The Devil’s Pair (The Road Devils MC #4)

Chapter Three

Briley clicked through the online property listings, musing yet again how much farther her money went in Pennsylvania. She had no real idea where she wanted to live, but as long as she had a mere, fleeting glimpse of the Appalachians from a single window, she’d feel pretty content. Bonus points if that window was in her kitchen or living room, where she could sit and drink coffee and just soak in the view.

Thinking of the view drew her eyes back to the window above the desk that she was sitting at. There was nothing glorious about it, as it was the opposite wall of the hotel, and she frowned at that. She wasn’t enjoying feeling trapped or stifled, like she was at some kind of metaphorical dead end in her life. She knew it was temporary, but still… she’d been under Gideon’s slimy, sickening thumb for so long that any sense of being held back was bad for her head space.

She had options, though, and she reminded herself to be nothing but grateful for that: before becoming a cop, Briley had been a registered nurse for almost three years. She’d liked it – loved it, actually – but her father had been a police officer, and a part of her had always wanted to follow him into the life. He’d died in the line of duty when she was quite young, and she still thought of her joining as a way of honoring him. Not that she’d honored the shield much lately, she knew, and she hoped hard that her father was still proud of her. The thought that maybe he wasn’t kept her up at night, that was for damn sure.

So in the end, she’d become a cop to carry on her father’s legacy… but she’d never let her RN qualifications lapse. She’d always figured that she’d go back to nursing at some point, maybe when her body couldn’t take the physical demands and rigours of being a cop. Briley had had a hazy idea that at the age of fifty or fifty-five, she’d maybe take up work as a private home care provider, or working part-time at a nursing home… but now that half-baked notion of the future had very much become her present. She needed to look for a job, and she needed to get some steady money coming in – but right now, she needed to find a place to live that had opportunities for an RN nearby.

First things first .

She turned her attention back to the homes for sale and clicked on a listing, clicked on another, clicked again. And there it was.

Briley blinked in astonishment at the small house that had just appeared, as if out of a dream or a vision. It was as if she was looking at a place that she’d been to many, many times in her childhood, or maybe in a past life. She knew this house, knew how it would feel to be in it.

That’s it .

Holding her breath, she clicked on the location information, saw that the town was called Bellefonte. She cocked her head at the French word for ‘beautiful’ being right there in the name, then quickly googled it, praying hard that it was within throwing distance of the mountains and a healthy work environment… and she was immediately in love with the town. It was a small borough – barely 7,000 souls lived in it – but it was only a dozen miles from a couple of major cities, both of which had hospitals, care homes, and private medical clinics and centers, some of which were openly begging for nursing staff. She then clicked on several aerial photos of the town itself, and she sighed in happiness.

And there are my mountains, literally surrounding the whole town, on all sides .

Perfect, perfect, perfect .

Right away, she got on her phone and called the property agent. Once again, a sense that the stars were aligning came over her as the agent warmly told her that a viewing for first thing the next morning had just opened up, and she was welcome to take it. Briley accepted, took down the address, then hung up, staring at the photos some more.

Suddenly, she knew that it was all going to be OK; she just knew it in her bones. Her new life was in Bellefonte, and whatever it ended up looking like, it was going to be good.

No. Great .

She got to her feet, stretched, glanced at the laptop clock, decided that she’d have a celebratory vodka and orange juice before an early bedtime. She grabbed the ice bucket, and headed down the hall to the machine, where Drake was standing. As always, he was just casually smoldering away, and she idly wondered if the machine was up to standing tough against his scorching hotness. She suspected that every bit of ice had been reduced to puddles, though.

“Hey, girl,” Drake greeted her cheerily. “On the hunt for ice?”

“Yep,” she said. “I’m going to make a Screwdriver with the minibar stuff.”

“Sound good,” he said, shaking the full ice bucket at her. “But I just took it all for Dux’s leg, and the machine is just making more.”

“His leg is bad?”

“Sore, for sure, and a bit swollen. The ice will do the trick.” He looked her up and down, and she felt that usual helpless tug of dark attraction. “Wanna come to our room for a quick one?”

She paused, narrowed her eyes at him, trying to beat down the dirty fantasies of being taken hard and fast against a wall, first by Drake, then by Dux. “Your room ?”

“Or your room.” He shrugged those massive shoulders, those incredible eyes dancing. “We’re easy, darlin’.”

