by Katie Ashley
I opened my mouth and then closed it without saying a word. I didn’t know how to take what she had just said. I wanted to think everything out of her mouth was a lie, but what if she was telling the truth? What if she truly had started out working me for the case until she began to feel something more for me?
Wanting to change the subject, I asked, “What makes you think I would take you up on your offer?”
“Isn’t your freedom enough?”
“I still have to live with myself, and how can I do that if I’m a rat who got into bed with the ATF?”
“Would your brothers honestly think you were a rat for testifying against the man who framed you?”
I didn’t know the answer. I hoped they would understand, especially considering that it was Eddy who had framed us. In the end, I didn’t have a real argument for not taking Samantha up on her offer. “Fine. I’ll say or do whatever I have to so I can get out of here.”
Samantha’s expression lightened. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“But let’s make one thing clear. It doesn’t change a damn thing between you and me. Got that?”
Without answering me, she reached out to pick up the manila folder she had carried in with her. Sam had never been one to avoid eye contact, but right now her eyes were completely focused on the folder in front of her. “I need you to tell me everything you can about who could have framed you.”
“There’s only one person it could be.” At the thought of Eddy, a low growl took me by surprise and seconds later I realized it had come from me. Samantha’s gaze snapped up from her paperwork at the sound. “You’re in luck, because if you nail this guy, you can have access to the Diablos.”
Samantha’s eyes widened as she stared from me to the mirror. “The bureau has been trying to get them for a long time.”
“Well, you track down Eddy, and you’ve got the Diablos by the balls, because if I know anything about Eddy, it’s that he has no loyalty. He’ll sing like a canary if you make it worth his while.”
“I see.”
Samantha scribbled furiously as I related what had happened with Eddy at the meeting in Virginia. Her pen stilled when I told her that he was one the behind the shooting. She glanced up to look at me. “This fucker has Gavin’s blood on his hands?”
“Damn straight.”
“I’m going to enjoy nailing him to the wall.”
By then I had finished relating everything I knew, including my theory about how the storm and the power being out enabled Eddy to plant the guns. “I’m sure if you had some agents go over the property, you would find evidence of shoe prints or tire treads.”
Samantha nodded. “I’ll put someone on it.” She shuffled her paperwork and then put it back in the folder. “I guess we’re finished here.”
“I guess so.”
“Once we produce the new evidence at the arraignment, it should be less than twenty-four hours before you guys are let out.”
“Good.”
She rose out of her chair. “I’ll let you know if we need anything else from you.”
When I nodded, she started for the door. As I watched her leave, I once again felt as if my chest were caving in. There was so much I wanted to say to her, but I was too stubborn. Finally I blurted, “Thank you.”
Samantha froze. Slowly she turned around to face me.
“You know, for sticking your neck out for me and my brothers.”
“You’re welcome,” she murmured.
We stared at each other for a few seconds before she hurried out the door. When it closed behind her, I brought my cuffed hands up to rub my shirt above my heart. No matter how I hard I tried, it still hurt like a motherfucker.
TWENTY-ONE
BISHOP
When the van carrying us home from jail pulled into the clubhouse parking lot, I couldn’t hold back my emotions, and I let out a giant whoop of joy. Archer had barely put it in park when I flung open the door and hopped out. Raiders came streaming out of the clubhouse. I don’t think I’d ever been hugged and kissed and thumped on the back so much in my life.
While the welcome was nice, it still felt hollow to me. Especially as I watched Alex and Annabel run into Deacon’s and Rev’s waiting arms. Even Boone, who had been married forever, had a happy moment with his wife. It made me miss Samantha, even though I shouldn’t, and I fucking hated myself for it. Yet in that moment, I didn’t care about all the bad shit that had gone down between us. I just wanted to feel her soft curves against my body, inhale the sweet smell of her peach shampoo, and feel the comfort of her arms around me.
With a grimace, I pushed those thoughts from my head and tried to focus on the party. I wanted a beer the size of my head. Before we could appreciate the welcome-home party, there were some things we needed to take care of in church. So we headed into our meeting room and closed and locked the door behind us.
Rev took his usual seat at the head of the table. He looked at Archer and Crazy Ace. “Were all precautions taken to ensure that the feds didn’t leave any bugs after the raid?”
Archer nodded. “We’ve each swept the room five times to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
“Good.” He glanced around the table. “Now, gentlemen. We can begin.”
“Feels good to be back in here, eh, boys?” Deacon asked with a grin.
“Sure as hell does,” Mac agreed.
“Didn’t know when my ass would slide across this leather again,” Boone joked.
Deacon turned to Rev. “What’s on the agenda?”
“First of all, we need to sign these depositions.” Rev waved the manila folder at Crazy Ace. After Crazy Ace took the folder, he passed them out. “Read them and make sure they’re accurate before you sign them.”
The room fell silent as we read the typed versions of what we had told the ATF about Eddy and the Virginia shooting. Thankfully, we weren’t asked to give any information on the Rodriguez cartel. They were one group I wanted in our corner.
