Under Fire (Winged Enemy MC Romance) (8 page)

I couldn’t think of anything to say, and the silence stretched on until Jed spoke again.

“This wasn’t an accident. Neither was Patty’s death. We need to warn the rest of the club, because someone is obviously targeting us. God, if Frank weren’t already dead I would be halfway to that hell hole of a prison he was locked in. This must be fall-out from the blown drop. Because of him we’ve got a massive target on our backs and we don’t even know who’s holding the gun.”

“Leslie and I already called a few people to spread the word,” Kat said. “We’ll make sure everyone knows to watch out, whoever is doing this must be pretty skilled. They killed Patrick, knew enough to set an explosive on Nightshade, and for all we know they had a hand in Frank’s death as well.”

It was a sobering thought.
Would they come after me? There shouldn’t be anyone outside of the motorcycle club who knows that I’m an agent, and I doubt they would stop to think that the bartender at the club’s bar would have anything to do with their criminal activities.

There was a knock on the door. The same nurse from earlier had returned. “We’ve taken a look at your x-rays and it doesn’t appear that you have any major internal damage. The biggest injuries are all external, the cuts and abrasions, and you will definitely develop a significant amount of surface bruising. We’d like to keep you overnight for observation just in case.”

Jed shook his head. “I’m not staying. I need to get back. I need to protect everyone else.”

“Come on Jed, you should stay here and rest overnight, just in case.” As much as I wanted him to come back with me, it was the smarter move for him to stay in the hospital.

“I think he should come back,” Kat said. “He can rest just as well back home, and we can make sure that nothing happens to him.”

Oh, great. She’s siding with him against me.

Jed’s voice took on a quieter tone. “Leslie, I’m fine, really. Or at least I will be. You heard the nurse, it’s just minor stuff. It’s not like I got shot again.”

“No, you almost got blown to shreds!” I took a deep breath. I was not helping the situation. “Ok, fine. If you want to go home, I can’t stop you.”

The nurse looked as though she wanted to say something, and then thought better of it. Jed didn’t have the look of the type of man that could be forced to stay somewhere against his will.

“I’ll go get the paperwork all ready to discharge you, then,” she said.

The drive back was rife with tension. Jed sat beside me in the passenger seat and Kat took the back. There was very little talking to each other; Jed and Kat spent the ride calling every single member of the club that they could reach and warning them about what happened and the potential dangers.

This time Jed was able to get through to Nathan. I could hear the relief in his voice when the vice president picked up the phone. Kat and I had told him that we couldn’t reach him earlier. If Nathan had been killed while Jed was out of commission in the hospital, I know that he would never forgive himself.

Every member had been contacted either directly or indirectly by the time we re-entered the city limits. The atmosphere relaxed somewhat, and Jed was even able to make a joke or two about how he would have to spend the next two years carefully rebuilding Nightshade piece by piece.

I stopped off at the small house that Kat had set up in after getting back into town. I could tell she was reluctant to leave us.
Well, reluctant to leave Jed, anyway.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright?” she asked. “I’m not sure I like the idea of just the two of you alone in Leslie’s apartment. It’s not as safe as if you were with the rest of the men either at the headquarters or at the Roost.”

“Kat, I’ll be more than ok,” Jed said. “Leslie and I have some stuff we need to talk about anyway. You know where we’ll be, so let us know if anything happens, and make sure you watch out your own back. As of right now, there could be a bad guy behind every bush. Don’t let your guard down.”

Her lips tightened and she leaned through the window to give Jed a hug. “Stay safe.”

Then it was just me and Jed.

We hadn’t had any time alone to ourselves since Kat had arrived in town, and there was a festering cloud between us that had arisen because of her presence.

Jed’s hand slipped onto my knee as I started to drive away from Kat’s house. It felt warm, comforting. It felt right.

I didn’t want to break the magic, so I didn’t speak on the short drive across town. Jed didn’t seem to want to get into it either. I could almost imagine that the past three weeks hadn’t happened, and we were still in the first few days of our relationship. Passion had ruled back then.

I’m thinking about it as though it was years ago. We only had two days together before the disaster of the big bust. You couldn’t even really call what we had a relationship. It was sex and danger, but that was about it.

Maybe that was the problem. We didn’t really even know each other.

Jed followed me into the house. I didn’t know what to say, where to even start.

“Leslie… I know that things have been rocky between us ever since that night.” He didn’t have to say which night it was. I don’t think there had been a more important night for either of us in our lives than the one where I had revealed my cover and the motorcycle gang had been busted along with any number of Mexican cartel members. Jed’s ribs still showed a wicked welt from where the bullet had entered his body.

“I think rocky is a bit of an understatement.”

He sighed. “You’re right. I like you, Leslie. I think we fit together really well. We have a chemistry that I’ve never had with anyone else.”

“Even Kat?” I didn’t really want Kat in the room at the moment, even the mere mention of her, but after the past few days I couldn’t help myself from asking.

His dark eyes locked onto mine. “Even Kat. Something special, primal, comes out when we get together. It’s incredible.”

Hearing him say those words was a huge vindication. The way his voice rumbled was as though it were a rough caress. What he thought about our passion sent a shot straight to my groin.

“But that’s all we have, Leslie. I feel like I’m being overly sensitive for saying it, but when it comes right down to it, all we have is great sex. Is that enough for a relationship?”

