Wanted: An Outlaw Anthology Page 3

  “Can’t wait,” I admit honestly.

  “Let me roll this rubber on, and then I’m really gonna make you scream.”

  Instead of innuendo, his words sound almost…ominous. That’s the first moment I start to think this—fooling around with a strange man—may have been a mistake, no matter how hot he is. I start to get up and call it good for the night right then and there, but realize that would be pretty messed up to give him blue balls after he gave me an incredible orgasm. So, I lie still and wait in the silence for him to fill me. Maybe he only meant that the sex will be better than the oral. I’m sure that’s all it was…

  I keep waiting, but Henry doesn’t say anything else or touch me again.

  “Everything okay?” I ask before I look over my shoulder…and see nothing but the car parked a few spaces down from my SUV. “Henry?”

  When there’s no response, I push myself up and finally straighten to look around the garage while quickly pulling my panties and pants up my legs. “Henry?” I say again, but there’s not a person in sight. God, how embarrassing. I was bent over with my ass out and anyone could’ve seen me.

  And what the hell happened to Henry?

  Did he change his mind? Was it something I did?

  Not wanting to wait around any longer, looking like an idiot, I grab my briefcase to throw it in the backseat so that I can get out of here, but it feels…incredibly light.

  Oh no. Lifting the bag onto the passenger seat, I jerk on the zipper to open it and find nothing but a blank notepad inside.

  Shit!

  Not only did Henry bail on me, but he grabbed my briefcase instead of his!

  Chapter Two

  Dalton

  I could’ve fucked her.

  I knew from the moment I kissed her that she would let me do anything I wanted to her. God, her tongue plunged into my mouth with a desperate urgency that was contagious. I already wanted her, but once she got my blood flowing south, I had to get on my knees and taste her. Just putting her face down on the backseat would’ve been enough of a distraction for me to snatch her bag and run, but I couldn’t resist getting her off with my tongue at least once. Hell, I still can’t believe she was bent over, naked from the waist down with a glistening pussy, ready for the taking…and I walked away.

  Licking my lips that still hold her delicious flavor, I realize that tonight may be the first time I’ve ever turned down a willing woman. But it just felt wrong to screw her before I screwed her over. That would be too much like taking advantage of her, and I swore that I would never do that to a woman. Casual sex? Hell yes. I’m all for one-night stands. But I’ll never use someone just because I can. Years ago, I was on the receiving end of such a shitty arrangement and I still haven’t gotten over it.

  While I’m still hurrying back to my bike that’s parked a few blocks away from the bar, my burner phone starts vibrating in my pants pocket. I groan when it rouses my already hard-as-steel dick.

  I can take a guess who is calling, since I used my actual number for the phony business cards.

  The damn buzzing starts and stops against my aching shaft two more times before I’ve stowed Peyton’s briefcase in my saddle bag and hit the highway, riding east back to Emerald Isle.

  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what her voicemails will say, yet the first thing I do two hours later, after I back my bike in at the clubhouse and climb off, is hit play.

  “Henry, hi. It’s Peyton. I’m not sure what happened, or why you left so suddenly, but you grabbed my briefcase by accident. Maybe we can have coffee in the morning to switch? Please call me back tonight at 404-555-5899. Thanks.”

  Her voice is pleasant, with a hint of self-consciousness and an edge of panic that increases on the next message.

  “Henry, it’s Peyton again. There’s a very important, government-issued laptop in my bag that I need back ASAP. The files on it are extremely confidential and about ongoing investigations. If you’ll call me back and let me know, I’ll come to your place tonight to pick it up and give you yours. Thanks. I’m waiting for your call.”

  The third message loses all hints of pleasantness and is downright rude.

  “Henry, if that’s even your real name, it’s Peyton again. Did I mention that I’m an ATF agent? Right, well, funny thing, I did a search with the state bar and your name is not listed as being a licensed attorney. You don’t come up when I do an internet search either, unless you’re the retired, sixty-year-old Henry Aycock in Alabama. Stop being Ay-dick. Call me back so I can get my briefcase tonight!”

  And the fourth and final message is straight-up hostile.

  “Listen, asshole. I will find you and when I do, you’re gonna be sorry!”

  There’s a hint of desperation on the last one. Her voice trembles like she’s tearing up, even though she’s trying her best to sound threatening.

  I’m still thinking about her words when I walk into the Savage Asylum.

  A manicured hand with bright red fingertips reaches for my arm, stopping me in my tracks as I start toward the basement door.

  “Hey, handsome. You look mighty good in a suit,” Alicia, one of the club regulars, says when I turn to face her.

  “Thanks,” I reply.

  “But I know you look even better out of it,” she replies with a wink. “Want me to come help you take it off?”

  Even after the long drive, my dick is still looking for some relief, wanting me to finish what I started with Peyton. But I’m not ready to get rid of the agent’s taste on my lips, or her sweet, peachy scent that’s lingering on my clothes just yet.

  “I think I’m just gonna crash tonight,” I tell Alicia, blowing her off and heading down the stairs to my apartment with Peyton’s briefcase.

