Make It Hurt (Texas Bounty)

by Jackie Ashenden

  And whatever soul had been left when he’d gotten back from Afghanistan had been stripped away in the process.

  Nora was silent for a long minute, staring back at him. Still no fear in her eyes, not a single flicker, only anger. Only rage. And something else…

  Her pulse was beating fast in her throat, getting faster.

  “So I spend one night with you and in return I get Dust—if you even give me Dust—while you don’t have to do anything.” She screwed her face up as if considering it. “Hmmmm. Let me think about it.” Her face cleared. “Thought about it and no. Not now, not later, not in a million fucking years.”

  “It’s not just yourself you have to think about, sweetheart,” he reminded her gently. “Don’t forget your boss.”

  “Yeah, like I’m going to take your word that Duchess scammed a biker gang. I don’t fucking think so.” The hand on his chest flexed. “I can live with you making an asshole of yourself. That’s what you did eight years ago after all.”

  He wanted to process that last statement, he genuinely fucking did.

  But at that moment, Nora pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 3

  Nora was many things, but one thing she wasn’t was stupid.

  She knew shooting Smith in the nuts—no matter how badly she wanted to—wasn’t the best of ideas. Especially with all the Ministry guys out in front of the bar. The club wouldn’t be too impressed with her injuring their president, and that made the chances of her getting back to Duchess alive, let alone in one piece, very slim indeed.

  But she had to do something.

  She wasn’t going to stand there letting him threaten her boss and loom over her like he owned her.

  Sure. Tell yourself it’s about the looming and not because he’s the sexiest man you’ve ever seen and he always has been.

  The voice in her head could just shut the fuck up. Same with her racing heartbeat and the wash of prickling heat she couldn’t seem to ignore. It was the lack of sex, that’s what it had to be. That’s what it must be.

  It certainly wasn’t because she wanted him.

  Nora aimed the muzzle at the floor between his legs and pulled the trigger.

  There was a deafening report and suddenly she was free, Smith having pushed himself back from her in an abrupt rush.

  For a frozen moment, they both held still, staring at each other. And it was very satisfying to see a ripple of what looked like shock in those glittering black eyes of his.

  Then he gave her a feral grin, white and savage like the smile of a tiger. “Nice move. But don’t think it lets you off the hook.”

  Shouting came from outside, the door banging open, and Nora found herself looking down the barrels of too many damn guns as the bar filled up with bikers all intent on neutralizing the threat to their president.

  “Calm the fuck down!” Smith roared over the shouts. “She’s mine to deal with. Any motherfucker lays a hand on her, they’ll answer to me.”

  Nora didn’t look anywhere else, only at Smith. And she had the abrupt, horrible feeling that somewhere along the line, she’d made a mistake. Because the violent, furious energy around him had changed. He wasn’t angry anymore, he just looked…intent. Like a hunter fixing on a target.

  And it seemed that the target was her.

  Be cool. Stay calm.

  She raised the muzzle of her gun, blew away imaginary smoke. “Next time, Ace, those balls of yours are going to be on the ground.”

  “Prez?” Her runaway skip, Dust, a massive guy with dark-blond hair and a Chinese full-sleeve tattoo wrapped around his left arm, lifted his weapon. “You really gonna let her get away with that?”

  Smith’s gaze didn’t leave hers. “I thought I wasn’t going to have to repeat myself, Dust.”

  He’s not going to let you get away with it. You should have said yes.

  Nora gritted her teeth, making a performance of holstering her weapon like there weren’t already fifty guns pointed directly at her. “Calm down, boys. Your president is quite safe. I’m leaving anyway.”

  An angry ripple went through the group of men.

  Smith ignored them and she knew that hungry smile was for her alone.

  A warning.

  Well, he could grin at her like a wolf all he liked, she wasn’t going to let him blackmail her with a threat to Duchess, not when he was talking a load of horseshit. She didn’t know her boss’s background, sure, but one thing she did know was that Duchess was a passionate supporter of both the law and justice, and scamming a biker gang was just not in any way, shape, or form something she would do.

