by Burke, Dez
She pulls her head up from my chest and looks at me.
“You really like kids, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I love kids. I hope to have a bunch one day. At least three. I plan on having a great big family. What about you?”
“I’ve never given it much thought. Any thought at all, actually. I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I never saw myself as a parent.” She idly traces a tattoo on my arm with her fingers.
“Why? Too permanent for you?”
The comment sounded nastier than I meant for it to.
Her eyes fly back to my face.
“Where did that come from?”
“Gut feeling, I guess. Not every woman wants a pack of kids to weigh them down.”
“No, it’s not that. I don’t have any siblings and my family is small. There aren’t any nieces or nephews or even little cousins that I see on a regular basis. I don’t know how to take care of kids. I might make mistakes and screw them up for life.”
“I doubt that. Where do you go on holidays then? Don’t you have any family to be with?”
“I usually go over to my parents’ house and have dinner with them. I was an accidental late baby, so they’re older.” She sighs. “And I was way too much for them to handle. By the time I hit my wild teenage years, they were in their late fifties and didn’t know how to handle me.”
So all Lila has are two old parents. Then again, maybe she’s lying and really has a huge family. At this point, I still shouldn’t trust anything she says one way or the other.
“Would you like to come back over tomorrow night for dinner?” she asks, changing the subject. “I’ll cook.”
I’m relieved. I wasn’t sure how things were going to be between us after tonight.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I tease. “It would depend on what’s on the menu.”
“How about grilled steaks, sautéed mushrooms, and a baked potato? Can you make it by eight o’clock? Or later is fine too. Whatever is good for you.”
She’s talking fast, like she’s afraid I’ll turn her down.
“I wouldn’t miss it. I’ll be here right on time.”
“You’re such a stickler about being punctual,” she says.
“True, but how do you know that?”
“Lucky guess, that’s all,” she says to cover up her mistake. “You always show up when you’re supposed to. I like that trait in a man.”
Her slipup throws me and makes me wonder how deep her research into the Steel Infidels goes. She’s obviously dug into my personal habits. Are all the Steel Infidels under close scrutiny?
What if the ATF is looking at Kendra and Trish too? The ATF might think they’re involved in our business dealings. Of course they aren’t, because we would never mix up the women in anything illegal. The risk is too great and the kids need their mothers.
How many people are going to get hurt in this mess before it ends?
Lila reaches for the sheet at the foot of the bed and tugs it up over us. “Will you stay with me tonight?” she asks. “I don’t want you to leave.”
I thought she would never ask.
“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sam
I pull out a chair and silently sit down beside Toby at the clubhouse. He glances over at my swollen lip and bursts out laughing.
“Damn, Toby!” I say. “Did you really have to elbow me so hard?”
“See? I knew you would get pissed off.” He throws up his hands and lets out a frustrated sound. “That’s why I didn’t want to do it. You kept saying ‘hit me, hit me’ and I did. And now you’re mad as a wet hornet.”
“I said hit me, not knock my fucking teeth down my throat.”
Toby laughs and tilts his baseball cap back on his head.
“You should have made that more clear. Don’t tell a Marine to smack you around unless you mean it. It was your dumbass plan, not mine. You wanted to get a reaction out of Lila and you did. So quit your bitching. No pain, no gain.”
“The main thing is did it work?” Jesse asks from across the room. “I saw her jump up and start screaming at Tom. I thought for a minute there she was going run out on the court and beat somebody up. I wasn’t sure who she would go after first. Tom for bad refereeing or Toby for elbowing you. Trish said she tried to calm her down and couldn’t.”
“It worked out okay,” I say casually.
“What exactly does that mean?” Toby asks. “Did she let you fuck her or not?”
“That’s none of your damn business.”
Rocco plops down in a chair on the other side of the table, gives me a long look, and then takes a swig of whiskey out of a bottle.
“I believe it is our business,” he says. “Weren’t you the one who tried to get us to bet against you a week ago? We’re not letting you off that easy. Did you fuck her or not?”
I feel like an asshole for making the bet in the first place. Thank God Lila doesn’t know about it.
“I would’ve won the bet, so it’s a good thing that nobody bet against me,” I finally admit. “Good for you that is, bad for me. Or actually it was good for me, so things worked out all the way around.”
Rocco leans back and roars with laughter.
“You sly son of a bitch. I knew it! You banged her right after the basketball game, didn’t you? Man, she was looking hot to trot. I bet she was one sweet piece of pussy.”
“Knock it off, asshole,” I blurt out.
“Knock it off?” He gives me a curious look. “You always tell us every juicy detail of your sexual adventures. Even when we yell at you to shut the fuck up and cover our ears because we can’t stand to hear any more. And now you say nothing? Spill the details. Was her cunt nice and tight? What about her breasts? They look firm and real. Were they real?”
It’s all I can do to restrain myself from reaching across the table and grabbing Rocco by the throat. Flint is watching us intently from across the room.
“Oh shit!” he suddenly says, walking toward us. “We’re all fucked. Sam likes her. That’s why he’s not giving up the details. He likes this girl who is trying to send us all to prison. Damn it, Sam!”
