HER BUYER Read online

  I turned back to face the road, and swerved onto a street which led to the outskirts of town. We used to live out this way, far out from the city. I loved it here, once upon a time, but it had been a while since I’d wanted to come back. Too many memories of my father and the trips we’d make to go camping in the woods together. I forced them from my mind and pushed the bike faster, the air whipping through my hair and numbing my face completely. It was just what I needed at that moment – something sharp and painful, something to take my mind off of everything that had just happened. Raven, Breaker, Thaddeus, every tiny thing that had been fucking with my head since I had arrived in this awful place.

  I could hear Breaker behind me, and glanced over my shoulder again to see that he had gained on me. His face was twisted with something that looked like regret, and the roads were empty save for the two of us. I pressed the bike to go even faster, the roar of the engine nearly deafening me. If he wanted to catch me, he would have to try harder than–

  It all happened to quickly that I didn’t have a chance to think about what was happening. The bike hit something slick, and the front wheel skidded out from underneath me. I let out a scream of terror, but it was whipped away by the sound of the tire screeching across the road and off into the mossy underbrush, tearing up through the mud with an awful, guttural groan. Whatever instincts I had for this kind of thing kicked in at once; I managed to lunge myself free before the bike smashed into the thick, solid oak that stood only a few feet from the road. I landed with a thump, rolling a few feet as the sound of crumpling metal rang through the air about me.

  I lay on the ground for a moment, my brain deafened by the screaming fear that seemed to carry me through those next few minutes. I moved each one of my limbs at a time, testing them out. Yeah, I was still alive. I wasn’t even hurt. I turned my head to the side and saw that the motorcycle looked as though it had been put through some kind of paper shredder. It was nothing but a miserable pile of mangled metal. I didn’t even want to think how fast I had been going when I came off the road, but here I was. Alive. As though I had business to take care of yet, and the universe wasn’t done with me.

  I heard another motorcycle pull to a halt not far from me, but I could be bothered to turn my head. Seconds later, Breaker was above me, looking down at me with an expression of unadulterated fear.

  “Angel?” he asked, his voice soft and careful, as though he was worried he was going to break me if he spoke too loudly. I looked up at him. I couldn’t believe that, even though I’d just been through the scariest accident of my life, my anger at him outweighed my fear at what I’d just been through.

  “Are you alright?” He demanded, and I managed a nod. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked down at my body. I was remarkably unscathed, my clothes bearing the only real damage I’d suffered from the crash.

  “Oh, thank Christ,” he muttered, and ran his hands over his face. “Never pull that kind of shit on me again, okay?”

  Just like that, my brain seemed to snap back into gear and I began climbing to my feet.

  “Angel, Angel, sit down, you must be–“

  “No, don’t you fucking speak to me like that,” I snarled at him. “Don’t talk to me about not pulling that shit when you’re the one who got us into this mess in the first place.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he sprang to his feet at once, following me as I made my way back over to the crashed vehicle. “I’m not the one who stole a bike and then crashed it five minutes later! Angel, you could have gotten yourself killed–“

  “And what, you selling me off to Thaddeus without any rhyme or reason was completely safe?” I shot back.

  “I was going to tell you why, and I promise, it’s a good–“

  “Yeah, I know why you gave me to him,” I cut across him. “You wanted the name of the person who killed my father, right?”

  He fell silent.

  “Turns out Thad responds well to some physical persuasion,” I went on. “He told me in five minutes after I smashed his nose in.”

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” Breaker threw his hands in the air. “Now he’ll be after us!”

  “Yeah, like he wouldn’t have been before,” I pointed out. “And besides, you seem to have found a decent bodyguard.”

  “What?” He seemed confused.

  “Raven?” I cocked my head at him. “I mean, I’m pretty sure that she’s meant to be the one looking after you, but whatever works–“

  “I didn’t bring her there!” He protested. “I didn’t want her in that place! She turned up, and I don’t know who sent her, but she had a gun–“

  “Yeah, and you just so happened to have needed to pin her down just as I walked in, right?” I snapped back. “Nothing to do with the fact that you guys used to fuck and you need someone on watch for you?”

  “Angel, I wasn’t fucking her.” He took a step towards me, and I could see a flurry of emotions in his eyes. Anger, confusion, defensiveness, guilt. “I don’t think she was there for me. I think she was there for you.”

  “Why would she be–“

  “Maybe Thad sent her after what you did to him,” He suggested angrily. “He’s not the sort of guy who lets that shit go.”

  “Why would he think I would come back to you, after what you did to me?” I demanded. “He’d have to be stupid to think–“

  “But you did, though.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was all I could think of to say, even though I knew it wasn’t going to help. If I knew one thing, it was not to get on the wrong side of a woman like Angel when she had already proved that you were about as far from her good books as it was possible to be.