  Refusing to let him see how furious and rattled she was, she blew him a kiss. “See you round, Smith.”

  Then she turned and walked out of the bar. Not too slow and not too fast. Just enough to show him how much of a fuck she didn’t give.

  Outside the heat of the sun nearly slammed her flat into the grit of the parking lot, the adrenaline that had kept her going since the moment she’d walked into the bar beginning to fade. Her legs felt unsteady, her heartbeat way too fast, and her mouth way too dry.

  Forcing herself to keep moving, she found her Mazda and got in, jamming the key into the ignition and pulling out of the parking lot, tires throwing up gravel as she did so.

  She half expected someone to follow her as she hightailed it down the highway, back toward Austin, but no one did. Or at least, no one on a Harley. Not that it was any consolation. Duchess had been very clear that getting Brook was a priority, and for the first time ever, Nora was having to return to the office after failing to get her man.

  It rankled. A lot. Because she always brought her skips in, always. Then again, she wasn’t to know her ex would be involved, nor that he’d turned into a major asshole, nor that he’d use some bullshit threat to blackmail her.

  But if he thought that was going to make her give up on getting Dust, he had another think coming. She never gave up. If there was an issue with getting a skip, she usually got around it and if she couldn’t get around it, then she blew that shit the hell up.

  This situation was no different. No different whatsoever.

  But she couldn’t shake the rattled feeling and it was still there by the time she got back to the Duchess offices, on the fourth floor of an office block full of accountants, in downtown Austin.

  Rose Hammond, Duchess’s sister who manned the office and dealt with the complex process of skip-tracing, looked up as Nora came in, slamming the office door loudly behind her. “Good hunt, I see,” she commented dryly as Nora strode past her toward Duchess’s office.

  “Duchess in?” Nora asked, ignoring her.

  “Yes, but she’s—”

  “Good.” Nora wasn’t in any mood to wait for the “but she’s” explanations. She needed to see her boss and she needed to see her now.

  Duchess’s office door was closed, but Nora didn’t bother knocking. She just pushed it open and walked right in.

  Duchess herself was standing by the windows, her arms folded. Her platinum-blond hair was neatly coiled into a bun on the back of her head and she wore one of her white pussy-bow blouses with a navy-blue pencil skirt and blue pumps. A neat little pearl necklace was twined around her delicate neck.

  She looked like she should be in a Manhattan corner office rather than managing a bail bond business in Texas.

  Her pale blue eyes regarded Nora without surprise. “Nora,” she said in her cool, slightly husky voice. “Nice of you to join us. I don’t suppose you could try knocking next time?”

  Belatedly Nora realized that there was someone else sitting in one of the chairs at the other end of the room. Tall and dark, long legs stretched out, his arms over the back of the chair as if he was at home watching a game on the couch.

  Quinn Redmond. He owned a fugitive recovery agency called Lone Star Bounty, along with his brothers Zane and Rush.

  Duchess Bail Bonds had a bit of a rivalry going on with the Redmond brothers and it was well known that Duchess and Quin
n hated each other. Duchess herself never talked about him when he wasn’t around, but it amused the rest of the gang no end to see them sniping at each other whenever they were in a room together.

  Which wasn’t often. Though only a few weeks ago they’d joined forces to help out a woman who’d been forced into smuggling drugs for one of the cartels. That operation had gone pretty well—in fact, Nora had really enjoyed herself and had upgraded her opinion of the Redmond brothers from idiots to marginally intelligent morons.

  “Sorry,” Nora said, completely unapologetic. “But I need to talk to you ASAP.” She glanced at Quinn. “It’s urgent. Do you mind?”

  Quinn lifted a hand. “Be my guest.”

  Duchess said nothing for a long moment, staring at Quinn. And Nora suddenly felt the tension in the room, so thick it was like the pressure in the air before a thunderstorm.

  There was a bet going on in the Duchess offices, about how long it would take Duchess and Quinn to finally rip each other’s clothes off. So far there was five hundred bucks in the pot and the clothes had remained firmly unripped.

