Untouchable: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Kathryn Thomas

  “I say we should’ve blown his brains out anyways, just for the inconvenience of letting something like that happen at his club,” Dylan added unhelpfully.

  “We do not blow the brains out of innocent people,” Lind growled up at them. The two were newly appointed members who had just made the leap from their prospects positions. Their promotions had given them confidence, and it was getting on his nerves.

  Both young men paled instantly.

  “Yes, Lind,” Phil said.

  “Sorry, Lind,” Dylan muttered.

  Jacob hid an amused grin behind a tall pint of dark stout.

  Shaking his head in disgust, Lind stood and left them. He searched out Alec with his eyes and was unsurprised to find out that his best friend had been watching him all along from a small, quiet table within a corner booth. Lind took a deep breath and forced his suddenly shaky legs to carry him forward.

  When he sat down, he found a tall glass of red draught already waiting for him.

  “I took the liberty,” Alec said.

  Lind nodded gratefully. “I appreciate it.” They clinked their glasses and took a few hearty chugs.

  “How are you holding up?” Lind asked after a few moments of companionable silence.

  This was the way they talked when it was just the two of them. Real talk, no bullshit. There was no Viper and there was no President. There was only Lind Addams and Alec Moore.

  “I’ve been shot at before,” Alec said.

  “I know that,” Lind conceded. “But this time was different. It affected you differently.”

  “I guess it did,” his friend admitted, reluctantly.

  Alec simply had not been the same since that night at the Cobra. It wasn’t that he was afraid or more fragile—he couldn’t be that if he tried. But it had shaken him up. It had given him a kind of anger that Lind had never seen in his best friend before.

  Now, as they sat quietly in the shadows of the pub, Lind studied him carefully. There were lines etched deeply in his best friend’s handsome face that weren’t there before. There were shadows in his black irises that weren’t there before. There was tension in his proud shoulders that wasn’t there before.

  “Why?” Lind finally brought himself to ask. He couldn’t put his finger on it. What was different about this shooting? Enemies had tried taking out the MC’s president before. What made this time one of a kind?

  “It just did.”

  Lind shook his head. “Well, whatever it is, you’d better snap out of it.”

  Alec’s dark eyes flashed dangerously. “What did you just say?”

  Lind stood his ground. “You heard me,” he said. “We all want to find whoever did this to us, but it’s like you’re obsessed. You haven’t been able to focus on anything else since. It’s making them nervous.”

  “Did they send you to talk to me?”

  Lind had to fight back a laugh at the affronted expression on Alec’s face. “No,” he said. “But I’m doing it anyway. You’re making everyone uncomfortable; it’s bound to get ugly.”

  Lind Addams had been the Viper enough to know that when nerves ran so close to the skin, things were bound to get out of hand. And that was about the last thing the MC needed right now.

  Alec scowled dangerously, but he didn’t argue. Somehow, Lind was getting through to him. “If only we could find that bitch,” he said. “She must know something.”

  Lind did his best not to tense up. He shrugged. “She’s vanished, man. Besides, she probably doesn’t know anything useful. Somebody must’ve put her up to it and chances are they just ordered her around.”

  Alec grunted. “Perhaps,” he said, begrudgingly. “Still…are you sure there was no sign of her when you found your bike?”

  “Don’t you think I would’ve brought it up by now if that were the case?”

  Alec blew out a frustrated breath and ran a hand across his face. In that moment, he looked as tired as Lind had ever seen him. “Shit. This is driving me mad. Three weeks, and we still know squat.”

  Lind let it go. He let the silence fall back upon them, and he let his friend relax—at least, as much as Alec could, given the circumstances. He let some of the tension ebb away, because there could be no real talk when tension was in the way.

  When he felt like he could be heard again, Lind spoke. “Alec,” he said quietly. He waited until his friend lifted his head and he had his full, undivided attention before he went on. “What’s going on?”

  Alec shifted a little in his chair. He was uncomfortable, and the fact that he was letting it show told Lind that he would finally be getting something real out of it. “Is it so odd that I would want to find out who ambushed our club?”

  “No,” Lind admitted. “It’s odd that you would be obsessed with it. Like you said, it’s not the first time we’ve been set up. It’s not the first time the cartel showed their disapproval. It’s not the first time somebody tried to kill you. But you’re pissed off, and it’s the kind of pissed off that tells me that this is personal.”

  Alec stared at him. “Fuck off,” he finally snapped. “Just leave me alone, will you?”

  Lind grinned. “Sorry, I can’t do that.”

  Alec glared at him. He was silent for so long that Lind was afraid he would really have to pull the words out of him like a dentist does to teeth.

  Finally, however, he relented. “Fine,” he said, with a deep sigh that was so out of character it instantly had Lind sitting up straighter. “You really want to know?”

  “I really want to know.”

  Alec hesitated for just a moment longer before he finally spat out, “Linda’s pregnant.”

