by Evelyn Glass
They found Stephan where Camilla had left him—sipping coffee in the kitchen. He had turned off the light that Camilla had turned on, and he was once more sitting in the dark, although dawn was approaching and the room was no longer pitch black.
Camilla felt nervous. Dirk had agreed to explain everything, but he refused to do it without Stephan’s presence; he said it would be a much wiser idea to let the MC’s president be there for this kind of conversation. Camilla was still unable to judge Stephan Walker’s character, but one thing she knew was that she wasn’t a huge fan.
He looked up when they entered, and she could tell immediately by the hardening of his handsome features and the steely glint in his hazel eyes that he knew something was up.
“You’re up early in this house,” he commented.
Dirk shrugged. “Camilla told me you were here,” he said. “Since when do you take guard duty?”
“Since it’s you,” Stephan replied easily. “And since my hands have been itching for Tar Mongols’ blood for quite some time now.”
Dirk nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
Camilla watched the exchange, and she wondered about the relationship between these two men. It was clear they cared deeply about each other and shared their own language. They couldn’t be any more different from each other, and yet their bond was deep and strong.
Dirk didn’t go for the coffee that still lay waiting and fresh in the pot. He took a seat right across Stephan at the table and gestured for her to do the same.
Stephan watched them curiously. “What?” he said. “Are you getting married or something?”
Camilla was surprised to feel herself flush at the words, and she was never happier for the lack of light in a room as she was then.
Dirk snorted, but he didn’t dignify that with a comment. Instead, he said, “I want to tell her.”
Stephan stiffened instantly. He sat up straighter and narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Tell her what?”
“Everything. What we do, how the territory works, what this feud with the Mongols really is about.”
Stephan stared at him in disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?” he all but exploded. “You want to tell our business to an investigative reporter?”
Dirk snorted again. “I won’t go into details, Stephan,” he said, huffing in annoyance. “I’m not an idiot.”
Stephan arched a blond eyebrow. “I swear, these days I wonder.” He cast a pointed look at Camilla, who glared right back.
“She thinks what’s happening is her fault,” Dirk said. “That we’re going to war with the Tar Mongols because of her.”
Stephan snorted. “That’s mighty presumptuous of you, Miss Hernandez.”
Camilla’s glare sharpened. “Well, you didn’t give me many reasons to think otherwise.”
“Fair enough,” Stephan said. He brought his attention back to Dirk. “But no, Dirk, I forbid you to go spouting off about our business to this woman.”
“But she feels—”
“I don’t care how she feels!” Stephan snapped. “This isn’t a fucking therapy circle! It’s not my problem if she feels guilty, and it’s not your problem either. You are not going to give her any information.”
His eyes burned. Camilla did her best not to recoil. She had never seen Stephan Walker’s infamous cold anger firsthand, but she was getting a glimpse of it now, and she didn’t like it one bit.
“I just want to tell her what’s going on, Stephan,” Dirk said with remarkable calmness. “Like it or not, she’s smack in the middle of it, and I think she deserves to know.”
Stephan looked from one to the other in disbelief. “I think we’ve done more than enough for her,” he said after a moment.
Camilla was getting annoyed at their referring to her as though she weren’t there, but she bit her tongue and kept her mouth shut; there was a time and a place to complain, and this was neither.
The silence that followed was tense and heavy. The two men glared openly at each other in silent challenge.
“Do me a favor and get out of here,” Stephan eventually said, “before I shoot you both.”
Camilla winced; she wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t serious. She followed Dirk out of the room and back up the stairs.
“Well, that went well,” she muttered.
Dirk flashed her a grin from over his shoulder. “As a matter of fact, it did.”
Camilla frowned. He didn’t sound ironic at all. “But he said—”
“He said I can tell you.”
Camilla’s confusion mounted. She watched as Dirk closed the door of his bedroom behind them. He took her hand and led her to the bed, and they both sat on the edge of the mattress.
“I’m not sure we were having the same conversation back there,” she said.
Dirk laughed. “Probably not. That was my way of asking Stephan for permission to tell you as much as I can without overexposing the club, and that was his way of giving me the go-ahead. If he didn’t want me to tell you, he would have separated us.”
“Then why didn’t you just tell me in the kitchen?”
Dirk grimaced at the thought. “Stephan is giving me permission to have this conversation with you, but he doesn’t necessarily approve of it. He doesn’t want to have to listen.”
Camilla nodded. She couldn’t say that she fully understood the dynamic of what had just happened, but she figured it was best to just concentrate on the matter at hand.
“So tell me,” she said. “What’s going on with the Tar Mongols? How can you say it’s not about me?”
“I told you, Camilla,” Dirk began, “you’re a pretext. We’ve been at war with them for a long time. It was bound to escalate sooner or later. You’re just the perfect excuse.”
