Shield Her (A Bad Boys in Her Bed Menage, Cop Versus Biker) Read online

  I was tired of playing this game, especially after today. He couldn’t just order me home after I had been so intimately threatened with assault and show up acting like the ice man as he so often did.

  Maybe it was time to ease Maddox and Carson out of my life.

  Before I could dwell on whether that really was an option, another knock landed on the apartment door.

  Maddox jumped up, his hand raised to keep me seated. He pulled his gun out, thumbed the safety off then glanced sideways through the peephole, his body as small a target as possible for the position. Then he unlocked the deadbolt but kept the chain on.

  Looking out to see just Carson, his shoulders relaxed. He holstered his gun and took the chain off, then relocked everything once Carson was inside.

  Past angry, deeply mired in brooding hurt, I didn’t offer Carson anything to drink, just moved my legs to the side so he could slide by and sit on the couch.

  “What the fuck, Reggie?” He took my wineglass away and lifted me to him, his powerful upper body wrapping me in a hug that threatened to crush my ribs.

  His hands roamed my back and arms, like he was looking for breaks or open wounds. “I’m so sorry you got dragged into this, babe.”

  Tears I had been fighting all day surged down my cheeks. I batted his hands away, reclaimed my wine and sat on the end of the couch with my legs tucked under me.

  “Would one of you please explain what the hell is going on?” I choked out.

  Neither of them answered. I looked between them. Carson stared at the carpet, still standing where he had been when I broke free of his desperate hug. Maddox was back in the chair glaring at his childhood friend like he wanted to snap his neck.

  “Carson,” I said, softening my tone. “Tell me what happened today—”

  “You fucking know what happened, Reggie,” Maddox interrupted. “You stuck your nose where I definitively told you not to and were seconds away from getting a train pulled on you while someone held a gun to Carson’s head.”

  The wine glass slipped from my numb fingers, my gaze wet and distorted as I watched the dark red merlot soak into the upholstery of my couch.

  “Asshole,” Carson spit out, picking up the glass from the floor and placing it on the table. “Don’t yell at Reggie like it’s her fault.”

  “Oh, it’s entirely your fault Eight Ball and his crew were there,” Maddox agreed. “But I told her to stay out of it and to stay away.”

  “Come on, babe,” Carson said, his voice low as he talked to me. Taking a seat next to me, he pulled me onto his lap, pushed my head onto his shoulder and wrapped his arms tightly around me so I couldn’t escape without a fight. “Just get it out, then we can talk.”

  I fisted his shirt, buried my face against his neck but couldn’t shed any more tears.

  “Maddox has the place wired for audio and video,” Carson said, rubbing gently at my back. “Someone is always watching and I wasn’t going to let one of them touch you.”

  “Except for Eight Ball rubbing her tit with his gun,” Maddox snarled, a palpable threat of violence running through his strangled voice.

  Carson tensed against me. “What? I didn’t…”

  I fisted his shirt more tightly and mumbled against his neck. “Never mind what Eight Ball did or didn’t do. What’s going on?”

  “No, Reggie.” He tried to pull back for a look at my face but I wouldn’t let him. “Tell me what that bastard did.”

  I shook my head, my hand leaving his shirt to shield my face from his gaze.

  “She doesn’t have to tell you, it’s on video.”

  I had never heard Maddox so furious, had seldom experienced him even slightly pissed at his best friend. Now every word out of his mouth dripped with anger — not all of it directed at Carson.

  I beat my fist against Carson’s chest, just as I had beat at his office door that afternoon, only with a far lighter touch. “What is going on?”

  “I stopped paying attention to the books,” Carson confessed. “You know Adam?”

  I nodded, my face still buried against his strong body.

  Adam Deberow was a twenty-something accounting student Carson had hired nine months back. By all reports, he was dedicated, hard working, and had quickly made Carson’s life easier by taking over all the paperwork and leaving Carson to do what he did best — build award-winning custom bikes shown all over the world.

