by Leah Wilde
“Yeah, we saw her,” Rex said. “She’s dangerous, man. Watch out.”
“She’s up to something is what he means to say,” Vice snapped. “Watch your ass, Hawk. I mean, she just has that look. She’s a professional of some kind. Either a call girl trying to work your ass over or a thief who’s going to take you for every penny your worth, probably while you’re here tonight.”
“Guys, I appreciate your concern, and I know she’s probably up to something, but she’s not going to find anything. Not unless I practically hand it all over to her. Anyway, she’s at the house under lock and key and under the watchful eyes and guns of my security team, so I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be either.” I took another drink from my bottle.
“Alright, if you think you’re safe, boss,” Alvin said.
“Just don’t get mad when the shit hits the fan,” added Vice.
“So, I called this meeting to see what we have on our radar as far as buyers for the diamond. Anything?” I asked.
“We’ve got a guy who wants to buy, but we’re still trying to negotiate a price,” Rex said.
“I will take no less than a billion for it,” I told him. “It’s listed as priceless, so we can name pretty much any amount we want. I’m not going less than a billion, though, because that puts it at just under twice the value of the next most valuable golden diamond. I want to hurry and get rid of it before it becomes a curse, but I don’t want to have a damn fire sale on it.”
“Got it. I told him five billion,” Rex said.
“Great, that gives us some room,” I agreed. “Anything else?”
“That’s really it,” Alvin said. “Rex is talking to the potential buyer, and the rest of us are just waiting to see what happens.”
“Everyone else is being quiet,” Vice added.
“Now that we have it, no one wants to buy it.” Ace laughed. His laugh was like thunder. We sometimes called him The Hammer because his last name was Hammer, and his fists were massive. He was a big guy. He was our muscle, no doubt.
“Tell us more about your girl,” Rex joked.
“You saw her, right?” I started. “I mean, do I need to say more? She’s fine as hell.”
“How is she in bed?” Of course Vice wanted to go straight for the gold with the question that was on everyone’s mind.
“Man, she is electric. Her body is tight and toned, and she’ll take anything you give her,” I said, thinking about that sweet little body lying naked in front of me. I took another drink from my bottle. It was going to be a long night with the guys. I still couldn’t get her off my mind.
Chapter Eleven
Felicity
After I heard Hawk’s motorcycle pull off, my first order of business was to disobey him. I went straight to his office despite that he had told me to stay out. I wasn’t looking for information on where I could find the Golden Diamond, though. I was looking for information on Hawk Renner. I wanted to know more about the man I was staying with. Unless I found something heinous, I was going to agree to stay as long as he would keep me. Or as long as it took to find the Golden Diamond and swipe it before disappearing.
Unfortunately, I knew that Felicity Tarren was going to have to disappear for good after this job. I was going to have to adopt a permanent alias since I was stupid enough to give him my real name. It wasn’t like I hadn’t already been a hundred different people at different times in my life. I was just going to have to add one more to the list. No big deal.
I walked the bookshelves in his office, looking at the pictures he had framed on his walls. There were all sorts of pictures of him with different people. There were a lot of pictures of him with different politicians, creating an indisputable record of their dealings, probably both for showing off and just in case someone wanted to throw him under the bus after a deal gone bad. It was a brilliant CYA tool, and it seemed so innocent to the casual eye.
I wasn’t interested so much in his business dealings. I wanted something personal. I wanted to understand his inner workings. I found a picture of him when he was younger with four other guys.
“This is more like it, Hawk. You’ll have to tell me who these guys are one day,” I said to his young face as I picked the frame up from its spot on the shelf.
He was so much younger then! He had been thinner, too. It was obviously before he had started working out. I recognized the guys standing around him, too. They had all been at the Paragon when I walked in, but I hadn’t noticed that they were actually with him. They had all sort of stayed apart. They had been doing their own thing, I supposed.
But there they were, five young men standing behind their motorcycles with their MC vests on. They were in front of an old run-down garage. That must have been where their clubhouse was.
“There’s no way it’s still, is it, Hawk?” I asked the younger Hawk in the picture, but he wasn’t saying anything. I realized that I held in my hand a piece of his history and a clue as to the whereabouts of the diamond. There was no way he was hiding the diamond in that dump, though, I told myself.
I put the picture back and continued to look around the room. I didn’t find any truly personal photos. The photos of the guys in the MC were about as personal as it got, and there were only a couple of those that didn’t feature everyone in formal tuxes or suits handling MC business.
“You’ve got to have a personal life, Hawk,” I said to the empty room, but then I caught myself.