One by one we signed. Then we handed the papers back to Rev.
“Okay. Good. Right now that’s the only order of business that I have.” He shuffled the papers together and put them in the folder. “Who can run these over to Samantha, uh, Agent Vargas?”
At his question, I stared down at my hands. When no one responded, Rev cleared his throat. “Bishop, why don’t you take them?”
“No fucking way,” I replied.
“It might do you some good to see her. Maybe you guys could talk,” Rev suggested.
I jerked my gaze up to stare at him. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“You’re actually sitting there advocating for me to talk to the woman who betrayed me?”
“Look, I’m not saying it doesn’t make me fucking furious that at one time she was sniffing around here for dirt on us—”
“Exactly,” I said.
“But there’s also the fact that she was spending most of the time here trying to clear us,” Rev argued.
“Un-fucking-believable.”
Deacon sighed. “Look, B, she’s really putting her ass out on the line for you and for us. You can argue that she’s doing it because we’re innocent, but there’s also the fact that she cares about you.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I demanded, “Could you forgive a woman for doing something like that?”
He snorted. “How quickly you forget that Alexandra handcuffed me to a bed in her efforts to take Sigel down. While it pissed the ever-loving shit out of me, she did it because she loved me, and she wanted to protect me.”
“It’s different with Samantha and me.”
Deacon cocked his eyebrows at me. “Are you so sure?”
I gazed around the table at the guys. They each gave me a look that told me I needed to take the depositions. “Fine.” I shoved out of my chair and snatched the envelope from Rev. Without another word to the guys, I headed out of the room and to my bike.
It took a good half ho
ur to get to Samantha’s office building. Once I got to her floor, I had to look for help in order to find her office. It wasn’t an easy thing, since a lot of the agents and staff had gone home. A guy who looked like a wrestler in the WWE stood outside Samantha’s door. “I need to give these to Agent Vargas.”
“I need your ID first.”
“Damn. Do agents always have bodyguards on hand?”
“Whenever there’s a threat, we do.”
I cocked my head at him. “Vargas has been threatened?”
He eyed my driver’s license. As he handed it back, he replied, “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“That answers my question.” I then knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Samantha called.
My stomach clenched nervously, which made me feel like a pussy. I pushed through the door. Sitting at her desk, Samantha once again looked polished and pressed like ATF Agent Barbie. Our eyes met, and we stared at each other. She broke the stare by rising out of her chair. “Can I help you, Bishop?”
“Yeah. You can tell me what Hulk Hogan is doing outside your door.”
“It’s nothing you need to be concerned with.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Let me guess. It’s confidential or whatever bullshit it is you don’t tell civilians like me.”
“It’s something like that.” While she appeared cool, calm, and collected, I could tell that deep down she was on edge.
“Whatever.” I tossed the folder with the depositions onto her desk. “Rev asked me to bring those over. It’s all the officers.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“Yeah, whatever. You’re welcome.”
“So you got home today?”
“A little while ago.”
“I’m glad to hear they didn’t drag their feet on letting you guys out.”
“No. It was pretty quick.”
As we stood there talking like strangers, I couldn’t help shaking my head.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
“I was just wondering how the fuck we got to this point of being like strangers.”
She looked down at the floor. “Oh.”
“I guess if we’re acting like this, there wasn’t much there to begin with, huh?”
“I disagree,” Sam said.
“Do you?”
“I think there’s always been something strong between us. Even from the first time we met.”
“Maybe. But for the most part it was all about the physical.”
“There was always a strong physical attraction between us, but that wasn’t it.”
“The physical’s the one thing that never changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the fact that you changed when you lied to me.”
Samantha rolled her eyes. “I lied to you about one thing—one fucking thing.”
“It was a pretty big thing.”
“Everything else was me, Bishop. Through all the long conversations on the phone and at dinner, that was me. Whenever I was with you at the clubhouse, that was me.”
“The most important thing in my world is loyalty, and you trampled all over that.”
Her dark eyes flashed. “Fuck you, Bishop!”
With a smirk, I said, “Wouldn’t you love to one last time? To have me make you come like I always did.”
“You should leave. Now.”
“And not be a good boy and satisfy you?”
Samantha’s expression was one of disgust. “I hate you. I seriously despise everything you are.”
“But you still want me.”
She cocked her eyebrows. “Considering the bulge in your jeans, I’d say you want me pretty bad, too, although I’m sure you hate yourself for it. Just like I do.”
Yeah, I do. “I want the old Samantha—the woman who made me fall for her.”
“We’re the same person, you arrogant, stubborn prick!”
That was my undoing. As I crossed the room in two long strides, Samantha started around the side of her desk. We crashed together and the next few minutes were a complete blur, a tangle of lips, arms, and legs. She brought her hand between us to cup my throbbing dick. It had been rock hard before she even touched me. “Please,” she murmured against my lips.
Taking her by the shoulders, I turned her around and bent her over her desk. I pushed the hem of her skirt up and almost came in my pants at the sight of her sexy garters. I tore her flimsy panties down her thighs. My hands quickly unbuttoned my jeans and shoved them down.
