Illusive (Storm MC 5)

“Sweetheart, trust me, I’d know if we’d ever met, and we never have.” I finally gave up the internal battle to keep my eyes on her face, and dropped them to her body. Bad fucking move. This woman was made of lethal curves and hollows that I wanted to dedicate some serious time and attention to. The shorts and tight black v-neck she wore revealed them all.

A neck I could wrap my hands around.

Wrists I could decorate with rope.

An ass I could paint red with my palm.

My gaze shifted back up along her neck to her face, and my hand curled into a ball as I imagined gripping her long, blonde hair from behind and pulling her head back so I could sink my teeth into her neck.

Marks on her skin, put there by me – the vision came out of nowhere and hit me fair in the gut.

Fuck.

“I don’t know, you seem so familiar,” she said with a shrug, grabbing my attention aga

in. And then she smiled, and god-fucking-damn if it wasn’t the sexiest smile I’d ever seen. “And you’re too good-looking for me to be getting mixed up with someone else.” Her voice held no more uncertainty of me, and her body relaxed.

Time to get out of here; this woman might be turning me on, but everything about her screamed pure, and I was far from the kind of man who should be trusted with pure. Taking a step away from her, I spoke a little harder than I meant. “No, I can assure you we’ve never met.” I jerked my chin at her. “Have a good night,” I added before turning and striding back to the bar.

Once inside and settled back on my stool, I finished my beer and ordered another. And attempted to put the blonde out of my mind. She was not the type of woman I pursued so it should have been an easy task.

It was far from fucking easy.

She’d stirred my deepest primal desires. From her easy smile to her trusting nature to the sense I’d gotten from her that she was untainted – it was like waving a red flag at a bull, and I was the bull, ready to take and bend and break.

Just as I was envisioning a long night being taunted by not only the ghosts of my past, but also the blonde, my phone rang, distracting me. And fuck, the number flashing on caller ID stunned the hell out of me.

“Danny,” I answered, wondering what the hell my cousin was doing calling me out of the blue after two years of no contact.

“Michael,” he greeted me, his voice clear of emotion.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked as I took a swig of my drink.

“I’m giving you a heads up…the Bond case is finally going to trial and you may be called as a witness. I couldn’t find a way around it.”

“Fuck,” I muttered as I ran through scenarios in my mind of how this could play out. Any way I spun it, not good.

“Yeah, I thought you’d want to know, especially since it seems as though the media is all over this.” He paused for a moment. “Michael, if they call you, your name and identity will be splashed all over the media in Australia. There will be no way for you to avoid it.”

I threw the rest of my beer down my throat and slammed the bottle down on the bar. “I fucking realise that, Danny,” I snapped.

“Don’t take this shit out on me. I told you to get out of that club years ago. You had what you needed from them so I never could work out why you chose to stay. The boys and I can try to protect you from them if this all comes out, but there’s only so much our badge can do for you. Storm has a long reach, and if they want you dead over this, I’ve no doubt they’ll go to every length to make that happen.”

I drew in a slow, steady breath, trying to keep my anger in check. “I am fucking Storm, Danny. I know how far our reach goes and I sure as fuck know how we deal with shit like this, so don’t try and tell me what I already know. I never wanted anything to do with that Bond case all those years ago, and I damn sure don’t want a thing to do with it now. You need to find a way to make it go away, and you also need to make sure nothing else comes back to haunt me. I’m done with that part of my life, and mark my fucking words, if you don’t fix this, you won’t like the ramifications.”

Before he could respond, I ended the call. Then I paid my bill and stalked out of the bar. Staying here drinking was not a good idea in this frame of mind. Taking my frustrations out on a punching bag, however, was a fucking good idea.

2

Griff

I walked into the clubhouse early the next morning with a pounding head and aching muscles that I’d thrashed last night during a brutal training session. I’d pushed myself to the brink with exercise, needing to feel the burn – needing to forget everything else for a few hours.

Not many members had arrived by the time I got there, but I found Scott in the office going through paperwork. He glanced up at me. “You look like shit.”

Dropping into the chair across from him, I rolled my shoulders in an attempt to unkink some of the knots there and grimaced. “That about sums it up. How was the party?”

“Madison outdid herself. You missed a good night, brother, and by the looks of it, you possibly would have had a better time at the party.”