Camilla scowled. She wasn’t sure she liked to be the “excuse” for a bloody conflict. “So what is it about?” she asked.
“Territory. We’ve been fighting over the Mojave Desert for years.”
“I thought you said the desert is your territory,” Camilla said, recalling the very first day that she had met the Minutemen. They had stopped her kidnappers, claiming that they were crossing borders.
“In bits and pieces, yes,” Dirk said. “Speckles, more like. Neither the Tar Mongols nor us have ever managed to win a good chunk of it. We want them gone, they want us gone.”
“Why?”
“Business,” Dirk replied. “We deal in two different areas, and both are bad for the other.”
Camilla swallowed nervously. Despite her best efforts to remain as detached as possible, she had begun to think of Dirk as a good guy. She wasn’t sure she was ready to review her evaluation once she found out about his deeds.
“What’s your area?” she asked.
“Guns,” Dirk replied candidly. “We smuggle weapons to the other clubs in California.”
“Oh.” Camilla didn’t like it, but she figured it was better than selling drugs to innocent people who didn’t know better…like the Tar Mongols did.
“We also don’t like the cartel sniffing around the area. We don’t like them crossing. We just plain don’t like them. We got here shortly before the Tar Mongols did, and once they appeared, it became immediately clear that one of us would have to obliterate the other in order to survive.”
Camilla bit her lip. “Um…can’t you just…I don’t know…move?”
Dirk blinked at her. He laughed, loud and raucous. “Are you serious?”
Camilla thought about it. It was a very naïve way to look at the matter, and she should have known better than that, given her professional background. “I suppose I’m not,” she admitted with a grimace.
“Over the years, things have gotten worse,” Dirk continued, “and Herman Ruiz revealed himself for the scumbag he is. It’s not just about territory anymore. The Tar Mongols are ruthless scum, and we don’t want them here.”
His eyes burned as he spoke. Camilla thought about Eleanor, Dirk’s fiancée who was kidnapped, raped, and killed by
the Tar Mongol’s godawful president.
“So what about me?” she asked after a moment. “What do I have to do with any of this?”
“Nothing,” Dirk admitted. “To the Tar Mongols, you’re a nuisance that needs to go away. To us, you’re nothing.”
Camilla couldn’t help but wince. She hated the thought of being “nothing” to him, but she didn’t stop to wonder why she hated it, and she knew better than to voice her disappointment.
“Then why am I here?” she asked instead. “If I’ve got no value to the club, why are you guys keeping me here? Why did you even take me in the first place?”
Dirk thought about it. He shook his head and gave her a small smile. “Because, Camilla, as much as we don’t like to advertise it, and as much as I’m sure you don’t like to think about it, even though we’re outlaws, we’re not monsters. The monsters are out there, and we couldn’t leave you at their mercy. We don’t let innocents die if we can help it.”
His features darkened, and Camilla knew they were both thinking about the same thing; they were thinking about Alex Hurley and his family, who had been slaughtered in their own home by the Tar Mongols a mere week ago.
“So this is a war zone,” she said after a few moments—during which she let herself take in all the information.
Dirk nodded. “It has been for quite some time now. Police won’t even come here.”
Camilla shuddered. She knew what that meant. It meant that whoever had the misfortune to accidentally wander into the Mojave Desert was on their own—like she had been until the Minutemen came along. She realized now—even though she didn’t like to admit it or think about it—Dirk and his men had saved her, and they were continuing to save her every day that they kept her with them.
“So you’ll really let me go once all of this is over?” she asked.
Dirk gave her a reassuring smile. “You have my word.”
Camilla decided that was good enough for her. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.
“You must be counting the days,” Dirk said. “I’m sure you can’t wait to be home.”
Camilla watched him. There was a darkness in his eyes that she knew all too well. She shivered, her body responding to the scalding look in his blue irises.
“I’m not in that much of a hurry,” she said, huskily.
Dirk took the hint. He leaned in, cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her.
Chapter 28
Camilla had thought she had missed Dirk’s touch on her body, but now that she was finally experiencing it again, she realized the longing had been a lot stronger than what she had first thought.
Even though Dirk had said he would not fuck her again, he, too, seemed impatient. His hands roamed over Camilla’s naked skin, as though she was on fire. There was an urgency to his movements, like he was embracing something he had thought long lost. And perhaps that was just the case. Perhaps, even though he had tried to resist it, Dirk’s longing for Camilla was just as strong as hers for him. Perhaps he couldn’t stay away from her any more than she could stay away from him.
Camilla surrendered completely to this new onslaught of desire and passion—what was the point in even pretending to resist, anyway? They both knew they were no match for their mutual appetite. They had known the battle was lost the minute they set eyes on each other. Camilla’s curves beckoned to Dirk like a siren’s call, and Dirk’s untamable wildness had bewitched Camilla from the very start.
