THE DEVIL’S BRIDE

by April Lust

  “Of course. I don’t blame you for that,” I told him. “I feel honored that the president of Storm’s Angels was waiting for me himself,” I admitted with a grin. The fact that he’d waited for me himself meant I’d gotten under his skin as a thief. Now, it had become my job to do so as a woman if I wanted to defeat his reputation and get out of here with any intel that would help Skull take him down.

  “I must say, I’m impressed,” he added, beginning to pace around me. “I didn’t think anyone could have done what you did. But a woman? It never occurred to me that a woman, an attractive woman, could get away with stealing from Storm’s Angels. I almost want to applaud you, but you’ve cost me a lot of money and caused a lot of trouble for me.”

  I knew I was in deep shit now. I could hear the tension in his voice. He was holding back his urge to beat me the way he’d beaten so many others. I wondered how long he could hold back. I knew the only thing keeping me safe in the short term was probably the same thing putting me in more danger in the long run—the fact that I was a woman. He didn’t want to rough me up because I was just a girl, but that probably meant there were other perils down the road if I didn’t do something.

  “So, who would hire a female thief to steal from Storm’s Angels? The question of our thief’s identity has been plaguing me since the first time we noticed some of our product was missing. We couldn’t figure out who would be bold enough to send anyone to steal from us like that. But now? Now, I really don’t know who would be behind it.” He walked around me while he talked himself up to the question.

  He put his hands on my tied wrists, pressing them hard against the metal arms of the chair. It wasn’t painful, but I winced anyway, giving him what he wanted to see. I could play along with the best of them.

  “So, who sent you?” he asked me again.

  I closed my mouth tightly and smiled at him. I wasn’t about to tell him so easily. He was going to have to work for that answer.

  “No more smart-ass answers, huh?”

  “Not at the moment,” I told him. I couldn’t help myself.

  “I see. So, what? If I let go of your arms and stand up, maybe step away from you, you’ll start with the smart mouth again?” he asked, stepping away.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, taunting him. He didn’t know what to do with someone who wasn’t afraid of him, and I was loving it. He probably didn’t realize it, but he had given himself away with the tenderness he’d shown while tying me up.

  “What’s it going to take, then?” he asked. “You obviously want something out of me in return for that information. What do you want? Do you want me to promise I’ll keep you safe from your boss when they learn that you were caught and that you gave them up? Sure, I can do that. I can help you get far away from them, where you won’t be able to bother either one of us anymore.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. Was he really bargaining with me? I really must have gotten under this man’s skin for him to trade in his usual brutal methods for trying to talk information out of me. I decided to throw him a bone. I took a deep breath so I could keep a straight face.

  “I don’t want immunity or protection,” I told him. “What I want to know is when you’re going to start torturing me for information. If you’re really Mason Crawley, known for beating the shit out of anyone who crosses your path, why haven’t you done the same to me? I’m waiting for the sting of your hand across my cheek, the taste of my own blood in my mouth from where you busted my lip. I’m waiting on cuts and bruises from where you try to force information out of me,” I taunted him.

  I’d never thought of torture as something that might have been sexually gratifying, but as I listened to my own words, I started to get turned on by the possibility of such close physical contact with Mason. It wasn’t that I wanted him to hit me or beat me, but I craved his touch again.

  “I won’t be torturing you,” he answered me. He stepped closer to me as a smile crept across his face, and he ran a hand gently along my cheek.

  I turned my face and let his skin pass in front of my lips. I thought about nipping him with my teeth lightly, just enough to get his attention and let him know what kind of physical contact I did want from him.

  “I can take it,” I told him, looking up at him, letting my voice grow heavy with desire.

  “I’m sure you can. You seem to be able to handle yourself very well, Clara. I’m impressed you can run with the big boys out here like you do,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he were paying me a compliment or just being patronizing. I wanted to take it as a compliment.

  It was definitely a boys’ club, this whole business of dealing with crime bosses. I hadn’t run into many women while I’d been working for Skull. Most of them had been on the sidelines, performing supporting roles instead of trying to make any progress of their own. I didn’t really mind the lack of women in my line of work. It made my job easier. There was no real competition, and I was able to slip under the radar because most of the other bosses didn’t expect to find a woman stealing from them.

  As a woman, when I was “caught,” some of the guys even went so far as to assume I was just a decoy. Of course, until running into Mason for the first time, I’d only ever been caught when I allowed myself to be. Being legitimately caught and tied to a chair was new to me. I wasn’t quite sure how to handle myself, but I could see the desire in his eyes, and I knew I’d found my way out of trouble, my way into his bed, and my way into his confidence.

  “There are other ways to get me to talk, you know,” I teased him, loading my words with a suggestive tone.

  “How would that be?” he asked me, raising a playful eyebrow.