“I just bet you are.”

“And there’s that smart mouth again.” He grinned. “So? Drink at our place?”

“Sure. Thanks.” She smiled back at him, utterly incapable of resisting that killer charm, not even making much effort to do so. “I have some news, anyway, and I wanted to tell you guys.”

“Ohhh,” he said as they walked to the twins’ shared room. “Job? House?”

“House. Well, a location of one at least.”

“Out of the whole state of Pennsylvania, you have a direction to aim at now, huh?”

“I do.” She smiled again as he opened the hotel room door with a flourish and ushered her in, like a devastatingly sexy doorman. “And I think I found my dream home to boot.”

“Yeah?” Dux was sprawled on the bed closest to the window, and he looked up from his phone at her. “You did? Where is it?”

“Small town called Bellefonte,” she told him. “About an hour west of here, so I set up a viewing tomorrow morning at nine.”

“Show us!” Dux demanded, handing her his phone. “Let’s see it!”

While Briley scrolled through the site’s property listings, Drake mixed her drink, handed his brother a beer from the minibar, and twisted the cap off his own beer bottle. Then he sat at the desk and started putting ice into a plastic bag.

“So,” he said. “Let’s take a gander at this place, darlin’.”

“It’s this one.” She handed the phone back to Dux, and the brothers peered down at the photos. “I love it.”

“Wow,” Dux said. “That is some gorgeous, babe.”

“Right?” Briley took a sip of her drink, settled deeper into the chair as the alcohol hit her bloodstream. “And I quickly checked jobs for RNs in the two closest cities, and it seems that they’re crying for help in all the healthcare systems, both public and private. I should be able to cobble together enough work to get by, even if I don’t get anything full-time right off the bat.”

“Yeah, about that.” Dux took another pull of his beer. “I just talked to Wolf about you buying a house and getting medical work, and he’s wondering how best to keep you safe.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him. “Safe from what?”

“From being tracked down,” Dux said bluntly. “Listen, if some cop is working with that dickhead Michael – we’re not saying one is, but Wolf always assumes the worst and plans accordingly – then can’t they find you through property ownership? Or your work records and tax filings? I mean, nurses are on official, legal registers in every state, right? Wouldn’t they be able to just… I don’t know. Just find you?”

She smiled. “I know you guys are worried about that, OK? I do. But it’s not as simple as typing my name into a computer, and suddenly everything popping up.”

“But for a cop?” Drake demanded. “Don’t you guys have wider access than normal people?”

“Sure. But cops still need to have the right information to begin any search.”

“You need to expand on that, babe,” Dux said. “Because right now, Wolf is debating buying you a whole new identity that would stand up to a pretty rigorous background check.”

She lowered her glass, stared at Dux in shock. “He’s – he’s what ?”

“Yeah. Believe me, if you need to disappear with a whole new name, Wolf’s the guy to help you do that. He’s done it for people before.”

She thought about those ferocious, wolf-grey eyes, thought about all the secrets and keen intelligence that gleamed out of them even while the man was at rest. “I have no doubt that’s true.”

“So.” Dux stared at her, unblinking and intense. “You need to explain why you’re so sure that you can just waltz on into Bellefonte and buy a house, and produce your RN license and collect a paycheck, and none of that will send up any red flags. No joking here, babe. If Wolf thinks you’re going to be rumbled, you’ll become someone new before you can say a word, I promise you that.”

“OK, OK. I get it.” She paused, gathering her thoughts to make her case. “Well, first, my nursing license isn’t in the name Briley Cross.”

That startled them, and they stared at her with identical stunned expressions on their drop-dead stunning faces.

“So – what name is it in?” Drake said. “Wait… are you already living under a secret identity?”

“Nope, nothing that dramatic or exciting. My name is legally Annette Briley Morris. That’s the name on my driver’s license, passport… and RN license.”

“It – it is?” Drake asked. “How come you go by Briley Cross, then?”

She shrugged, sipped her drink. “I was named after my Dad’s sister Annette, but she was a real nightmare. By the time I was about ten, she and my parents had completely fallen out, so I started going by my middle name. I liked it better, anyway.”

“Ohhh-kay,” Dux said slowly. “That all makes sense. But from Morris to Cross?”