  “In private, Quinn,” Duchess suggested gently.

  Quinn narrowed his brilliant green eyes at her and another long moment passed.

  Nora, getting impatient now, snorted. “Oh come on you two. Get a goddamn room already.”

  “And that’s my cue to leave.” Quinn pushed himself up from the chair and strolled to the door, where he paused. “I wouldn’t get your panties in a bunch about it, little girl,” he said, looking pointedly at Duchess. “No one likes a drama queen.” Then he pulled the door open and went out, letting it slam shut behind him.

  “Did I interrupt something?” Nora raised a brow. “Sorry. Like I said, it was urgent.”

  Duchess shook her head. “No. Just Quinn Redmond being an ass.”

  “Business as usual then.”

  “Quite.” Her boss moved over to her desk, leaning back against the edge of it and folding her arms again. “So, what’s going on? Trouble in bikerland?”

  Nora wasn’t looking forward to explaining her failure with Brook, but then she didn’t have a lot of choice, not when he wasn’t in handcuffs at her side.

  She hooked her thumbs into her belt loops. “I didn’t get Brook.”

  Genuine surprise crossed Duchess’s face, followed by the briefest flash of something else that looked a hell of a lot like worry. “That’s…unexpected. What was the problem? Do you need West and Rhys?”

  Nora let out a breath. “The problem is the new president.”

  Duchess tilted her head, giving her a long look from underneath her pale lashes. “And what exactly is the problem with the new president?”

  The problem is that he’s the man whose heart I broke eight years ago and he hasn’t forgotten and he hasn’t forgiven and now he’s taking his revenge. On me.

  And unfortunately that means you’re probably going to suffer too.

  Yeah, that sounded perfect, didn’t it? That sounded superstrong and in control.

  Not.

  The words sat there in her mouth and she just couldn’t get them out. Because they weren’t Nora Sutcliffe, the toughest fugitive recovery agent in the entire county. They were Nora Sutcliffe, stupid debutante, so afraid of disappointing her father, she’d done whatever he told her to, even betray a man she’d once cared about.

  But she wasn’t that woman, not anymore. And Duchess didn’t need to know about her ancient history with Smith. Pretty much no one needed to know that.

  “The problem,” Nora said flatly, “is that he’s a dick. But I guess that’s pretty much par for the course with biker presidents.”

  A crease appeared between Duchess’s fair brows. “That’s it? He’s a dick?”

  Nora took a small, silent breath. Should she mention this scamming business? Just to make sure it really was a nonissue, of course. Because if Smith hadn’t been bluffing…Well. If he’d been telling the truth, then she’d really be in the shit.

  You’d have to give him the night he wanted.

  Unfortunately, yeah, she’d have to seriously consider it, since it was either that or let Duchess’s past come back to bite her. And there was no way she’d do that.

  Nora had been at rock bottom when she’d first met Duchess. A month after finally realizing that she was only a cog in her father’s empire-building machine and walking out of her pampered Houston life, she’d been cleaning tables and taking drink orders in a seedy bar in Austin, the only job she could get. With no money and no friends, she’d never felt the smallness and powerlessness of her own existence so completely. And then Duchess had turned up, all cool intelligence and tough as nails, despite the whole polished Manhattan lawyer vibe she had going on.

  Nora had instantly been drawn to her, admiring how in control of her own life Duchess seemed, and they’d gotten to chatting about Duchess’s business. And Nora had decided then and there that that’s what she wanted to be. A bounty hunter. Cool, tough, in control, and most important—not afraid.

  Duchess had helped Nora with her weapons training, sponsored the certificates she needed for a career in bail enforcement, and then she’d given Nora a job. And not just a job. Her boss, for all her cool exterior, was very supportive, running her whole crew like a family rather than a business, and for Nora, whose mother had died when she’d been born and whose father had been such a dictator, it had been somewhat of a revelation.

  So yeah, betraying everything Duchess had given her just because her ex was being an asshole? That wasn’t happening.

  Though it would be good to know if she genuinely had something to worry about all the same.