  Lind did a double take. He would have expected anything, but not this revelation about his friend’s old lady. “What?”

  “She’s pregnant,” Alec repeated. “She’s twelve weeks along. They’re twins.”

  Lind’s eyes were wide. “Wow,” he said. “Congrats, man.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Alec said, waving his hand as if to bat away any attempt at celebration. “Keep it down.”

  “Why?” Lind found himself smiling wide. “You’ll have to marry her now.”

  Alec grinned. “Jerk.” He didn’t seem to mind the suggestion.

  Lind tried to picture Alec and Linda’s tumultuous relationship ending with a white picket fence and twin kids, and he had to admit that it didn’t seem that absurd.

  “Why haven’t you told anybody?” he asked.

  “The tension with the cartel was escalating,” Alec said. “I didn’t want the news leaking and for somebody to use it against me.”

  Lind nodded. Now that he could understand. “I still don’t get what this has to do with what happened at the Cobra sending you off your rocket though.”

  “I’m about to be a father,” Alec said. “Don’t you get it? I’m about to have babies, and someone almost took that away from me. Someone almost took me away from them.” He shook his head and looked down. “I realize it sounds stupid, but it is what it is.”

  Lind remained silent for a few moments, his mind reeling. He really didn’t know this side of Alec. It was jarring and endearing all at the same time.

  “It doesn’t sound stupid,” he finally said. “I understand.”

  Alec nodded. “So, I need to find the son of a bitch who almost destroyed my family. And then destroy him.”

  The dangerous fire was back in Alec’s eyes, the fire that Lind knew so very well. Alec was just but ruthless, and Lind had no doubt that his friend wouldn’t rest until he got his revenge.

  “We’ll find them,” he said. “I promise you.”

  Alec nodded. “Keep what I told you to yourself, all right? I’d much rather make them nervous than have them blab on to somebody about Linda and the babies.”

  “Of course. My lips are sealed.” Lind grinned. “I think we should still have a toast. No one has to know what it is we’re toasting to.”

  Alec smirked. He waved at a waitress and ordered a second round. A few m
inutes later, he was joining the others for a game of darts and leaving Lind to sit alone.

  Lind watched them all from his safe distance. Things seemed to get messier by the minute, and he didn’t like that one damn bit. Time had just gotten to be more of the essence. Soon, Linda’s belly would begin to show, and then everyone would know. And if whoever had done this to the Diamondbacks was still out there, she would be in danger. Lind wasn’t about to let anything happen to his best friend’s babies. He needed to start closing in on somebody, and soon.

  He thought about what Jacob had said. Did he trust Eve too much? Should he be warier of her? It just seemed impossible for her to be involved somehow, and yet it would also seem unfathomable to many people for the daughter of Harold Robinson to go by Trinity and spend her nights with her legs wrapped around a strip pole.

  The thought of Eve’s legs around the pole sent an unbidden shiver down Lind’s spine. He had noticed her the minute he had walked in. He had seen his fair share of working girls, strippers, and dancers, but he had never seen anyone quite like her. There was a grace to her movements that he had not known before. Their eyes had met briefly as she danced, and Lind still remembered that thrill as if it had happened ten minutes ago. He had never been that enthralled.

  He had noticed her again later that night when he went out for a well-deserved cigarette break. She had been at the bar, and she had watched him. Their eyes had met again, and once again he had felt like he had just been electrocuted.

  Every day in the apartment, Lind had to pretend like he couldn’t see just how strikingly beautiful she was. How sexy. How smart. How funny even. He knew he couldn’t let himself be pulled in, but that pull was sometimes incredibly hard to resist. He was trying not to get attached, but the irrational surge of anger he had felt when Jacob had suggested that she might be playing them told him he was doing a poor job of it.

  He couldn’t blame Jacob. The man was being sensible, a quality that Lind seemed to be well on his way of losing wherever Eve was involved. After all, what did they know about her? Sure, they knew her background, but what about her? What about Eve, the person? What about her motives? What about her allegiances?

  And yet, the more he tried to take Jacob’s suspicions into consideration, the more absurd they seemed. Eve wasn’t a backstabber. She wasn’t a player. She was just a wild child who had found herself hanging with the wrong crew, on the wrong night, at the wrong time. Lind was certain she had nothing to do with what had happened.

  He couldn’t help but smile as he thought back on the dazed look on her face when they found her sitting in the grass by his bike. He had been enraged at the time, but now that he thought back on it, it was one of the funniest sights he had ever seen. He was surprised that she had managed to take his beloved Harley that far, and even more surprised to later discover that the only reason she had tipped over was that she was drunk. Eve Robinson knew how to ride a bike. Who would have thought? Certainly not Lind, who had not believed her when she told him and had made her take them both to the supermarket on his bike. They had gotten there unscathed, and Lind had secretly been very impressed.

