Guns & Burning Rubber: The Iron Brotherhood series
Read Guns & Burning Rubber: The Iron Brotherhood series Online
Authors: Samantha Westlake
The Iron Brotherhood, Book Two
Samantha Westlake
Copyright 2015 Samantha Westlake
All rights reserved.
Guns & Burning Rubber – The Iron Brotherhood, Book Two
Book design by Samantha Westlake
Cover Image Copyright 2015
Used under a Creative Commons Attribution License:
Guns & Dusty Roads (The Iron Brotherhood, Book 1)
“Kara needed the big, burly biker to keep her secret. She had to keep him happy - even if that meant giving in to his desires…”
FBI Special Agent Kara Sybil is composed, capable, and committed to her job. When a gun smuggling case comes across her desk, she doesn’t hesitate to dive in. With help from her biker uncle, Kara infiltrates a 1% motorcycle club, the Iron Brotherhood, searching for clues and the culprits.
Undercover, Kara’s prepared for rough trials, uncouth bikers, and heavy interrogation and suspicion. But she’s not prepared to be coupled with a handsome, sexy biker named Cross - who also knows her true identity!
Cross is willing to help Kara ferret out the gun smugglers, as long as she grants immunity to the Iron Brotherhood for their other criminal activities. But as Cross and Kara become more entangled in their deception, they both start to feel the primal pull of attraction towards each other.
How long can Kara hold out, resisting this criminal’s sexy masculine appeal?
For Mary, who is an ever-present distraction.
CHAPTER 1
FBI Special Agent Kara Sybil growled loudly to herself as she stared around at the dusty desert, stretching out in all directions around her.
She was, most definitely, not having a good day.
Next to the female FBI agent, a heavy, cherry red motorcycle let off the occasional pop and hiss as it cooled. The machine was a Harley Fatboy, produced in 1990 - the first year that the machine had rolled off of the production line. But despite its age, the machine looked practically brand new, with fewer than ten thousand miles on the odometer. The machine was on permanent loan to the FBI, courtesy of a drug dealer they’d busted a few years back who had purchased the machine with his illegal profits. Even after being grabbed up by the FBI, the big chopper had been left to rot in a warehouse - until Kara requisitioned it for her current investigation as part of her cover.
The big bike had a slight coating of road dust covering its smooth, sleek body, but was otherwise almost spotless. There were no scratches on the sides of the gas tank or the lights from being dropped, and the machine ran smoothly. Whenever Kara gave the throttle a twist, the machine throbbed appreciatively between her legs as it surged forward, an eager stallion yearning to eat up the miles between it and the horizon.
As an FBI agent, Kara spent a depressing amount of time sitting behind a desk, staring at a computer screen. It was fulfilling work, but it quickly grew old, and she often yearned for a change of scenery. When she was out on the road on her chrome steed, the wind in her hair, she could almost forget about her obligations, just reveling in the freedom of the open road.
At least, she felt like this most of the time - when her chopper was actually running.
Kara swung one leg over the bike and tilted it back and forth, looking down carefully into the open gas tank, hoping that somehow the vehicle might have produced some extra gasoline in the last couple of minutes.
Unfortunately, the tank was still just as empty as it had been a few minutes earlier, when the bike’s engine sputtered out and the machine lost power, drifting to a slow stop on the side of the highway.
Of course, that was no big deal. This was why the machine had an auxiliary valve on the side of the chopper. It would only take one twist of that valve, and the bike would switch from the gasoline intake halfway down the tank to the one at the bottom. There wasn’t much extra gas in the machine, but it would be enough for Kara to limp to the nearest gas station.
As she had discovered, despite this Harley sitting on display in a drug dealer’s house for half of a decade, it had broken exactly one part:
The auxiliary valve.
And this meant that the FBI agent was now marooned out in the middle of the desert with no gas.
In between a surprisingly long and inventive string of curses, Kara’s ears caught another noise, faint but growing steadily louder. Perking up, she turned, looking back down the long, straight stretch of highway from which she’d come.
There was a small plume of dust, growing larger as its cause approached. Kara squinted, narrowing her eyes, and after another minute she was able to make out a dark figure, also astride a motorcycle, rumbling down towards her. The man was hidden in a helmet and black leather. Kara recognized the chopper between his legs as a Harley as well - although this one was jet black.