  Hell, maybe I’m coming down with something, turning down two women in one night. My skin underneath the suit and tie does feel like it’s overheating. Nah, that’s probably just the leftover effects from getting so worked up in the parking garage and having to walk away.

  That’s when it hits me that the feverish sickness that’s come over me isn’t from the hot make-out session. Instead, I’m pretty sure that it’s…guilt. Guilt for kissing and touching a woman under false pretenses, knowing I was going to screw her over.

  The culpability is a new sensation for me since my goal in life for the past eight years has been to never let myself feel anything again for a woman.

  Peyton

  “That son of a bitch!” I exclaim as I stomp around Quincey’s apartment bright and early the next morning, with still no response from the jerk. She’s in her green flannel pajamas, curly brown hair an enormous crow’s nest, with squinty eyes, since I knocked on the door and got her out of bed before sunrise.

  “I still can’t believe he went down on you in what you claim was the best oral sex ever and then stole from you,” she says between yawns from her seat on the sofa. “It was probably an honest mistake and he’ll realize it when he opens up the briefcase.”

  “See, that’s what I thought at first too,” I respond as I continue pacing back and forth in her living room. “But my bag was so much heavier than his. He had to have known!”

  “Okay, but why would an attorney rob you for a laptop?” she asks with her brow creased in confusion.

  “He’s not an attorney!” I shout, making her flinch. “He lied about that, about everything! And I’m gonna have his ass thrown in jail! Just as soon as I figure out who the hell he is…”

  God, it’s so embarrassing to even think about how stupid I was to believe a man I met on a dating app was who he said he was. Then, to not only let him kiss me, but more. What the hell was I thinking?

  I’m pretty damn smart most of the time. I have a master’s degree in criminal justice for chrissake. But being divorced and single for so long has apparently made me stupid when it comes to my personal life. Now a single moment of idiocy is going to royally screw me over in my career that I had to work my butt off to obtain.

  “How are you
going to arrest him if you don’t know who he really is?” Quincey voices my own concern.

  “I don’t know yet. That’s what I’ve been working on for the last eight hours rather than sleeping. But I will figure it out!” I declare because I’m a damn good agent when my brain isn’t all foggy with need and longing for a sexy man I knew was too good to be true. “He’s a damn good thief, so he probably has a criminal record.”

  “Great, so you just have to look through thousands of local mugshots,” Quincey responds. “At least his face should jump right out at you since he’s so freaking gorgeous.”

  “A criminal stole my laptop that is full of confidential government files because I was blinded by his good looks. How messed up is that?” I ask her. “I’m supposed to catch criminals, not get duped by them!”

  “Have you tried contacting him again on the app?” she questions.

  “His profile is long gone,” I huff, since I tried that about half an hour after he left and didn’t return my calls. I’m pretty sure he took his profile down before he even walked into the bar.

  “Well, in a few hours, you can call the local pawnshops to see if he sold it,” Quincey suggests.

  “No. He wouldn’t have pawned it. This whole scheme wasn’t about money. He wore a nice, new suit and took the time to set up a fake dating profile and have business cards printed. He’s more than a petty thief who stole for money. He’s smart and patient.” When it finally hits me, I exclaim, “Whoever he is, he must be after what’s on the laptop!” The big picture starts to make more sense when I think about it from that angle. “Oh, god! What if he hacks into it and shares the files? Or reveals the names of confidential informants? I could lose my job if my superiors in Atlanta or…or the U.S. Attorney here finds out that I’m single-handedly responsible for blowing the lids off all of their investigations!”

  “Then you need to figure out who he is, find him, and get the laptop back before anyone knows what happened!” she urges.

  “I know!” I grumble. “First, I should probably go through the cases I’ve been working on and look at photos of all the suspects,” I say as I think aloud. “Ugh! But it’s kind of hard to do that when he has my damn laptop!”

  “Calm down. You can use mine,” she tells me, getting to her feet and retrieving it off the computer desk in the corner. “Did you save your work to our server?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then you should be able to find everything,” she says as she hands the laptop over.

  Two hours and a giant pot of coffee later, we’ve been through all the files, along with hundreds of mugshots, yet we still have nothing.

  “So, maybe you’re wrong and he’s not a suspect on a potential case,” Quincey says with a sigh from her end of the sofa, where she’s curled up with a blanket and pillow. Both of us called in sick today, since finding this asshole is worth missing a day of work.

  “No, I don’t think I’m wrong about that,” I huff as I stretch my arms over my head, working out the stiffness. “If I had to guess, he’s probably in one of the gangs, or associated with them, and they sent him to steal it because he doesn’t have a record.”

  “That would be the smart criminal thing to do,” Quincey agrees. “Who has the smartest gang?”

  “Probably the one we don’t have a shred of evidence on, even though they’ve been the number one suspects on shootouts, murders, and arsons in just the last year,” I say, when it suddenly hits me. “Oh! And the same one that is located on the coast, which would fit with his stupid profile’s claim that he likes, ‘long walks on the beach.’”

  “Great! Who is that?” she asks.

  “The Savage fucking Kings!” I shout.

  It looks like I’m going be taking a trip out to the North Carolina coast to see about a handsome thief in a motorcycle gang.