  “Well, the little snake shit goes by the name Mildew when he’s wearing his Steel Tide leathers.”

  I jerked my head back and looked at Carson for the first time since he had pulled me onto his lap. “That kid is one of them?”

  “Yeah, and he had me blindly signing anything he stuck in front of me.”

  Hurt flashed across Carson’s face. I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him, which made him hug me even harder.

  “When they had enough illegal transactions with my signature on them, that’s when that psychopath Eight Ball showed up. Counterfeit parts, stolen parts, drug shipments in from Canada.”

  “Holy hell,” I said, still wrapped tightly in his arms. I had a feeling he hadn’t had a sympathetic ear from anyone, not even Maddox, and his holding me was as much for his benefit as it was to comfort me over the afternoon’s events.

  I lifted my head and looked at Maddox. His face was grim, his gaze boring into both of us. I felt like Carson and I had gone from friends to civilians, probably at the bottom of that particular category of people — “dumb civilians” who were only a step above the criminals who took advantage of them.

  “The only way to keep him out of jail with no criminal record was for Carson to become a confidential informant. And the prosecutor isn’t going to do anything but send him to jail for twenty years if we don’t get a spectacularly large bust on Steel Tide. My task force has three federal agencies watching over our shoulder on this one.”

  I couldn’t stop the huffing laugh that escaped me. “Oh, so that’s why you’re being an extra large dick. I figured you broke up with Zara and were just riding my ass like you always do after one of your three-month affairs is over.”

  His expression widened and I thought if I squinted hard enough I would see steam coming out of his ears. His face was certainly red enough to show his blood was boiling.

  “I’m riding your ass because you did an incredibly reckless thing that almost got the both of you badly injured — at best — and could still screw up three months of trying to get Carson’s ass out of a sling.”

  Maddox finished with a jab of his finger in Carson’s direction.

  “You’re right, though,” Carson said, his lips against my ear, their warm brush sending flesh bumps racing pleasantly across my skin. “He and Zara broke up last weekend.”

  Carson patted my leg, his voice turning very serious. “You better move off my lap and sit a safe distance from me.”

  I started to move to my usual spot, the one that would place me between the two men. Carson grabbed my hips and stopped me. “No, babe. He’s going to want to take my head off in a second. You might want to fix up an ice pack or two.”

  I pushed his hands off and wagged a finger at him. “Maddox is not going to hit you. Yes, he’s being a dick, but the two of you have never done violence against one another.”

  Something flashed across Carson’s face and I knew I had missed something over all these years. I looked at Maddox, his gaze giving nothing away.

  “I’m not going to hit him, Reggie.”

  Taking a seat, I turned expectantly for Carson to begin.

  He folded his much larger hands around mine and stared deep into my eyes. “When you left, Eight Ball wanted an explanation — about you and about the cops showing up and searching your car.”

  I could hear the wood frame of the side chair protesting as Maddox gripped the armrests too tightly.

  “I said the cops probably got a tip from your crazy ex-boyfriend who had pulled the same stunt twice before, once when you were headed to your office’s
Christmas party.”

  “Okay…” I looked over my shoulder at Maddox to see if this information was making him angry. I couldn’t imagine why it would. Carson had probably saved the investigation with that little story. Maddox should be pleased — or at least not glowering at his best friend as he was doing.

  Carson rolled his lips, pushed the bottom one out with his teeth scraping and pinching at it. He blinked then dipped his forehead so it touched mine. “They were still going on about your banging on my door, said any woman other than an old lady needed a…group lesson…in respect. So I said you were my old lady.”

  Air hissed from Maddox and then his fist slammed down on the chair’s armrest. I turned to him. There was just enough color difference in the black of his pupils and the blackish brown irises that I could see how very large the pupils had become. His body had definitely tripped over into some fight or flight response and his closed fists told me he wasn’t going to be running out my front door anytime soon.

  “Look,” I said, resting my hands over one closed fist as I met Maddox’s angry gaze. “This is a little hiccup. So Carson has to pretend he’s got a girlfriend…”

  My words trailed off as Maddox refused to soften.