  “I’m sure you know how to make a woman do anything you want, Mason Crawley,” I taunted him. Most men, even if they were smart enough to see that someone was stroking their ego, were dumb enough to fall for it.

  “And I’m sure you know how to make men do the same,” he said to me, proving that he could see straight through me.

  We were clearly at an impasse. We sat in silence, staring at each other, seeing who would break the silence first. My mind raced to find something else I could use to unnerve my captor. I still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced he wouldn’t give in to his instincts and torture me before it was all said and done. Torture would have been preferable to this gridlocked silence.

  “You know, I could just let you go,” he said finally, breaking the silence first.

  I wanted to laugh at him and taunt him, but I was also curious where this latest threat was going.

  “So, if you don’t start talking,” he continued, “I think that’s what I’ll do. I’ll let you go and put the word out that you were captured. I’m sure it’ll get back to your boss just like the news I planted about moving my heroin to our HQ did. What do you think will happen then?” He knelt down in front of me again, this time with his face looking up into mine.

  I didn’t respond. I knew what would happen. I knew Skull would find out before I could either get in touch with him or get out of town, and I knew he would have someone on the way to pick me up right away.

  “Your boss will probably want to know how you got caught, why you allowed yourself to walk into a trap the way you did. Now, chances are, he didn’t know it was a trap. Chances are, he told you about the news that we were pulling everything back in because of how much you’d already stolen from our stashes. And he sent you to check it out. You were supposed to grab a little heroin and take it back to show him that the news was true. Then, you were going to be out of it. He was going to send some muscle to take it all, wasn’t he?”

  I blinked. Skull had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. Everything had gone according to Mason’s plan. It was like he was recounting my conversation with Skull. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d been working for the wrong man all along. Skull might have been a smooth talker, but he wasn’t nearly as cunning as Mason seemed to be.

  “What I’m saying, Clara, is that it’s not your fault.
” He patted my leg. “So, you tell me who sent you, and my guys go punish him for his stupidity. I get my right-hand man in there to put a little extra pain on him for sending someone so beautiful into harm’s way so recklessly, and we handle it. You’re good to go after that. You take your cut of whatever he’s got laying around, and hit the road. Start a new life, Clara. How does that sound?”

  I narrowed my eyes. It sounded too good to be true, honestly. No one walked away from shit like this that easily. I opted for silence again, waiting to hear what else he had to say.

  “Fair enough.” He nodded, patted my knee again, and stood up. “If you don’t talk, I’ll just let you go, and you can face him yourself, no drugs, no intel. I’m sure your boss will just be happy to have you back safe and sound, realizing how careless he’d been to send you right into the clutches of the most notorious, most feared men on these streets.”

  He walked away while he was talking, but when he finished, he turned around and gave me a smile that sent chills up and down my spine. My blood turned to ice in my veins, and my stomach froze into a ball of solid ice. I was about to see the real Mason Crawley, the man I’d heard so many horror stories about. Play time was over.

  Chapter 4

  Mason

  Clara Burton was my thief. I grabbed her arm and wrestled her into the metal chair where I intended to tie up my thief when I caught her. I pulled the ski mask off over her head, and when I saw the soft angles of her chin and jaw, her soft pink lips, and the cascading blonde hair falling out of the cap, I couldn’t believe it!

  The rest of her outfit did nothing to give away her gender. Even when I grabbed her arm, I figured the thief who’d been stealing from us was going to turn out to be a man. I never expected a woman, but that also made the lone wolf theory a little more likely. I didn’t know anyone who employed women in our neck of the woods, not for jobs as dangerous as what Clara was doing.

  I took my time tying her up to try to gauge how her body was built. I wrapped the rope around her wrists slowly, carefully, realizing how thin and frail they felt underneath my hands and underneath the ropes. I tied her to the back of the chair gently, observing the curve of her breasts, her flat stomach, and her narrow waist. I wanted to get her out of those clothes and into something more feminine. I tied her ankles to the legs of the chair and gripped her calf muscles to gauge how thin her legs were. The image I put together in my head was pretty good, but I wanted to see the real Clara.

  I patted her knee several times during our initial conversation, just to be able to touch her and imagine what her skin must have felt like underneath the cargo pants she wore. She must have noticed my interest in her, because she taunted me. It seemed she wanted to use my attraction to her to get me to set her free, or to get close to me so she could milk me for information. I wasn’t going to fall for it.

  Those blue eyes made it difficult, though. They were expressive and piercing. I could almost read her thoughts through them, or at least the thoughts she wanted me to see. It was such a shame we had to meet the way we did. I could have had a lot of fun with her if she’d just been another woman instead of the thief who’d been stealing my product and robbing me of my clients’ confidence.

