Up In Flames

by Alexx Andria

  His gaze was stark. “You deserve better.”

  “I know,” she said, smiling. “That’s why I know it has to be you. You are better than I could ever hope to have. You are worth everything I’ve been through. But here’s the thing…if you’re in — you’re all in. No half-ass. I want 100 percent from you. Can you do it? Don’t commit if you can’t hold up your end of the bargain. I’ve spent half my life chasing after men who weren’t worth a damn and now, it’s time I stop.”

  Pyro answered by pulling her close and sealing his mouth to hers. They kissed long and deep and something shifted so powerfully between them that they were both breathless with wonder. “I’ll spend my life working at being worthy for you and Mila,” he told her with stark honesty that brought tears to her eyes. “You’re everything I don’t deserve but I’m grateful to have it and I’m sure as hell not letting go now. You’re stuck with me, sweetheart.”

  Her heart sang and she climbed on top of him, stripping her pajama top as she went. She grinned as his eyeballs bugged and his hands immediately went to cup her breasts. “It’s about time you came to your senses,” she purred, grinding on his rock-hard cock. “What say you we break in this new bed?”

  He rolled her to her back in a shockingly quick movement and his answering feral grin sent riots of pleasure tripping up and down her skin. “Baby, we might do more than that — by the end of tonight…we might need a whole new bed all together!”

  She was game for that.

  Anything as long as it was with Pyro.

  -Epilogue-

  Six months later…

  Pyro rushed to help Angel but she batted him away with a glare and Dee just laughed, saying, “You’re going to get it if you keep hovering like that. No pregnant woman likes to feel as if she’s helpless, even if she is.”

  “I’m not helpless, just irritated. This baby has a thing for sticking its foot in my ribs whenever it gets the chance,” Angel groused, rubbing at her distended belly with a groan. “I’m sure it’s a boy. Ornery as hell already. My pregnancy with Mila was a cake walk compared to this one.”

  Pyro grinned from ear to ear even as Angel tossed a crouton from her salad at him. He caught it with his mouth and munched happily. “I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s healthy.”

  Mila ran in from her bedroom and jumped into his lap as Jazzy, their adopted daughter followed, giggling. They were both wearing crazy lipstick and looked like miniature Jokers. “See Daddy? I pretty!”

  “You sure are,” Pyro agreed, laughing as he hoisted Jazzy on his lap as well.

  “You’re almost out of room,” Dee said as Bronx grabbed another beer from the fridge. “What are you going to do when you run out of lap room?”

  “I figure something out because my babies are never going to feel as if Dad can’t make room for them.”

  Suddenly Angel started sniffling and Pyro looked to his very pregnant newlywed wife and she covered her face with a napkin as she groaned. “I can’t stop crying over the silliest things.” She sent him a fake reproachful look. “You did that on purpose.”

  Dee laughed and the girls started talking about girl-stuff and baby prep while Bronx and Pyro took themselves off to watch the baseball game. It was so damn normal and suburban that Pyro didn’t even recognize his life from before. And that was okay with him.

  The fact was, even though he’d remained club president, he was busy trying to change the public perception of the club, which meant no more illegal stuff. It was hard turning a new leaf and not everyone was happy about it but so far things were starting to happen, and he was happy about it. He’d managed to open his own business — totally on the up and up — working with people who needed second chances. He worked with the probation department finding suitable jobs for those who truly wanted to clean up their act and get a life. It was far more rewarding than he would’ve imagined and he wasn’t about to go back to the way things had been before.

  “How’s Jazzy doing?” Bronx asked once they were out of earshot. “She adjusting okay?”

  At the mention of his adopted daughter, he sobered. “She’s doing great. The resources you guys hooked us up with through Gage’s Watch are really helping. She’s not having nightmares anymore and she’s stopped wetting the bed. All steps in the right direction, her therapist says.”

  Jazzy was found along with five other children ranging in age from three to eight years old, huddled in a dirty apartment bedroom after Crawford had sung like a bird when IA started putting his feet to the fire. The District Attorney hammered him and his fellow dirty cops as an example and they were all facing hefty prison sentences. Frankly, Pyro would’ve preferred to put a bullet in their heads but he was giving the legal channels a chance to do their job.