I sat down in his chair with another picture of the five MC members in my hands. It was a more recent picture but they still all had the same looks on their faces. Their smiles were genuine. It wasn’t a photo-op. It was five brothers hanging out and having a good time together, no matter where they were or what kind of business they were up to.
“You should probably take your own advice,” I told myself, realizing that I had more in common with Hawk than I had originally realized.
If I’d had any pictures to go through, he would have found the same thing that I was finding in his office. I didn’t have a life outside of work, and my line of work even prevented me from having pictures of it. The only pictures that existed of my job were pictures of empty jewelry boxes and the upset faces of their owners that appeared in news articles.
I certainly didn’t have any pictures of Kleo! The last thing I wanted was something identifying my boss if I ever got caught. No, that would never do.
“Miss Felicity,” a member of his house staff said cautiously as he opened the door.
“Yeah?” I looked up from the picture. This time I wasn’t guilty of snooping, not really, so I didn’t feel the need to hide what I was doing.
“Mr. Hawk said you weren’t supposed to be in here.” The young man entered the room and spoke politely, but I got the point.
“Sorry, I know. I was just looking at some of his pictures. He doesn’t have to know, right?” I said as I put the picture in my hand on his desk, leaving a little sign that I had been in here.
“I guess not. Your clothes are upstairs if you would like to change,” he told me.
“Thank you, but I think I’ll be calling it a night,” I told him as I walked past.
“Excellent. He said feel free to use his bed,” the staffer told me.
“Thanks,” I told him as I walked away. I would have used his bed anyway.
I went upstairs and pulled his shirt off. I took my clothes, still on the hangers from the store, and put them in Hawk’s closet. I pushed his t-shirts aside to make a temporary space for my new clothes. I knew he would probably freak when he saw them, but that was part of the point.
I went to the bathroom. It was time to get ready for bed, instead of just jumping in bed like I had the night before, and I also wanted to be fresh in case Hawk wanted some action when he returned.
After all, that was why he was keeping me around, regardless of what he wanted to say.
****
Hawk
After hanging out with guys, I sort of wanted Felicity to be gone when
I made it home. I knew that if I found her there, it would only serve to complicate my life. I had been all work for so long, I didn’t know how to handle someone trying to move into my life the way she was. Besides, I knew the only reason she was really there probably had something to do with the diamond. It would have been best for both of us if she was gone.
Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing until I was in the house and back upstairs.
I came home and parked my old bike in the garage. I trudged upstairs and walked to my room. I opened the door to find the shape of her body under my sheets.
Despite how much I had been hoping she would have left while I was at the meeting, I was relieved to find that she was still there.
I walked into the room quietly and went straight to my closet to get out of my biker clothes. I opened the door and turned on the light, careful not to hold the door too wide. I didn’t want the light to wake her.
I tried not to laugh when I saw the clothes Kelvin had purchased for her hanging in front of my t-shirts in the closet. That was too funny.
“You are moving in, aren’t you?” I asked her clothes in a low voice.
I shrugged off my vest and hung it up. I pulled off my boots and put them back in place on the floor, and I threw my sweaty shirt and jeans in the dirty clothes hamper. I stood naked in front of my mirror and considered whether or not to put on any clothes. I was pretty sure she was sleeping naked under the sheets, so I didn’t bother putting anything on, just in case she decided she wanted some action when I slid under the covers with her.
When I walked out of the closet and cut off the light, another light caught my attention, flashing on the nightstand. Her phone sat there next to her purse, and it was plugged into the wall. Apparently, she had found her charger.
I knew I had told her to ask Kelvin to get her one if she still needed it, and I wasn’t sure how I knew it, but I just knew that was her own charger, despite what she had told me in the office when I caught her snooping.
“What did you find while I was gone?” I asked her while I stood over her sleeping body. I was glad she wasn’t awake to tell me.
I slid carefully into the bed. The game wasn’t over yet between us. From what I could tell, we were tied, but the rules were already starting to change, and things were getting more complicated just because she had stayed the night. I knew she was going to agree to stay longer, and I knew that as much as the sex did it for her, that wasn’t going to be the only reason she was staying.
For some stupid ass reason, I didn’t care.
I put an arm around her thin waist and pulled her to me. She moaned in her sleep and pressed her naked body against mine. I knew that in the morning we would resume our game, but for now, she was just Felicity, the beautiful redhead who challenged me physically and intellectually, who turned me on with no limits, and who didn’t seem to have any problems allowing herself to be vulnerable in my presence.