The man pulled in the clutch on his bike as he approached, slowing down and smoothly braking as he veered off the road and onto the shoulder. He hit the button to kill the engine, and the throaty growl of his own engine faded away, leaving Kara’s ears slightly ringing.
Kicking down the stand on his bike, the man, his face still hidden by the helmet, stepped off of his bike. He reached up with both hands to lift off the protective cover on his head as he stepped over to Kara.
The first thing revealed as that helmet rose up was a wide, shit-eating grin that immediately sent a wash of conflicting information through Kara. On the surface, given her current situation, that big smile made her fingers itch, tightening towards fists inside of her leather riding gloves, just dying to reach out and slap the man’s face.
Deeper down, however, Kara wanted to get rid of that grin in a different way - by tackling the man down to the ground and kissing him so passionately that he couldn’t even control his muscles any longer!
The strength behind that second thought made Kara pause, frowning a little. That was definitely not appropriate for the situation.
Fortunately for her, the man didn’t seem to catch the different, conflicting urges raging inside her head. “Well, little miss Kara, looks like someone’s made the rookie mistake of running out of gas,” he commented, talking through that big grin.
The man lifted off his helmet, tucking it under one shoulder, his eyes sparkling in the sunlight. Christopher Rhodes - biker, friend of her family, incredibly sexy and distracting, and utterly corrupted criminal - smiled at her, the little crinkled laugh lines at the edges of his well-tanned face making her stomach do a nervous little flip. Standing a good six feet tall, an inch or two over her already considerable height, he had the broad figure of a swimmer, with a well-muscled core that Kara personally knew looked just as good under his clothes as it did with them still on.
“Cross, it’s not my fault,” Kara pointed out, using the man’s biker nickname. She couldn’t think of Christopher by anything else. As a member of the Iron Brotherhood, one of several motorcycle clubs that operated in the area, he was known to all his friends as Cross; in fact, Kara doubted that they would even recognize his true name. “It turns out that the petcock from the reserve valve on the tank is blocked. I thought I’d have enough fuel - the next place to fill up is just up the road!”
Even as she protested, however, the FBI agent knew that it wouldn’t do her much good. Cross just stepped up closer to her, still grinning down at her in his unbearably smug manner that made her feel so conflicted. “And you could have checked that before heading out,” he pointed out, sounding far too reasonable for her tastes.
The man was a study in frustrations, Kara thought, glaring at him. He was a degenerate, and although she hadn’t caught him explicitly participating in any criminal activity, he’d only first started talking to her as part of a sweetheart deal to save the Iron Brotherhood from prosecution. He was selling out a rival gang in exchange for a blind eye being turned to his own group’s illegal activities.
But as much as Kara hated even this exception of justice, she needed him more - or rather, she needed his help to level charges against his rival gang. Chasing after that rival gang, she’d agreed to forgive Cross’s own lawbreaking - in exchange for his help in letting her go undercover with his gang to uncover the evidence she needed.
The FBI had been tracking a group of gun runners, a criminal group smuggling large numbers of illegal firearms into the United States across the southern border and moving the weapons up through the states. Information had been spotty, and the press was breathing down the FBI’s neck - but Kara caught a suggestion that a motorcycle club might be involved, and she reached out to Cross for help.
In exchange for immunity, Cross helped get her accepted as a friend of his own gang, the Iron Brotherhood - by passing her off as his new girlfriend! That cover story rankled with the female FBI agent, but she soon learned that the Iron Brotherhood’s contacts were good - better even than the FBI’s own tipsters.
The Hellraisers. They were a rival one-percenter motorcycle club, operating throughout the Southwest, and they’d recently been expanding their criminal empire. An expansion, Kara was informed, that was fueled through sales of illegal firearms.
Bingo.
Now, Kara had a group to set in her sights. She even had a nickname - “Savage,” the president of the Hellraisers, and apparently quite the asshole. (Kara’s cover story to the Iron Brotherhood, made up half on the spot by Cross, insinuated that she was a jilted former flame of Savage, and she was out to ruin the Hellraisers in revenge for being unceremoniously dumped by the biker.)
But what Kara still didn’t have was proof. Before she could call in the full support of the FBI, she needed to get her hands on undeniable cold, hard proof that the Hellraisers were responsible - as well as a location where an FBI strike team could apprehend all of the bikers at once, not letting any of them slip away.
