Wicked Ties (Steele Security Series)

by Justice, A. D.

  “Get ready to go. We need to leave,” Bull stated matter-of-factly as he walked into the closet. He came back out with two more Glock .45 pistols and had put additional clips in his back pockets.

  That seemed to suddenly snap Chaise into action as she dashed to his side, her eyes wide with fear and her breaths shallow, but for a different reason now. She followed closely behind him as he used his immense body as a human shield. His gun drawn and at the ready, he quietly moved through the house, checking the windows from the safety of the sides until he caught movement along the southern edge of his property.

  “A security team is en route, but I need to get you out of here now,” he turned his head to look at her. “When we get in my truck, keep your head down. Lie all the way down and don’t get up until I tell you.”

  Chaise nodded, fear taking over and apparently rendering her voice incapable of responding at the moment. She knew someone was after her, but to hunt her down at Bull’s house demonstrated their unyielding determination to get to her. If I’m not safe here with him, I’m not safe anywhere, she thought solemnly.

  Chaise followed Bull down the hall, through the kitchen, and into his truck that was parked in the garage. Quietly opening and closing the doors, Chaise slipped in and hid in the floorboard of the backseat. The garage door was eerily quiet as it raised and Bull gunned the engine, making a quick exit from the garage until he reached the road. In his rearview mirror, Bull watched as the Steele Security teams arrived en masse to secure his home and property.

  Bull had every confidence the men from Steele Security would thoroughly scrub the entire area until they either found the culprits or they deemed it clear. In the meantime, he made the decision of a safe place to take her—a place she could learn new skills to help protect herself and help him feel better. He would take her to the shooting range owned by Steele Security and teach her how to handle and shoot a pistol.

  “Chaise, you can get up now,” Bull had almost forgotten she was still lying in the floor in the back of his truck.

  Chaise slowly rose up and looked around before sitting up fully.

  “I feel like I’m being chauffeured sitting back here alone,” Chaise teased.

  Bull smiled at her in the rearview mirror and her stomach did somersaults. He was more than gorgeous when he smiled. He didn’t smile much, but when he did, it made it all worth the wait. She couldn’t help but return the smile as she asked, “Where are we going now?”

  “I’m taking you somewhere safe while they clear the house. We’re going to the shooting range and you’re going to learn to handle a pistol,” Bull stated with a glint of humor and anticipation in his eyes.

  “Oh yeah, because the shooting range is the best place for me,” she replied sarcastically.

  “Yes, it is. You think someone will try to get to you at a Steele Security shooting range, where everyone is armed to the teeth and an expert mark? No, sweetheart, that’s the safest place for you to be right now,” he explained.

  “If you say so,” she replied while looking out the window. Chaise was seriously dreading the situation. Her secret was killing her and it just kept piling up. Should she pretend to not know how to use guns so that Bull could teach her? Or should she just go ahead and tell him that she was fairly well versed in handling guns and didn’t really need instruction? Opting to reduce the backlash she was sure to get later, she decided to share some information with him.

  “I’m actually pretty handy with a pistol already,” she said nonchalantly.

  “Really? Who taught you?” Bull was skeptical and watching her carefully in the mirror.

  “My dad and my brothers,” she said softly. “When we were growing up, my dad always said all his kids needed to be familiar with guns so that we had a healthy respect for them. He used to take us out in the back yard once a week to practice.”

  “Where are your dad and brothers now?” Bull asked, clearly not happy that they weren’t helping to protect her.

  She leaned up between the front seats to be closer to Bull but to also try to reestablish some connection between them. She couldn’t tell him everything, but she wanted to convey in some way that she was telling him everything she possibly could.

  “My dad and I don’t have the best relationship. We haven’t for many years now. I left home and have tried to make it on my own. He is more than controlling, Colton. He is overbearing and impossible to please. I talk to my siblings occasionally but they all have their own separate lives. My mom is caught in the middle, so when I spend time with her, I try to leave everything else out.”

