Once my eyes have adjusted to the change, I return my gaze to earth to take in the faces of those around me. There are five men arrayed about the enormous chamber, leaning up against tables and workstations with their arms crossed. The ski masks are gone, and I try my best to memorize their features in case I am called upon to provide an eyewitness account later; but, it's difficult to concentrate when my heart is hammering so loudly in my ears. I notice the duffle bag from the heist thrown almost carelessly aside on one of the tables and disgorging green bills onto the counter.
"What have we here?" one of the newly uncovered men quips, and I recognize him instantly as Marcus. I don't wait for Lesher to push me into the light; I go myself, hands still bound in front of me, standing as erect as I can manage. "Thought for sure you'd ditch this one along the road. She hasn't outlived her usefulness?"
The men share a chuckle at my expense, and my frantic pulse suddenly ratchets up an additional beat or two. What is he talking about? I feel as if I've been thrust into a private conversation where I don't understand any of the inside jokes. I try to play it cool, unwilling to let them see just how wary their laughter has made me.
Lesher doesn't join in. My eyes dart to the side as he strolls forward and runs his hand along the table propping up the bag of money.
"Is it all accounted for?" He sounds as if he couldn't care less. I blink, certain I must be hearing things or missing some detail in his expression, but the disinterest carries over to his face.
What the hell is going on?
"It's all here. That pussy bank manager wouldn't fuck with us—not when I told him we'd be back if he didn't deliver the first time. But no, we haven't counted it all yet." Marcus takes his eyes off me for only a moment while he lights a cigarette. "Me and the boys will get to it. Where are you taking her?"
"I want it all in the briefcase," Lesher commands. I realize he is deliberately ignoring Marcus' last question, and find myself feeling grateful for the lack of information. Wait, why am I feeling gratitude toward the man who kidnapped me again? I shoot daggers at him as he crosses to me, but he doesn't appear to notice the poison in my look. "And a full report when I get back," Lesher adds as he takes me by the elbow. "No divvying up shares before then."
The men groan in disappointment as I allow myself to be reluctantly guided toward the stairs. I'm not sure what I'll find wherever he intends to take me, but I'm thankful to be taken out of view for now. Something about the hungry looks on the men's faces makes me think they might be spoiling for more than money as a reward. I shudder at the thought, and try not to let my imagination get away from me. I'm not likely to find anything that will comfort me down that path of thought.
It’s strange that I should now look to the man who kidnapped me as my sole protector in all this. I try to study his face as we walk up the stairs, but it's as unreadable as it was when his back was turned to me on the bike. What if he means to keep me to himself in a secluded back room; and his only reason for withholding my location is to ensure total privacy while he does what he wants with me?
A shudder courses through me; but, in the next instant, I feel a heavy weight settle across my shoulders to suppress it. I look up again in surprise, but Lesher has turned his back to me once more. His leather jacket is missing, and I instantly realize what it is that now sits on my shoulders to keep the chill off.
He carries on as if his own gesture is beneath his notice, leaving me more confused than ever about his intentions. If he perceived I might be cold all along, he waited until we were out of sight of his men to do something about it.
Lesher leads me down another back hallway, this time on the second story, and I can see now firsthand why Marcus had asked about my intended location—the warehouse is labyrinthine, full of enough empty rooms and offices even on the second story to make the search for my prison an hours-long effort. Again, I feel comforted; again, I know I really, really shouldn't.
I try to distract myself from my mixed emotions by tracking our path through the warehouse. By the time we arrive at the end of another long corridor, I think I have studied the terrain enough to know where the exit might be located—unfortunately, I will need at least five minutes of escape time, through an endlessly winding maze of what are most likely locked rooms to make it to freedom. With nothing to conceal myself behind and the likelihood of encountering at least one of the roving gang members, I would say my odds of leaving the warehouse unnoticed are, at the moment, akin to a snowball's chance in hell.
Not to mention my hands are still bound. Not to mention that Lesher is still here with me.