  “He mentioned something,” Nora said, slowly. “I threatened to go to the cops if he didn’t give me Brook, and he…uh…well, he threatened to bring down the Ministry on us.” She paused. “Or rather, you specifically.”

  The cool expression on Duchess’s face didn’t change. “Ah,” she said.

  Okay, so that wasn’t encouraging. “Ah?”

  “Damn,” Duchess muttered under her breath, glancing down at the floor. “Damn. Damn. Damn. And fuck for good measure.”

  Nora went cold. Holy shit, please don’t say Smith had actually been telling the truth. “Something you’re not telling me, boss?”

  Duchess looked up, meeting her gaze. “Okay, so here’s the deal. I need Brook taken down and in jail, and the sooner the better. And yes, there’s a reason. A reason I was hoping not to have to tell anyone, but…” She trailed off. “Goddamn bikers. What did he tell you?”

  Unease settled in Nora’s gut. She had a feeling this was not going to be good. “He mentioned something about your father and how he scammed the club out of some money.”

  “I guess it was too much to hope for that they’d forget.” Her boss pulled a face.

  Nora blinked. “You mean…it’s true?”

  Duchess let out a sigh. “Yes, it’s true. My dad was a con artist, used to grift a lot of people, including, unfortunately, the Austin chapter of the Ministry.”

  Oh fuck.

  “Dad went to prison,” Duchess went on. “He died there of cancer. And I thought the Ministry had forgotten about getting payback, until…” She stopped again. “I don’t know how Brook found out about the scam, but he did. He started sending me notes about a month ago, saying if I didn’t pay him a certain amount of money every week, he’d ‘remind’ the Ministry of who I was and how much money I owed them.”

  “Jesus,” Nora breathed, shocked. “You’re not serious?”

  “Sadly, I am.”

  “But why didn’t you—”

  “Tell anyone? Because it was my problem to deal with and I dealt with it.” Her tone was flat and it was clear she didn’t want any argument about it. Not that Nora was going to argue since she knew what it was to want to handle a problem herself. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t expecting him to skip bail.”

  Nora’s already massive respect for her boss grew a little bigger. Had Duchess engineered Brook’
s arrest? Kudos to her if so, because they certainly didn’t need scum like that walking the streets. “Wow, okay. So, you bought his bond.”

  “Yes, and I was hoping he’d be an easy pickup.”

  Not so much.

  The unease in Nora’s gut twisted. “He’s the VP, boss. And Smith wasn’t happy with turning him in.”

  “Obviously.” Duchess cursed under her breath and pushed herself away from her desk. “I can’t have the Ministry coming for their money, not when I don’t have it and certainly not when I had nothing to do with Dad’s scam. Which means we’re going to have to rethink how we do this.”

  Dammit.

  Nora’s unease twisted tighter, because there was a way out of this little problem and all it would involve was spending the night with a certain biker asshole.

  A hot biker asshole.

  A biker asshole you did the dirty on, not forgetting.

  Nora shoved that out of her head. Okay, so that wasn’t old news for Smith, but him being pissed at her about it had no bearing on whatever decision she made now.

  What was important was Duchess and the company who’d taught her toughness, self-reliance, and loyalty. Who’d been there for her when she’d needed it.

  Sleeping with Smith wouldn’t be a hardship anyway. He was hot and yeah, she was still…attracted to him. She didn’t like being forced into stuff, it was true, but hey, it was only sex, no biggie.

  Yet despite her little internal pep talk, the unease began to morph into something more, something that felt like trepidation. She ignored it.

  If it meant getting Brook back in jail and off Duchess’s back, and the Ministry leaving Duchess alone for good, then she’d do it. Naturally, Duchess didn’t need to know the details, though. No point raking through the coals of the past, and especially not to a woman as adept at handling the opposite sex as Duchess was; the kind of woman who never had any kind of problem with a man, Quinn Redmond included.

  “Don’t worry about rethinking, boss.” She gave Duchess a cocky grin she didn’t feel. “I’ve got an idea about how to handle Smith. Just give me a few days, okay?”