“What?” The men all yell at the same time.
“No way,” Toby says. “Tell us it isn’t so, bro. Since when do you give a shit about any girl?”
“I like her,” I say with a shrug. “No big deal. Or I would if she wasn’t a damn ATF agent. What’s the harm? Hopefully she’ll like me too and will shut down the investigation. I don’t see what the issue is here. I thought this was what we agreed for me to do. To stay close to her and feed her false info until the investigation is over.”
Flint sits down beside me, which means I’m about to get a stern brotherly lecture. I always hated those when I was younger. Still do in fact.
Especially coming from Flint.
“The issue is that she’s playing you,” he says. “Not the other way around. Don’t trust her, Sam. I don’t know how many times I have to say it so you’ll listen. She’s getting under your skin. I can see it, and it’s frustrating the hell out of me. I’m going to remind you every fucking day until she goes away. I want these words to be the last thing in your head at night and the first thing every morning. Don’t trust her. Say it like a mantra. Whatever you think you’ve got going on with this chick isn’t real. She is fucking you over.”
“And what if she isn’t?”
I regret the words immediately.
“See what I mean?” Flint says to the other guys. “Sam just proved my point. This was a bad idea. Lila is too good at her job.”
“I can make this work,” I say. “Why can’t you trust me on this? The original plan is working right on schedule. I don’t know what else you expect me to do. I’ve already fucked her.”
Damn. That sounded crude.
Whatever Lila and I shared, I sure as hell wouldn’t describe it that way. Not now. Never in a million years.
“Sam, let me tell y
ou a story,” Flint says.
Everyone around the table groans.
“Oh God, no,” I say, banging my forehead on the table. “Please not another one of your longwinded stories that go nowhere.”
Flint doesn’t pay any attention to me. Not that I expected him to.
“Do you remember the Bible story of Sampson and Delilah from Sunday School when we were kids?” he asks.
I give him a blank look.
“Is that a serious question? If so, the answer is vaguely. Sampson had long hair and Delilah was a hooker. Am I right? What the fuck does this have to do with anything?”
“Nah, I don’t think Delilah was a hooker,” Rocco says, rubbing his beard. “She was a conniving bitch though. I see her more as a sexy woman with long black hair and big tits. Wearing like a silky see-through dress. Pink or gold. And a scarf covering part of her face so that only her mysterious dark eyes are showing.”
“With no underwear,” Toby adds. “She definitely wouldn’t wear underwear. Then again, I don’t think any of the women wore panties back then. We were born in the wrong era, boys.”
“I like where you’re going with this,” I say. “In my mind, she would be wearing lots of gold jewelry and use black eyeliner in the corner of her eyes like Cleopatra. And have pretty feet in strappy leather sandals.”
“This gives me an idea,” Toby says. “I wonder if we could talk the Sweet Butts into dressing like Cleopatra for a night? We could tell them we’re holding a toga party, except they’ll be the only ones dressing up.”
Toby and I both crack up at his idea. The Sweet Butts would probably go for it. They’ll do pretty much anything we ask them to.
“Did Sampson and Delilah fuck?” Rocco asks. “Or was it only implied?”
“Definitely implied,” I say. “The wording is probably something like ‘loin to loin,’ which always makes me think of pork chops. Not sexy at all.”
“It’s the Bible,” Flint says in exasperation. “What do you expect? It’s not supposed to be sexy. Do you guys want to hear this story or not?”
I nod at him. “Sure, let’s hear it since you seem so damn determined to tell it.”
“Okay then, back to Sam and Lila. I mean Sampson and Delilah.”
I cut my eyes over at Toby and he grins back at me.
“Since you all seem to know parts of this story, I’ll recap the highlights. Delilah was a beautiful temptress who seduced Sampson with her feminine wiles. She convinced him to tell her the secret of his strength so that she could destroy him.”
“His long hair?” I guess. “Ha! See, I know that one.”
“Right,” Flint says. “She was playing Sampson the whole time just like your Lila is playing you. One night when he was sleeping with his head in her lap, she cut off all his hair. He trusted her and she betrayed him.”
“I can see how devastating that would be if he had luxurious hair like mine.” I flip my hair back from my forehead to make my point.
“What if she shaved your head in your sleep?” Toby says. “That would suck.”
“Do you really think she’ll cut off my hair?”
“No, don’t worry,” Toby says. “She’ll cut your dick off first.”
“The hair isn’t the point, you idiots,” Flint says. “The point is that he fell for her and she was fucking with him all along just to find out his secrets. He refused to see her for what she really was. Do you see any other similarities here, Sam? Like maybe Lila is seducing you to find out all of the Steel Infidel secrets?”
“Yeah, of course I get it. I’m not stupid. How does the story end?”
“The Philistines, who are the bad guys in the story, put Sampson in prison. Eventually his hair grows back and he brings down the pillars of the temple with his tremendous strength, crushing himself and a whole bunch of Philistines.”
“What happens with Delilah?” I ask.
“The Bible doesn’t specifically say.”