My captor stops abruptly in front of an unremarkable door, two away from the end of the hallway, and unlocks it with a key. The window in the door is misted over, I notice, a feature of the glass panel inset into it. That means anyone walking by won't notice that I'm here.
The door swings open, and Lesher steps aside to allow me to pass through first. What a gentleman. I hope he doesn't expect me to feel anything but revulsion for his gesture. I breeze past him as if it was my intention all along, with or without him, to enter the room that is to be my prison.
"You don't trust your men," I say as he switches the light on. The room was small and windowless aside from the door; there is a cot in the corner that appears clean but undressed for prolonged company, as there are no sheets. There is a desk nailed to the floor in the corner, and a folding chair that looks as if a strong wind or heavy weight could splinter it into pieces. So much for any weapons.
I know who the cot is meant for, but I ignore it. I pull up the chair awkwardly, trying to maneuver it with my bound hands, and settle into it at once. Lesher closes the door behind us and leans against the wall. Without his jacket, I can clearly see just how sensuous the frame he kept hidden beneath it is. Not only is he well-muscled—he doesn't look as if he has an ounce of fat on him, and the tightness of his wife beater would have revealed this fact to me immediately—he's completely and totally at ease in his own skin. Only looking at him now do I realize how rare a trait this is to find in a person. Tattoos twine up and down his arms like black demonic lacework. I shift uncomfortably beneath his amused stare.
"Well?" I prompt him. "Am I right?"
"No," he replies, but I soon realize it's in agreement to my claim. "I don't trust them. Especially not with female company."
"Great. I'm company now." I sigh hard enough to blow my hair out of my eyes. "Why did you bring me here, then? I feel like a piece of meat that just got thrown into a den of ravenous wolves."
"Don't flatter yourself. You're pretty, but not enough to stir an appetite."
"Well, that's…good?" I ask tensely. The way Lesher keeps looking at me makes me think he might be lying. I'm not sure what I hope for. I'd rather be insulted, I decide. There's nothing good that can come from his being as attracted to me now as he seemed to be back at the bank. I didn't feel on even ground with him then, and I certainly don't now. Where the power structure between us before had been murky, given my position at the bank, now it's become all too clear who the dominant party is.
"So now that I'm here, when can I go home?" I ask hopefully.
"When I say you can." Lesher crosses the room to me, and I cringe back instinctively. He surprises me by dropping to his knee to start working loose one of my shoes from around my aching heels. Now would be the prime time to kick him in the head, but I have a feeling this would only make things worse for me. If I'm going to hit someone in this situation, I need to make it count—I'm not going to take action unless I can ensure I leave the other party unconscious.
"Relax," he murmurs. "You're so fucking tense." He sweeps his thumb beneath my anklebone, and I nearly jolt out of the chair; only the firm grasp of his hand keeps me steadily in place. A rush of heat overwhelms my face as he continues to stroke me through the too-thin material of my black stockings. Why does he have to touch me right there? There's no way that could be considered an erogenous zone on a normal person, right? His touch makes me want to squi
rm in the chair, but I fight my own body's response and hold as still as I possibly can.
Lesher continues this seemingly unconscious act as he sets my left shoe aside and starts for the right. I force a laugh to ease the tension I feel building between us.
"Relax? Are you actually being serious?" I demand. "I'm a hostage! How do I know you won't hurt me?"
"I've been honest with you so far." He pops my next shoe off, and it suddenly occurs to me to wonder why exactly he is undressing me. I pull my skirt down self-consciously, but he seems disinterested in looking above my knees—then again, Lesher always seems a lot of things. Hell, he seemed like a "Thomas" for the first hour I knew him.
"No, you definitely have not," I correct him. "You lied to me from the beginning. You never wanted to open an account."
Lesher chuckles, and I feel the press of both of his thumbs now as he takes hold of my right foot and massages the sole. I shiver, even as I outwardly try to suppress how good it feels. I always hated wearing those shoes, but they were part of the uniform. It makes weird sense that Lesher should be divesting me of them now, as easily as he divested me of the job that I didn't always feels as grateful for as I probably should have.