  Chapter Three

  Dalton

  Heading to the chapel with my score, I walk in early with a few minutes to spare before our meeting starts. Most of the guys are already seated, each of them wearing the same identical Savage King MC leather cut as mine since the cuts are required for all meetings. The only time we take them off is when absolutely necessary, like going on a fake date with an ATF agent.

  Last night, after I got back to my apartment, feeling a little off-balance and nauseous, I searched through Peyton’s bag before I finally took off the fancy suit and fell asleep. There’s a password of course on her computer, so I couldn’t get in. But some of Peyton’s notes were scribbled on a legal pad, along with her day planner and change purse that held twenty dollars and a few coins. If she had left any credit cards in there, I would’ve found a way to at least return those to her.

  And for some reason, I spent more time than I should have reading every fucking thing I could find written in her neat, girly handwriting. She alternates going to yoga and spin class twice each week, which explains why she looks good enough to eat, literally. She recently got a haircut, and she’s planning to go home for Thanksgiving, wherever her “home” is located. My guess is Atlanta.

  “Here you go,” I say to Reece when I place the leather briefcase down on the table and slide it to him. Then, remembering our stupid bet, I pull out a hundred-dollar bill from my wallet and toss it down. Sure, I could’ve snapped a photo of Peyton’s panties around her ankles, but I didn’t. I’d rather take the loss than have conned her out of anything else.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” Reece says, reaching for the cash to slip it in the inside zipper of his cut. He’s grinning like a kid on Christmas morning when he removes the laptop from the bag.

  “You got it?” Chase asks as he watches Reece typing away on the keypad. “How the hell did you pull that off?”

  “Carefully,” I reply with a smirk.

  “Okay, I’m in,” Reece says a moment later when he somehow breaches Peyton’s password in a matter of seconds. “Give me a few minutes?” he asks Torin, our president sitting like usual at the head of the table.

  “Sure, brother,” Torin answers, so Reece picks up the computer and heads down the hall to his apartment with it for some peace and quiet.

  Turning his concerned gaze on me, Torin asks, “Do we have any blowback to worry about?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?” he asks me with one of his sandy-blond eyebrows raised suspiciously. “You just stole a laptop from the federal government. If you get caught, that shit is serious.”

  “Oh, I know,” I say, my grin widening as I recall the incredibly erotic details of my heist. “Nothing to worry about. She won’t report it.”

  “You better hope not,” Abe huffs from across the table. “You’re too pretty for federal prison. Wouldn’t last a damn day.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” I wink at him. “How long did your ugly mug last in prison? Years, right?” I ask, and the big man flips me off.

  For about half an hour, we shoot the shit and discuss the MC’s legitimate businesses and illegal side gigs that supplement our income. Since math is one of the few things I’m good at besides fighting and fucking, my job as the club’s treasurer is to not only collect membership dues, but to sort out the best ways to funnel our dirty money into the legit enterprises before we send anything to our straight-as-an-arrow accountant. Keeping two sets of books isn’t easy but someone has to do it, and Torin has enough shit on his plate trying to run the businesses.

  Finally, Reece comes back with the report on his findings from the government’s files.

  “Good news,” he says to the room as he stands in the doorway with Peyton’s silver laptop still in his hands. “They don’t have shit for evidence. The CI we ran off wouldn’t tell them a damn thing other than our names, and it looks like they’re just trying to connect the dots between us, the Aces, and the Cartel. The articles from the arson, bar shooting, and Cruz’s death are all in there, but I didn’t see anything that would tie that shit to us directly.”

  “Thank fuck,” Torin mutters an
d we all heave a sigh of relief. “Now maybe we can get back to business as usual around here.”

  “Sounds good, boss,” Reece says, along with the rest of our relieved words of agreements.

  Although, I already know that forgetting the hot as fuck agent I screwed over is gonna be harder than I expected, especially since I can’t seem to stop thinking about her, no matter how hard I try.

  Peyton

  “I’m here,” I say into my cell phone after I circle the block and then park a few hundred feet away from the Savage Asylum parking lot that’s known as the clubhouse for the Savage Kings MC.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea? You should have let me come with you!” Quincey says into my ear. “These guys are dangerous, right?”

  “I’m not stupid. I won’t go running in with guns blazing,” I tell her, with a roll of my eyes she can’t see. “I’m just going to wait here and try to catch Mr. Aycock leaving alone.” God, I should’ve known when he told me his last name was Aycock that he was a fraud. So childish.

  “Keep me on the line until then,” she says.

  “Okay,” I agree, since what I’m doing out here alone, staking out an MC gang, is not very smart. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I have to get that laptop back, preferably before they’re able to crack my password.

  How the asshole was able to so easily distract me, I’m not sure. Even when I was going through a messy divorce, I didn’t make even a single minor error. Now this…

  The worst part is that I was finally starting to regain enough confidence to start dating again, and after last night, I’m certain that it will be nearly impossible to believe anything that comes out of a man’s mouth anytime in the near future.

  It’s one thing for a guy to use an old or misleading photo on his profile, but to pretend to be someone else entirely in order to steal from me? That level of betrayal blows my already apprehensive mind.