The only solution to being troubled, then, is to make Ana in as much trouble as I am.
I cross to the bed, snatch her arm, and yank her out of bed. She comes to me with a wordless exclamation of protest, but I can see the fire of challenge in her eyes. She loves this—last night was enough to prove as much to me. I have taken lesser lovers before, women who couldn't handle my thirsts, much less quench them in any satisfactory way.
I lay my hands on her, binding her to me, and kiss her roughly. I regret putting my clothes on now—if I could do anything differently, I would be naked now. She would be that much easier for the taking.
Ana knows what I want. She wants the same thing. My clothes are off again in a matter of moments, and I lift her off the floor and into my arms. She wraps her legs around me, using the sharp, mean angles of my hips to keep herself comfortably seated. I feel the seam of her tight, pert ass perfectly position above my raging cock. I grasp her backside and maneuver her back; her pussy is already slick with wanting. I love the way her body betrays her every time I handle her. If it was left up to the woman, she would fight tooth and nail to deny me this encounter, just so she could feel smug about it later.
But I know things that will make her feel a whole lot better than winning one over on me. And she knows it too, now.
My erection bends, tilting upward between her thighs, finding itself in a prime position to enter her. As I pull Ana back into the circle of my arms, I feel my cock submerge itself in her all too readily—she wasn't the only one physically primed for this encounter. I have never met a woman who could make me so hard, so fast, in a matter of moments. With her I am completely insatiable.
"Ohhh," she moans as I sink into her. I feel the legs wrapped around my waist tense, every muscle flexing as she keeps herself upright. I have no fear of losing her, though—my arms are strong, and she weighs next to nothing. I could lift five Anas with the amount of adrenaline pumping through my veins. But why bother, when the wall is right there?
I slam her back into it, kissing her punishingly as I thrust, making her climb the wall beneath me. Ana gasps in what I take for wordless encouragement, and I feel the arms looped around my shoulders tighten, slide, and shift. I can feel the rock-hard tension of my own muscles straining beneath her frantic touch.
"Yeah?" I hear myself growl the nonsensical word as if I hadn't been the one to ask the question to begin with. "You like that?"
"Yes!" she pants. "Oh God, Flint!" Her words deescalate to moaning and crying out. In the wake of such tantalizing vocalizations, how am I supposed to control myself? I press my chest tightly against her heaving breasts until there is scarcely room left between us to breath; until we are forced to breathe together if we want to breathe at all. I try to control each rough exhalation, if only to try and prove something…but what I'm trying to prove, I've already forgotten. There is no pretending that thrusting into the redheaded beauty, forcing her against a wall, and silencing her with the needs of my body, doesn't have me turned the hell on.
My lips drag across hers; our teeth clash and scrape together in a rough display of passion, just the way I like it. Never before have I been able to find this kind of satisfaction with just one woman and one woman alone. My tastes have forced me from one bed to the next in a seemingly never-ending revolving door of women: blonde, brunette, and redheaded, just like Ana. There was always the potential to overpower them with what I desired, to be too much for just one woman to handle, and I had handled plenty as a result—seeking fulfillment in snatched encounters and unsatisfying trysts along the road. Even before the road, that was how it had been for me: hiding the fire and dark passion, taming the animal that lurked inside me as if I was presenting myself inside a boardroom.
Ana slides back down beneath me, and I pause our exertions to give her a sensuous, appreciative kiss. She is performing wonderfully. I know it's an arrogant thought to have, but I didn't make it this far in life…and subsequently fall…due to humility. Besides, my own performance is of the utmost importance to me. I think I can read how well I'm doing in the way her body moves, and in the euphoric expression on her face that I see lurking just below the intensity.
"Relax," I murmur as I thrust myself inside her. I hear her tailbone connect with the wall, just hard enough to keep her attention and make sure she knows who is in charge of this latest heated session. "It's okay to let go."
"Don't tempt me," Ana gasps. "I want to make it last. And you're making it very hard to do what I want."
