by Zoey Parker
His words satisfied two purposes. First, it was just good to hear his praise. I felt like we were connecting again after being separated all night. Second, I knew it was eating Coyote alive to hear him talk me up the way he was.
She had been prepared to throw me away, but little did she know, I had already been working my way in with someone who truly appreciated everything I had to offer. Bitch.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gunner
Sierra never ceased to amaze me. She had been impressing me since the night we met for the first time. It started before she even approached me boldly at Eden, when I spotted her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. That was when she had first impressed me, with her beauty.
Then, it just continued, until the latest moment when she’d amazed me, when I found her kneeling behind the car with Coyote. She was working on getting the location of the diamond for me, even as she told her old boss that she was trying to get to it before I did. She’d shot me a look to let me know that she was just using that line to get the information she wanted. She was good at working people, and that was exactly what she was doing with Coyote. She worked the hell out of her to get her to believe that somehow, after everything, she was looking out for Coyote’s interests.
I also saw something else that impressed me. When she grabbed Coyote’s bloody hand to use her pain to persuade her to talk, it seemed to me like a huge step in the right direction for her. If Sierra wanted to come with me after everything was said and done, I needed to see more of that kind of determination and less of the shock and terror I had seen on her face after dropping the body of my fallen brother to the ground.
“Someone get Coyote bandaged up,” I said as we emerged from between the cars. I shoved her forward and watched a couple of guys grab her. I didn’t know where I expected anyone to find bandages, but someone would be able to rig something up. We always did.
“So what’s the plan?” Sierra asked as we stood between the cars and the bikes.
“We get her bandaged up, and we get back on the road. We get to the house, neutralize any threats there, and we find the damn diamond. After that, I don’t know what we do.” I wanted to take her in my arms, but I felt like the tension between us was all that was holding us both up at that point. If we had allowed ourselves a moment’s comfort, we might have collapsed. I didn’t want to risk it. There was still much to do.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “How are we getting out there? Who am I riding with?”
I smiled and threw an arm across her shoulders. I pulled against me and gave her a quick kiss.
“I think we’re going to have to get creative with the rides,” I told her. “I’ve got to get someone out here to clear the road.”
“Already on it,” Luther said, overhearing me. “Already called the cleaner and told him to bring a crew.”
“Excellent. Luther, have you met Sierra yet?”
“No.” He held out one of his massive hands to her, and her hand disappeared in his grip. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” she said with a smile on her lips but shell shock in her eyes. It was all a bit overwhelming, and I could see that even though she’d been around all of this for a long time, she had only seen one aspect of it. She only knew what her job was. She didn’t care for the rest of it.
“Sierra, we sometimes call Luther The Boulder. His last name is Stone, which is convenient, and he is our muscle,” I explained to her.
“So if you ever need anyone to back you up or handle someone for you, give me a call.” He winked at her and went back to helping a few of the guys with their bikes. It seemed that some of them had been damaged in the melee.
While I watched several of my men kick their bikes over in disgust over the damages they had sustained, I decided it was time to have a quick talk to let everyone know what we were doing. I waved my hands and whistled to get everyone’s attention.
“Okay, we’re taking Sierra and Coyote back to Coyote’s mansion to find the Sun Stone. Sierra here was able to get the location of the diamond from the boss lady, so we know where it is. Now, that doesn’t mean we should expect this to be a walk in the park. It’s very possible there are men waiting for us at the house. If your bike is running, ride it. If it’s not, we have a cleaning crew on the way to clear the mess. There are plenty of cars and trucks behind me that you can use if you need to.”
I turned around and looked at the cars.
“In fact,” I said to myself, “I think I have an idea to make it even easier.”
“What’s that?” Sierra asked.
“I’m going to need someone to drive at least one of the cars in front. Shit, why don’t you do it?” I asked her. It was so obvious.
“Me?” She balked at first and started to step back.
“No, it’s a great idea,” I said, reaching for her to stop her from walking away. “Look, I can put a few of my guys in the car with you, but you drive in front of the pack. You already know where we’re going. You should be able to find it easily, right? Then, when we get there, the guards recognize you, so they don’t give you any problem when you go in. They’ll recognize the car and let you in. Then, we storm the place as we enter behind you.” It was a brilliant plan, I thought, and I was proud of myself for it.
She nodded as she considered it, looking at the sedan in front of me. “Yeah, okay, but what about Coyote?”
“She’s riding with me. I want to keep a close eye on her to make sure she doesn’t trying anything else stupid.” I gave her a smirk and nodded.
“Alright. Let’s do it.” She brushed my cheek with a hand as she walked by and blew me a kiss.