“Cross is my birth name,” she explained. “When I was fourteen, my Dad was killed in the line of duty, and Mom remarried two years later, to Edmund Morris. She legally changed her last name, and my name too, but I never felt like Briley Morris , you know? So as soon as I was out of the house, I started telling everyone that my name is Briley Cross. I never legally changed it, just because I knew that it would really hurt my mother for me to do that. She died a few months ago, and I could officially be Briley Cross but now I doubt that I ever will, with current circumstances being what they are. So you see…” She smiled at the men. “The house will be purchased by Annette Morris, and any job that I find will hire that same person. I’ll go by my middle name of Briley, of course, and just tell people that Cross is my preferred last name. They’ll just assume a bad marriage or something, and leave it. But on all the official paperwork, Briley Cross will be totally hidden. In fact, she won’t even exist, because she truly doesn’t exist.”

“Ah.” Dux stared at her some more. “And that’s enough? To keep you safe?”

“I think so.” She stretched out her long legs in front of her. “But there’s another layer of protection, at least as far as the buying of the house is concerned.”

“What’s that?” Drake asked.

“Well, if you’re looking to see who owns what property, you can only search by address, not by name.”

“For real?” Drake demanded.

“Yep. For real. You have to type the full address into the search, then the owner’s name will pop up.” She smiled. “So which cop in Utah looking for me is going to type a full small-town-of-seven-thousand-people Pennsylvania address into a property search?”

“Uhhh.” Dux shook his head. “None. Nobody, Nuh-uh.”

“Exactly. And even if said cop did type the full address of any property that I bought into a search engine, the name Annette Morris will come up as the owner.”

“So… so you’re OK to do this?” Dux said. “We can tell Wolf that you’re impossible to find?”

“I’m really OK,” she assured him. “I promise, guys. I’m not looking to be found, believe me, so if I thought for one second that putting my name down anywhere would put me in danger, I’d find another way to live and work.”

They nodded slowly, doing that wildly unnerving ‘staring at each while mentally having an entire conversation’ thing, then as one, they flicked their eyes back to her face. And as always when she was the focus of their double-gaze, Briley felt her heart jolt to a dead stop, then start up double time.

God , could these men be any more gorgeous? Like, was it humanly possible for them to get more sexy, and funny, and generous, and kind? She really doubted it, and in moments like this – in the bright-blue spotlight of their full-on attention – Briley knew that it wasn’t possible at all .

“So.” She cleared her throat, took a huge glug of vodka and juice in a futile attempt to beat back the slow, traitorous heat rising in her body. “You guys will come with me to check out the house tomorrow?”

“‘Course, babe,” Dux said. “We’d love to see where you might end up in your whole damn new life.”

“Great.” Briley bit her lip. “I’m a bit nervous about it all, but I think it’ll be OK in the end.”

“You think you’ll miss your old life?” Drake asked her, watching her closely. “Any part of it at all?”

“Well, no. I’m taking Cheryl with me into my new life, so I’ve got the only thing from the old one that really matters to me. But I’m nervous about what’s coming.” She smiled. “I’m going somewhere that I don’t know anyone, and even though that’s an amazing opportunity at a clean slate, it’s also a bit overwhelming.”

“You can call us anytime you want to talk to someone, you know,” Drake said. “We’d love to hear how you’re doing.”

That surprised her; she’d thought they were ‘out of sight, out of mind’ kind of guys. Besides, she suspected that their MC life back in Denver was chock-full of hot women and eager hangers-on, and wild club adventures, and probably a fair share of crime. After all, these men had blown on into her life under false pretences, then tied her up in her own living room, then gone into a cult compound guns blazing – and they’d looked totally comfortable doing all of those things. Not as comfortable as that fucking blond beast Ice, but still… Dux and Drake had been right there with him, not flinching or backing up from any of it.

So their offer to be her long-distance support system was quite sweet, to be honest. She was sure that they’d tire of it after the third call, but still. It was a nice gesture.

“Sure,” she said. “I’ve got to make sure that you don’t forget about your two-week road trip buddy, after all.”

“Jesus, girl, like we’d forget about you ,” Dux told her. “You’re ninety-two kinds of sexy, after all.”

She choked on an ice cube. “I’m what ?”

“Sexy as all hell,” Drake chimed in. “In at least ninety-two ways.”

“Ha!” she managed. “I hardly have the monopoly on sexy in this room. Have you two looked in the mirror lately?”

