Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) (22 page)

Mads’ brow wrinkled. He reached a hand over to stroke her arm. “What happened to you?”

“I wasn’t with them at the time. The marshals put me into foster care.” Mads lifted their joined hands to his face and kissed her palm. Tears pooled in her eyes at his kindness. “I never forgot about my brother, but I could never find him. I couldn’t even look for him until I was eighteen. None of my foster families would get involved or help me to find him.”

“What changed?”

“I got an email a couple of months ago.”

“From whom?”

“Don’t know. It was anonymous.”

“Emails aren’t anonymous.”

“This one just showed up in my mailbox as if I’d drafted it to myself. From me to me.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Maybe. I didn’t delete it, but who knows if it hasn’t disappeared the same way it appeared. Anyway, it told me what became of my brother. It said he was here, living with a group of boys and that his name was Lion.”

“So you thought you’d just come check it out for yourself?”

She silently regarded him. “Pretty much.”

“Where do you live, Hope?”

“I had an apartment in Cheyenne, but after I quit my job, I moved into a long-term motel while I prepped for this trip.”

“Where are your things?”

“I put them in storage. In Cheyenne. Why?”

“I want to see the email.”

“Why?”

“Curious.”

“The last email had your name,” she said. Mads went still. “Just your name. I didn’t know if it meant to look for you or avoid you.”

“My name?”

“Mad Dog. That’s all it said. It was the only one signed by my friend.”

“What was his name?”

“King. I didn’t know if he was someone else I should look for, or if the two of you were people to be avoided. I took a chance that day at the fight.”

Mad Dog tensed at the mention of King’s name. “Have you ever met King?”
 

She shook her head. “No. When we talked on the phone, his voice was digitized. His texts and emails both never had any identifying sources.”

Mads reached over and caught a strand of her hair, pulling his fingers down the length of it. “When we get your brother out, what are you two going to do?”

She studied Mads. She’d given that a lot of thought, but hadn’t yet found an option she felt good about. “I have two routes out of Wyoming planned, one to the northeast, the other to the northwest. I don’t know if either destination is far enough away.”

Mads shook his head and pushed her hair behind her ear. “Someone has info on you, your brother, and me. Someone we don’t know is connecting a lot of dots long ahead of us. I don’t like that. I want to check out that email.”

“What can you do with it?”

“Before I took the full-time post here, I spent my career in IT. There’s a lot I can do with it. But it might be best if I hand it over to a friend of mine. You mind giving me the keys to your storage shed and letting him go pick up your computer?”

Hope frowned down at Mads. “I don’t think I’m at that level of trust yet.”

Mads smiled. “You trust me with your body but not your things?” Damn him. That wasn’t fair. “Besides, it’s for your brother.” He took his heavy skull ring off his left middle finger. “You can keep this as insurance until I return your computer. It’s platinum. Worth a helluva lot more than your computer.”

Hope slipped his ring on her thumb. It was too loose for her fingers, but she had some twine she could use to make a necklace for it. “He won’t damage my files, will he?”

“No.”

“And I will get my computer back, right?”

“You will. You’ll give me my ring back, right?”

Hope looked down at the heavy ring, still warm from his body. The skull’s empty eye sockets were filled with two diamonds. Rubies sparkled from its teeth in a ghastly grin. Some part of her mind didn’t want to return it. No one had ever given her a token of their trust. It meant nothing, really. It was only a short-term trade of two things they both valued. But she liked that it was his, that wearing it meant she, too, was his.
 

Or not. What they shared was sex, not fidelity. Not their futures. Not their hearts.
 

She looked up, meeting his gaze. His eyes had hardened. Had he read her mind? “Never mind. Keep it. At least while we’re together. Might give you a little protection, too. Wear it where the others can see it.”

Her hand closed over the big ring.
“At least while we’re together.”
Strange, she’d been so desperate to end this ordeal and get on with her life. She’d never expected to feel something for the biker forced to sponsor her.