  Keeping her dress in place as best she could, Chaise worked her way between the seats and claimed the front seat beside Bull. “I know you’re probably wondering why I haven’t run back home to my family in all this. I just…I can’t do that, Colton. If you don’t want to be stuck with me, I understand—you didn’t ask for this mess. I just want you to know…..I want you to believe me when I say I mean no harm to Noah or his wife. And if my being here, with this gang and whoever else after me, puts them in danger, I will leave right now with no hard feelings.”

  Pulling up to a red light, Bull took a moment to read her body language, to study what she wasn’t saying, and to decide what he should do next. Do I cut her loose and protect Reaper and Brianna? Do I keep her close to keep an eye on her and protect them all? She kept her eyes trained on him, never breaking eye contact, never flinching and never showing that she was telling him anything but the truth.

  “I don’t want you go to anywhere,” he finally replied. And that was the truth. He didn’t want her to leave. He didn’t know if he had it in him to pursue anything serious with her, but he couldn’t deny the attraction. For once, he thought, maybe I should give someone a chance. “I believe that you don’t mean them any harm. As far as danger, Reaper’s job automatically puts him in danger and he’s used to it—he’s good at what he does. Brianna is pretty tough, too.”

  “She sounds great. I hope I get to meet her one day,” Chaise replied absently, looking out the window. “And I hope we find Aura soon. I’m really worried about her, Colton.”

  After a couple of minutes, she realized he hadn’t responded. Looking at him, she saw the muscle in his jaw jumping and recognized the hard set of his teeth. Aura was still a sore spot between them. Bull didn’t believe her and she knew she wasn’t lying. Before she could say anything about it, Bull pulled into the drive of a gated compound, keyed in the code, and soon they pulled into the parking area.

  Bull reached across Chaise and removed a Ruger LCR .357 from his glove compartment. After grabbing a box of rounds, he and Chaise made their way through the secure building to the shooting range area. Bull wordlessly handed Chaise a pair of ear plugs and the Ruger pistol. He set the rounds down on the shelf beside them and proceeded to put up a target and sent it out on the target line.

  He stepped back, crossed his arms, and said, “Impress me.”

  It was definitely a challenge—and not just about her ability to shoot a pistol. She knew he was challenging everything she’d said to him. He was making her prove what she’d told him, and most likely using this test to gauge if she had told the truth about Aura. Unwilling to back down, or to risk the small advances they had already made, Chaise met his challenge head on.

  She picked up the box of rounds and removed five bullets. Expertly popping the chamber, she loaded all five bullets in and snapped the cylinder shut. She carefully put the gun down on the shelf, put her earplugs in and grabbed a pair of safety glasses. Once set, she took her shooting stance. She held the gun in her right hand, extended her arm and brought her left palm up underneath her right hand, wrapping her fingers firmly around her right hand to help steady her arm.

  Letting out a calming breath, she aimed, and then slowly squeezed the trigger five times in a row. Without looking at Bull, she put the gun back on the shelf, removed her ear plugs and safety glasses, and pushed the button to retrieve the target. Chaise removed it from the line
and smugly handed it to Bull.

  “Is a one-and-a-half inch grouping at twenty-five yards enough to impress you?” Chaise asked with a hint of sarcasm and a hefty amount of pride. She knew it was good but she waited for his confirmation. But for good measure, she also hid the intense stinging in her damn hand from firing so many of the .357 rounds in such close succession.

  Bull smiled, dropped his arms, and nodded. “Impressive, indeed. Remind me not to piss you off,” he said jokingly.

  After Bull finished his practice shots, Chaise helped him pick up all their belongings and walked back toward his truck. One of the other Steele Security men stopped Bull. Bull turned to Chaise, “Can you hold onto these for me for a few minutes?”

  “Sure will,” she said happily, taking the few .357 rounds that were left, along with the pistol, and dropping them in her purse. Bull walked off with the other man, leaving Chaise to walk around inside the building alone for a few minutes. She saw a large picture hanging in the main hallway and approached it. Instantly recognizing it as a company all-employee picture, she searched each face looking for the men she’d recently met.