The twins glanced at each other and simultaneously made an identical expression, and Briley laughed.

“OK, yeah,” she said. “Clearly you look in the mirror every time you look at each other, huh?”

“That is correct, darlin’,” Drake said. “Though I do think I have a slight edge on my older and damaged brother. By the way,” he said to Dux. “I dragged my ass out to get you that damn ice for your leg, and you’re just lounging there, letting it all melt.”

“True,” Dux said. “I’d better get to it, huh?”

And then – with zero warning and without a word – he got to his feet and unbuckled and unzipped his jeans, just stepped on out of them in one smooth movement. Then he casually settled back on the bed on his side facing Briley, holding the bag of ice to the back of his thigh, sipping his beer like he wasn’t gloriously half-naked, all sexy and hot and just two feet in front of her.

Meanwhile, Briley was seriously thinking about dropping dead from the shock of seeing Dux in just boxer shorts and a t-shirt… and though she tried and tried not too look, she couldn’t resist sneaking a few glances at the ridiculously impressive bulge in the boxers.

Dear. Sweet. Lord .

“So,” Dux said in a conversational tone, as if absolutely nothing out-of-the-ordinary had just happened. “What were you saying about us being sexy?”

“Ummmm.” She forced her eyes away from his long, strong legs and up to meet his Arctic blue gaze; that was when she saw his smirk, and she realized that he was teasing her. “I mean… you guys know you’re sexy. Clearly.”

“We do,” Drake agreed cheerfully. “But we’re also in total agreement that you are, in no uncertain terms, drop-dead hot.”

“I – I am?”

“Yes,” he continued. “And we were wondering if you’d like to stay here tonight.”

Puzzled now, Briley blinked at him. “I am staying here. My room is right next door.”

“Nah, babe,” Dux said. “He means here with us . In this room. Together. All three of us.”

“You mean…” She hesitated, sure that she had way the wrong end of the stick here. “You mean that I stay here with – with both of you? At – at the same time?”

“Yep,” Dux said, his voice going low and almost growly. “All three of us together, at the same time.”

“But –” She stuttered to a conversational halt. “You mean that you’d – that one of you would watch me with the other? Like, take turns?”

“No, darlin’,” Drake said and now his voice was as rough as his brother’s. “We’d enjoy you at the exact same time.”

“So – so you two –” Briley waved her hands in futile and flapping circles, trying to find the words. “You – share women? In bed? At the same time?”

Dux and Drake gave her those identical, absolutely heart-stopping smiles. The ones that lit up their amazing blue eyes so they crinkled and danced; the ones that made those curved, sensual lips more tempting than ever. Goddamn them.

“You got it, darlin’,” Drake said. He lifted his beer bottle to that distracting mouth and slowly took a sip. “We prefer things that way.”

“But –” Briley blinked as images flashed before her eyes: her on her hands and knees in front of Dux, while Drake fucked her from behind, his every thrust driving Dux’s cock deeper into her eager throat. Her riding Dux, her hair wild and tumbled over her shoulders, while Drake teased her nipples with his fingers and mouth.“But how does it – I mean – how do you – what do you – I mean, I kind of know what but what I mean is how –”

“Ah, babe,” Dux said gently. “We’ve blown your mind and we ain’t even touched you.”

“No, no, no. You haven’t.” She shook her head, sought refuge in a gulp of vodka and orange as she gathered her whirling thoughts and pushed down on the desire rising in her throat. “OK, you have. It’s just that I’ve never – I haven’t –”

“You’ve never had two naked men make you the center of all of their attention?” Drake said. “Never had two men worship you with every single inch of their bodies?”

“Never been sandwiched between two huge, hard guys?” Dux said. “Never been kissed and touched by two sets of hands and lips?”

“No,” she whispered. “Never.”

“Is that something you’d like?” Dux’s voice was getting even deeper, even darker. “Something you’d want to experience?”

“I – I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Well, darlin’,” Drake said. “You say the word, and it can happen. Here. Tonight.”

“I – I –” Briley took refuge in more sweet, blessed alcohol, hoping that it would take the drowning edge off the wave of longing that had just washed over her. “I really can’t.”

“How come?” Dux asked in a conversational tone, like she was refusing a second helping of pasta at a dinner party. “Why can’t you?”

