Blackmail (Restless Motorcycle Club Romance)

by Julia Marie

  “I don’t… I mean, you will?” The thought that I could make such a powerful man lose control was delightful. From somewhere deep inside I found there was a part of me that was bold and fearless. That part made me look directly into his eyes and speak my mind. “Maybe you shouldn’t even try.”

  I stepped closer, until I was inches away from him.

  He groaned, and pulled me hard against him. Those delicious lips found my own and made my fantasies come true. My eyes fluttered close as I lost myself in the feelings that threatened to overwhelm me. His hands explored my back before wrapping themselves deep into my hair.

  I can’t believe I’m making out with my boss in his office! It was so unlike me, but it felt so right.

  When we finally parted, he looked down into my eyes, his dark orbs filled with a deep fire that sent pleasurable shivers straight down to my core and made me sodden.

  “Wow,” I said. The word didn’t do it justice, but I had to let him know just how much he had affected me.

  All of a sudden Brittany’s voice appeared over the intercom. “Mr. Hamilton, Derek is on the line for you.”

  Shane growled and stalked toward the desk. The sudden absence of his arms around me made me feel like I’d managed to just barely touch something special before losing it all.

  “Now’s not a great time, can you tell him to call me back this afternoon?”

  “He said it’s very important, it looks like the Los Cabos deal is going to fall through.”

  “What?” Shane’ voice was thunderous, and it filled the room so loudly that I winced. “Put him through!”

  When the phone rang, he picked it up and yelled into the receiver. “How the fuck did this happen? We were solid on this deal.”

  Whatever the man on the other side said caused Shane’ back to stiffen up. His voice dropped to a soft murmur, as though he was holding himself back so that he wouldn’t snap and cause mass destruction. “We’re fixing this. I’m coming over there. Now.”

  I paced the office in frustration. No - I prowled.

  Kissing Shane had gotten me even more worked up than I possibly could have imagined. The way his lips toyed with mine, the firm pressure of his hands sliding up my back as though he had to know me, the feel of his hard muscles underneath his plain white shirt - it all combined to drive me wild.

  And just as things felt like they were about to go to the next level, it all ended.

  I stared at the intercom that had betrayed me by allowing Brittany to intrude on my time alone with Shane, and entertained fantasies of unplugging it and smashing it against the wall.

  I knew what we’d done was improper, but I didn’t give a damn. I felt so alive. I need to get out of here.

  Shane had left with hardly any goodbye at all beyond instructions to take my time with lunch and not to rush back. Since I didn’t know this area of town very well, I decided that I would take a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood and see if there was anything worth eating. It had been a while since I’d been able to justify paying to eat out, but celebrating the first day at my new job was as good an excuse as any.

  The hot sun didn’t help to cool me off, and while I walked the business district I found that my thoughts were unwilling to settle on anything other than my tattooed, rough, muscular boss. He exuded sex - how could I not be drawn in?

  My stomach growled, a subconscious response to the delicious scents wafting from the cafe that I was passing alongside. The patio was expansive and nice but not too pretentious; a great place to relax in the sun and enjoy the day that hopefully wasn’t going to completely blow my budget. With time to spare, it looked like exactly the type of place I’d been searching for without realizing it.

  An attentive waiter showed me to a small table and left me with a little lunch menu, returning shortly with a glass of ice water, condensation beading on the side.

  I made short work of the sandwich I ordered, delighting in the light crunch of the toasted bread. This is so much better than I can make at home. I hope I’ll be able to afford going out to eat more often. I’d always assumed that I would become a better cook with practice, but somehow the gift of fine cooking eluded me. I could barely stand anything I made for myself; if I had the money I would never cook again.

  Just as I polished off the last bite, my plate darkened.

  I looked up, squinting into the sun as I tried to make out the face of the person who stood over me and shaded the table. The sun sat just over the shoulder of the figure, making it impossible to tell even if it was a man or a woman.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  As though I had extended an invitation, the person sat down across from me, and I was able to see that it was a smartly dressed man in a well-fitted suit and tie. If I hadn’t just been kissing Shane Hamilton then I would have called him the most handsome man I’d seen for weeks, but he wasn’t quite up to par with my new boss.

  “Miss Maguire, I hope I am not disturbing you. I wanted to ensure that I waited until you were finished your lunch.”

  “Uh, excuse me?” I asked, startled. “How do you know who I am?”

  I gave him a second look. Have I met him before? I was sure I hadn’t, but I couldn’t figure out how he knew me. He isn’t a stalker, is he? I almost hyperventilated until I remembered that there was no reason that anyone could have to stalk me. I wasn’t rich or famous, or even particularly good-looking in my own opinion. There wasn’t anything interesting about me at all.