When Samantha tried to turn to face me, I shook my head. “No. We do it this way. It’s only fucking.” Placing my hand on her shoulder, I pushed her down. I used my free hand to guide my dick to her pussy. Finding her wet and ready for me, I plunged into her, causing both of us to shout. Oh fuck, I was going to miss her pussy. So warm. So tight.
When I began pounding relentlessly in and out of her, Samantha gripped the front of the desk.
“Agent Vargas? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Samantha panted.
“Do you need me to—”
“Just stay outside, Tomkins.”
“I have my orders, Agent.”
“She’s more than fine, because I’m fucking her brains out. Okay?” I shouted.
When Sam moaned in pleasure, Tomkins finally got the message and left us alone. The only sound from then on was our sweat-slickened skin slapping together. As I got close to coming, I realized Samantha hadn’t come yet. Part of me didn’t give a fuck if she got off, but the other part of me didn’t want her to remember our last time as me not getting her off. So I reached around to stroke her clit. Over and over, I massaged it until I felt her walls tensing around me. “Oh, Bishop!” she cried as she went over. Then I brought both of my hands to grip her hips. I pulled her back against my thrusts. It wasn’t long before I came, cursing and then shouting her name.
Panting, I collapsed over Sam’s back. I stayed that way for a few seconds while I caught my breath. When I realized what we had just done, I winced. “Fucking hell,” I muttered. I quickly pulled out of Sam, and once again winced at the fact that I hadn’t put on a condom in the moment.
My emotions were skidding out of control. When I started to help Samantha up, she drew herself away from me. “Sam, I’m—”
“Just leave.”
“But—”
She shoved herself off the desk and pinned me with a death glare. “You got what you wanted—to fuck me again—so leave.”
I wanted more than anything to pull her into my arms. I wanted to sit her down and tell her that somehow we would work things out. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for being the stubborn prick she had called me.
But I turned and walked out the door. That was it. The last time I would see her, touch her. It was the way it had to be.
TWENTY-TWO
SAMANTHA
After the door slammed shut behind Bishop, I calmly went about putting my clothes back together. Once I finished, I collapsed into my chair. Placing my head in my hands, I began to cry with abandon. Harsh sobs tore through my body with such intensity I didn’t know if I would ever recover.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, perhaps five minutes or maybe ten. I was too lost in my grief to notice. In some ways, it felt like losing Gavin all over again. As if I was somehow destined to always lose the ones who I loved to the MC world.
At the creak of the door, I kept my head buried. “Give me five minutes, Tompkins. Then you can walk me out.”
“You’ll make time for me now,” a raspy voice said from the doorway.
I snapped my head up. Although I’d only seen pictures of him from his file, I knew without a doubt that it was Eddy Catcherside. “Where’s Tompkins?”
With a vicious sneer, Eddy said, “I’m afraid that Tompkins is indisposed. Indefinitely.”
While my mind wanted to spin in a hundred different directions, I worked to keep my focus. My life depended on it. There was nothing else I could do for Tompk
ins, but I could save myself. In the top right drawer of the desk was a gun, and I needed some way to get to it.
“Agent Vargas, I can’t allow you to testify for the Raiders. They have to go away, and I have to get access to their gun trade. But first, you have to go away.”
He raised his hand to reveal a knife with a long blade that caught the light. When I started to reach for the desk drawer, he dove at me. Frantically, I struggled to open the drawer and get the gun. Before I could, the knife pierced me in the arm. A scream tore from my lips with the onslaught of pain. I didn’t have time to recover before he stabbed me again in the chest and then in the stomach.
In agony, I collapsed onto the floor and tried to block some of Eddy’s hits. But I began to grow weak and soon couldn’t lift my arms. It was then I heard a shout from the doorway. As hard as I struggled to keep my eyes open, it was futile, and I felt myself slipping away.
TWENTY-THREE
BISHOP
I felt like the biggest bastard imaginable as I made my way out of Samantha’s office building. What the hell had I been thinking? Well, I guessed I knew what I had been thinking—I had once again let my dick control my decision-making. Just the thought of the angry sex we’d had caused my cock to throb for a second round.
When my phone rang, I dug it out of my pocket. It was Rev. “Yes. I got the depositions delivered. I’m not a total idiot.”
“That’s not why I’m calling.”
“What is it?”
A pause came on the other end. “Was Samantha okay when you saw her?”
I didn’t think Rev would want me to answer that question honestly, so I replied, “Yeah. Why?”
“She wasn’t alone?”
“No. She had a bodyguard outside her door.”
“Oh. Good.”
“Rev, what the fuck is going on?”
He sighed. “Eddy’s gone off the grid again, even from the Diablos. And I’m worried about what he said before he disappeared, B.”
Anxiety spiked in my bloodstream as I gripped the phone. “What?”
“He said that without Samantha’s testimony, there wouldn’t be a case against us Raiders, so she needed to disappear. Then we would be behind bars, and he and the Diablos could take on the Rodriguez cartel for the guns.”
