Slow Burn (Lost Kings MC 1)

He cocked his head and nailed me with one of his smoldering stares. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," I answered while tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.

"Your hands are shaking."

This was true. A polite person would have ignored it. He knew the reason why. He just wanted to unsettle me.

"You're flushed," he continued.

"I'm fine," I answered in a tone meant to shut him up.

My phone buzzed, and I mentally pumped my fist in the air in relief. Staring at the screen, I realized I needed to get going if I wanted to make it to court on time.

I stood and collected his file. "I have to be in court this afternoon."

He pushed his chair back and got to his feet slowly. I was very aware of the way he watched me as I tucked his file under my arm and exited the conference room. A few quick steps down the hall, and I set the stack of folders on top of my filing cabinet. I unearthed my briefcase from behind my desk and checked to see if I had everything I needed for the afternoon. Whipping myself around, I collided with a wall of muscle.

His warm, heavy hands settled on my shoulders to steady me—the first time we'd touched all afternoon. I wanted to swoon. Did women still swoon? Didn't matter…I wanted to.

"I have to get going," I whispered. Dammit, why did my voice disappear every time he touched me?

I’d avoided his eyes during our whole appointment. Rude, yes. But I couldn’t risk getting sucked into those stormy depths. I made the mistake of looking up. Our gazes locked and held. Studying his irises, I noted hints of blue in a sea of gray. Without thinking, my lips parted. Instead of kissing me, Rock just stared.

"You have the prettiest eyes, Hope."

Jinx! How’d he know I’d been thinking the same thing about him? It unnerved me so much, I broke the spell by wriggling out of his grasp. He sighed and dropped his hands.

Laying my hands on Hope did absolutely nothing to calm the storm that had been brewing in me all afternoon. The second she squirmed away from me, I sighed in defeat. I wanted to respect her marital status. I really did. Or at least I wanted to want to.

"How's your husband?"

That was not the right thing to say. She pinned me with an icy glare.

"We're fine."

"Just checking, doll. I'd never forgive myself if your situation changed and I didn't know about it."

Her jaw clenched and unclenched before she answered. "My situation is not going to change."

I raised an eyebrow. Was her husband some controlling asshole? As shrewd as she was, she caught the shift in my demeanor.

"God, calm down. We're just not the divorcing type. I don't believe in it."

"Religious?"

"No. Just a moral, decent person."

Hmm. Interesting dig.

"Even in abuse or adultery situations?"

"No, of course not. But Clay would never lay a hand on me, and he's not a cheater. Neither am I," she finished with a pointed look.

I got that. I really did. He was a lucky man. Women with her kind of depth and conviction were rare in my experience. It made it hard not to want that for myself.

I consoled myself with the fact that at least her man treated her well. She deserved nothing but the best, and to be brutally honest—as much as I hated to admit it—I wouldn't be good for her. Although she turned me on like no other woman I’d ever known, we moved in different worlds. I bet she liked to get dressed up and go to fancy lawyer functions where she made uppity chit-chat and sipped white wine. I’d rather be caught dead than in a suit. Besides the massive hard-on she gave me whenever I got within three feet of her, we were not compatible. It was time to get that through my thick skull.

I slipped on my shades and patted her back before leaving, wishing I had the right to do more.

After our conversation, you would think I would back off, but my little trips into suburbia actually increased. I couldn't help it. When I thought the bike might garner too much attention, I started taking my SUV. Big and black with tinted windows, it was a bad-guy cliché, but it made spying in privacy a lot easier. That’s how far gone this woman got me.

Of course, all these excursions didn't go unnoticed by my club. Even though I wore the President patch, I still had obligations. Because of the patch, I had an enormous amount of responsibility. I didn't let any of it slip, but I easily could have. Because of the nature of our business, a lot of our deals went down at night. Since I found myself cruising Evergreen Lane on more and more nights, this became a problem.

I got sloppy.

There was no excuse.