I can't help the ferocious grin that overtakes my lips at her assertion. My hips quest against hers in a driving rhythm. I don't relent, even though she expressed it is what she wants. I think we both know what she really wants.
I feel her thighs tighten, the innermost part of her knees drive into my waist, and she utters a choked cry that shouldn't threaten to undo me as much as it does. It was her own release that brought me to orgasm last night, and I'm desperate now to hold out…desperate to give her more pleasure, desperate not to repeat a show of my own weakness…but I know it's a lost cause the moment I see her beautiful face thrown back in ecstasy. I feel the hot coil in my belly tense, so close to unraveling. I hold fast to my shredded willpower as she rides me, taking all she can, every last ounce and chasing, tangible thrill of pleasure.
And then I come. Hard. My entire body stiffens as if there is an electric current running through it, and then I come maddeningly, blissfully undone. I utter a low groan, and I only think a moment later to clench my teeth over the sound and keep from betraying any more. But there is no suppressing the instinctive response of my body to hers. I feel tightness and warmth as she engulfs me, and I fall over the precipice into her. I feel the hot spurt of my seed as I empty myself inside of her; I feel the renewed grip of her arms as they envelope me, and I carry us sideways down onto the bed. I hear her breathless laugh of satisfaction stifled beneath the oppressive weight of my chest. I keep her pinned down beneath me, grinning as she struggles to come up for air. When I finally relent, she wriggles herself into a better fit inside the ring of my arms. I might even go so far as to say it was perfect fit.
"Quit smiling like you think you won something," she says, but her words are a continuation of her laugh. "Is this what sex with you is always going to be like? Some weird anti-race to the finish, where one person gets to hold their non-victory over the other until the next round? And anyway," she continues, "since you clearly think you won by making me come quickest, I'd say it was more of a tie. You can't hold out once I go over."
"Are you always this talkative post-sex?" I grunt. "If I was doing my job properly, you should be ready to call it a day. Maybe I'm not fucking you thoroughly enough."
"I can't call it a day already! It's morning!" Ana protests as I roll myself over on top of her and bury my face in her collarbone. I don't have to lay my lips on her to know how she'll taste: like the pure salt of sweat and exertion. I know she'll taste delicious without allowing myself a sample, but I do anyway. My lips ghost across her neck, and she sighs.
It was only after morning sex with Ana that two things occurred to me: one, the coffee had gone cold. And two, she had successfully avoided answering any questions I might have about her past. She hadn't even let me get to the point of asking.
Maybe I wasn't as in control of things as I thought.
#
"So tell me...what do the 'R' and 'B' stand for?"
I glance up from the table, and the various documents arrayed about beneath my hands. Ana sits in bed, her long legs drawn up and tucked beneath her. She is completely naked, aside from my leather jacket, which she has turned around so that the patch faces the front and covers her breasts. The sleeves are long for her diminutive arms and wrinkle where she has to push them back around the cuffs. She cradles a cup of coffee in her hands, watching the steam rise as she waits for it to cool. Rather than reheat what had already gone cold, I settled for spoiling her by brewing another pot fresh.
"Robber Baron," I
reply finally. "I ride with the Robber Baron MC. Doubt you've heard of us."
"Why would that be?" Ana muses as she glances down at the skull and crossed arrows. I settle back in my chair, balancing on two legs as I consider her.
"Because we don't boast the usual membership of a motorcycle club," I reply.
"How so?" she asks.
"There are only five of us, to start," I say. "And we don't always see eye-to-eye. We don't always get along. It's rare that we ride together, but the brotherhood aspect...we take it very seriously. A brother is always there when you need him, so it doesn't matter if most of us choose to ride alone the majority of the time."
"That seems counter to riding with a club," Ana is quick to point out. "Don't you get lonely?"
"No." My reply is automatic. "We've come together and networked out of necessity. Like I said, we're not like other MCs."
