VENDETTA: A Bad Boy, Motorcycle Club Romance (2 page)

Flash

Since Rafael Deleon died, I hated dealing with cartel motherfuckers even when things went smooth, but having to talk Santiago down put a bad taste in my mouth. Finding him holding a Glock to the head of some woman who couldn’t have been more than 20 filled me with rage.

I bit it back and killed the engine, setting the kickstand and climbing off to face the son of the Deleon Cartel boss. One thing you have to know when dealing with a cartel asshole is that they’re always fucking high—at least, the low-level shitheads. Gotta take that into account when you’re figuring out how to manage them. Even if Santiago hadn’t been flying and holding a gun, I still don’t think I would have drawn on him. His dad would go plumb crazy if I put a bullet in the kid’s head.

Family, man.

Without Rosaline’s help, I wouldn’t have found him at all. She’d come out of the kitchen to where I was waiting on Manuel to finish his damn card game and handed me a glass of water. Then she leaned down and put her lips almost to my ear.

“Santiago took some poor girl out into the desert.” Her hands twisted on the scarf she wore around her neck. “She looked young,
nene
.” I hated to see the strain on her face. I’d known Rosaline since I was a kid and my Dad dragged me to Mexico when he met with Rafael Deleon, the cartel boss who had died two years before—Manuel’s brother. I wished the old lady would come back to California and stay with The Fallen—she had a smart mouth that I liked—but she’d never walk away from the Deleon family, even if a shithead was in charge now.

“Why?”

She hesitated, her eyes flicking over my shoulder to search the hall before focusing on me. “I don’t know. A misunderstanding.”

“He high?”

She didn’t say anything, just dropped her eyes to the ground. There it was. Santiago was having a bad trip and pulled some girl off the street to make her pay for his addiction. “Manuel let him take her,” Rosaline said.

“Why?”

She shrugged and looked over her shoulder. “If you take the road behind the house, you’ll find him quickly.” Her eyes beseeched me to do something, and I sighed. I’d always been a sucker for her.

“I’ll see you later,” I said. “If Manuel asks, just tell him that I went to talk to Santiago.” The old man would like that. He’d always wanted to get Santiago more into the business and less into coke, but his son was headed for trouble. That much was obvious. I hadn’t seen the boy step off the white horse in ten years. Last year he’d sliced up one of the housemaids and sworn up and down she was looking at him funny.

Crazy fucker
.

Striding from the villa, I started my bike and headed for the desert. The last thing I needed was another ride in the sun with my skin cooking in my heavy leather jacket, but fuck if the breeze didn’t cool me off and put me in a better frame of mind. If it wasn’t for Rosaline, I’d have stayed at the villa and let Santiago do whatever he had to with the girl, I told myself.

I wasn’t sure if it was true, but it helped my mood to imagine a day where I didn’t have to deal with this horseshit.

The engine of my bike rumbled under me on the bumpy road, and I tilted with the metal frame to stay upright. Nothing in the world like the feel of melding with your bike, moving as one creature to reach a new destination. Even heading for possible disaster, I felt free. Unencumbered. Exactly as I was meant to be.

Then I saw the figures in the distance.

The sun was on the way down, but there was still enough light to take everything in through my sunglasses. Santiago jerked his head up when he saw me, then cuffed the girl in front of him, sending her sprawling. She was a small, slight thing, and I felt my protective instincts rise against my will.

Pushing all that useless shit down, I steered toward them. The Deleons owned a lot of land and since Manuel had taken over, the miles of desert had become a place where his lackeys could drag snitches and rats out back and put them down like diseased dogs. Once the desert started eating away at a body, no one was ever going to find it again. What the sand didn’t take down, the crows finished off once it was cool enough to scavenge.

“What the fuck are you doing, Santiago?” I hoped the weasely man wasn’t so high he didn’t recognize me. The last thing I needed was a hot slug buried in my chest because I listened to an old lady who didn’t want some poor girl shot. I shut off my bike and climbed off, feeling the sand shift under my boots.

San’s eyes lit up, so I asked him why he stood me up for a meeting he was never supposed to be a part of. Respect went a long way with men in the cartel, but twitchy bastards like San liked it more than most. His muscles relaxed a little at the question. It went against my personal code to make Santiago happy, but I was willing to break it if both the girl and I were able to walk out of the desert.

She looked like a college student—the parts I could see at least. Tanned skin that looked soft to the touch was tinged rosy from the sun and her ass. Well. Her ass was something I’d have given serious consideration if there wasn’t a Beretta in play.

“No, Flash.” I knew if I’d had plans to meet with him, he wouldn’t have come out here. Hell, he’d probably have opted to spend the day mostly sober instead of cruising around looking for little girls to beat and murder. San had a lot of annoying qualities, but one of the worst was the way he idolized The Fallen Motorcycle Club.

You couldn’t beat him off with a stick when we rolled up to his father’s villa to talk cash or coke.