Max touched Hope’s soft skin, remembering a time—not that long ago—when he’d been certain he’d never again be with a woman, never share a night and a morning with her. Hope didn’t stop his hand from wandering over her skin. His hand cupped her breast. His eyes lifted to hers. His hunger was building again. She had to feel him pulsing to life as she rested against his hips.

He moved his hand over her chest, slipping beneath her long hair. Such a rich color. Like gold. Skeins of it. His fingers curved around her neck. He pulled her toward him. She had to brace herself on her wrists as she leaned forward. His eyes grazed her face, memorizing everything about her. The way her almond-shaped eyes were widest by her nose and sloped down toward her cheeks. How the thin, nearly straight lines of her brows were darker than her hair, dark like her feminine thatch of hair. She had high cheekbones, long dimples, an angular jaw, and lips that were pointy at the top and corners, rounded on the bottom.

He pulled her close, against his mouth, watching her the whole way. His hand dug into her hair, holding her in place, letting her neither lean in to him nor pull away. Her breasts brushed his chest. He took her mouth. Her lips were soft on his. He thrust his tongue inside her.
 

He adjusted their positions, twisting slightly so that he leaned over her, pushing her back against the futon. He still held her hair, still worked her mouth. Her body beneath his felt warm and soft and fragile, the opposite of his body. He moved so that he was fully on top of her. Her eyes never left his.
 

He leaned forward and kissed the space beneath her bottom lip, her chin, her neck. His hands moved to cup both her breasts. He pushed her thighs farther open, moving his cock to stroke between her legs. His apadravya was positioned right at her clit. He rocked over her, slowly, rubbing himself against her as he leaned down to suck her hardened nipples.
 

He felt her breathing change first. It became audible puffs, lifting her ribs, parting her lips. Her hands no longer rested softly on his arms, but her nails now dug into him as he moved against her sensitive flesh.
 

He reached over and grabbed a rubber. He raised up to his knees, still between her spread legs. He covered himself, then entered her. He was throbbing, hungry, not even sure he could wait for her this time. He pushed forward, pulled back, his weight braced on his elbows. He pumped into her harder, jostling her breasts with each thrust. He reached for the edge of the futon, using it to leverage himself as he took her hard, relentlessly, pounding into her. His legs spread hers wide, wider. Each thrust pushed her closer to the futon’s edge, and then her head tipped back, baring her neck. He leaned down to mouth her throat and the soft underside of her chin, licking and sucking.

He was pumping fast. He was so damn close. They slipped over the edge a little farther. He reached down and braced himself against the floor as her legs folded over his hips. Her release slammed through her. Her little muscles gripped his cock, locking him in place, throbbing and pulsing. With a last thrust, his release broke free.

When his vision cleared, he realized they were half off the futon. Hope was draped backward over the edge, limp and soft, like a woman well spent. She looked up at him and huffed a little laugh. Her arms reached up to his neck, but her grip was too weak to lift herself.
 

He scooped her up, righting them both as he knelt on the futon. He was still inside her, soft, sated. She leaned in to him, burying her face in his neck. “Mads, I’ve never felt that. It was like I was falling and flying and coming apart and back together again.”

She looked at him, her eyes soft pools of chocolate. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Do you think we could rest a bit?”

He grinned slowly. “You’re spent.”

She touched his cheek. “I am.”

“All right. Five minutes do it?”

She laughed. “Let’s just lie here.”

“Okay. But I have hours yet. And I’m going to want you again before you leave.”

“Been a while, huh?”

He looked at her lips. He’d never had time like this, with a woman like her.
Try never
, he wanted to say. He eased himself from her body. He tossed the rubber, then brought her back some ice water. The tap water in his cabin tasted like it came straight from the mountain streams, cold and fresh. He held the cup for her. When she finished, he swallowed what she’d left. He set the cup aside, using the movement to break the hold she had on his mind.
 

He moved the pillows back into place, then lifted the sheet. “Climb in,” he said, placing her between his body and the wall. As she crawled in, he almost forgot her request to rest for a bit. She settled at his side, her body curved into his, her leg over his. Christ, they fit together perfectly. He pulled her even more closely to him, curving his arm around her back, then pulled the sheet up with his other hand.

