Chapter Fourteen
Suddenly I was trapped in a morgue between two arms of leather and a man looking at me like he might just feast on my flesh. His arms propped against the wall on either side of my head. I hadn’t noticed him walking me backwards. Hadn’t noticed the wall advancing on me. Hadn’t noticed I’d cut myself off from the escape route.
And now I was stuck, Fury’s face mere inches from mine, and his body pushed closer still, until his chest squeezed against me, and his elbows bent either side of my head. My neck burned, my cheeks aflame, and my stomach whirled in a riot of butterflies fighting for freedom.
“Fury,” I warned, my voice betraying me, a whisper not the command I’d intended.
But he didn’t answer, his lips crushing into mine, the back of my head slamming into the wall behind me. I don’t know what took my breath away. The shock of the painful thump against my head or the ferocity of the lips on mine. Plucking, pulling, teasing, his tongue pushing into my mouth, his beard scratching at my skin, my tongue pushing back angrily, fighting and duelling.
A fire licked at my insides, unbearably hot, building from nowhere and engulfing my entire being in a rush of heat. The hands I’d propped against his chest slid around the waistband of his trousers, his body flushed to mine, his entire weight forcing me against the wall at my back. His kiss was brutal, punishing. And I was well and truly fucked as my body gave way to every meaning in it. A hand moved to my side, fingers teasing my shirt from the waistband of my trousers, the brush of a rough pad on the skin on my stomach making me gasp against the mouth that held be prisoner against the wall, unable to think clearly, to function properly. Fury’s fingers crept up my stomach, and the ache between my legs intensified. We could just…here…in the morgue. My pussy pulsed. The thought was so wrong on so many levels, but so fucking right. I wanted to wrap my legs round him right now.
I could do that. Just take what I wanted from him. Right here, right now. His hand paused, squeezing my side, his thumb pushing into the unguarded flesh. My body reacted again, tensing, wanting, needing. Fuck.
Fury’s lips slowed, the tension relaxing, until his mouth pulled back, giving me the chance to breathe properly. To feel the dampness that had pooled between my legs, and the hand that now tangled in my hair, the other gripping my side, both holding me in place in a cold morgue against the wall. I clenched my legs together, trying to find that control I’d had a few minutes before. The control I’d handed over to some big guy I barely knew. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded, my voice hoarse.
“Could ask you the same, doll.”
“You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back. Not like you slapped me.”
“Your hands. Take your hands off me.”
“Fine. But you need to take yours off my arse first.”
Fuck. And they were on his arse. How the hell had they got there?
I pulled them away, biting away the disappointment as the hand left my side and the fingers untangled from my hair.
“What the fuck was that?” The sternness of my words was returning, my resolve creeping back to where it should be, not succumbing to the roughness of a biker’s kiss.
“Sorry. Got distracted.” He smiled, the dimples showing under that beard, his eyes lightening from the darkness of moments ago to the playful annoying boyishness that I was becoming used to seeing. “Didn’t seem like you minded, though?”
I did. I did mind. Every bit. I should have minded. I should have slapped the fucker. Kicked him in the nuts for even thinking about touching me. But the minute those lips had hit mine, there was nothing I could do. Nothing. Fuck. I needed rid of him. Rid of this job. Of chasing money and rectifying accounts. Of the north of England and its bastard cold. Of the people who looked at me with disdain everywhere I went. Apart from him. Fuck.
“We’ve got an intruder to find. Remember?”
“Like I said. Distracted.”
Those eyes again. A hint of darkness descending once more, my stomach rolling over. I slid sideways, brushing against him enough to get myself off that wall, before I lost control again.
“Come on, then. Let’s check the rest.”
We moved in silence down the rest of the corridor, Fury checking the last of the offices at the back of the building, and still nothing looked out of place.
“No one here,” I mumbled as we got to the back door that was firmly shut. “You sure there ever was?”
Fury turned suddenly, taking a step closer. But the way he loomed over the top of me wouldn’t scare me, more so now I was barefoot in front of him.
“What are you implying?”
His voice was low, not quite threatening, but there was something in his tone.
“Well, it’s rather convenient that there was an alarm I couldn’t hear, and suddenly you’re outside ready to ‘help’ ”. I showed the insinuation with my fingers, drawing quotation marks in the air.
But instead of getting angry and defensive, he smiled.
“Doll, I didn’t need to rescue you from intruders to get you to drop your pants for me. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Fuck you.”
“You will.”
