Chapter Thirty Two
I’d laid awake for hours. Thoughts swarming my mind, most of them intangible, a hint of a worry but gone before I could grasp what that worry was. I turned over again, staring at the other side of the room, at the flowery wallpaper which seemed misplaced for a biker’s clubhouse. I’d heard muffled sounds from below me for hours. The low drone of voices, people still drinking in the bar below. And still Fury didn’t come back.
Turning over again, I tried to close my eyes. I’d had a few hours’ sleep. Probably something like five hours in a forty-eight- hour period. If I didn’t sleep soon, I’d become delirious and do something stupid. I snorted at myself. I’d just let a biker eat me out against the fridge in the clubhouse kitchen. And I hadn’t just lain back with my legs spread, I’d ridden his fucking face. Used the scratch of his beard, and ground into his nose and mouth to come. Fuck. The spot between my legs tingled. Sore and aroused.
Outside, there was a rumble. Something far off at first, gradually growing louder. I rushed to the window, parting the curtains, peeking out into the night. To my left there was a hint of red, bleeding slowly in the sky as dawn crawled across in the east. To my right there was a pinprick of light, and it grew larger, others joining it. Eventually, I could count seven of them bumbling down the road, until the rumble was a roar, angry and urgent. The bikes rode a little way past and then turned left, disappearing from my view. But I could still hear their engines. Until I couldn’t anymore.
I strained my ears, lying in the dusk of the room alone and tired. The mumbles of voices beneath grew louder, a bass orchestra of sounds. Unintelligible murmurs in the night. I closed my eyes, a wash of tiredness. The stairs creaked. Louder voices now.
“We need CCTV on everyone’s houses. The club will pay for it.”
“The club doesn’t have enough money, Indie. The brothers will have to pay for their own. I’ll get everything at cost.”
“You know the old ones won’t put their hands in their pockets for it. We’ll get the same old excuses that they made it through the last war.”
I sat up, straining my ears.
“And then what are we going to pay for anything else we need with?”
“I want more prospects. They put into the pot straight away. And again when they get their colours. Plus, they make good foot soldiers.”
“Untrained, undisciplined foot soldiers. You’ve seen what happens when they’re untrained, Indie. We saw it in Afghanistan with the young ’uns.”
“This isn’t that type of war.”
“No. It’s worse. You know it and I know it. There’s no rule of war here. Only the MC code. And the Hand didn’t follow that the last time.”
“Those officers are dead and gone now. Internationally, we all signed up to the new code. The Hand will have more than us on their backs if they don’t follow it.”
The voices trailed off, the floorboards outside the bedroom door creaked. I turned onto my left, my face to the window, and closed my eyes. The door stuttered in its frame, Fury stepping quietly into the room, but his boots clumped on the carpet, the wood underneath it complaining at the weight of the big man. I didn’t open my eyes, my breaths slowing, listening to the rustle of clothes that were being removed.
Then the bed dipped, and he climbed in beside me, tucking his legs into the back of mine, his thighs cold and I bit my lip. His arm wrapped around me, pulling me into his body and I lay there listening to him breathe. His chest rose and fell, slowing down with each breath. A little whoosh of air just chasing over the back of my neck and my ear and the weight of thick biceps weighing me down.
And finally, I felt safe. Safe enough to let my brain shut down and drift away.
*****
My arm and shoulder ached, a dull thumping of my pulse and then the chase of dull prickles, my fingers going to sleep, the sensation rolling up my arm to my elbow. I tried to change positions, but there was a weight at my back. A much too heavy weight. The pins and needles had ravaged my arm, and now I didn’t dare move at all, until the awful sensation had passed. Eventually, second by second, the feeling cleared, leaving me free to move again.
Turning towards Fury, I watched him sleep. His dark eyebrows pushed together as if he was angry, or overthinking. His lips too, thick, fleshy lips pursed, surrounded by the beard that never seemed to grow, immaculately groomed, never a hair out of place. Where his eyes closed, dark eyelashes lay brushing the very top of his cheeks. Too long for a man. But so was the long dark hair that fell around his shoulders, yet he pulled it off in model proportions.
Undressed, he was God like. The only hint of his biker roots the tattoo that covered his entire back and the little scars over his skin. I brushed my fingers over the top of them, feeling over each one, my mind flitting back to the conversation I’d overheard last night, the one that danced round my mind this morning.
Fury stirred, groaning slightly, and turning onto his back, his eyes still closed. I moved with him, propping myself up on my elbow and gazing at the man I’d spent the last few days with. My heart felt heavy, like it was sinking into my stomach. I should be feeling elated, not the deep throb of worry. Fury’s chest rose and fell, beautifully rhythmically, the muscles gently moving with it. I’d always sensed a danger on his periphery. He was a bad boy through and through, but last night’s conversation felt far darker than I’d ever anticipated. And now I didn’t know whether I should fear him, the club, or my own family.
I turned back over, back towards the windows. Daylight pushed through a crack in the heavy fabric, casting a sliver of light into the darkened room. I had no idea what time it was and there was barely any noise, the rumbling voices that went on below us long into the night now silent. The entire house was sleeping.