  She glared at me, fists clenched tight, and we stood there for a moment, just taking each other in. We were both breathing heavily. The adrenaline that had started pumping as soon as I’d heard a gun cock in my apartment was still fresh in my system, and I took a step towards her.

  “You did come back,” I repeated.

  She didn’t reply. What was there to say, I supposed. Nothing beyond the thing that had been between us since that first time we had fucked, the knowledge that there was something deep and heavy and real that existed somewhere in the space between cop and criminal, good guy and bad. She wanted me, and that’s why she had come back. And I knew the exact same thought was going through her head, too.

  I took another step towards her, closing the gap between us, as I observed her interestedly. God, she was gorgeous, even when she was raging mad. And even though she hated me more than anything else at that moment, I could see that she believed me. The pieces were slotting together in her head, telling her that I wasn’t lying. Raven had just turned up, and I had only sold Angel out because Thaddeus had backed me into a corner.

  “I would never have let him touch you if I thought he was going to hurt you,” I blurted out. “I knew you could handle yourself. I knew you’d be okay.”

  “I know,” she nodded, her voice quiet. And then, before either of us could stop ourselves, we lunged for each other.

  Her body was still shaky from where it had been thrown from the bike, but her mouth met mine and was as hard and as passionate as ever. I backed her into one of the thick tree trunks behind us, the smell of smoldering metal twisting in my nostrils as I ran my hands over her body. I caught my wrists between my fingers and lifted them over her head, my other hand roaming across her body. She groaned loudly, the sound echoing around the empty forest around us. Anyone could have driven past and caught us, but I didn’t give a damn. I needed her. I had to have her.

  I grabbed her and picked her up, digging my fingers deep into her ass as I did so. She wrapped her legs around my waist, raking her nails up and down my back as she did so. I pressed myself against her, making sure she could feel how hard I already was for her. She reached down to grab my erection, and massaged the steel of my cock roughly through my pants. This wasn’t a time for romance and sweet love–making – I w
as going to have her, right here in the middle of nowhere, and she was going to love it as much as I was.

  I moved her so that I could lay her down on the ground, and roughly yanked down her shirt so that her bare breasts were exposed. I leaned down to take her nipple in my mouth, playing gentle at first before biting the skin hard enough to make her squirm beneath me. She moaned again, and I glanced up, watching as she closed her eyes and let the sounds of her pleasure echo around us. I had never seen her let loose like this before. It was as though the intensity of the last twenty–four hours was being concentrated into these minutes, every inch of her skin receptive to my touch. I moved back up to kiss her again, letting my teeth catch on her lip, and she tugged at my hair, hard enough to send a sharp shiver down my spine.

  She took my hand and guided it between her legs, where I was all too happy to slip my fingers below the waistband of her borrowed jeans and find her pussy; even though the fabric of her panties, I could tell that she was soaking wet. She grazed her teeth over her bottom lip as I pressed my fingers against her bare cunt and began to massage her, dipping my fingers in and out of her slit teasingly until she lifted her hips and begged for something more.

  “You want me to fuck you?” I asked, and she nodded, but I was relentless, desperate to hear her say it, to hear her admit it.

  “Louder,” I murmured, stroking my fingers around the edge of her slit.

  “Yes,” she murmured, her chest heaving up and down.

  “Louder,” I ordered again.

  “Yes!” She cried out, as I slipped my index finger inside of her. “Just fuck me already, Breaker, please. I need this.”

  I felt down my pockets for a condom– shit, nothing. Then I remembered I had one tucked away in the pair of jeans she was wearing, slid my fingers into pocket, and found the crinkled packet. I grinned. Bonuses to having your girl dress in your clothes, I guessed. We both moved as much out of our clothes as we needed to – it was damn cold out there, after all – and I slid the condom on to my dick and grabbed her legs. I pulled one back over my shoulder, and she wrapped the other around my waist to draw me closer.

  With one smooth motion, I was inside her. The sheer power of it was incredible; the cool wind on my ass and my cock buried deep in the heat of her. I could have stayed there forever, but she was wild. She arched her back and pressed her hips against mine, grinding back against my cock as she did so. Her hands grabbed at the ground beneath us, her fingers digging up clumps of dirt as she did so. I ran my hands down her waist and held her hips tight as I started to fuck her, moving deep inside her, making sure she felt every inch of my cock in her pussy.

  I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her up on to my cock, desperate all at once to feel her lips against mine. She twirled her arms around my neck and kissed me, hard, as I slowly lifted her up and down on top of me. She was completely at my mercy, and yet I felt completely under her control. It was an odd blend, one that made my head ache and my cock stiffen even more with desire inside of her.