“Fucking won’t.”
He chuckled, deep and warming, and I ignored the flutter of my stomach. There was no way I’d let the arrogant fucker near me again.
“Come on,” he reached for my elbow, and I shrugged it away. “Fine, stay here in the dark. I’m going to check the cameras.”
I watched him move past me, walking off until the shadows consumed him, and I took my eyes off the way his jeans hugged his arse, and tightened around thighs to the point I could see the lines of muscle underneath. Fuck.
He was already at my desk waiting for me in my office when I caught up with him.
“Waiting for your laptop, doll. You’re going to need to login.”
“It’s fine. Thank you for checking the premises. You can go now. I can check the cameras by myself.”
“And if you see something you don’t like?”
“You mean like us?”
Fury smirked. “Nah. You’ll love us.”
The man was insufferable.
“I’ll need that seat then.” I wafted my hand towards him and watched as he stood up and bowed before taking a step back.
The laptop took an age to fire up and seemed to go even slower, with Fury hanging over my shoulder, his breath rustling the little strands of hair on the top of my head. Pausing the footage at the time of Fury’s alert, I flicked through the camera frames. Each camera showed nothing, until the very last footage at the back of the building.
The image was blurry, not catching much other than a shadow through the glass window of the back door. But as the recording played back, the movement was clear. Someone in dark clothing approaching the door. They paused, reaching forwards and a red box flashed around the frame. The alert sounding to Fury’s phone, not mine. Then the person dressed in dark clothes looked up, stepped back and ran off.
“See. Wasn’t me,” Fury’s voice grumbled in amusement from over my head.
“Might have been. Can’t see anything clearly on this.”
“I’m way taller than that. I need to adjust that camera at the back. Doesn’t look like it captured that would-be intruder enough. We need to know who it was.”
“Me,” I reminded him. “ I need to know who it was. You’re just setting up the cameras. Then we’re going to give your ex-president a good send off. And then you can go about your merry way.”
Fury’s hand slid onto the desk beside me, his arm touching mine, before it brushed across my chest, and I heard the sudden inhale of air. And if I’d heard it, he had too. He reached for the mouse attached to the laptop, positioning the curser over the email icon and bringing my inbox up on the screen, going straight to the email I’d kept pinned at the top.
“And what are you going to do about this, huh? I mean, I know what I would do about it if you were my woman.”
“That’s great, Fury. I’m going to ignore it. People like that just want to scare others. It’s just a threat. Someone looking for the attention I won’t give them. A threat I’m going to completely ignore.”
“The Kings can look into it. We can find who sent this?”
“Really. You’ve the technology to work out where this came from?”
“We don’t need technology, doll. Just influence and contacts. And that’s what we’ve got.”
“Thought the Northern Kings were a bike club?”
“We are.”
“Then I don’t know how you can help me.”
“We’re well connected. Nothing we can’t find out.”
“I doubt that.”
I was already tired of the ‘Kings are everything’ bullshit I’d been hearing, and this was just topping it off nicely.
But then suddenly I was spinning, yanked away from my desk, disorientated for a split second, until my eyes settled on the man in front of me. The man with the dark eyes and short, cropped beard, a lock of dark hair hanging loose over his face.
“Heidi,” he started, and I was just about to interrupt, to stop him giving me whatever pitiful statement about this bike club and what they could do for me. “Come with me.”
“Come with you where?”
“To Ste’s funeral. Let me show you what I mean. Let me show you the world of bikers. It’s not what you think it is and everything that you think it’s not. Meet my family. Then maybe you might let me help you.”
“I don’t need help, Fury.”
He stooped over me, his towering figure becoming even more imposing as I sat facing him on the swivel chair he had just forcefully swivelled.
“You do, doll. You do. In every way conceivable.” He smirked. “But for now, just let me find out who is threatening you.”
“Fine. I’ll wait right here to say I told you so.”
Fury laughed, his eyes brightening again. That hint of dimples and those full lips framed by his beard and my stomach jumped, reacting traitorously.
“And the funeral. Will you come?”
“No. I don’t mix business with pleasure.”
“Could have fooled me.”
I pushed my lips together, ignoring the burning heat igniting again deep in my stomach, and turned back to the computer. Back to another email.
‘You’re still here. Tik tok, tik tok.’
The fire in my stomach immediately extinguished, the shiver racking up my spine, icy fingers at my throat.
“Fury,” I whispered.
“I see it, doll,” his voice was calm from behind me.