“I know, Jed. I can’t ever get enough of your body, of you. Not having sex over the past three weeks has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and you know that it’s not by my choice. I want to make this into more, into something great. What do I need to tell you so that we can keep us alive?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Jed said. “Even if you tell me everything about you, your past, what makes you tick, how do I know if it’s the truth? You’re an undercover agent, lying is in your job description. How do I know that you aren’t just sucking me in deeper, using me even harder than you did the first time?”

His words were like a physical blow to me.
I had no idea that he had these thoughts running through his mind. No wonder he can’t get past it in order to have sex with me.

“Jed!” I put a hand on his arm and looked up into his eyes. The extra head of height he had on me was all the more imposing from inches away. “I’m me. I’m Leslie. I haven’t lied to you since you were shot. And even before that I never hid my personality, who I am. I only ever lied about my background and my job, and if we’re being completely honest here, you were never exactly interested until you knew it was a cover.”

As much as Jed played the hurt party, it was true. We had used each other for sex, and I had used him for information. He couldn’t be too hurt that I had lied about who I was, because he barely knew anything about my cover anyway.

“I had a very elaborate cover prepared, down to the smallest details of where I went to kindergarten and the name of my imaginary best friend when I was little. Months of preparation went into that role, and the most I ever used was saying I was from out of town and looking for work.”

As I started to think about it more, the more indignant I got. “The first night we met, you literally pushed me to my knees in front of you and fed me your cock without so much as asking. I never even planned on sleeping with you until that happened, so you can’t act all wounded warrior to me!”

Jed stood there, looking down at me, bemused expression on his face. “You had a fake imaginary friend prepped and ready to go?”

“Of course I did. I’m thorough. His name was Charles, and he was a flying koala bear. He and I used to go on imaginary rides to faraway lands and fight evil armies with swords made from sticks.”

Jed laughed, a genuine, full-bellied roar that startled me with its intensity.

Caught in the middle of a self-righteous rant, I stared at him as his composure completely disappeared. When he was no longer able to remain upright and bent over to put his hands on his knees, a smile crept onto my face no matter how hard I tried to keep it off.

“Jed, come on, I’m trying to yell at you here.”

If anything he laughed harder. “Ch… Ch… Charles! The flying koala bear?” He straightened up and looked at me as he wiped tears from his eyes. “Did he have wings or did he fly around in a miniature helicopter?”

“Well… neither, actually. He had a pet dragon named Snuffles that he rode around.”

Jed and I locked gazes. I saw the corner of his mouth twitch and felt my own begin to do the same in response.

The dam burst.

My stomach hurt from ten straight minutes of laughing. My abs never got that much of a workout even when I was trying to target them intentionally. It felt as though my ribs had split open by the time our chuckles died out and we both managed to not start off again.

“Oh, fuck,” Jed said. “That was too funny. I can’t believe that you went to such lengths for such a minuscule detail. How did you ever think that I would ask anything remotely close to that?”

I smiled. “I admit it was a long shot. If I’d known that all I had to do was drop to my knees and open wide it would have saved me a lot of work.”

“I have to admit, you really know what you’re doing down there.”

The air was cleared from the bout of hilarity, but it started to get serious. Serious in a good way.

Jed closed the distance between us in that scarily fast way that he did sometimes. His hand cupped the back of my head and tilted my lips up towards his. He hovered just out of reach for a few seconds. The nearness of him, the scent of his masculinity overwhelmed me.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I put both hands on his shoulders and pulled him towards me, meeting his lips in a blaze of glory.

I moaned into his mouth as I pressed my body against his. For the first time since the bust I could feel him respond whole-heartedly. His manhood stirred against me through our clothes, and my own body responded. I clutched at his powerful shoulders and lost myself in the feeling of his lips on mine.

He pulled my shirt off and I reluctantly let him break off the kiss as the fabric separated us for a moment that felt far too long. His hands deftly reached behind me and unsnapped my bra, freeing my breasts to the cool air. His fingers splayed against my bared skin, stroking the sensitive flesh at the swell of my breast and making me pant.

“Take your fucking shirt off,” I said, but didn’t wait for a response before I tackled it myself. His skin and the hard muscles that I so admired felt incredible beneath my needy fingertips. It had been too long since I had gotten a good feel for him without having to worry if he was going to cut it off prematurely.

I latched my mouth onto his chest. The hot flesh under my tongue was smooth.

The sensation as he cupped me was enough to make me lose myself in the pleasure, a feeling that I had been waiting for. His fingers rolled my nipples, tweaking them just a little in the way that he had learned I liked.

“Mmm, Jed, that feels so good.” We shared another hot kiss as we caressed each other’s bodies.

Jed’s phone started to ring. He growled and fished it out of his pocket. He didn’t even look at the number on the screen before he flung it across the room onto the couch. It sat there, beeping in reproach at being abandoned by its owner.

My hands had crept down and found the front of his jeans. I couldn’t resist dropping over top of the denim. My loins grew even hotter as I felt how hard and ready he was for me already. His sizable shaft strained against the faded fabric, and I hurried to try and release it from its cage.

The distinctive piercing buzz of my cell started to ring from my own pocket.

“Who the hell is calling?” If it was the same person who had called Jed then it might be important. I took the phone out of my pocket but before I could answer it the cell was ripped from my hands by Jed.

“I’ve waited too long, we aren’t answering our phones, got it?” He stared into my face, the lust clear on his strong features.

I nodded meekly, certain that I was about to be manhandled by the man of my dreams.

He picked me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist. I slammed into the wall as he pinned me there. One of his big hands captured both of my wrists and held them above my head, leaving me powerless. It was hotter than anything I could have imagined.