“Doubt it,” Tank said. “Curtis is being pretty cagey about it all.”
“Then we keep our mouths shut too,” King said severely. “Not one word.”
“With pleasure,” Val said. Everyone else nodded, and a few may have rolled their eyes at Val’s hate-on for marriage. “Can we change the subject now?”
“Sure, Valentina, Lady Of All Things Heart and Valentines,” King said, poking fun at her romantic, poetic name. “Shall we talk about Ace and Spider?”
“Well,” Tex said, and the others’ ears pricked up at his jovial tone. “Y’all won’t believe it.”
“What?” Lilly asked. She was strangely intrigued by the two men, by their long and complicated history, by Ace’s surprising sacrifices for a man that he clearly still loved, and she for one was rooting hard for them to just get it together, already. “What?”
“Well,” Tex said again. “Our boys are getting along at long last.”
“Uh-huh,” King said with suspicion. “How well?”
“Oh!” Tex said. “Not that well.”
“No?” Lilly said, obviously disappointed. “Why not? And do you think they’ll get together again soon?”
King and Knox threw her surprised looks at her wistful tone, but she didn’t much care. Lilly was newly-in-love herself, completely and totally and utterly head-over-heels with the guy, and even though the rule of King’s Men was to disclose that kind of intimate personal relationship immediately once it turned serious, she hadn’t done so yet. She would eventually, of course, but for now, she wanted to keep something to herself, here in this world where everyone knew everything about everybody, all the goddamn time. She wanted something secret and all hers and his… just for a little while longer.
So right this second, Lilly was all about people making it work, and making each other happy, and she truly didn’t give a damn if that made her look la-la or naive. She was sure that Val was rolling those perfect violet eyes and being the Siberian Ice Princess that she excelled at, but Lilly didn’t care about that either. Val was welcome to be alone forever, if that was what she wanted. Lilly, though, she wanted other things in her life. Hopefully, those things included Kevin Talbot, a safe, steady school teacher.
Yeah, the man was a teacher, and a high school English teacher at that. It was just about as far from professional bodyguarding and ex-special-ops-for-hire as it was possible to be – and Lilly had been nothing but astounded at how attracted she was to ‘normal’, after years of being in the army, and then the past two years with King. Kevin had changed her priorities and pretty damn quick – and what had started as random, fleeting thoughts about getting out of ‘the life’ had become a constant, steady drumbeat in her mind.
She knew that she’d have to tell him soon that she wasn’t actually a beauty products small-business owner. She’d explained her travel for the Men as expanding her business and meeting clients and suppliers, but she longed to come clean with Kevin. And of course, she had to tell King about him, so that he could be put under some very hands-off security. Every single significant person in any of the King’s Men’s lives were watched from a distance, just to make sure they were safe. Kevin was going to be an object of scrutiny by a bunch of ex-military types, and Lilly dreaded that for him, and was putting it off.
“Dunno if they will or not,” Honey replied now, wrenching Lilly’s thought from Kevin. “But Jack says it’s just a matter of time, and we all know the man’s voodoo powers for predicting future behavior. So if I were a betting woman, I’d lay my money down now that Spider and Ace will soon be… uhhhh… together.”
Lilly beamed, Val rolled her eyes, and everyone else muffled groans.
“What?” Lilly said again. “Why are you all making those noises?”
“Because,” Tank said, suddenly thrilled to be in the house of wedding cakes and table arrangements. “Nothing’s worse from a safe guarding a safe house perspective than a volatile couple.”
“Who says they’d be volatile?” Lilly demanded. “Quite possibly, they’d be more volatile apart and with all kinds of weird tension between them. Maybe finally getting things settled would be the best thing, and I mean for everyone.”
“Maybe,” Tex said not sounding convinced. “Though I have to admit, it’s been way nicer around here since they’ve been talking.”
“Describe the behavior,” King ordered. “Tell me.”