Back in the present, Cross was still grinning at Kara in that smug way of his, but he had retreated back to his bike, and was beckoning her over. “Well, come on, climb on,” he called to her. “I’ll give you a ride down to the station so you can grab a can of gas - but only if you hold on nice and tight to me as we ride!”
“Oh, I’ll show you holding on,” Kara muttered as she threw her leg over Cross’s chopper and pulled herself up behind him.
She looped her arms through the man’s armpits, around his waist, watching as the grin reappeared on his face. But as Kara tightened her grip, squeezing the air out of the man’s lungs, his grin faded, until he looked more annoyed than smug. “Easy now,” he growled back to her. “If I pass out on the highway, we both fall off, you know.”
“Almost worth it,” Kara told him, but she eased up on her grip.
Slightly.
Cross pulled his helmet back on and started up the Harley’s engine between their legs, pulling smoothly up onto the highway. Kicking up through the gears, it only took a few minutes for them to cruise into the gas station, where he pulled over and waited for Kara to go inside and purchase a gas can.
Once she had learned the name of the Hellraisers, and additional information on their locations and meeting places, she had hoped that she could wrap up this case quickly. Playing her undercover role, she was stuck living with Cross at the Iron Brotherhood’s communal house - a location filled with temptations. The sooner she could get out of that place, Kara thought to herself, the better.
It definitely wasn’t that she was lonely. Sure, Kara could barely even picture her last boyfriend, however many years ago that had been, but she was married to her work. She didn’t need romance in her life, didn’t have the time to take on juggling a boyfriend along with her caseload.
Yet even though she intellectually knew that he was trouble, her body kept on pulling her towards Cross.
Their very first night together, Kara ended up having about a half dozen too many drinks, and found herself nearly naked, riding atop the man as she tried to strip off his boxers and he nuzzled at her chest! She narrowly managed to break things off, but ever since that point, she’d felt the sexual tension growing between the two of them, an elephant in the room between them.
And the longer she was stuck on this case, the longer she had to stick around Cross - and the more concerned Kara felt that she’d end up slipping, giving in to the man in a moment of lusty desire-fueled weakness.
It would certainly be amazing.
But it would be a mistake.
So to keep herself from considering just how amazing Cross would perform in bed with her, Kara focused as hard as she could on tracking down leads, doing her best to find some way, any way, to worm in a visit with the Hellraisers. She only needed to find their smuggling headquarters, to know where the guns were located and see them for herself, and she’d have enough evidence.
That little bit of information would spell case closed - and would send Kara back to her normal life, with a glowing commendation in her file as well.
Yet over these last few days, Kara’s leads into the Hellraisers had gotten her nowhere but, well, stranded and out of gas. She was rapidly running out of contacts to try, and she was no further now than she’d been a few days previously.
So when Cross dropped her back at her bike and then lingered, she might have snapped at him with a bit more vitriol than was absolutely necessary. “What?” she snarled, glaring at the man in the hot afternoon.
“I actually had some news to share when you called me,” Cross said, watching her carefully.
“Yeah? What’s that? You just got fresh massage oil to relax me tonight?” Kara snapped sarcastically.
“Actually, I have a new lead that might help you meet with the Hellraisers,” Cross countered. “I’ll tell you back at the house.”
And as he climbed back onto his own chopper, smiling a little at the surprise on Kara’s face that he’d actually helped, Cross added one more sentence. “And I know just how to relax you tonight - and it doesn’t involve massage oil.”
As the man sped away, Kara turned away as she blushed furiously so that he wouldn’t see.
CHAPTER 2
Back at the Iron Brotherhood’s house, a rambling two-story affair out on the edges of town complete with a massive veranda that stretched around the house, Kara could hear the party going even before she opened the door.
Bunch of degenerates, she thought to herself as she climbed the steps. Most of the bikers were unemployed, at least in the eyes of the government - they engaged in a variety of underground activities, ranging from shady to downright illegal. When they weren’t out selling drugs or smuggling contraband across state lines, they spent their time lazing about the house, drinking and partying.
But even though she detested the lawbreaking that went on under her nose, lawbreaking she couldn’t do anything to stop, Kara couldn’t quite bring herself to truly dislike these men. Now that she’d been living at the house for close to a week, she’d come to at least vaguely know most of the other Iron Brotherhood members, and none of them were really inherently bad.