I held her close. I accepted her vulnerability, regardless of where things would go from there. I got the feeling that no matter who had sent her, part of her needed me.
And I figured I could at least admit to myself that part of me needed her. I closed my eyes slowly, making sure she was still asleep before I let myself drift off.
Chapter Twelve
Felicity
“I guess you know by now I’m planning on taking you up on your offer to stay here with you,” I told Hawk in bed on the morning after our second night together. We lay in bed with our naked bodies pressed against each other. His arm was around my waist and I had my fingers intertwined with his on my stomach. His arms and hands were so large compared to mine. I really liked the way it felt to have my hand on top of his.
“Good,” he said smoothly in my ear. “For how long?”
“As long as you’ll have me,” I told him.
“That could be for a while,” he teased. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
“You’ll run me off eventually,” I answered him, and I knew he would. Once I completed my job, I would find a way to either run off before he noticed or get him to run me off before he could realize it had been me.
He sighed. “We’ll see.”
I knew he didn’t believe me. He didn’t have any reason to. He didn’t know who I really was, and so far things had been pretty good between us, so there was no reason to pretend we could see the future. Besides, it was one of those silly things people always said at the beginning of every relationship. It was the same argument every time. Except I wasn’t saying it out of low self-esteem or because I was trying to get more attention from him. I was saying it because I knew it to be true. This thing we were doing had an expiration date on it.
“Well, if you’re going to stay, we’re going to need to set up some rules,” he said, and he slid his hand down between my legs, stopping as his fingers slid down over my slit.
“What kind of rules?” I asked.
“Sexual rules. You’re going to need to know how to behave if you’re going to stay with me,” he said with his lips just over my neck. He kissed me as his fingers slid along my lips.
“Is that so?” I asked. I grabbed his hand and pulled it back up to my stomach. I was going to need to know more about these rules before I let anything go on this morning.
“Well, first, if you’re going to stay, you have to agree that your body belongs to me,” he said. Then he kissed my bare shoulder.
“What does that mean?” I asked playfully.
“It means that you agree I can have you any time I want you, and any way I want you,” he explained.
“What if I don’t want it the way you do?” I figured that was the logical question that needed to be asked next.
“Well, that’s the second rule. If you don’t want to consent to behavior, or if you’re unsure, we have safe words,” he answered in a patient tone.
“Safe words,” I repeated. My blood turned to ice. He was serious.
“Yep, and I believe in keeping them simple. So, if everything’s good, it’s green. I don’t expect to actually use that one, but I might ask you if everything is green or whatever to make sure we’re good. If we need to slow down, or if you’re unsure, use yellow. It’s not a definite no, but it means we’re being careful. And if it’s a no, that’s red. You tell me red, we stop what we’re doing,” he explained to me.
“Green, yellow, and red, huh?” I laughed. He was actually serious about it. What had I gotten myself into?
“What do you think?” I felt his weight shift behind me as he sat up to check on me.
“I think I’m going to be using safe words,” I told him, taking a deep, shaky breath. I couldn’t deny that all of this was something new to me, and it was making me nervous to agree to it all. “Is there a third rule?”
He was quiet for a moment, and I started to think he was trying to come up with the third rule.
“You can’t make it up right now.” I laughed.
“No, I’m not making it up. I’m trying to decide if I really want to tell you what it is,” he said cautiously.
“Well, how am I supposed to obey the rule if I don’t know it, Hawk?” I teased.
“Okay. The third rule is that as long as we’re doing this, it’s just us,” he said.
“Of course it is.” I gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m not that kind of girl,” I told him. It struck me as a little odd that he would make that one of his rules.
“What I mean to say is that as long as we’re doing this, you are mine and mine alone. Out of respect for you, I will not bring anyone else into this situation without getting the literal green light from you. Also, if you want to try anything we’ve done with someone else, I want you to talk to me first. But, if we are expecting this to only last for so long, then I don’t expect either of those situations to happen.”
“Great. Me either,” I told him. What bothered me was that he sounded troubled by his third rule. Were there other rules beyond that?
“Good. Now that we ag
ree, it’s time to get up. If we don’t get up now, we’re never getting out of bed today,” he said suddenly. He kissed me and pulled his hand away as he slid out of bed.
His motions felt sudden as well, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I felt like things were already starting to get more complicated than they needed to be, and that was fine, as long as I knew what was going on and could keep my eye on the prize. In fact, if it got more complicated for him, it would be more likely that he wouldn’t see what I was up to.
But it wasn’t getting complicated just for him.