"No more lying between us," he suggests. "I'll go first. I don't need to open an account because I already have my money taken care of."
"What is this?" I give a small, incredulous laugh. It isn't a bright and happy sound, but it's still a laugh, and I hate myself for rewarding him with one in the next instant. The only reward I'm interested in is whatever the police decide to offer to bring this man in. "Is this a game of twenty questions? Shouldn't you be back downstairs splitting the cash you stole?"
Lesher raises a pale eyebrow at me. "Sounds to me like you want to go first. Fine, I’ll answer your question. I don't need the money. The men you met downstairs will be keeping it for services rendered."
"What do you mean, you don't need the money?" I demand. My leg spasms as if he's hit a nerve, and his tender grip suddenly turns steely. Apparently I won't be moving until he's done with me. "Why did you decide to rob a bank if you don't need the money? Why did you…?" My eyes cut quickly to look him over as the answer to my own question sinks in. If it weren't for the plastic ties that bind my hands I would be hunting through the pockets of the jacket he's laid across me. "Wait. I saw you. I saw you take something…something from the vault!" I glare at him triumphantly. He doesn't react, but I'm sure I've hit on the real answer.
I rack my brain, trying to remember those last moments in the backroom before Marcus arrived, but I can't recall seeing what, exactly, it was that Lesher held in his hand. "Is that what all this is about?" I ask.
A get a vicious yank in response, and I'm jerked out from underneath the leather jacket—and halfway off the chair—by Lesher. He grabs hold of my slender ankle, and I realize his hand is almost big enough to manacle my leg. "My turn," he interrupts me. "Do you actually like wearing these?"
It takes me a moment to realize he's referring to my stockings. I have no idea why he wants to bring them up, unless he's trying to distract me from my line of questioning. I must be on the right track, then, when I theorized he was in on the robbery for something else.
"I…" My throat feels suddenly dry, and I swallow. Buck up, Nancy. Play his game. Who knows what you might learn, and how your information might benefit the police once you get out of this.
Considering that I have yet to figure out how to get myself out of this, it seems like a solid plan. I swallow again. "I've never thought of it before. They're inexpensive, so it's not a big deal that I have to wear them."
"They make you wear them," Lesher infers as his hand glides up the smooth side of my leg. His fingers explore a run, and I realize that this particular pair of stockings is, like the rest of me, completely wrecked by the events of the day. "Pity."
His fingers catch deliberately in another run in my stockings, tearing the hole wider, and I move my knee aside. I clench my thighs together and try to brush his hand away with both of mine.
"Okay. Okay, my turn," I say quickly. I feel his jacket slide down my back, and I'm struck by a sudden inspiration. "What does the patch on your jacket mean? Is it the symbol of your gang?"
"It's the symbol for a life I'm in the process of leaving behind me," comes his enigmatic reply. "It's something I thought I needed, but I see now that it won't help me get what I want."
"Which is?" I prompt him. He surprises me by lowering his mouth to my leg, and I feel the press of his lips above my knee…right where he's just made the hole in my stocking wider.
I freeze as an overwhelming sensation crashes over me. He's hardly touched me, but everything he's done to me so far has been so sexually charged that I can't deny any longer what is happening—and I'd have to be pretty heavily in denial to still think this is all an innocent game when his lips are on me.
"My turn," he reminds me. His mouth forms the words against my skin. "You're turned on right now, aren't you?"
"I'm…" I want to say something to negate what he's saying, to reject and dismiss the truth, but I'm afraid he'll know I'm lying. And if Lesher knows I'm not going to play by his rules, what's to keep him from providing further valuable information? I have the opportunity to interrogate him as much as he is interrogating me. It's just that our lines of questioning differ…as do our methods.
"Tell the truth." His voice is singsong.
"I was…attracted to you when you first walked in to the bank," I admit. That should be good enough, right?
"Not good enough."
Damn.
"I…don't find you any less attractive now," I stammer. "I mean, physically. But obviously everything about our situation has changed!"
"Has it?" he purrs against my thigh. "Or are you just more aware now of who you're dealing with?"