  And he never would’ve imagined it but being a dad…yeah, he got it now. He understood why Bronx wanted a passel of kids. Being a dad was the best thing in the world.

  Next to making the babies, that was.

  “To new beginnings,” Bronx said, tipping his beer in salute.

  Pyro smiled, truly happy for the first time in his life. “To new beginnings, bro.”

  For some reason he thought of Ashley and his smile turned more reflective. Maybe he was getting sappy but he hoped Ashley was smiling down on his little family and gracing them with her blessing.

  Something told him…she was.

  ***

  -EXCERPT-

  Kings of Asphalt

  The roadside bar reeked of cheap whiskey, spilled beer and bad judgment but Zoe Delacourte wasn’t about to turn tail and run even though her knees were practically knocking together like two castanets in the hands of a Spanish dancer. This was her chance, her big break, her opportunity to show her editor that she could deliver the real deal, a solid story the readers wanted to read about. Maybe even a Pulitzer. Okay, maybe not a Pulitzer but this was some serious journalism and she had chops to prove.

  Okay, so technically, no one knew she was doing this but all the more reason to make it count. Fortune favored the bold, or so they say. Time to put that saying to the test.

  She’d been blessed — or cursed, depending on how you look at it — with a nose twitchy for information. Her mom called it downright nosiness but whatever, that quality was exactly what was required in the newsroom and when she happened to run across a small blurb about an execution style murder on the west end of the city that sent her nose to tingling, she couldn’t ignore the urge to scratch further. A little inquiry here, a little digging there, and she’d found quite a few tantalizing leads that she couldn’t help but try and chase down for the bigger story. The problem? No one wanted to touch it. Not that she blamed them. Not even the cop reporter wanted to dig into a possible retaliation hit between the two most notorious motorcycle clubs, The Kings and the Road Dogs, for fear of ending up on the wrong end of a bullet but where others saw a one-way ticket to the morgue, she saw a golden opportunity to finally make her mark.

  From her furtive digging she managed to dig up two names: Jax Traeger and Hunter Ericksen. Bad boys to the core, Jax and Hunter seemed to be running The Kings, while she wasn’t sure who was calling the shots for the Road Dogs, possibly a guy named Bronx, no last name that she could find. The guy who ended up dead was a member of the The Kings, which meant she wanted to get to Jax and Hunter and see what she could get out of them by way of intel. But it wasn’t as if they were just going to spill their guts. She had to be crafty, real sly-like to get the goods, which brought her to the current reason why she was wobbling on too-high heels into The King’s known clubhouse, Bad Whiskey, squeezed into a skirt too tight with her breasts pushed nearly to her chin, and risking everything by going deep under cover for the story. That’s what real journalists did — not like the paper-pushing wimps currently occupying space in the newsroom. What happened to the golden age of investigative journalism? What happened to digging down to the bone of a story to suck out the marrow? What happened—

  “You lost?” A thick, gravel
ly voice interrupted her internal dialogue and she stopped short, nearly bumping into a mammoth of a man with a beer belly big enough to double as a trampoline. He jabbed a stubbed finger past her, pointing at a grimy sign hanging off-kilter on the wood-paneled wall to grunt, “Members only.”

  “I-I was invited,” she stammered on the lie, her gaze darting as people within the rough crowd began to stare. “By J-Jax.”

  “Dimas sent you?”

  Dimas? “Um, yes.” She bobbed a nod and then yelped as the man grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward a back room to thrust her inside. She realized too late that her lie might’ve just landed her in really hot water but before she could try to back out the man had already left her behind, slamming the door behind him. Oh heavens to mergatroid, what had she just gotten herself into? “Wait…I think—“

  “A brunette with curves…I like. It’s as if Dimas read my mind.”