It was no secret that our area had a lot of gang activity. Believe it or not, my crew played a part in keeping the worst of it out of our city and the surrounding county. That wasn't to say we weren't criminals, but drive-bys, prostitution, hard drugs—we kept them out. That didn't mean the two nearest cities bordering ours weren't teeming with guys eager to change that. It's not like people in Empire couldn't drive the five miles over the bridge to Ironworks if they needed to buy heroin or meth. Interestingly, it did not work the other way around. Dealers from Ironworks did not drive into our territory to sell the harder drugs. No one within a hundred-mile radius dared to sell weed that didn’t originate in our grow house. Sometimes rival crews tested these rules, and it never ended well for them.

We had an understanding. To the east of us, Ironworks was run by an MC called the Vipers. For some reason, Ironworks was attractive to Hispanic immigrants, so the Vipers had a large portion of brown guys, but I don't think it was a requirement. We had a precarious relationship with them. They mostly dealt in prostitution. This I wanted no part of. If my girls were caught soliciting sex in the club, they were out on their asses. I did not need the hassle of Vice sniffing around.

The Vipers knew this, yet they stirred up shit by attempting to send girls into my club to pick up side action occasionally. Lots of their girls were hooked on crap to keep them compliant, which I found abhorrent.

I ran a clean club. My girls danced because they wanted to. They kept the same percentage of their income dancers in any legitimate club kept. I doubted the Vipers treated their women with the same respect. Crystal Ball was one of two legitimate businesses the Lost Kings operated, so I absolutely did not want anything fucking with that. My girls were clean and healthy, or they got the fuck out. Customers didn’t come into my club and pay top dollar to watch glassy-eyed girls with meth sores lazily work the pole.

This was important for a number of reasons. One, Crystal Ball had a good reputation throughout the dancer community, and let me tell you—those bitches were tight. A club that engaged in questionable practices would not get top talent. The more dancers and porn stars I could rotate through my club, the better it was for business. No matter how hot the girls were, guys got tired of seeing the same thing over and over. Well, most of them. We definitely had our regulars who were attached to one girl or another, but it just kept them guessing. And kept everyone smiling all the way to the bank.

To the west of us, an MC called the Wolf Knights ran Slater City. Historically, their business was in the transportation and distribution of guns—a dangerous business with serious hard time attached to it. The monetary rewards were worth it for some people. Me, I liked my freedom too much to mess with that shit.

For many years we had a good working relationship with the Wolf Knights as we turned to them for any hardware needs. At one point, they tried to push into the drug trade. After a few missteps, they understood the wisdom in steering clear of the nasty shit. The Vipers did not. While I was not privy to all of their internal dealings for obvious reasons, it became widely known that there had been a shake-up in leadership.

New leadership shook up the Vipers from outside. These assholes had no interest in abiding by the strict lines that had been drawn years ago. They assumed my club was small enough to intimidate into giving up territory for their meth, coke, and hooker distribution. While my particular charter was small at this time, it w

as not an orphan. We had a mother chapter, and we had brother chapters in surrounding areas. All I had to do was pick up the phone, and I could have enough brothers here to deal with any additional shit from the Vipers. The Wolf Knights and my club also formed a tighter alliance when faced with the sheer violent bloodlust of the new Vipers. Rumors of rival gangs' ol' ladies or even the sweetbutts being abducted and gang raped to "send a message" had been swirling for a few weeks. Considering the number of girls in and out of Crystal Ball, this made me very uneasy and I did call in a charter club to help with protection at the strip club. A good portion of the girls had no idea the club they danced at was owned by an MC, so keeping them safe was a priority for me. It never occurred to me that the Vipers would target any female associated with us.

My short-sightedness became clear while on one of my stakeouts on Evergreen Lane. While I sat staring at what I could see of Hope’s house, two bold, brazen Vipers with colors flying cruised down the quiet street.

Motherfucker.