"There's no way you find me attractive," I scoff. "I mean, come on. I'm so plain my name may as well be Jane, and you're a freaking master criminal with a gang—"
Lesher raises himself off me suddenly and strikes. Before I can think to turn away, he's in the chair with me, his knee propped to one side of the seat as he straddles me. He seizes my hair; I raise my hands up to ward him off, but tied as they are, the gesture is completely ineffectual.
He holds me in place, as he pushes his mouth against mine in a kiss.
The inside of the little room spins. My eyes are wide open. I close them as I try to summon my control, to take back the vestiges of my resistance…but it's harder than I expected. The way his lips knead against mine feels like pure Heaven.
"Lesher," I gasp, but he silences me once more before I can form a real protest. I meant to say "stop," right? I wish I could remember.
"Admit it, Nancy. You like a little danger." He holds his face inches from my own as his hand whisks its way down between us once more. "You liked me then, and you like me now."
The arm that snakes between us forcefully pins my incapacitated hands. If I was helpless before, I feel like a complete prisoner beneath him now.
He's still wearing his riding gloves. I feel the thickness of the reinforced fabric as he shoves his hand up beneath my skirt, delving. I cry out, but there's nothing for me to clamp my legs down over; he keeps his arm out of reach. The flat of his hand presses possessively as it flares along my pelvis, missing what I mistakenly think to be his destination. The core of my womanhood throbs, aching for his touch despite my persisting confusion about whether or not I should be doing this.
No. No, I should definitely not be doing this.
Lesher muffles my sigh of low disappointment with another wet sweep of his mouth. The hand beneath my skirt settles on the waistband of my tights, formerly hidden to the point of inaccessibility beneath the tight cotton of my skirt. He tugs, guiding them down my thighs, the speed with which he undresses me increasing with the escalating intensity of his kiss.
I break away in alarm. "No," I protest suddenly, firmly. Bare legs make this all too real. My perception of the
room returns as soon as I've wrenched myself from the intoxicating pull of his lips, and I see the cot in the corner as if for the first time. I feel the bite of zip ties against the tender flesh of my wrists.
This is not how I want things to be. And even if I crave Lesher as much as he seems to crave me, I can't allow myself to go any further. I have to get away, and allowing myself to feel this good wrapped in his arms is only clouding my judgement…
My tights keep descending. Soon he has them down past my knees, my shins, he peels them off my ankles without a second thought.
He carries himself down, lower and lower, following the removal of clothing. Maybe he didn't hear me. If that's the case, time to make myself heard.
I do what any frazzled bank teller in my situation should have done from the beginning. The moment he strips my ruined tights off me, I snap my leg and kick him.
I had only half-hoped I would make any sort of connection, but it turns out his head was exactly where it needed to be to take the full force of my blow. My instep strikes his cheek, rotating him almost one hundred and eighty degrees.
Lesher falls off me with a curse. I'm up and out of the chair before he can retaliate…and I'm sure retaliation is coming. I've just struck the leader of a gang of dangerous criminals.
"Don't…don't come any closer," I warn as I back myself into the corner. "I'm warning you."
"You couldn't have warned me earlier?" Lesher demands. "Shit." He grasps his jaw and works it back and forth; his eyes flare open as he blinks in an attempt to clear his vision. My foot is killing me, but I try not to limp too obviously as I retreat further away from him. I'm certain I'll have a bruise to remind us both of my successful sneak attack.
"I told you 'no'." My words sound strong and more self-assured than I expected, and I soldier on. "I don't care what you think you know about me, or even if you're right…when I tell you to stop, I mean it."
I glare at him through a curtain of tousled curls, thinking it would be a wasted effort to attempt to comb them back into place considering my hands are still bound. Lesher rises from his doubled-over position beside the chair, flat blue eyes tracking my movements across the room. He doesn't return my glare, but I don't think he looks amused by my rebellion, either. Good. I need him to quit condescending to me and start taking matters between us seriously.
BILLIONAIRE BIKERS: 3 MC Romance Books Page 18