“Because… “ She screwed up her courage to talk about this, and she thanked God that she’d already told them about some of it. “Because of – of Gideon. Because of what Gideon did. I’m not ready for any kind of… of physical thing, not with even one man. But two men, and two men at the s ame time? That feels…” She swallowed. “That feels really impossible.”

They were silent now, all teasing and flirting gone. She continued:

“I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t tempted, despite what he – what happened to me. I mean – I’m very, very tempted. You two are unbelievably sexy, and I’m curious what it would be like, and I suspect that you guys are great at what you do. But…” She stopped, turned her now-empty glass around and around in her trembling hands. “But I don’t think I can handle sex. Not yet. Not so soon.”

“Babe,” Dux said quietly. “You’d be totally safe with us. We’d go slow and we’d stop the second you said the word.”

“I know all of that,” she said, realizing even as the words came out of her mouth, that she did actually know. “You guys aren’t the problem here, at all. I am.”

“Well,” Drake said, and now his teasing tone was back. “That is very disappointing – mostly for you, of course, ‘cause we are dynamite , darlin’ – but of course we understand.”

“Yeah?” she said, now torn between aching desire in her pussy and crashing regret in her chest. “You’re not – not mad?”

“Mad?” Drake said. “No way, no how. If the lady doesn’t consent, then nothing is going to happen, and that’s just the way it is.”

“And do many ladies refuse to consent?” Briley asked, already sure that the answer was ‘no way, no how’. “You guys get turned down a lot?”

“Aw, babe, we don’t kiss and tell. Or not kiss and tell.” Dux grinned at her, those eyes just holding her whole, and the regret went deeper still; she could now feel it all the way in her stomach. “If you change your mind, you just say the word… we’d be happy to introduce you to a whole new world. But we won’t bring it up to you again, not ever.”

“Ah. Well.” She scrambled to her feet now, desperate to be back in her room and alone, so she could go over every syllable of this astonishing conversation in befuddled privacy. She was already wondering for how long she was going to kick herself and second-guess her decision to say no to this surely-mind-blowing experience. Probably years, if she was being brutally honest. “So… thanks for the drink. We need to be on the road by eight at the latest, so I’ll see you at the van by quarter-to?”

“You sure will,” they said in unison. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she managed, then fled their gorgeous, breath-stealing presence with a few shreds of dignity, and many many shreds of confusion. Like, enough shreds to make a full- length winter coat, complete with a scarf dragging behind her a good eight feet.

When she got back to her room, she had a shower and then stared at herself in the foggy mirror for a while, asking if she’d just made a huge mistake. Then she reminded herself that just the day before, she’d been saying that she’d never be able to be vulnerable with a man ever again… and if she couldn’t be that way with one man, no way that she could be with two men.

Not even men as smart and understanding and sexy as the two just one room over, with a single wall separating her from those strong, muscular, tattooed bodies. Bodies that she’d stood between just yesterday, with one man pressed against her back and the other cradling her front.

And just like that, there she was again, weeping in Drake and Dux’s arms, feeling safe and cherished. She felt them against her even now, felt their breaths and heartbeats and muscles all around her; she heard their voices murmuring that they had her and it was all over, heard her own sobs as she started to let go of the ugliness of Gideon.

She remembered so keenly that feeling like her world had tilted off its axis, but that she was held steady by their calm strength. They’d never let her fall or spin off into they dark, they’d hold her tight and close.

And they’d undoubtedly see to her pleasure before their own, and they’d see to it many, many times. Briley suspected that she wouldn’t just see stars with them – she’d see entire solar systems.

Argh. Stop it. You said no .

“Yeah, you did,” she told the woman in the mirror. “You fucking idiot.”

With that, she snapped off the bathroom light and got into bed, determined to not think for one more second about those stolen, secret few moments in the corner of the restaurant. She resolved to forget how fragile and protected she’d felt between them, large hands in her hair and on her face, so gentle and careful. She swore that she’d develop amnesia about what it had felt like to be able to let go, and be vulnerable, and borrow the strength that had been so freely, so generously, given to her by those two amazing, drop-dead-sexy men.

She screwed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth, and willed sleep to come.

Of course it did, eventually. But it took a long time.

And before it finally did – before she was able to tumble down into a vivid dream world of rapid breaths and heartbeats, of wild cries and begging need – she realized that she wasn’t going to be able to forget any of it.

Not ever.

Her last thought before she dropped off was that she didn’t know if she was happy about that or not.