  Zoe whirled at the sound of the sultry voice at her back and she found herself staring at the most sinfully handsome man she’d ever seen. Lounging like a giant jungle cat on the worn black leather sofa, Jax Traeger’s stare burned two holes into her soul as he regarded her with open interest. Goodness, he was handsome…in a dirty, I-will-likely-break-your-heart-and-ruin-your-credit sort of way. She hadn’t expected that. Talk about being blindsided. There’d been precious few pictures of Jax on the Internet. It seemed the bad boy was camera shy, go figure. “I-I’m sorry…I think your guy got the wrong idea…”

  One black slash of a brow went up in question and he leaned forward, saying, “And what idea would that be?”

  “The idea that I’m…oh, I don’t know…um, available for…” Shut up, you idiot! This was what deep cover was all about! Riding the knife’s edge to the ultimate story, finding your discomfort level and pushing past it to get to the good stuff that everyone else was too chicken to look for. Right. Inhaling a discreet, stabilizing breath, she straightened and braved a smile as she sauntered over to Jax, ignoring the flutters in her belly as his gaze darkened with interest. “Available for just anyone.”

  “Oh? Isn’t that the whole idea behind being a whore?”

  “A ww-hore? Excuse me? I’m not—“

  “You’re not what? Not a whore?” His smile slowly faded. “Then you’re not from Dimas and if that’s the case…just who are you?”

  Oh crap. Her damn mouth. “I-I just mean…well, of course, I’m from Dimas. I was just taken aback for a minute. I mean, well, I wasn’t sure I was in the right place.”

  Faster than she could react, he had her pressed up against the wood paneling, crowding her personal space and sending her heartrate through the roof. He smelled of leathers, a cool midnight ride, and the faint wisp of alcohol clinging to the edge as if as a reminder that his angelic face and body was simply a ruse to lure unsuspecting women to their doom. It should’ve repulsed her — truly, bad boys weren’t to her tastes — but she was oddly, and dangerously thrilled by the threat of caged violence she saw in his eyes and could see rippling through his biceps as he pressed forward. Was he going to ravage her right there like a modern day pirate or simply punt her outside the doors with a growled warning? Was she crazy for hoping — for a wild, irresponsible moment — that he would choose to grind those sensual lips across hers as punishment for daring to breach their inner sanctum? Yeah, don’t answer that. She already knew — it was fucking lunancy.

  “I…I am totally from D-dimas. I mean…well, of course I am. Who else would I be?”

  “You’re telling me you’re a prostitute?” he said, mocking her brave attempt at subterfuge. Deep cover was a lot harder than she imagined but she wasn’t a quitter. She lifted her chin and swallowed as she jerked a nod. She could handle this. It wasn’t as if she were a virgin, although technically, her one experience had been pretty lukewarm in the sizzle department. It’d been a plain miracle that Teddy had been able to find the right place to put his…well, his thing and the whole shebang had been over in less than two minutes. But she’d definitely handed in her V-card thanks to that two-minute gropefest so yeah, she could handle whatever Jax Traeger was thinking of handing out. Besides, weren’t all men relatively the same? The parts were the same anyway. Tab A went into Slot B. Simple biology, right? Jax chuckled as if he’d somehow heard her internal dialog and said, “then you won’t mind if I do this?” right before he bent down to nuzzle her neck, scraping tender flesh with the rough growth of his beard, sending delicious waves of wonderful cascading down her spine and pooling in places she hadn’t given much thought until this very moment.

  “Nope,” she said breathlessly. Teddy had never done that. Ohhh, that felt nice. Focus. Focus Zoe! “This is old hat to me. In fact, you’re the tenth guy that’s done that to me today.”

  “Tenth?” he repeated with dark amusement as he lifted his head, his gaze narrowing. “Good. Then you won’t mind if we up the ante.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hunter…what shall we do with our willing little harlot?” he asked, seemingly to thin air until Zoe realized with a start someone else was in the room with them. Hunter Ericksen, a man with just as wicked of a reputation, eased from the shadows, a hungry grin on his supple lips.

  “Well, Dimas did promise a good time,” he reminded Jax as he joined him, both men regarding her with something akin to hunger in their eyes. “And you know my weakness for soft, curvy girls.”