"You still haven't explained that point to my satisfaction," Ana says as she ducks her head to blow on her drink. I raise an eyebrow.
"How is your satisfaction my problem?" I ask. Then, "Never mind. Don't answer that. Any more innuendo and I'll have to take you for another round, and I don't think I've recovered yet."
"I beg to differ," she mutters to herself. "Your stamina is something else, Mr. Carter. Are you sure you're human?"
"You asked to know more about the MC," I remind her. "So here it is. It's money, more than blood, that binds us brothers together. It's not as romantic as most MCs, I know, but it's the truth. The club found me three years ago when I needed it most, and I wouldn't dream of leaving it now. We've got revolving membership and revolving rules. The one thing that stays the same—that we all have in common—are the bank accounts. You could say it's the price of admission."
"You're all billionaires," Ana concludes. "Aren't you?"
In answer, I rock back a little further in my chair, letting the creaking wood speak for me.
I continue to be surprised by how my wealth doesn't appear to affect Ana. The only conclusion of my own that I can draw, watching her thoughtful expression now, is that a fuck-ton of money isn't anything new to her.
Again, I find myself wondering who she is and what she's been through. Who she's running from. Can I take her as far as she needs, or will she always be running?
"I can see why the club might be just a little bit exclusive," she says.
I shrug. I drop forward in my chair to continue studying the papers I've pulled from Richards' briefcase. All these names and numbers are starting to give me a headache, but I persevere. There was a time when I would have gladly spent hours doing this in the office, but then I'd have had a pair of readers with me. Somehow, I think pushing a pair of glasses up my nose now would give Ana occasion to think I am far less hard than I want her to think.
"I know it's been three years," I mutter to myself, "but I don't remember any of these accounts. And these investments are completely spitting in the face of what Green Star is supposed to be. To stand for. Sustainable energy. A tomorrow that will completely eradicate the need for fossil fuels. Hell, we even had an electric motorcycle program we were set to start developing with Tesla. Looks like Halligan burned that bridge."
"I assume you've been watching the news," Ana says. She slips from the bed to pad barefoot across the room and join me at the table. "Green Star hasn't been doing so hot since the widely-exaggerated reports of your death. Making controversial decision after controversial decision…"
"This goes beyond even that," I mutter. "These transactions, these accounts…they prove how deep the corruption goes."
"So why not release them?" Ana is standing at my shoulder now. "You could blow the whistle. You could take Green Star down. No one would ever even need to know you're alive. Unless you think that guy—Richards? Will piss his pants and tell."
"You certainly have a way with turns of phrase," I chuckle. "No. The only people likely to believe Richards are the people who tried to kill me. There were three of them there that night: Richards, Tannenbaum, and Halligan, who rose to take my place as the current CEO of the company. Whether or not they believe I'm alive, if I do decide to blow the whistle, they go down with Green Star."
"So what's the problem?" Ana presses. "Isn't that what you want? Revenge?"
"No." I glower at the pages, my attention focused on something not present in the room with us. "Not like this. Not at the expense of my company. Green Star needs to go on, with or without me. The foundations were laid for them to do good work. Great work. I need to nullify the corruption from the inside, and leave a resounding message for those who would try to pervert what I created."
"You can't put the life of your company before human life," Ana says. I turn my glower onto her then, but she appears unaffected. Sleeping together has its drawbacks, then, if she no longer feels intimidated by me. Then again, I'm not sure I can argue that she ever was. "No, Flint. Listen to me. I'm not trying to be the feminine voice of reason here. When you really think about it—if that's the stance you really want to take with this—then you are exactly like the people who tried to kill you."
"I'm nothing like them," I growl. Normally I would have lost my temper at this, and likely slammed something—my fist on the table, maybe—to demand her silence so I could think. But the logic of what she was saying was sound. Now I had to face the reality of the situation I had put myself in: if I had always run the risk of becoming like the men who had corrupted my life's work, had it ever mattered to me? With or without Ana's summary of events, did I really care about being a good man if it cost me my revenge?