She ran her hands along the six-foot-five expanse of Dirk’s body, mapping out his numerous scars with her fingertips. She wondered about those marks, and she surprised herself with the sudden wish that she could hunt down everyone who had ever put a mark on him and make them pay. What was that about? A small voice in one corner of her mind told her she knew exactly what that was about, but she refused to listen; she just wasn’t ready. Not yet.
Dirk’s mouth began to trace a scalding path down her throat, and Camilla forgot about any coherent thoughts that might be running through her head. He kissed her breasts reverently, and he sucked at her nipples, as though he were drinking from the fountain of life. Dirk had always been passionate during sex, but he had never been worshiping. This was a new aspect of him, and Camilla felt flattered, embarrassed, and elated all at the same time. To be worshiped by a man such as Dirk Coleman was a rare and strange privilege.
Camilla threw her head back, long, auburn hair cascading down her shoulders, as Dirk’s mouth continued its delicious ministrations. When his fingers came into play, Camilla felt her whole body shiver with anticipation. She knew what was coming, and she couldn’t wait. The way Dirk played with her clitoris was something Camilla had never experienced before. It was something she dreamed of at night, the kind of dream from which she would wake up wet.
She didn’t have to ask. She didn’t have to beg. Somehow, Dirk seemed to know exactly what she needed. He slid a finger inside of her, and she welcomed it. His fingertip created swirly patterns within her, and she writhed and gasped in an explosion of pleasure. He smirked, pleased with himself at the effect his every gesture seemed to have on her.
He leaned down to capture her mouth in a hungry kiss—even as his hands continued to tantalize her. When his fingertips found her clitoris, Camilla’s world exploded and her brain short-circuited on her. The way he could touch her, the way he knew exactly what amount of pressure to apply, the way he knew exactly what would get to her…all of that alone was almost enough to tip her over the edge. But Camilla held on, knowing that the longer she let this go on, the more mind-blowing the orgasm would be.
Dirk smiled at her and moved, his mouth tracing a pattern down her abdomen and stomach, all the way down to her awaiting mons and lips. The tip of his tongue swirled around and on top of her sensitive clitoris, sending renewed waves of ecstasy shooting up her spine. Camilla knew she was done for now. She knew there was no way she could hold on much longer, and she decided not to fight it anymore.
Indeed, when the orgasm came, it was the most intense Dirk had given her yet—perhaps it was the long wait, perhaps it was the fact that she hadn’t thought he would ever touch her again. Perhaps it was just that she was hungry for him—a hopeless, constant kind of hunger that ate her up from within. Whatever the reason, Camilla’s universe dissolved into a red-hot explosion of white light. She heard herself cry out, but it sounded very far away.
When she regained her bearings, Dirk was grinning down at her, his blue eyes shining. “Wow,” he said, “that really got to you, didn’t it?”
Camilla growled. She was still unable to string one coherent sentence together. She reached up to grab the back of his neck, and she tugged him down for yet one more heated kiss. He went willingly, but he pulled away when she attempted to flip them over. The smirk on his face had widened.
“Nuh-uh,” he said. “This time was all about you.”
Camilla watched him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“Positive.”
He kissed her again, and then he rolled over to lie next to her on the mattress.
Camilla turned her head to look at him. “So that’s it?” she asked. “One mind-blowing orgasm, and that’s that for the day?”
Dirk laughed, loud and more carefree than she’d ever heard him laugh before. “I’m sorry, does that seem like too little to you?”
Camilla grinned. “God, no,” she said sincerely. “I was just thinking you might want something…uh…for yourself.”
Dirk propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her with a serious expression on his face. “You have no idea, do you?” When she just stared at him uncomprehendingly, he continued, “You have no idea how sexy you are, do you?”
Camilla felt her cheeks catch fire, and for the first time in a very long time, she wasn’t embarrassed to let a man see her blush. She could have stopped to think about why that was, too, but she didn’t.
Instead, she gave an eloquent, “Uh…” in response to Dirk’s praise.
He smirked,
not unkindly. “Giving you that orgasm right now was more than enough, Camilla. You’re not the only one who got some serious pleasure from it.”
Camilla blushed harder, but she didn’t care. She sat up and kissed him—long and hard and grateful for both what he had done and what he had said.
“What about your new ‘no distractions’ rule?” she asked once they were both settled back under the covers. “That didn’t last long.”
Dirk chuckled. “I wasn’t expecting it to.”
Camilla smiled, pleased with herself and the pull she seemed to have on this strange, remarkable man. “I’m glad it didn’t.”
Silence fell over them, and it wasn’t an uncomfortable one.
