Adler (The Henchmen MC 14)

Luckily, money meant shit to me.

Adler seemed of the same mind.

I was going to add to his comment, loving nothing more than whittling away at Geoff's pride little by little, but I felt a body move in behind me. I felt his body move in behind me, the heat somehow breaking through the barrier of his clothing and mine, seeking my skin underneath, sending a shiver across the surface, making goosebumps prickle up over my back, chest, down my arms.

"Got yourself an assistant? Lord knows no man could stand being with you for more than an hour without being paid."

"Yeah, like the panties are dropping all across this town for you, Geoff," I told him, tone bored as I flipped the file to the police report of my new skip's case.

Thomas R Malon.

"Real fuckin' prince," Adler's voice said behind me, his breath brushing my ear in a way that shouldn't have been, but absolutely was, erotic. "Ya know, it's been a while since I visited AC. Last job I had there was, well, a good three years back I guess."

"Do I want to know what kind of job that was?" I asked, taking a step toward the side like I was trying to see him while I spoke to him, not like his nearness was causing all kinds of chaos in my too-long-untouched body.

To that, Adler's head ducked to the side a bit, lips quirking up, eyes dancing. "Think ya can handle it?"

"If you're done with the foreplay, I want my two-fifty back," Geoff snapped, banging a hand on his desk in a way that was meant to startle me, but I was too used to it by now to do anything but shoot him a raised brow.

Ignoring the foreplay comment, I rolled my eyes toward Adler, finding his brow already quirked up.

And it was right then that Graham's voice broke through the steady hum of low female voices talking - to each other on the phone.

"I told you I could handle it, Pops," he declared, voice firm, unyielding, the kind of confident his father could only imitate, not actually possess.

Graham was the proof that even wholly unappealing men could get laid. Not only laid, but laid raw. Producing offspring.

That offspring was Graham who had the double bad fortune of being born to slime like Geoff and a woman who was either a junkie or a whore or both, who got shot of him as soon as she was out of the hospital, leaving him for Geoff to try to rear. Or, more accurately, Geoff's poor mother and a string of office women.

And, to their credit, they did a decent enough job. Graham was confident, intelligent, respectful, and undeniably attractive - tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, dark-blue-eyed, cut jaw, slightly cleft chin. But he was also too young, untrained, untested, hot-headed.

One day, he would be good.

Better by far than his father ever was, than most of his father's men were.

But not yet.

"You aren't making your bones on this case. Not with this kind of money on the line."

I sent him an apologetic look, watching the way his hands clenched hard, trying to keep his temper under control. "What are you still doing here?" Geoff growled at me, waving his hand out.

"You're a real peach, Geoff. I'll be in touch. Try not to blow up my phone like the mother of a teen girl on her prom night when she's three hours past curfew."

With that, I took my file, walking out, moving to stand on the sidewalk out front, the salt crunching under my feet. Apparently, we were expecting snow. Legwork in a dusting wouldn't be a big deal. In eight inches to a foot? I was going to be one cranky camper.

"So, are ya drivin' or am I?"

My head swiveled, finding him standing beside me, shoulder close enough to brush, chest widening as he sucked in a deep breath.

"You don't work with me," I reminded him. "Your job is to provide illegal guns to bad guys like my skips."

"And to bad guys like yerself," he told me with a smirk.

"Never bought from you," I assured him. "I have a less... complicated contact."

"Oh yeah? In these parts?" he asked, the biker part of him perking up, wanting the intel.

"Not getting dick from me. So get on your merry way. I have a scumbag to find, and a check to cash."

"Right. Yep. Won't stand in your way," he agreed, tucking his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels.

I should have known better than to take him at his word.

But I did, getting in my car, shuffling the file into the glovebox, then scrolling through my iPod.

It was just a second before the music started playing that the door opened and swung shut again.

And there he was.

Looking as pleased with himself as a kid who just scored his first goal.