  “Fuck!” She groaned against my ear, letting her lips brush across the sensitive skin as she did so. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, flexing my hips so I was deep inside her once again. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer – she felt too good around me, the heat of her breath on my skin a tipping point reached. She ground her hips down as far as she could, flexing her pussy around my cock, and that’s when it happened.

  She came with a cry, clutching at me as she did so, her body shuddering in my arms as I tried to hold her steady. Her mouth was still next to my ear as she finished, and it took me a second to realize that she was mouthing something against my skin. The words were silent at first, incoherent, but soon took form. I love you, I love you, I love you. And before I knew it, I was saying them back, driving myself up inside her as hard as I could as the most intense orgasm I’d ever had rocked through my body. I gasped the words into her hair, unable to hold them back, knowing that they were true…

  And then, like that, the moment was over. We sat there for a moment, catching our breath, before she slowly climbed off of me. I snapped the condom off my cock and disposed of it quickly, suddenly moving with what felt like practiced caution. We sat there in silence for a moment, and then she spoke.

  “We should probably get back into the city,” she muttered, her elbows balanced on her knees and her eyes planted firmly at the ground. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed, and cast a critical eye over the mess she’d made of my bike. “I’ll pick whatever’s left of this one back up later.”

  “Sure,” she shrugged, and got to her feet, adjusting herself. My eyes flicked up and down her body, and all at once, my heart swelled with it again – the feeling, the true feeling that coursed through my veins. I loved this woman. I didn’t know how, or why, or whether I should admit that I’d never said those words to anyone I’d slept with before, but it was true. I loved her, and she had loved me, at least for those seconds. But now, as she got dressed and both of us tried to avoid each other’s gaze, I had a feeling that we’d be putting it behind us. With a small sigh, I went to pick up my bike where I’d left it at the side of the road, and see whether I got hotwire it again with the shaky, post–orgasm fingers I was currently dealing with.

  A few seconds later, the engine was up and running again, and Angel was behind me. Her face was flushed and her hair matted and messy, and she caught my eye as she approached the bike. Her mouth opened briefly, as though she was going to say something. I thought for a second that she was going to address what had happened between us, but of course, she wasn’t.

  “We don’t have to go back to the club, you know,” she remarked, scuffing her foot back and forth on the turf beneath us. I raised my eyebrows.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We could just leave,” she replied. “We could get out of here, leave everything we’ve got with the police…they could figure out plenty from what we’ve already got, I promise you.”

  I stared at her. I knew she was right, all the way down. If we went now, no–one would come looking for us. We were at that sweet spot where we knew enough for everyone to want to keep us happy, but not so much that they wanted to keep us dead. I eyed her for a moment. Was she really suggesting leaving all this behind, after everything that we’d found out? She met my gaze, and I could see them glazed over slightly, and at once knew where this was coming from. She’d seen enough. She’d been through enough. She didn’t know who she could trust or what she could do with them. This had started out a fight for her life and her body, and had turned into an investigation that had been all muddled up with whatever was happening between the two of us. She knew we could never fully trust each other as long as that club was around. After all, she was a cop and I was a criminal, and nothing we could do or say to each other was going to change that, no matter how hard we tried, no matter how much we wanted it to.

  “I don’t think I can do it anymore,” she admitted, her voice small against the enormity of the forest behind her. It seemed to almost vanish on the sound of the wind, but I made out the words, and knew at once how hard they must have been to say. I doubt Angel had said anything even close to that before in her entire life.

  “You can, if you want to,” I assured her. “I know this…fuck, I know I haven’t exactly been carrying out a standard investigation. But we’ve already found out so much. About the club, about Thad, about your father…”

  I brought him up before I had a chance to think about what a stupid thing it was to say. Her face tightened at once, and she leaned up against a tree for support. Her fingers splayed against the rough bark, and I wanted to cover them with my own, but I knew that it would do no good. Right now, Angel needed to stand on her own two feet, and my intervention wasn’t going to make her feel any better about proceedings. She stared at the ground just in front of my feet, and I followed her gaze, trying to figure out if she was seeing something there that I
wasn’t. After a moment, she spoke, and it was though she was in some kind of hypnotic trance, the words falling from between her lips without her face changing expression at all.

  “He was involved in all of this, wasn’t he?” She asked softly, and I wrinkled up my face in confusion.

  “Huh?”

  “They never told me what he was involved in, but I know…” She trailed off, as though silently putting the pieces together in her head. “I know this is what he wanted to spend his life doing.”

  “What are you talking about?” I shook my head in confusion, and she took her hand off the tree, forcing herself upright once again.

  “I remember, he would talk about auctions on the phone…and I never saw him go down to the station, not once, not for months before he died,” she continued, as if only putting the pieces together in her head now. “He was trying to take them down, Breaker. That’s why he died. He must have known too much or gotten too close or…something.”