“Let me get someone to ride with you,” I told her.
“Sure.”
I turned around and raised my hands again, trying to get everyone’s attention. It was hard to whistle and shout over the engines roaring to life or sputtering and trying to come back to life.
“Luther,” I shouted. He had a voice that could be heard over the crowd.
“Boss,” he said, backing away from the bike he was tooling with.
“Tell them that if anyone needs a ride, I need to see them up here.”
“Got it.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at our other brothers to come up to the front if their bikes didn’t work.
Several guys came forward. I put three in the car with Sierra and explained that they were riding in front. I grabbed the other five and walked them over to a pickup truck that was purring as loudly as one of the motorcycles. Two climbed in front, and the other three got in the back.
Venom walked up and handed them guns. “In case you need them, these will come in handy,” he said.
“Good idea,” I agreed with him. “Let’s get as many of these in Immortal hands as we can,” I told him as I picked up a couple of assault rifles at my feet.
We walked through the crowd passing them out as I made my way back to my motorcycle. I drove up the shoulder of the road and pulled in front of the line of motorcycles, where Luther, Bryce, Venom, and Duncan straddled their bikes, waiting for me.
Sierra backed up, and the truck followed. They turned around up ahead of us and started driving towards the mansion. Duncan helped Coyote get onto my bike and put her arms around my waist so she could hold on.
“I’ll be careful,” I told her.
I didn’t know where my helmet was, and I hadn’t brought an extra one with me. Then again, it was the middle of the night, and we were handling official MC business. I didn’t really give a rat’s ass about a helmet as we started to pull through the wreckage of the running cars and dead men littering the highway.
The cleaning crew would come through soon and clear all of it away. By the time we were driving back from Coyote’s mansion, there would be no sign of the conflict left. And the cleaners would probably already be gone as well. They did excellent work, but no one ever wanted to be around when they showed up. From what I had heard, they were worse than the rest of m
y guys when it came to depravity. They did not care one way or the other, as long as there was no trace of what had happened when they were finished.
I tried to ignore the fact that I had one of the toughest bosses in the underworld on the back of my motorcycle. She had her firm arms around my waist and pulled herself tight against me. Her frame was narrow like Sierra’s, but she was a little shorter and much harder. Her body was all muscle and bone. It matched her cold, professional demeanor, and it made her current position really fucking erotic as far as I was concerned.
I had taken this woman with immense power and brought her way down, to the point that she wouldn’t even speak to anyone. She had a hole in her hand with a makeshift bandage wrapped around it. It was just a folded bandana one of the guys had in his back pocket. I felt her hands pressing against my stomach.
Apparently, her position wasn’t lost on her either. She let her hands slowly slide down over my belt. I felt her thumbs hook themselves over the top of my pants, holding her hands at about my hips, though it seemed like she wanted to let them sink even lower.
I shook my head and laughed to myself. She wasn’t as smooth as Sierra. It was obvious that Coyote had crafted her attitude and demeanor to do for her what Sierra’s body had done for her. In other words, if she had reached any lower, it wouldn’t have done anything for either one of us. It might have done something for Sierra later in the morning when I finally got her alone, but it wouldn’t have done anything for Coyote right then.
Still, I couldn’t deny that it felt really good to have a powerful woman under my thumb. I controlled her, and if I had wanted to, if I hadn’t been convinced that there was a future waiting for me with Sierra on the other side of everything, I knew I could have taken anything I wanted from her at that point, even sex. That thought inevitably led to my mind wandering and considering what she must have been like in bed. I wondered how that tight, firm, muscular body of hers would have felt underneath me, but I decided it wasn’t worth the energy.
She wasn’t going to make it through the night if I had my way.
Besides, I had Sierra, and I was pretty sure I would had have had no problem getting her to act domineering in the bedroom so I could break her down and make her serve me. I reached down and pulled her hands back up, keeping one hand on the handlebar of my bike. It was enough, I hoped, to get the message through to her that her advances were unnecessary and unwelcome.
Then, we were turning into the driveway of the mansion. We were pulling through the gate behind the pickup truck, and I got a look at her hideout and home for the first time. It was a glorious mansion with lights everywhere. Everything was brightly lit by lamp posts in her yard and accent lights on the house.
The house itself looked like a jewel already, which I thought was pretty fitting considering whose house it was. The place sparkled like a diamond ring, but we were going to fix that before the night was out.
As we pulled up, her guards poured out of the front of the house, realizing pretty quickly that we weren’t who they were expecting to return. They all had guns drawn. Luckily for us—unluckily for them—they weren’t quick to pull the trigger. They were going to regret that once twenty or more bikers stormed the house with guns blazing. There weren’t enough of them to even hold off a few of us.