  So, to sum up, Eve Robinson was sexy, smart, funny, and knew how to ride a bike. Lind Addams was screwed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Eve sat at the kitchen table, hunched over the pictures of all the people who had populated her nighttime life. Some of them she could never suspect, others she kept in the backburner of her mind as real possibilities, and others were so glaringly obvious that she discarded them right away. Three weeks in, and she still had pretty much no idea who could have been behind the attack on the Diamondbacks. She would be lying, however, if she said she wasn’t beginning to enjoy the investigation.

  She froze as soon as the thought entered her mind?

  Christ. What’s wrong with me?

  Why couldn’t she be happy with her life? Her daytime life, her real life. Most of the people she knew would kill for that life. She had a great job in an architecture firm; she was paid well; and, she had good credit. She had a loving family who had made sure she had never wanted for anything. She had a devoted boyfriend who was dying to marry her. What more could a girl want? What more could Eve want?

  She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she didn’t want this. Her life felt like a t-shirt several sizes too small. It felt tight and suffocating. On paper, Eve’s life was perfect, but she had long since realized that she didn’t want perfection.

  What Eve wanted was passion and adventure. She wanted a life that kept her guessing, where not everything was already said and done and where her path wasn’t set out for her. She wanted a life full of surprises. She didn’t want a white picket fence. She didn’t want a corporate job. She didn’t want all comforts.

  Comfortable. That was really the key word, wasn’t it? Eve didn’t want to be comfortable. She wanted to be alive.

  The front door opened then, and she watched as Lind walked in, a tired expression on his handsome face. Still, even with that tension that kept his whole figure so taut, he looked hotter than any other man she had ever seen.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  Lind shrugged. “Jacob is nowhere closer to narrowing down his suspicions than we are.”

  He tossed his leather jacket onto the couch, and Eve did her best not to notice the way the white t-shirt fell on his torso, outlining every hard muscle. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and went to sit next to her at the table, peering over her shoulder to look down at the scattered pictures and files they had gathered over the past three weeks.

  “Did you come to any new conclusion?” he asked.

  His face was very close to her, so much so that his warm breath ghosted over her ear. Eve tried to suppress a shiver.

  “Not really,” she said, doing her best not to show what his closeness was doing to her body.

  Lind sighed in frustration and sat back. He casually leaned one arm on the back of Eve’s chair, almost encircling her shoulders.

  “This is starting to piss me off,” he said darkly, taking a swig from his beer.

  “Same here,” Eve echoed absently. She tried downing some of the now-cool coffee from the mug sitting next to the various papers, hoping that the blackness of the liquid would help keep her suddenly rising urges in check. “I’m really tired of being cooped up here.”

  “I hear ya,” Lind admitted. “But guess what? I brought you another movie.”

  Eve rolled her eyes. Lind brought her DVDs to watch from time to time. They would pop them into the player and watch them together, pretending like they were spending a normal evening together. Except that there was nothing normal about the situation, and the stillness of her predicament coupled with her rising attraction for Lind were really starting to take their toll.

  “I don’t want to watch a movie,” she said curtly.

  Lind nodded. “OK. What do you want to do then?”

  There was something cheeky about that question. It was a barely discernible note in Lind’s voice, but it was there and Eve caught it. She stared at him, incredulous. Her heart pounded in her chest, sounding like war drums.

  Lind’s impossibly blue eyes were boring holes into her. He leaned in closer, but she wasn’t quite sure he noticed. Instinctively, she also leaned a little more toward him.

  “You are very beautiful,” he said, his voice quiet and soft and gravelly.

  Eve watched, hypnotized, as he reached out with one hand and pushed an errant lock of her blonde hair behind her ear. She swallowed hard, unable to say anything. She couldn’t move. She hardly dared to breathe for fear that this might go away. That he might go away.

  Lind’s hand cupped her cheek, and Eve’s heart did a wild somersault in her chest. Was this really happening? And if it was, could she let it happen?

  His lips landing on hers a split second later completely short-circuited her brain and silenced all doubts and questions. Suddenly, it seemed just unfathomable to not let this happen. He tasted like beer and cig
arette smoke, and it was intoxicating.

  “Stop me if you don’t want this,” he said, the words vibrating against her mouth.

  Eve shook her head. “I want this,” she heard herself say with a gasp, and she realized then and there just how true it was. She did want this. She wanted him. She wanted to feel his body against her, and she wanted him to make her moan.

  He was all too happy to oblige. Before she even had the chance to realize what was happening, Lind was picking her up and carrying her to the bedroom. He had his palms spread firmly across her butt cheeks, as her legs wrapped around his waist.

  He dropped her unceremoniously onto the mattress, but Eve didn’t protest at the rough treatment: this was exactly the kind of passion she had been longing for without even realizing. She realized it now, however, and the knowledge that the passion that she craved was literally at her fingertips filled her with electricity. She felt wired, electrically charged. She felt like her whole body was filled with a kind of raw, primordial energy that she never suspected she could possess.