The bed moved under me, Fury turning into me again, his body pushing against mine, his flesh warm against my back, through the thin silk pyjamas I wore, and his hard-on pushing against my arse. My pussy ached, battered and used from too much sex. I didn’t think I could take another round. But as his fingers slid over the smooth material, pushing up underneath and stroking the skin of my stomach, I shuddered.
“Morning, doll,” Fury muttered into my ear, before sucking my earlobe into his mouth.
“What time is it?”
“Dunno, doll.”
I leant towards the table on my side of the bed, rummaging for my mobile and clicking a button till the display lit up.
“Fuck! It’s after lunch.”
“S’ok, Heidi. It’s the weekend. You’ve nowhere to be.”
“I’ve wasted most of the day.”
“The day has just started, doll. It starts when you wake up and ends when you go to sleep. What were you going to do today, anyway?”
“I…err….I…”
“Work?”
“Probably.”
“Weekends are for relaxing, Heidi. And fucking. What do you normally do on a weekend?”
“I dunno. Work mostly. Read a book.”
Fury chuckled, his laugh vibrating through my skin. But the heavy knock at the bedroom door stopped that chuckle.
“What?” Fury asked brusquely.
“There’s a cop in my bar. By himself. There’s also a dozen hungover bikers.”
“So what?” Fury answered.
“So, he’s asking for you. And I don’t want cop guts on my new carpet.”
“Fuck,” Fury groaned, swiping a hand across his pecs. “Forgot about him. Tell him we’ll be down in a minute. Don’t let any fucker twat him. Mamma Dot’ll be on the warpath and we’ll all be shitting spiders.”
“Hurry the fuck up, Fury. Your blood or not, he’s not welcome in my bar. Fucking mad head coming in here again.”
Fury nudged me towards the edge of the bed, throwing his legs out his side and standing up in front of me, stark, bollock naked. His cock was semi-hard, but it still hung thick and long between his legs. Most of it was the same lightly tanned colour of his arms, and legs and chest, the tip just a little darker that the rest as the foreskin pulled neatly back over most of the head.
“Doll, we’ve been fucking for a couple of days now. Yet you still look at this like it’s the first you’ve seen in your life.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s a beast. The best you’ve had. I get it.” Fury smiled mischievously, the faint outline of the dimples under his beard and his loose hair sweeping to one side. “Come on. We better get down there before the shit hits the fan.”
*****
“And you say you think your brother Gordon has taken the missing company money?”
He looked so much like Fury, just younger, and thinner, with shorter hair.
“Ms Fischer,” he prompted.
“Hmm. Yes. Well, I’m guessing it must be him.”
“But you have no evidence?”
“No. Not for the money that has been going missing. The cash withdrawals, the cheques. I can’t find the cheque book either,” I added when PC Mini Fury opened his mouth.
He frowned, scribbling in the tiny notebook. Around me bikers lurked, watching our exchange, their arms crossed over their chests, attempts at hostility that the young police sergeant completely ignored like they just weren’t there.
“So, why do you think he is responsible for the threatening emails and texts and the missing money?”
“Fuck’s sake, Jacob,” Fury cursed, stepping closer.
“Back off, Freddie. This is in my hands now. Or you would never text me for help.”
“Freddie?” I turned to look at the enormous man with the long, dark hair. “Your name’s actually Freddie?”
Fury shrugged. “Yeah. It’s Freddie. What’s so amusing?”
I smiled, trying not to giggle.
“It’s actually Frederick. He likes neither.”
“I’ll still knock you out, little brother. And I don’t mind doing time for it either.”
PC Gray turned back to me, deciding not to taunt the angry biker any further, and my bet was that he wasn’t as worried about his brother, but at the men that gathered behind him, waiting to be let loose on the young copper.
I sighed. “Look, I snooped around his office and found a secret stash of paperwork in a safe hidden under his desk. Contracts and wills. All leaving a sum of money to him and the rest to one church.”
The officer sat up a little taller. “You get copies?”
I shook my head. “We went back for them, but he’d already taken them away. Then, when I got to my hotel room, it had been ransacked, like someone was looking for something. That was not a coincidence. But now, without those documents, I have no evidence, no leads. Just a nice fat, dead end.”
“Can you remember anything else about the wills?”
“I can remember the names on them?”
“Good. Good.”
I listed the names I’d seen, and some partial addresses, the odd one or two sinking in my memory.
“That’s fantastic. I need your number. To update you on how the investigation is going.”
I nodded, writing it on a page in his notepad. And then he leaned forward towards me.
“You don’t look like the sort of woman that would hang around with an MC, Ms Fischer.”
“And what sort of woman would that be, then?” I answered curtly.
“I just mean know who you are here with. These are criminals, Heidi. What do you really think they can protect you from? Go home. You’ll be safe there. With your friends, to your own home. In a place that you know, and your brother doesn’t. We’ll run the investigation here, and you can stay well apart from that, and from a one-percenter MC who’ll only pull you into shit that’ll likely end with you dead, anyway.”
I sat staring at him. Doing nothing, just staring at him.
“What’s wrong, Heidi?” Fury asked, moving forward towards us again. “What has he just said?”