  She smiled when she found Bull in the midst of the all the primarily male employees. He was younger in the picture, but he had certainly only improved with age. She kept looking through the faces until she found Shadow and then Rebel. When she found the next face, her entire body froze. She would recognize him anywhere, even if she hadn’t seen him in years. He had aged, of course, since she last saw him, but there was no doubt of who it was. He was still just as handsome as she remembered. It was Noah.

  Finding her breath, she turned to move away from the picture and saw Bull watching her at the end of the hallway. Not missing a step, she smiled at him and said, “I found you in the company picture.”

  Bull nodded, “Who else did you find in it?”

  “All of you,” she answered honestly.

  “Even Reaper?” he asked, cocking his head to the side and narrowing his eyes at her as if he dared her to lie to him.

  “Yes, even Noah,” she answered but refused to look away from him.

  “Have the gun?” Bull asked, swiftly changing topics.

  “Yep,” Chaise answered as she patted her purse.

  Bull cocked one eyebrow up at her, “You know that’s illegal, right?”

  “I have a concealed carry permit. I’m legal,” Chaise replied with a smile at Bull’s surprised look.

  Back in Bull’s truck, he proclaimed, “I think I need to take you away for a while until the heat dies down.”

  Chaise knew his comment was only related to him doing his job, but the way he said it sent shivers down her spine. The thought of going away with Bull was more than enticing. But her determination to find Aura overshadowed her desire to run away from everything with the very sexy man seated next to her.

  “As much as I’d love that, Bull, I can’t. I have to go to work tomorrow.” She kept her voice calm, projecting a confident outer image, but inside she was dying. She had been dreading that very conversation all day.

  “Chaise, in case you haven’t noticed, your employer is apparently into some very bad shit. The Tres Sieses are after you and work is the last place you need to be. Even though the breach at my house today was a false alarm, we still have to be careful.”

  Bull’s last statement was the termination of that conversation in his mind. He was damn good at his job but he couldn’t protect her at Viboro—the very place from where she thought young girls turned up missing. He was on the job for a reason and he intended to make sure she stayed safe.

  “Colton, I’m going. I have to find Aura. I know you don’t believe me, but she was there—I talked to her mom, and I’m going to find her! I have to go back to work and try to back trace her from there,” Chaise argued.

  “No.”

  Chaise’s head whipped around to Bull, her glare burning through him and the steam coming off her raised the temperature in the truck ten degrees in two seconds flat.

  “No?” she asked incredulously. “Are you fucking kidding me? You think you can just say ‘no’ and that’s it?”

  “Yep.”

  “That doesn’t work on me, Colton. I left my overbearing father behind years ago. I’m the customer in this scenario and I say I’m going back to work!” Chaise shifted in her seat to turn her body toward Bull as she spoke. When she did, her already short dress hiked up her thighs even higher and Bull was reminded that, in their rush to leave his house, Chaise had left her panties behind.

  He suddenly forgot what they were arguing about and he had a hard time focusing on the road. She was still sitting facing him, the flowing material moving with her every breath, moving up and down her smooth skin. Every few seconds, it would ride up high enough just to torture and tease him with the threat of a very public display, before it moved lower again.

  She was still admonishing him with everything she had, but for the life of him, he had no idea what she had said. He was both dying inside and trying to focus on not killing them both by running off the road or driving into oncoming traffic. He felt like he could breathe again when his driveway came into sight.

  “Damn! Finally!” he yelled, then realized that Chaise was still raking him over the coals and he’d just interrupted her rant.

  “Finally what?” Chaise asked irately.

  Bull didn’t answer her—he simply turned into his driveway. He parked his truck in the garage and quickly jumped out. Chaise sat in the truck, stunned at his behavior, and contemplated the various scenarios that could occur should she just get her stuff and leave right then. The defiant part of her wanted to take the chance to handle everything alone. Maybe it had been a mistake showing up at Noah’s wedding and getting his company involved.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Chaise unbuckled her seatbelt and, with a heavy heart, resigned herself to the fact that she couldn’t do it alone. Just as she started to reach for her purse, two strong arms pushed underneath her and easily lifted her out of the truck.