“Well, they eat together every meal,” Honey said. “They spend time in the common spaces together, just watching TV and movies, or doing stuff on their laptops. And they talk, King, they talk about everything and nothing. They make each other coffee and they sit and chat for hours. It’s actually… well. It’s actually kind of adorable.”
“Jesus, Honey,” Val said, disbelieving. She couldn’t believe that her fellow female romantic cynic was being soppy. “Did you drink the kool-aid too?”
“No,” Honey snapped. “But they’re happy and they seem to be working through a serious amount of serious shit, so why not back the hell off, Valentina? Leave them to it, and keep your fingers crossed that they’ll be alright, and maybe – just maybe – hope for someone to be with someone else? If they’re happy together and good for each other, then what’s your issue with them? It doesn’t involve you, and it’s none of your damn concern.”
“OK,” King interjected. “Enough.” He scratched his dark head, tried to phrase the next question with some delicacy. “So they’re not – not sharing a bed?”
“Not yet!” Tex said gleefully; he loved nothing more than dropping conversational bombs that he knew needled others. “But Jack says that ain’t far off at all. He’s pretty much counting down the hours.”
“Really?” Lilly said, delighted all over again, ignoring King and Knox’s sidelong glances. “Oh, good.”
“Yeah, goodie,” Val said. “Hurrah for love.”
“According to our resident mind-reader, who’s gonna make the first move?” Tank said. “Ace or Spider?”
“Oh, Jack doesn’t think anyone’s going to make a move,” Tex said. “They’re both way too worried about doing the wrong thing and pissing the other one off again, or putting themselves out there only to be be rejected. It’s a truce, man, but it’s a shaky one, and Jack says that they’re not rushing to rock the boat.”
“So how does he think it’ll happen?” Knox said, fascinated despite himself. He hadn’t been a big fan of Jack’s at the beginning, since Knox didn’t put much stock in shrinky shit, and he just thought Jack should shut the hell up and shoot his gun at the bad guys. But damned if the man didn’t know what he was doing, and he got inside people’s heads in a way that Knox didn’t even think was humanly possible before he saw Jack work. How it did it, Knox had no clue, but he did know that Jack Taylor knew what people were going to do before they knew it themselves. “If I were to double-down on my bet, which way would I go?”
“Oh,” Honey said. “Jack says it’ll be totally spontaneous and unplanned… it’ll just happen, probably before Ace or Spider even really recognize what’s going on. Nobody will be more surprised than they are when their minds catch up to their bodies.”
“Oh, brother,” Val muttered, but they all heard her loud and clear.
“Anyway,” King said. “You all keep me in the loop, we clear? If Ace and Spider pick things up where they left ‘em seven years ago, I want to be among the first to know. You savvy?”
“I savvy,” Tex said solemnly. “I’m savvying to the max. We all are.”
**
“Joker.”
The voice wasn’t particularly loud or insistent, but it cut through the noise and activity at The Grinning Skulls like a machete through butter out in the sun. Right away, Joker looked up, totally alert.
“Yeah?” he said to Nails, already shoving the blonde pass-around off his bulging lap, his hard-on already heading for the hills. “What’s up,
Prez?”
Nails said nothing. He just poured himself another few fingers of bourbon, and nodded at the hallway leading to his office. Without hesitation or regret, Joker got to his feet, yanked off the condom, and tucked his cock into his jeans. The club slut tumbled to the floor, landing painfully on her bare ass.
“Hey!” she protested shrilly. “What the fuck?”
“Shut up,” Joker growled. “Find someone else.”
“I volunteer as tribute!” Cruz said cheerfully, and right away, her over-painted fire-engine-red sulk flipped up into a boozy smile. “Crawl on over here, honey, and suck me off.”
Joker turned away as she did as she was told, and followed Nails to the quiet office. Nails stayed standing, so he did too.
“We’re going ahead with the teacher,” Nails said with no preamble. “Day after tomorrow.”
“OK,” Joker said. “So I guess you found what it was that you were looking for? Whatever it was checked out?”
“Yeah.”
Joker waited; he knew better than to ask.