  “The people I work for know a lot of things about everyone,” the man said with a deadpan expression. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or was trying to mess with me. “My employers are very interested in the man that you just started to work for, and we need your help in finding some delicate information.”

  He wants something from Shane? I felt an automatic impulse to hit the man and try to run away. Only the knowledge that I couldn’t possibly win in a physical contest against a man who was clearly in fantastic shape kept me in my seat.

  “What do you want with Shane?” I couldn’t understand why this suited man could have such an intense interest in a man who ran a small shipping company.

  “Shane Hamilton is the leader of an outlaw motorcycle club, and a very dangerous individual,” the man said. “We are looking for proof that he’s broken the law, so that we can use that against him if need be.”

  Outlaw motorcycle club? And Shane’s the leader? I felt as though I should have been more shocked, but there had been clues. The tattoos, the leather jacket. Even some of the conversations that I had heard that morning made a lot more sense with the new information.

  Still, just because he rode motorcycles didn’t mean that he deserved some asshole demanding I find his secrets and spill them. “Why the hell should I help some random person who just sits across the table from me during my lunch? I don’t owe you anything.”

  A small briefcase appeared on the table in front of the man. I hadn’t noticed it when he had walked up, but I had been too busy trying to look at his face. The top clicked open, although the contents were hidden from my point of view.

  “Are you the daughter of Ruth and Mike?” the man asked. I nodded; there didn’t seem any point in denying it. “And it says here that you have about two hundred dollars in your bank account, thirty thousand dollars against student loans, and approximately three thousand owed on a series of credit cards, is that right?”

  My face flamed immediately. “How the hell do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “We know much, much more than that, Miss Maguire. And we can do anything with that information that we please. And we will do whatever it takes to get what we want. So you have a choice - you can help us with what we want, or you can decide to take your chances that we won’t pursue you any further.”

  Blackmail! It felt like a scene out of a movie, like a director was going to yell “Cut!” any minute and makeup girls would appear out of nowhere to polish up my cheeks and fix my hair. I wasn’t the type o
f person to get blackmailed. Hell, I didn’t even have anything worth blackmailing for.

  Except that thanks to my new job, it appeared that I did.

  “What would you do if I said no?”

  The man leaned back in his chair and said nothing, although his eyes bored into my own, leaving me no doubt that it wasn’t something that I wanted to find out.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  He sat forward in his chair again and gave me a predatory smile. “Now that’s more like it.”

  That asshole better keep his house in order.

  Spending the entire afternoon to sew back together the shattered pieces of the Los Cabos deal was not how I’d wanted to spend my time. The entire meeting I could feel the faint memory of Jackie’s lips on my own, driving me to distraction and almost causing me to flub a few key, heated moments. Derek had disappointed me, something that I hadn’t believed possible. If he messed up that badly again then I’d have no choice but to remove him from such a sensitive position. He wouldn’t like a demotion within the ranks, but I didn’t have a choice.

  The ride back to the office gave me an opportunity to clear the anger from my mind. The cool evening wind whipping through my hair was as calming as the familiar rumble of my bike underneath me.

  It was late enough that most of the cars and bikes were already gone from the parking lot; there was only a beat up Corolla that I didn’t recognize. The downtown office was relatively tiny, purely for the use of the business; the rest of the men spent the majority of their time at the clubhouse, which was further out of town.

  There was a light on in my office. It couldn’t be… could it?

  Inside, Jackie looked up at me with a startled look as I opened the door. She was sitting at my desk, on my computer, the blue light from the monitor lighting her face and those tempting lips.

  “Shane! I was starting to think you wouldn’t be coming back.” She clicked a few more times on the mouse before turning her attention back towards me. “I’m sorry for using your computer; I just really had no idea what else I should be doing.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “I really didn’t expect you to still be here, I came back much later than I had intended. I thought I’d told Brittany to let you know that you could go home.”

  A sour look crossed the woman’s face. “Well if that’s the case then she didn’t see fit to keep me in the loop. I didn’t want to just leave on my first day without being told I could.”

  Ah. No love lost between those two already, huh? It wasn’t a surprise. Brittany had always been after me, but she just wasn’t my type. Any time another woman had the opportunity to get close to me the secretary couldn’t stand it. If she wasn’t the vice president’s sister, I would have gotten rid of her years ago. The headache of explaining to him exactly why I couldn’t stand her wasn’t worth the trouble.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. You are earning yourself some serious points on this trial period already.” I let my voice drop as I said it, looking for her response and grinning inside when the tell-tale trace of pink colored her cheeks, washed out slightly by the monitor light. “And how are you enjoying it so far?”

  She blushed even more fiercely and looked away for a moment. “It’s been great. You’ve been great. I couldn’t ask for anything more than this opportunity.”

  The tension rose between us, surpassing even the levels from the morning. I walked to the desk and sat on the edge just beside her, our legs touching.