My heart hammered in my chest at seeing their lazy drive by Hope's house. My hand automatically reached for the pistol I kept hidden at the small of my back. I highly doubted they were here to take a nature hike on the state land that bordered the end of the street. No, the unusual attention they paid to her driveway left no doubt why they were here. Either they'd followed me here, or they knew she worked as a lawyer for some of our club members. Didn't matter. This was bad. I’d fucked up big time.

They left, but the fact that they'd even touched their bikes to Hope's street unnerved the fuck outta me. I needed to fix this immediately. First, I had to stay away from here. This was my fault. My obsession with this woman I couldn't even have was going to get her hurt or killed. I needed to end it.

I had to figure out a way to get her out of my system. If she hated me, it might be a lot easier. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, I knew there was a part of her that acknowledged the chemistry between us. That knowledge made it difficult to give her up.

But my inaction had caused me to lose a girl I cared about once before. I wouldn't let it happen again. Especially when now I was in a position to prevent it from happening.

On my way home, I worked out a plan in my head. It would never fly unless I changed my mindset. Hope occupied way too many of my thoughts on a daily basis. I needed to go cold turkey for both our sakes. Implement my own personal Hope Kendall Detox Program. Then I could move on with my life and let her move on with hers. First, there were some safeguards I needed to put in place.

Number one, I couldn’t see her any more. Seeing her made me want to spend more time with her, which made me want to kiss her, which desperately made me want to fuck her. Second, I needed to stop fantasizing about her. Fantasizing led to me wanting to see her, and well, see the first reason. That meant no more envisioning unpinning her hair, wrapping my fist in it, and taking her mouth. No more picturing myself balls deep inside her while she lay writhing and moaning beneath me. For that matter, no more picturing what she would look like naked or imagining her perfect nipples between my lips while I jerked off in the shower.

And most importantly, there could absolutely be no more fantasizing about finding her husband in a dark alley and putting two bullets in his head.

Once I got myself under control, I could put the second part of my plan into motion. The one that would guarantee she would hate my guts and never want to see me again. The one that would solve all my problems—except the problem where I was pretty sure somewhere along the way I’d fallen in love with the woman I needed to destroy.

CHAPTER FIVE

Rock's court date approached swiftly. I'd managed to work out an okay deal with the new prosecutor. She'd graduated three or four years after me, which made me feel incredibly old. Rock gave me shit about the deal the day before when we'd met to discuss it. He objected to the one year of probation, which was a dance-a-jig-worthy gift considering they'd originally wanted jail time.

I possessed an unusual amount of self-confidence when we entered court. A bunch of his scary-looking friends accompanied Rock in a show of solidarity. I didn't think having them in the courtroom wearing their leather vests and various patches was very helpful, but as long as they didn’t cause any trouble, I planned to keep my mouth closed on the subject.

After knocking at the door of the attorney conference room and told to come in, I got a shock. Theresa, the assistant district attorney I'd worked my deal out with, was not there. The district attorney himself had made a rare appearance. This was unusual for a number of reasons, and none of them were going to be good for my client. Dread marched down my spine. I pulled the plea sheet out of my file and studied it. Proof I had a deal in place. Only on rare occasions would a DA renege on a deal.

"Have a seat, Ms. Kendall."

Yeah, this was going to be bad.

"It's good to see you, Mr. Cain. I expected Ms. Delaney. We worked out a plea earlier in the week."

He shuffled through some papers. A large stack of papers. Not good at all.

"Yes, I see she worked out a deal, but she never got my okay." He flipped his file closed and turned his glacial eyes on me. "Do you realize who you represent, Hope?"

"Rochlan North." Maybe he had my client confused with one of his other cases. Not frickin' likely, but a girl can dream.

"Mr. North is the president of the Lost Kings Motorcycle Gang. Are you aware of that?"

"Club. They're a club, not a gang."

