbled. Then he added, “Anything to please the ladies.”

Rusty pulled the portal shut and sat back. “I know we are hitting the DJ at the Redrock club, but what are we eating. We have to take this show on the road and strut it at some local restaurant for appetizers and shots.”