"There are other ways to get revenge, you know." It's as if she can read my mind. More than that, it's as if Ana knows precisely what it is I have always required, inside or outside of the boardroom, in or out of exile—the proposal of a better solution. "You can hit them so hard you can make them wish they were dead."
"How do you propose I do that?" The words sound pretty, especially when someone like Ana says them, but I can't imagine what she might mean. How can those men possibly be better to me alive than dead? Even when you take my personal vendetta out of the equation, the future of the world suffers every hour these men are left alive and able to take it down the wrong path.
"Sometimes you're as dumb as you are pretty," Ana says. "Or maybe the gears of your brain have been turning on the idea of 'revenge' so long that you can't think of anything else." She gestures to the pile of papers I have amassed before me. "They decided your life was forfeit over financial gains, right? They chose power and money over human life. That tells you a lot about them—it tells you what they value more than anything else. I think killing these men won't make them suffer nearly as much as destroying what they've lied and cheated and murdered their way into getting. Go after their money, Flint. Go after their public image. There's gotta be some stuff in here that will enable you to do that."
"You may be on to something," I say slowly. "But I'm going to need help if I decide to go down that path." Ana perks up at this, and I can tell her bright expression has nothing to do with the coffee, and everything to do with my words. "Not you," I correct her assumption. "After all that talk about tenuous brotherhood, I'm going to have to get in touch with one of the other Barons."
"Why not me?" she grouses. "I was really helpful before in, you know, not letting you star in Making a Murderer, Season Two."
"I'll let you tag along," I allow. "If you're still in a mood to blackmail me. And if you feel like you have nothing better to do."
"I have a million better things to do," Ana replies. "But you're right. You better keep an eye on me, just in case I decide to cash in on the story that Flynn Carter, vanished billionaire, is still alive."
Our eyes meet for a moment, but I don't betray an expression that I am joking despite my words, and neither does Ana. I can see how playing pretend about our relationship might become exhausting in the near future, but I'm not ready to give up the lie—not yet. And neither is she.
We can't be together, but
we can't find it in us to be apart. Something's got to give, and if my life and past are anything to go by, it's going to be sooner rather than later.
I realize I still hold Ana's gaze. It's either that, or she holds mine. I break away and move about the hotel room, gathering up our sparse belongings, kicking discarded clothes her way. The time to leave draws near. I'm anxious to get down into the lobby and make the call; then, it's back out on the road for us.
There's only one brother who can get me the information I want, and he happens to be conveniently located nearby.
I just don't know if he's more likely to greet me with a handshake or the barrel of a gun.
CHAPTER 11
ANA
I'm more nervous than I thought I would be about meeting one of Flint's "brothers."
Of course, I'm not going to let it show that my nervousness is starting to get the better of me. I stride confidently across the hotel parking lot, following him to his bike, the mode of transportation I already find myself adjusting to. I'm not sure I can go back to riding in a regular old car after this. More traditional vehicles are too confined, too slow, and somehow seem more likely to be maneuvered by inexpert hands. Men like Flint seem almost like wranglers—they spend a lot more time learning to break the power between their legs.
A blush threatens my face as I conceive the metaphor, but I fight it back. I can't help but wonder what the similarity I've drawn means for me.
"The man we're going to see is named Lesher," Flint mentions as I lift myself up onto the seat behind him. "His membership in the club has been contested. A lot. I'm on better terms with him than the rest of the Barons, but that doesn't mean he's going to be happy to see us when we roll up."
"Wouldn't it be better to call ahead if you're worried?" I ask. The question strikes me as being incredibly, I don't know how to describe it—civilian—but I feel the need to point out the obvious just in case. The Flint I've come to know these past few days has proved himself to be an incredibly intelligent man, but he doesn't always seem to identify the most straightforward solutions to things.
BILLIONAIRE BIKERS: 3 MC Romance Books Page 10