  “What the hell-,” she yelled, startled and momentarily confused.

  Bull’s deep-chested growl was his only reply as he swiftly moved from the truck to the door. Expertly maneuvering through the opening with her in his arms, he kicked the door shut behind him and continued straight to his bedroom. Inside, he put her down in the center of the bed and immediately covered her body with his own—clothes and all.

  “Were you doing that on purpose just to make me crazy?” Bull’s husky voice confronted her, desire infused in his every word as his lips hovered just above the skin on her throat.

  “Doing what?” she asked him as he turned her face to the side, giving himself full access to her neck.

  Her arms encircled him when he started licking and kissing her neck, just below her ear. Bull’s head moved downward, his mouth nipping and licking her. He sucked her soft skin into his mouth, between his teeth, in the most erotic mixture of pain and pleasure Chaise had ever felt. She grabbed his head and pulled his mouth to hers, desperate to taste him and be claimed by him.

  Their mouths collided and Bull released a guttural moan of satisfaction that Chaise felt, warming every part of her body from the inside out. Bull’s tongue lightly licked her lips, pushing its way through. He took his time, savoring her and enjoying the feeling of her slick, wet velvet tongue against his. Their erotic dance set Chaise on fire. She tried to take control, tried to increase the tempo, but Bull continued to keep his own pace, thwarting her attempts.

  Ending their kiss, Bull raised his head to look at Chaise. Her plump, red lips were slightly swollen from their passionate kiss. Her skin was reddened and warm, her eyes were glazed over and full of heated desire. The quick rise and fall of her chest revealed her ragged breaths and her need for him to finish the sensual assault he’d started. And he had every intention of completely owning her before he was finished with her.

  Using his knee to part her legs, putting him directly between her legs, he held his weight with
one arm while the other hand slowly moved down her side. His touch left a trail of fire in its wake, branding her with his unique mark. When his fingers reached the outside of her leg, his skin on her skin, she thought she would come completely undone. His fingers traced circles on her skin until he reached the innermost sensitive part of her thigh.

  “Oh my god, Colton. If you don’t touch me now, I’m going to die!”

  The carnal plea in her voice urged the primal side of him to take her right then, with no thought, rhyme or reason. Just. Take. Her. The protective side of him, the side that she had awakened in him, prevented him from doing just that. That voice told him to take her slowly, to build her up to heights so high she would be ruined for any other man. It urged him to make it so that she could only think of him and what he alone was capable of doing to her senses.

  His deep voice lowered to a whisper against the skin on her neck. “That’s how I felt in the truck. With this fucking short dress,” he said as his fingers moved slowly up her thigh, “riding up on your legs.”

  “Colton, please!”

  “Then it flared up, teasing me but never giving me what I wanted,” he continued as if she wasn’t begging. His fingers moved higher still, barely grazing the outside of her core and causing her hips to jerk toward him involuntarily. “Reminding me that your fucking panties were here on my floor. And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it,” he growled.

  Chaise pulled on his short hair, pulling his face up to hers. Her eyes were like fire and her breathing was choppy and fast. “NOW, Colton!”

  His sexy smirk didn’t help matters. He was dead set on claiming her at his own pace.

  “Chaise, baby, you’ve only read about the things I will do to you. By the time I’m finished with you tonight, no other man will ever be able to even come close to pleasuring you. Just relax and I’ll prove it to you—one touch at a time.”

  The promises of pleasure from the sexy man on top of her weighed heavy on her mind and her body, like a physical being, watching and waiting to fulfill every word he’d spoken. Chaise took a deep breath, trying to calm herself before the anticipation caused an anxiety attack. As her chest rose in mid-breath, Bull’s mouth caught her nipple between his teeth with light pressure. Chaise moaned loudly but made no attempt to move away, allowing him to take his fill.