“You—you wanted me at the meeting?” I would’ve felt bad for the kid if he wasn’t such a waste of air. I wasn’t in charge of the MC, but I sure as fuck hoped we’d vote to cut our ties to the cartel before Manuel turned in for the long dirt nap, the way we should have when his brother Rafael died. This guy wasn’t going to be stable enough to man a lemonade stand, let alone take over one of the biggest operations in Mexico.

“I’ll waste her and we can go.”
Fuck
. The girl was nothing to me, but I didn’t want to see her brains sprayed out over the sand.

“What did she do?” Buying time should have been my middle name, because I was spinning shit faster than a spider. I had nothing to say—if Manuel had sanctioned her murder, I doubted I’d be able to get her out of the villa alive anyway.

“She’s a threat to the cartel, Flash.” I lost my cool then and started laughing. It rolled out of me like helium from a balloon and I let him see just how crazy he sounded. I didn’t even have to see her face—which was kissing the sand—to know she wasn’t a threat. “A threat to the Deleons? Are you fucking kidding me? She’s probably still in school. Jesus, San, she’s just a kid.”

His face wavered and the hand with the gun relaxed. I felt my stomach loosen and took a step toward him. Whether or not I was willing to throw myself at San and disarm him was a question I couldn’t answer, but I wanted the option. Of course, taking it meant that Manuel would kill me and the girl before going after my brothers. So I opted to try to talk him down.

“Can’t let her go now, Flash. She saw the villa.”

I sighed, not looking forward to the bullshit this little rescue mission was going to put me through. “I’ll talk to Manuel. You know The Fallen don’t go in for this bullshit, San. Where are you from, kid?”

She didn’t answer for a minute and I wanted to clench my fists with frustration. Didn’t she know that I was her only ticket out of here?

“I asked you a question.” I put a hard edge on my voice; if she was more scared of me than San, she might develop a spine.

“Ca-California.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m on vacation at…at Two Palms Resort.”

“See, San, she’s just a fucking scared kid who’s spending time at a resort. Girl, are you going to say shit to anyone?”

“N-No.” Her body was shaking and the absurd urge to comfort her ripped through me. I put up a wall to stop it. Three things in life I didn’t do: betray The Fallen, snort coke, and give a fuck about women who weren’t related to me. Rosaline asked me to save her, I reminded myself. That was the only reason I was here—because of Rosaline, who might as well have been a distant aunt.

“Get up.” She obeyed, her arms pushing down so that her body rose. Judiciously keeping my eyes from her tits, I studied her face. Unsteadily, she placed her feet on the ground and then rose from a crouch, looking into my eyes and lifting her chin in quiet defiance.

Holy shit
. Her eyes were deep, shimmering green. The entire world seemed to shrink to a pinpoint and then rapidly expand as I stared into them.

I didn’t know it then, but the girl was going to destroy me.

Emily

“I’m taking the girl.” I still couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but I knew Flash wasn’t playing games. The bastard who grabbed me must have known it too, because he backed up a few steps before the biker strode forward and took me by my arm.

I winced. The kidnapper hadn’t been gentle and I knew my limb would be ringed with bruises by the morning. Flash must have noticed, because his grip immediately loosened and I felt some of the tension trickle out of my body. Whatever else he was, this man wasn’t taking pleasure from my pain.

“Where are her clothes?”

“What?” Santiago stepped forward and I cringed. I didn’t want him anywhere near me. Though anger was fueling me, there was still fear burning under it, pooling in every one of the bruises he’d put on my body. My skin was sensitive where the biker held it, despite the unexpected gentleness of his touch, because the sun’s glare had kissed it with a slight burn. All week, I’d laid out on the beach slathered in sunscreen, but this morning I’d reasoned that I didn’t need it.

Wrong, Emily
.

“Her clothes. Why isn’t she wearing clothes?”

“I stripped her at the villa,” he said, a whine coating every word. “Dad wanted to make sure that she wasn’t wearing a wire.”

“I’m sure he was very concerned,” said Flash, sardonic and disbelieving. He was right, of course. The man in the white suit hardly seemed concerned about me, and he knew as well as I did that no wire was worn. All he wanted was to get back to his game and to get his dragon-chasing son off his back. Remembering the way a sour feeling had settled in my stomach when he told Santiago to get rid of me, I shuddered.

My life wasn’t much, but I wanted the opportunity to live it.

“Why is everyone giving me shit about this?” Santiago dropped his arms to his sides and pouted like an overgrown child. Maybe I should have been less scared of him, but seeing a man with the emotional control of a kindergartener holding a gun didn’t exactly reassure me. His face was harsh with the sun setting behind him, creating shadows below his cheekbones.

His emaciated figure reminded me of my uncle. I wondered whether I would ever see the old man again.

“I’m not giving you shit.” Flash’s voice changed so that it was softer, gentler. Coaxing. He obviously had experience talking people down.
That makes two of
us. I’d tried to reason with Santiago from the moment he’d pushed me out of the van onto the sand of the dune, but it hadn’t worked. He’d just called me a whore and gripped my hair tight enough that I could feel strands pulling away from my scalp.

“She’s dangerous,” he insisted, but his voice shook like he wasn’t as sure as he had been.

“Where did you find her?”