  She asked me to torture her, and when I told her I wouldn’t, she suggested doing other physical things to get her to talk. I didn’t want to hear her talk. I wanted to hear her moan. I wanted to hear her voice, heavy with desire, moan deep within her throat. I wanted to torture her with sex, to make her want me and not give it to her. I wanted to please her until she simply gave me all the information I wanted on who her boss was and where he was.

  When I threatened to set her free and get word to her boss that she’d been caught, I could tell she grew nervous. She knew I would get word back to him pretty quickly that she was being sent back to him empty-handed, just as I’d gotten word to him about moving all of my heroin back to our empty basement at HQ, where I had her now.

  I decided it was time to have a little fun with her.

  “Still sure you don’t want to talk?” I asked her as I approached with a knife in my hand.

  She just smiled at me and taunted me with those delicious lips and seductive eyes.

  I pressed the knife under her chin.“See, at this point, I could use this knife to cut your ropes and send you running away from your boss, or I can use it to cut your tender flesh,” I taunted her, whispering in her ear as I pressed the point of the blade lightly against the skin under her chin.

  She strained her head back, away from the knife. Her thin fingers clenched the arms of the chair. Leaning back, stretching her back along the chair, I could see her tits pushing out against her shirt over the ropes around her waist. Her neck wasn’t what I wanted to cut. Neither were the ropes. I wanted to cut those clothes off of her, to expose her.

  Maybe a little exposure will do her good, I thought. I figured there were two possible outcomes that would be served by stripping her. Either I’d get the answers I wanted or we’d have sex. Either outcome was fine by me.

  “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?” I asked. She wasn’t just gorgeous. She was fearless. I could see why her boss had hired her in the first place.

  “Is there anything to be afraid of?” she asked in response, cutting her eyes to me and giving me a smug little grin.

  I threw the knife to the side. It clattered when it hit the concrete floor, and the sound filled the room, amplified as it bounced around the concrete walls. I grabbed her underneath her chin and pushed her back, lifting the front legs of the chair off the floor.

  “If you had any sense, you would be afraid,” I growled at her.

  “Is that the best you got?” she spat back at me.

  “Who the fuck do you work for?” I snapped at her.

  Her eyes shifted away from me, looking straight ahead now to avoid the question.

  “You’ll talk,” I told her. I pushed the chair back until I had her lying on her back on the floor.

  “Or what? You’ll let me take a nap?” she smarted off again.

  “You wanted to be tortured and beaten,” I told her, “so I’m going to start.” I placed a boot across her throat and rested my foot there. I wanted to threaten her. I didn’t want to actually hurt her. When she tilted her chin up to give me better access, I decided against it. I couldn’t imagine hurting someone as beautiful as she was. She’d obviously gotten in over her head by working for her boss, whoever that was.

  “Do it,” she said. “Crush my throat, big man. You won’t get anything out of me, then.” She laughed mockingly.

  “Dammit,” I cursed her, pulling my boot away and going back for the knife. I didn’t know what I was going to do to her. I wanted to make her talk, but I also didn’t want to use any of my normal tactics. I simply couldn’t bring myself to damage her.

  Then, as I grabbed the knife from the floor, I got an idea.

  “You were right,” I told her. “There are other ways to make you talk. I’ve got you in a pretty compromising position right now,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, you do,” she agreed.

  I grabbed her shoes and worked them off of her feet. I cut off her socks to reveal her feet to me.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “Are you going to tickle me to death?”

  “Oh no, I’m not going to tickle you.” I chuckled as I grabbed the bottom of her pants leg and started cutting.

  “Oh, you want to do other things to make me talk,” she said with the corners of her lips slowly creeping up into a smile.

  I cut her pants legs up to her knees and ran a hand along her smooth skin. She moaned as I touched her. My desire grew stronger for her.

  “You keep this up, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know, baby,” she said. She bit her bottom lip and tilted her head back again, closing her eyes this time.

  My heart pounded in my chest. My manhood ached in my jeans. Everything about this woman teased me. I wanted her. I wanted to cut her loose, tear off her cl
othes, and take her right there on the floor. I wanted to hear her moan. I wanted to make her scream and call out my name in ecstasy. But with a knife while she was tied to a chair? That wasn’t the way to let our first time happen.

  I grabbed the chair and pulled her back upright.

  “Change of plans?” she asked, meeting my eyes.

  “Not really,” I said, shaking my head. I was sure she would see the bulge in my pants, but I didn’t care. I was going to torture her sexually since sex seemed to be her preferred method of getting people to talk.

  I ran the blade of the knife along the curve of her breasts. She closed her eyes and sucked her breath in through her teeth. She gripped the arms of the chair, and her toes curled. “You’re teasing me, dear,” she said. “I don’t like men who tease. Why don’t you give me what you’ve got for me?”

  I pressed the knife against where I imagined her nipple would be and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Not yet. I’ll give you what you want after you tell me your boss’s name.”