I lean back in my chair and cross my arms.
“I believe I can speak for all of us here in saying thank you so much, Flint, for the uplifting, cliffhanger story. My day would have felt incomplete without it. Rocco, slide that bottle of whiskey over this way. I need a fucking drink. Or two.”
Rocco pushes the whiskey over to me and I take a long swig and then another.
Jesse laughs and grabs the whiskey bottle from me to take a drink, too.
“I feel sorry for little Josh,” Jesse says. “For having to listen to Flint’s stupid shit stories every day of his life.”
“You’re all going to feel sorry for Sam and for the MC when this thing goes south,” Flint replies. “Can we at least talk about what he should be doing to help things out? Besides sliding between her legs. We need to get ahead of this situation.”
“What do you have in mind?” Jesse asks.
“Sam should check Lila’s cell phone and see who she is calling and how often. Is she reporting in to the ATF every day? Once a week? How much time do we have left to turn this around? Read her text messages. Does she have a computer?”
“A laptop,” I answer.
“Try to get into it.”
“She’s a hacker,” I remind him. “There’s no way I’m getting into her computer.”
“She never leaves it open?”
“Not unless she wants me to read what’s on the screen.”
“Like what?”
“A fake magazine article she’s supposedly writing.”
Flint raises his eyebrows. “And you think she’s not playing you?”
There’s nothing I can say to that, so I take another swig of whiskey.
“We need to find out more about her personal life,” Flint says. “Like where she lives in Atlanta, who her friends are, and all about her family.”
I don’t like the sound of this. “Why do we need to know about her family?”
Jesse and Flint both look away from me.
“What are you two thinking?”
“We might need some kind of leverage with her down the road,” Jesse says, still refusing to look me in the eyes.
“You would threaten her family?” I ask. “Like her parents?”
All she has in the world are two old parents, and the MC wants to find them.
The whiskey is beginning to burn a hole in my gut.
Why didn’t I think this far ahead? Of course the MC would threaten her family. And threaten her. Maybe even hurt her or worse. It’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done. What would be any different this time around?
Fuck.
The stakes in this game just got much higher. I’m not only playing for her, I’m playing to keep her alive and safe, too.
“Wait!” I say. “We don’t need to go in that direction yet. Give me time to do it my way. I’m seeing her again tonight. Things are going well. We don’t need to panic and do something rash.”
“We have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” Jesse says. “We can’t be caught with our asses hanging out on this. She has to be stopped no matter what. You need to understand that if you can’t take care of this, we’ll be forced to handle it our way. There always has to be a Plan B.”
“Club first,” Flint says.
“Club first,” the men say one by one around the table.
Everyone but me.
“Sam?” Jesse says, waiting for my answer.
I nod in agreement.
“Club first.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sam
“You’re early,” Lila says when I arrive at her house. “I’ve been out for a run and I’m all sweaty. Don’t look at me until I take a shower.”
“No complaints from me about how you look,” I say, pulling her in for a quick kiss. The tight sports bra and running shorts shows off her curves perfectly.
“I’m serious,” she says. “I have to take a shower first before dinner. If you want a snack, there is butter pecan ice cream in the freezer and chocolate syrup on the counter. I’ll hu
rry.”
“Take your time,” I say. “I’ll eat a bowl of ice cream or two.”
“Don’t spoil your appetite,” she calls out from the hallway.
I wait until I hear the sound of the shower running before glancing around for her phone. It’s not on the kitchen table, so I quietly sneak into the bedroom where I spot it on the dresser. With any luck, I’ll be able to see how often she’s checking in with the ATF.
I flip open the phone and immediately the screen prompts me for a four-digit code.
Shit!
This is hopeless, and I’m not even going to attempt it. I put the phone back where I found it and go back to the kitchen. Grabbing a bowl out of the cabinet, I add two scoops of ice cream and a generous helping of chocolate syrup.
I’m halfway through my second bowl of ice cream when Lila stomps into the kitchen with a pissed off look on her face. She holds up her cell phone.
“Did you try to get into my phone while I was in the shower?” she asks.
Damn!
Opening her phone was stupid and a mistake. Of course she would know if I touched it. She probably set me up just to see if I would try. One look at her face tells me that lying isn’t an option.
“Yeah, sorry,” I reply. “How did you know?”
She glares at me for a moment before answering.
“The phone has a program that alerts me if anyone tries to open it. Were you checking up on me?” She crams the phone in her back pocket. “Just so you know, I don’t go for the jealous, stalker type of guy. I don’t understand what you hoped to find. Were you afraid I was texting other men or something?”
Texting other men? Oh hell no!
The thought had never occurred to me until she mentioned it.
I feel like I’ve had the breath knocked out of me.
What if she has a boyfriend or even a husband in her real life? Here I’ve been thinking it’s just the two of us involved in this game. A game that I’m enjoying way too much considering the high stakes involved.
If there is another man in her life, I need to know right now.
This puts an entirely different spin on things, and I don’t like it.
Not one bit.
I can’t let her see how unsettled I am by the idea.