Nails threw back his drink, slid open his desk drawer to produce another bottle of Wild Turkey and a second tumbler. Joker watched as Nails poured out two drinks, handed one over to him. He raised his own drink in response to his Prez’s silent toast, tossed down the bourbon. Finally, Nails took his chair, so Joker backed up a few paces and sat himself.
It’s time. Thank fucking Christ, ‘cause I was about to rip King’s Garage apart with my bare goddamn hands just to have something to do.
“His girl works for King,” Nails said in his usual gritty growl. “She’s the newest team member, and she’s the youngest, and she’s the dumbest. She’s got herself involved with an untrained civilian, for fuck’s sake, and she hasn’t said a word to King.”
“Uh,” Joker said. “Is she supposed to?”
“Hell, yeah, she’s supposed to. She’s supposed to tell him so he can set up surveillance once in a while.”
“King’s Men keep an eye on the crew’s boyfriends and girlfriends?”
“Sure do. Families, too. Not every day, naturally, but they do drive-by’s and they hang around looking casual and unsuspicious and just make sure they’re OK. Things are stepped up when one of the Men is on an assignment that’s especially touchy. When King was working on busting all those cartels down in Mexico, for example, the family of every team member with him was watched closely, in case the cartel got any smart ideas.”
“Holy shit.” Joker was stunned. “I had no idea.”
“They’re quiet about it.” Nails leaned back in his chair. “About three years ago, part of what I was doing for Trigger was watching King’s Garage, watching who was coming and going. They were careful, but I was patient, and it took me about eight months to suss out his people from regular garage customers. I then followed them around a bit, figured out where some of them lived, found some of their parents and siblings. Trigger wanted harming the families as a nuclear option, just in case.”
“But he never gave the order to hurt anybody?”
“No. And when Cuddy took over, he told me to back off King’s Men.” Nails cocked his head. “Couldn’t figure out why at the time, but I did as my Prez said. Of course, now I know why he didn’t want us sniffing around any of King’s people. It’s because Cuddy was meeting with them and selling us out.”
Automatically, Joker hissed out a breath. Fuck, he couldn’t stand to so much as hear his ex-Prez’s name, and his hands snapped closed into fists. What he wouldn’t give for Cuddy’s neck to be trapped between his hands as he squeezed… squeezed tighter…
“It pisses me off, actually,” Nails said. “I have a pretty good idea who’s watching the safe house with Cuddy and probably the faggot boyfriend, because some of King’s people are MIA. I wish that we’d figured out about Cuddy sooner, but by the time we’d caught on and I got to watching King’s people, they were already in position and Cuddy had vanished off the face of the planet. Missed my window to follow anyone to the place they’ve stashed him.”
“So this is all about finding out where he is?”
“It sure as hell is.”
“Good.”
“So we grab the teacher,” Nails continued. “And we let the bitch know that we have him.”
“She’ll go to King.”
“No. She won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Look, her first instinct will be to do just that, because King is nothing but good and experienced at hostage negotiations and saving kidnap victims. She’ll think that she’ll be able to talk to him secretly, and he’ll help without tipping us off.” Nails smiled. “But we’ll make it clear that we mean business, and that we’re watching her every move.”
“How?” Joker said, and a thrill of anticipation went through him. “What are we gonna do?”
“All in good time,” Nails said, getting to his feet again. “First things first.”
“The teacher.” Joker stood up too. “Who do you want to grab him?”
“You and Bear. Do it the day after tomorrow, because he gets home from school at five on Tuesdays. It’s his one early day.”
“Just us two?”
“You do it right, and you two are enough.”
Joker nodded, turned away. He’d just reached the door, when Nails’ voice caught his attention again:
“Oh, and Joker?”
He spun to face his Prez. “Yeah?”
“When you do grab him? Leave his right hand behind.”
“You – you want us to cut off his hand?”
“Yeah. Leave it on the kitchen counter for the bitch to find when she gets home from work at seven. OK?”