  “Oh…” Zoe melted a little even as her traitorous heart tap-danced in fear. She was playing a dangerous game with two of the most ruthless men in Southern California, men who have carved reputations for themselves within the cutthroat circles of motorcycle gangs. What the hell had she been thinking? But what could she do but ride it out and hope for the best? They wouldn’t actually hurt her, would they? As far as she knew they weren’t cold-blooded killers but then, dead men told no tales, right? What if her thirst for legitimacy landed her in an unmarked grave out in the desert somewhere? Holy crap! What if she turned out to be fodder for a crime television drama in one of those Ripped From The Headlines! movie-of-the-week? “Gentlemen, I think we got off on the wrong foot,” she said, trying to edge her way out alive. “Sure, Dimas sent me because who else would I be, right? I mean who would be so stupid as to come in here and pretend to be someone she wasn’t. Sounds like a suicide trip to me.”

  “It would be,” Jax agreed but he didn’t seem ready to let her go. In fact, he seemed more interested in discovering her secrets than divulging any of his own. “Let me float a theory by you,” he said as he and Hunter began to circle her. “Here’s what I think…I think you’re a Road Dog girl and you’re hoping to get some intel on that shipment slated for next week. But here’s the thing, Bronx is an idiot if he thinks that a pretty face and a nice, plump ass are going to get him anything from me or Hunter on that score but seeing as you’re here, we might as well take the edge off. I’ve had a shit day and you walking through that door is the first thing that’s made it better. Take off your clothes and let’s see what we’re really working with.”

  ***

  Jax knew the minute the curvy brunette walked in she wasn’t no club whore. She had a look about her that was sweet and innocent even though those pretty doe-brown eyes snapped with open curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. Most club girls were hard and their hearts were as jaded as the guys they fucked. There was nothing hard about this little chicklet. Everything about her was soft and squeezable. Her tits, bobbing right beneath his nose, were made for a man’s mouth. Hell, a man could lose himself for days in that succulent body and never complain about the lost time. And damn, she was pretty cute, too. His sharp gaze took in every detail, committing it to memory. Young, maybe about twenty-five if he were to guess, with soft-as-a-baby’s-ass skin — she was a dangerous one to keep around. She was the kind of girl that made a guy wonder what the other side looked like — and that was a luxury he and Hunter couldn’t afford.

  The best thing he could do for this little imposter was to scare t
he life out of her so that she never tried something so stupid again. However, he wasn’t above enjoying the lesson.

  “Take off my clothes?” she squeaked in open distress. “I can’t. I mean, I can but I hardly know you. I mean, shouldn’t we have a beer or something first?”

  “Fine. Tell us your name. I think you already know who we are.” Hunter poured her a whiskey shot and handed it to her. “Bottom’s up, sweetheart.”

  “Oh, um. Okay.” She took the whiskey and stared at it in dismay. Guess she wasn’t a whiskey drinker. Not that he or Hunter were surprised. She probably liked wine spritzers or some shit like that. Suddenly, she suggested in desperation. “How about this…Scrabble? I have to warn you, I rule at word games. I have quite the talent for using the Q and Z on double word tiles.”

  “Not one for games,” Hunter grunted, downing a shot and refilling Jax’s. “Unless it’s strip poker. I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s hiding beneath that leather skirt. How about you, Jax?”

  “Wouldn’t mind at all,” Jax agreed, watching her closely as he pointed at her drink. “Come on now, don’t hurt our feelings. Drink up.”

  She shuddered and gulped the whiskey, coughing as it no doubt burned her throat and hit her stomach like an iron fist. “That’s good stuff,” she gasped. “Real good. Dang…that’s some…wow.” Her eyes swam as she sucked in a wild breath. “Well, you know, I think I should probably go. Thanks for everything…but…um, yeah, this just isn’t my scene.”

  “No one leaves until we say they leave,” Jax said quietly, looking to Hunter. She stared, unsure of how to extricate herself. He pulled off his leather jacket and tossed it to the old sofa, plucking at his shirt buttons. “Here’s how I see this…I don’t think you’re from Bronx or from Dimas…so that leaves me to wonder…just who the hell are you?”