I had an even better idea than to just hop off the bike and start shooting. I pulled around in front of the car and the truck. I saw a few of the men relax their aim as their boss was paraded in front of them on the back of my motorcycle. By the time I parked, I noticed that we had quite a few guns aimed at them as well.
“Come on,” I told Coyote, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her off my bike. I drew my gun and put it to her head as we marched up the steps.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” she said in her typical, stern tone. I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or to them.
“Tell them to put their guns down or they’ll see crazy,” I growled in her ear.
“Put your guns down,” she said, and they did so obediently.
Sierra ran up beside me and peeked around in front of me to wave spitefully at Coyote.
“Sierra, send a few guys in with me to secure the house, but tell the rest of them to hang back and handle the security,” I told her.
“Got it. What about me?” she asked in a sober tone.
“I want you to hang out here and make sure they get everything handled. I’ve got things inside. I’ll be out after I get the diamond.”
She gave me a pouty look and started to walk away.
“Hey, I’m asking you to watch over what happens out front because I trust you enough to make sure it’s done,” I told her, and her face brightened. I figured she had given me that dejected look because she thought I was pushing her aside.
On the contrary, I was putting the woman who had tried to screw me over front and center. That was sure to piss someone off.
Chapter Thirty
Sierra
The guards at the mansion parted ways along the steps going into the house to let Gunner enter with their boss at his side. They’d even surrendered their weapons, and without having to be told, members of The Immortal Devils approached to take the guns away. They took the guards down and lined them up along the edge of the driveway.
“What did he say?” Duncan asked as I walked down.
“He said he needs a few guys to go inside and quickly secure the house. He said everyone else needs to hang back. Someone needs to handle the guards,” I told him.
Duncan’s almost black eyes sparkled. “I can handle these assholes,” he said, pulling a gun from behind his back. He nodded to a few other guys standing together, and they ran inside, already working the house without even being explicitly told to.
I was impressed to see how these men handled their work. Tonight, I had seen a side of Gunner and his MC that I didn’t think really existed. He seemed like such a businessman that I had ignored the fact that he was the same Gunner who lead The Immortal Devils. He had founded the MC along with Duncan and three other men, and the word on the street was that they had earned their name.
It was overwhelming to assume a role in all of it, though. It was one thing to witness it, or to know what went on. It was another thing entirely to actually be part of it. I stepped back and crossed my arms. I didn’t have to issue any of Gunner’s orders. The men were already handling everything that needed to be done. The members left out front were securing the perimeter and making sure there weren’t any security guards hiding or coming up the drive from beyond the wall surrounding her property.
They even went as far as to close the gate to keep anyone else out. The MC truly was a fine-tuned machine. The discipline and focus of the men set them apart from other biker gangs. They weren’t just a bunch of street thugs. They were organized. They had a goal in mind, and they worked together to make it happen. It was almost like they had trained for what they were doing.
I laughed as I imagined them running siege drills at the clubhouse or headquarters. They’d probably used Gunner’s mansion since it was so similar, which I still found rather odd.
I looked behind me at the house. I wondered how the men inside were doing. I hadn’t heard any gunshots or anything from in the house, so I assumed they either hadn’t found anyone or had subdued them with minimal violence. It wouldn’t have surprised me. They operated with almost military precision when it was time to really get down to business.
Even back on the highway, they had quickly taken down the men coming at them, and I knew what kind of training went on here at Coyote’s mansion. I had seen the men in uniform come in to get her men in fighting shape. To take them down the way the bikers had was incredibly impressive. They made Coyote’s men look like amateurs.
Then, I heard gunshots out front. I turned around and saw that Duncan was executing the guards. He had commanded them to get down on their knees and put their hands behind their heads. In what looked like a wartime scene, he was shooting them in the back
of the head one at a time. The bodies were slumping forward as he shot them.
I couldn’t look, but I couldn’t turn away either. My gaze was fixed by the terror I felt. They presented no threat to the MC or to the current operation. It was unbelievable that he would feel the need to kill them. It was incredible that he had thought to execute them the way he was. It both appalled and amazed me to watch him handle the situation.
That was when I realized what the look in Duncan’s eyes had meant. All of Gunner’s men were power hungry and enjoyed taking control, just as he did. They also seemed to greatly enjoy murdering people the way they had been doing all night. They were bloodthirsty. They were monsters.
More horrifying than the fact that they were so in touch with such bestial, primal desires was the fact that I was watching over them as Duncan took it upon himself to execute relatively innocent men just because of their boss. They hadn’t done anything. In fact, considering the circumstances, they had been rather welcoming.