“Oh, yeah,” Joker said, a warm wave of pure rightness and sheer happiness passing over him. “Oh, yeah, that’s OK. That’s perfect. That’s exactly the kind of thing that I’ve been waiting for.”
“I know,” Nails said. “And that’s just the start, Kane. There’s gonna be plenty more blood shed and skin shredded and bones broken before this is over.”
“Man.” Joker opened the office door, feeling twenty pounds lighter, and ten years younger “I sure as fuck hope so.”
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Ace stepped out of the shower, wiped the steam from the mirror. He looked at himself, and tried to decide if he needed to shave. He'd always preferred the scruffy look, since it covered up the evidence of his father's abuse left on his face in small, white scars, and anyway, it had suited an MC one-percenter to a T. And it's not like he had to go to an office that day or anything; it's not like he had to go anywhere.
Musing over just what the hell 'to a T' meant, Ace dried off his large, muscled body, hung up the towel next to his boxer shorts, and absent-mindedly starting to brush his teeth stark-naked. He was just thinking about breakfast, wondering if bacon every day was a bad thing, when the door opened, and Liam walked in.
Ace froze mid-brushstroke. Liam froze mid-step.
"Holy fuck," Liam blurted out. "Oh, God, Ace... I'm so sorry..."
Ace's first reaction had been to cover up, but that was before he'd seen Liam sneaking a peek at his cock. Then another one. Then he'd started to blush, and shuffle his feet.
The one thing that Liam didn't do was leave.
So Ace continued to stand there. Naked and huge and hard... and getting huger and harder.
"Holy fuck," Liam said again, but this time, the words had an almost reverential tone to them. His brown eyes were fixed on Ace's body, and Ace assumed that he was ogling his impressive cock. "What the hell is that?"
Ace smiled. "What do you think it is, sweetheart? I'm surprised you don't remember it, seeing as how well acquainted you two were once upon a time."
Liam blushed a fire-engine red, but stuck to his guns. "Not that." He gestured at Ace's right arm. "That."
"Oh, shit." Now Ace did cover up. "I di
dn't think –"
"Nuh-uh." Liam crossed the bathroom floor, ignoring Ace's hard-on, and tugged his hand off his arm. He stared at the tattoo there, stunned. "Is that – is that for me?"
Ace's face was stone. "No."
"Don't you lie to me, Ace Cuddy. I knew every inch of your body once, and I knew your every thought, too. You're a world-class liar... but you've never been able to lie to me. Now." Liam touched the black ink that ran the length of Ace's whole arm, almost to his wrist. "Is that for me?"
Ace looked down at his body, mostly to avoid the certainty in Liam's eyes. He was heavily-tattooed, as befit an MC member, and although tattoos generally meant something to bikers, this one was special. It wasn't his biggest or most intricate tat – that was the Fallen Angels MC logo tattooed across the whole of his chest – but it was the one that he loved the most.
"Yeah," Ace mumbled, since denial was pretty fucking pointless. "Of course it's for you. You know it's for you. I don't even know why you're asking me that."
Liam's fingers traced the lines of the spider web tattoo, traced the three dates written within its lines: the first, the first night that they'd met. The second, the first night that they'd made love up at the lake. And the third, the day that Ace had left Liam sitting in that hotel room, alone and heartbroken and devastated.
"Why"? Liam whispered, shaken. "Why did you get it done?"
"Are you kidding me?" Ace was offended at the question, offended to the point of anger. "Don't you know what you meant to me, Liam? What you still mean to me? Don't you think that I wanted to honor what we had, even just a little bit, but in some permanent and personal way?"
"No." Liam's voice was soft. "I didn't, Ace. How the hell could I know that, after how you ended it? I thought that you'd walked out of that hotel that day, and never looked back. Not even once. I thought that you'd forgotten me. I thought that I was alone in missing us.""
"Well." Ace gestured at his arm. "Now you know. You weren't."
Liam stared at the tattoo for a few seconds longer, then he abruptly stepped back. Ace ached at the sudden distance between them, and longed for it to return.
Extreme Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 7) Page 12