“Downtown. Right where she was supposed to be. We were tipped off…” He glanced at me with a confused look on his face. “Dad can explain it. But she knew me, Flash. She stared right at me.”

I hadn’t even noticed him before he grabbed me.

“What were you doing at the market? Were you meeting someone?” Flash’s tone warned me to be as conciliatory as he was. I looked down at my feet in the sand and resisted the urge to cover my skin. The setting sun still shot the last of its rays over the desert and I could feel them prickle on my flesh. For an hour before he’d drawn the gun to shoot me, Santiago had ranted at me, blaming me for his failures. None of it made sense, but I was grateful for it now that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. If he’d shot me in the first five minutes, all Flash would have found was a corpse.

“I’m sorry,” I said, soft words slipping out like water from my cracked lips. “I wasn’t meeting anyone. I was just looking for something to send home to my boyfriend.”

“Why did you stare at Santiago?” Flash’s hand tightened imperceptibly on my arm.

“He’s—he’s a handsome man.” The words sounded sincere, but it made me sick to speak them. It was like trying desperately to keep down medicine when you’re already ill, and it left the same bad taste in my mouth. But no words were worth more than my life.

“See? She’s just a dumb kid.” Flash and Santiago laughed together as the wind picked up and more sand blew around us. Unwilling to raise my arms and draw attention to myself, I couldn’t prevent it from abrading my skin and drying out my eyes, even though I closed them quickly.

“Come on,” Flash said, pulling me toward his bike. “Let’s get home, clear shit up with your dad and do the deal. I need to get back to The Fallen.”

He ushered me to his bike, sat down and pulled me on behind him. “Hold on tight,” he said, his words almost lost in the whip of the wind around us. I nodded and wrapped my arms around his torso, knotting my fingers against the hard metal of his jacket zipper. From our left, Santiago watched us mount the Harley, then stepped into his van and took off for the villa, kicking up sand in his wake.

“Thank you,” I whispered, pressing my body against his and speaking directly into his ear as he started the engine. Flash stiffened, but didn’t reply.

My ass vibrated on the leather seat as the motorcycle rumbled over the sand-swept road that led back to the lighted villa in the encroaching darkness. Flash didn’t hurry. He navigated his bike gently over the bumps and cracks in the road. Since I needed time to process what had happened, I was grateful.

I was also kind of aroused
.

Despite the dark day I’d had, I couldn’t deny my physical response to the man who’d saved me—though whether I’d make it home was still very much in question. For now, though, my nipples brushed the smooth leather and rough patches on the back of his jacket, moving against them as the bike bobbed up and down. I couldn’t read them without moving away, and it didn’t seem likely that I’d be able to in the dim light anyway. So I tucked my thighs against the soft fabric of his jeans, leaned my face against his shoulder and let him drive me out of the desert.

By the time the guard opened the gate and Flash drove the bike up the winding road, I was shaking. The combination of night wind and sunburned skin wasn’t doing much for my internal thermostat. My rescuer turned to look at me after I climbed off the bike on unsteady legs.

“Are you doing okay?”

I laughed in a harsh burst. “Better than an hour ago.”

“What’s your name?”

“Emily. Emily Daniels.”

“Don’t talk unless you’re directly questioned. Don’t look anyone in the eyes. Try to disappear.” His head was tilted toward me while he issued instructions. He didn’t look to see whether I intended to obey. Obviously he was a man who expected obedience.

In this, at least, I intended to give it to him.

“Here.” He took off his jacket and laid it over the chrome handlebars, then pulled off his vest and put it on top of the jacket. Reaching for the hem of his white t-shirt, he pulled it over his head and I fought to keep my jaw closed.

Flash was the sexiest man I’d ever seen.

After a lifetime spent around pale, soft men and too-thin junkies, it was a shock to my system to see the hard, muscled chest of a real man. No speckled youth here. No. Flash was all sinew and lean grace as the shirt skimmed over his tanned body. Once it was in his hands, he offered it to me. I chided myself for wanting to reach out and run my fingers down his chest to the beginning of his happy trail above the button of his jeans.

“Pull this on. We’ll get you some clothes once we’re out of here.” He slid his vest and jacket back on, then walked up the stairs. I could read the patch now: The Fallen Motorcycle Club.

Since our height difference was at least a foot, the t-shirt covered all the parts of me that I wanted to keep to myself. Well, mostly to myself. I thought about the tattoo that wrapped around Flash’s arm and over his chest, wondering what it would look like if he was above me in bed, pounding in to me while I wrapped my legs around him and—.

No. This wasn’t the time for my schoolgirl fantasies about a man that I’d never get to have. Even if he was the sexiest person I’d seen in my life. Even if he had walked up to a madman and insisted on freeing me.

I ran a hand through my hair and felt the grit of the sand against my fingers. Not having access to a mirror meant I had no idea how bruised I was, but I could feel swelling on my face and tenderness throughout my body. Flash waited at the top of the stairs, then put his hand at the small of my back. The gesture radiated throughout my body and gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, everything would work out.

If I made it out of this alive, I was going to grab my purse from the resort, kiss Mexico goodbye and head home to California. Working for my uncle was better than this, even if only a little.