  “And how was lunch?”

  To my surprise, Jackie paled as the blood fled from her face. “L… lunch?” It was like I’d asked how her grandfather died. “Lunch was good. Nothing interesting about it.”

  Her words could not have disagreed more with the expression on her face. It was like her body was fighting itself.

  “Jackie, what-”

  Before I could finish the sentence, she leapt out of the chair and grabbed hold of the back of my neck, planting a hot, furious kiss on my lips. Any thought of what I was going to say was immediately erased from my mind, replaced with the feeling of the woman in front of me pressing her body urgently against mine, all shyness abandoned.

  Shane groaned and his hands came up to pull me even harder against him. I could feel him stirring against my leg, the sensation so unfamiliar and yet so primal, evoking a response in my body that was as old as time itself.

  My gambit appeared to be working, distracting Shane from the events over lunch. It also prevented me from tripping up and letting slip that I knew that the business was a front for illegal motorcycle club activities. I didn’t trust myself to be able to lie convincingly about it, and so I did the only thing I could think of - the thing that I’d wanted to do ever since I’d walked in for the interview and saw his face.

  His hands were everywhere, tugging at the base of my hair, running down my back, cupping my ass through my clothes. I needed them against my bare skin, giving me the pleasure that I knew he could.

  My clothes disappeared with alarming speed, dropping to the floor until I was standing in front of him in my bra and panties. Shane was still completely dressed, which made me feel like a stripper or some kind of whore about to service my client. I couldn’t believe how big of a turn-on it was.

  There’s no way this feels this good! Just the touch of his roughened hands on the bare skin of my back was almost overwhelming, driving me out of my mind with need and want and lust. A low growl rolled from deep in my chest as my frustration at his level of dress came to the fore.

  With a goal in mind, I was able to focus better. His leather jacket dropped from around his shoulders, but his t-shirt was caught on his arms without his cooperation.

  Finally I snarled in frustration. “Get this off, now.”

  The amused glint in his eye brought me back to earth. It was entirely unlike me to give a command like that. Especially to my boss. Especially during sex.

  “Please?” I added, tone more plaintive.

  Shane chuckled and took his hands away from where they had been occupied groping my ass. “That’s a side of yourself that you are going to have to show me more of,” he said. “I haven’t had a woman order me around like that in quite a long time.”

  I lost the thread of the conversation as his hard abs were revealed. His tattoos were webbed across his torso, the ink suiting him and highlighting the firm curves of his muscles. His powerful chest was exactly as the tight shirt had advertised; broad, smooth, and so sexy that I had to taste it.

  Action followed thought, and although I’d never had the urge to put my mouth anywhere near a man’s chest before, I’d never seen one as nice as this. His skin was hot beneath my mouth, and he was so much taller that I didn’t have to bend my head at all.

  The disappearance of the shirt wasn’t enough. I needed more, greedy and not satisfied when I knew what was in my future.

  The shirt had been needed his help, but a belt was a belt, and in no time his pants fell down around his ankles, followed by his boxer briefs as soon as I could hook my thumbs in the waistband.

  “Oh!”

  I couldn’t form any more words than that as his cock, heavy with blood, bumped against my bare thigh and drew my gaze downward. It was magnificent, somehow suiting his body perfectly.

  I looked up into his eyes, seeing the passion that blazed with intensity there.

  “Your turn,” he said, the words a low rumble carried on a voice roughened with lust. I was so hot and ready for him and the way he announced his intentions only stoked the fire.

  Without warning, he wrapped his arms around me and turned, placing my ass onto his desk. It didn’t feel like it had required any effort at all for him to lift me, not something that I could have said of any of my ex-boyfriends.

  Shane moved back a step.

  Why is he pulling away? Did I do something wrong?

  The fire still burned in his eyes, raced along his skin in an almost visible blaze. The intensity was almost scary.

  “Take
off your bra.”

  Without the fumbling, urgent actions of earlier, I felt exposed, uncertain. The only thing I knew for sure was that he was definitely still into it. His erection left me no doubt of that.

  I summoned my courage, and reached behind myself to unsnap the bra.

  “Now the panties.”

  His eyes roamed my body hungrily as I took down the little slip of fabric, baring myself to his gaze, nowhere left to hide. Despite his response to me so far, for some reason I knew that this would be the point that we would pronounce himself disgusted and tell me to get out of his sight.

  “Open the drawer below you and hand me one.”

  Inside was a box of condoms. The sight gave me a little shake, and threatened to moisten my eyes. I tried not to let myself think about why he would need a box in here and how many women he had seduced in this exact office, in this exact way, on this exact desk. There was no point in ruining the moment. That was something Future Jackie would have to deal with. Present Jackie would not, could not be denied.