She fell asleep almost instantly. He felt her body relax. Her breathing became slow and even. Her hair spilled over his chest. He lay still, holding her, refusing to sleep and miss a second of his time with her.

Max eased his arms away from her a few hours later. She didn’t stir. Her breathing was soft and even, undisturbed by his movement. He moved closer to the window, where a cool breeze swept into the room. Hope was naked and relaxed in his bed, as ephemeral as shadows from the window’s sheers, stroked by the moonlight, morphed by the breeze. He focused on the shadows, trying to blur her image. It didn’t work.
 

He closed his eyes, but the imprint of her was burned into all of his senses. His skin replayed the feel of her skin. His nose remembered the sweet scent of her. His fingers ached to touch her, see if she was real.

Women like her were rare and precious and never chose him. But then, she hadn’t chosen him, had she? Her presence here was payment for a debt. Nothing more, no matter what she’d said at the beginning. She was only as real as a moon shadow.

He’d set the price at one entire night because he was tired of waking up alone. Pitiful bastard that he was, he’d wanted the time almost more than the sex.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, running his thumb over the three scarred ridges on the inside of his upper left arm, reminding him why a single morning was all he should ever take from her.

He was so damned tired of being alone.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY

Max walked around his cabin after Hope left the next morning, putting it back to rights. He stowed the candles. Set the futon back into its couch position. Collected their dishes. Reactivated his comm unit. “Greer, you copy?”

“Loud and clear. You been offline a while. Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” He paused. “I spent the night with Hope.”

“Shit.”

“It’s good I did. She said someone she didn’t know brought her here. He helped her find her brother. And he suggested she find me.”

“Well, fuck that.”

“Yeah. She said her friend’s emails and texts just appeared out of nowhere.”

“Can’t happen. Not without a little programming. Like dropping viruses on her computer and phone to camouflage his communications.”

“Right. She also said the last one he sent her appeared to have been signed by someone named ‘King.’”

“Aw, hell. You know I gotta tell Kit.”

“I know. Her computer’s in a storage shed in Cheyenne. I have her keys. I’ll meet you halfway between us in an hour to hand them off. Go check it out. I want to know why King’s involved with her and her brother, and what he knows about me.”
 

“Copy that.”

“Everything cool there?” Max asked.

“Yeah. We’re just in wedding hell here. The girls are all weird, full of secret convos that’re driving Kit a little crazy, and you know where shit rolls. You’re missing some good times.”

Max chuckled. “Sounds like. This’ll give you a break, then.”

* * *

Max leaned against his bike an hour later, waiting at the scenic overlook for Greer. It was already a hot day, blowing like the devil’s breath. No one was at the overlook that morning, since it was early on a weekday. After a few minutes, a black SUV pulled off the highway and parked near him. A few giant boulders and scrubby pines blocked the parking lot from the road, giving them privacy.

Kit and Greer got out. Kit walked over and stood in front of Max. He looked all kinds of grouchy. Max grinned, imagining Ivy running him ragged with preparations for the upcoming nuptials.
 

“You were supposed to stay away from the girl,” Kit snapped.

Max lifted his brows. “I have to follow my instincts. I’m glad I did. Both she and her brother are in King’s sights—if it really was King who sent her. That he pointed me out to her means he knows about me, too.”

“Do I need to pull you out?”

Max shook his head. “Not yet. King’s talked to al Jahni and Pete about a mole. If they thought it was me, I wouldn’t be standing here now. Who the fuck is King?”

Kit blew his cheeks out and tilted his head. “Owen mentioned a Red Teamer who’s gone rogue. I have a feeling he thinks he might be King. We just don’t know enough yet.”

Max gave the keys, address, and unit number to Greer. “Let me know what you find out.”

“Can you pull Lion out for us?” Kit asked. “I’d like to talk to him.”

“Sure. I’ll make it happen this afternoon. The club’s talking about a run to Cheyenne Frontier Days. Can you get down to the rodeo?”