His mouth flattened into a thin line, and he sat up straighter in the chair. "We're looking at his club for a number of crimes. Prostitution, marijuana trafficking, money laundering, assault. Are you sure you're not in over your head with this one, Hope?"

It would be a gross understatement to say my brain had dissolved into a puddle of jelly by this point. A low buzzing filled my ears once he started listing off alleged crimes. If what he said was true, I was indeed in over my head. I'd need to pull in my mentor and maybe another attorney to deal with all of that. I stopped myself in mid-freakout. This was a common trick. He wanted to scare me into accepting a shittier offer, and I’d been about to fall right into his trap.

I straightened up and looked him in the eye, determined not to be intimidated by this asswaffle. "Tony, you know damn well the charge here is possession of less than eight ounces. If you had a shred of evidence to tie him to any of that other stuff, you'd be handing me some sort of indictment, bouncing this up to county, or calling in the AG's office. Since you’re not doing any of that, why don't you tell me what you're offering and let's wrap this up so we can stop wasting each other’s time."

He'd been unnaturally still during my rundown, the rhythmic drumming of his thumb against the edge of the desk my only clue that my words had their intended effect. Clasping his hands in front of him on the desk, he leaned forward.

"Fine. Here's what I'm willing to do. Five years probation."

Good grief, Rock was busting my ass over the one year of probation.

"I don't know if I can make that happen today, Tony. I need some time to discuss it with my client. He wasn't happy about the one year."

He snorted. "Yeah, I bet. This offer is going to expire at the end of the week, Hope. You see, I've got an officer who is solid to testify. He’s also going to testify that the amount your client had on his person might have been over eight ounces. I’ll prosecute it myself."

Shit, shit, shit!

Over eight bumped it from a misdemeanor to a felony. I kept the tirade in my head. Antagonizing him wouldn't help me now. If it came down to a trial, I could easily argue police fuck-up with that discrepancy.

I nodded calmly. "Understood. I'm going to ask Hale for a week adjournment."

He scribbled some notes on the file sheet and passed it to me. "Hand that to Gloria, and I won't need to come out. Send the next attorney in, would you?"

I left the room in a daze. Rock sat patiently waiting in the front row. His eyes found mine as soon as I entered the courtroom. I s

trode up to the side of the judge's bench and handed the file sheet to his clerk, Gloria. "Can you give me a few minutes to speak with my client before you call us up?"

"Sure, hon, just nod when you're ready."

I thanked her. Walking around the edge of the courtroom, I reached Rock and motioned him out into the hall. His buddies moved to join us, and I asked them to wait with a shake of my head.

"What's up, counselor?" Rock asked as soon as the door shut behind us. I took a moment to admire him. He’d left his leather vest at home. He hadn’t exactly dressed up for court, but the black T-shirt, paired with black and gray camo pants, looked neat and clean enough—not to mention the way the tight black fabric stretched over his well-muscled arms and thick chest. An evil little voice in my head whispered he'd be dark, dangerous, and sexy no matter what he wore.

Shaking off the inappropriate thoughts, I focused on the problem in front of us. "The DA showed up personally. He doesn't want to honor the agreement we made. He's pushing for five years probation."

"What the fuck, Hope? I thought you had this locked down?"

I really didn't need him making me feel shittier than I already did. All my regular doubts about my abilities were speeding toward a meltdown without his tirade. The only thing I needed to do was get through the next half hour without crying, then I could go home and drown myself in the bathtub.

He took a deep breath and in a calmer tone of voice asked, "What do we do?"

"He agreed to a week adjournment, but he wants an answer by Friday." I didn't even get into all the other stuff the asshat had brought up. That was a conversation for another time and place.

He nodded, his angry expression softening into something a lot kinder. His warm hand curled over my shoulder. "Thanks, Hope. You've done a really good job for me. I want you to know how much I appreciate it."

The sudden sentimentality of the moment affected me. My lips pulled up into a smile, and I took a step closer. "No problem."