  “Okay,” I said, changing tactics and pulling my hands back to my lap. “What’s wrong with him saying I am his old lady?”

  “How many times have you interacted with Mildew?” he asked, shooting off another question before I could answer. “How many one night stands has Carson bragged about in front of the kid?”

  “He backed me up when Eight Ball asked,” Carson said. “Told Eight Ball I fucked around a lot but that Reggie was my steady girl. They figured she was there because she found out I had fucked around again — which is hilarious since I’ve kept my dick strapped down since this shit exploded all over my shop.”

  I almost choked on the idea — not Carson strapping his dick down but actually managing to keep it in his pants for several months.

  “Fine,” Maddox said, grinding the word past clenched teeth. “I’ll check the AV logs and see if he said differently after you left. Now tell me what the fuck you’re holding back.”

  My head ping-ponged between the two men. Maddox had me on edge, both from the uneased tension that had gripped his body since he pulled me over that afternoon to his confidence that something worse was waiting around the corner, that the dreadful apparition would arise as soon as Carson finished the story.

  “They want her to come to the club mixer on Friday when the other old ladies will be there.”

  “No,” Maddox said, his voice and delivery absolute.

  “I know, that’s what I said,” Carson agreed. “So the investigation is pretty much over.”

  Silence filled the space around me, neither man saying anything. My brain slowly processed the implication of the investigation ending now.

  “Is there enough to satisfy the prosecutor?” I asked, stomach sinking as Maddox slowly shook his head.

  “So you’re saying because I showed up today, Carson could go to prison for twenty years?”

  Maddox looked away, his face crunching at some answer or idea that he was keeping to himself.

  “No,” I said, my voice and tone every bit as absolute as Maddox’s had been earlier. “Big fucking deal if I have to go to some biker party. You said their wives will be there. My stomach might churn the entire time, but why the hell are you—”

  Stopping, I pointed from Maddox to Carson. “And you telling me this means the investigation is over?”

  Hooking my gaze, Maddox scooted forward on the chair, his body leaning in toward me, our faces kissing close when he dropped his answer.

  “Carson isn’t a patched member. He’s not even a fucking prospect. He’s a vendor, a mark, your status as his old lady means jack shit, other than you’re one more thing they can use against him to get what they want.”

  “He’s right, baby girl. And my going to jail has nothing to do with you coming in today—”

  “Fucking right—” Maddox started to interrupt before I lunged forward and pushed hard at his chest.

  His hands caught my wrists and I thought I saw a flicker of violence in his dark gaze, but I was too pissed off to care.

  “I don’t know what has your dick twisted in a knot,” I snarled. “But you’re not using that brain you’re so fucking proud of. I’m already in danger, whether I go to the club or not — and when the investigation ends without arresting those scummy human beings, I’m in even more danger. So instead of thinking about how you can plunge me into that danger even faster, let’s figure out how we keep Carson out of jail and me with all my original equipment!”

  I wrenched my hands free from his iron grip and plopped my ass down on the couch.

  His entire body shaking, Maddox slowly rose up from the chair. His hand dipped into his pocket to wrap around his Blackberry as his gaze burned holes through the back of my skull.

  “I need to review this evening’s tapes,” he started, his voice scraping over every syllable. “And then I need to talk to my lieutenant and the prosecutor. If the two of you could keep from fucking anything up even worse in the meantime, well, that would be great.”

  Speechless, I watched him walk out of my apartment without a glance back at either of us. I began to shake, my rapid blinking flinging tears onto my cheeks.

  “Why is he so angry?” I managed to ask Carson at last.

  He wrapped his arms around me, pulled me into another hug. “He’s mad because he’s wasted the last eight years of his life if I go to jail.”

  “What?” I tried to turn in his arms and look at his face, but he was too strong and unwilling to allow the maneuver.

  “Shh,” he said, squeezing me tighter. “Forget I said that. I’m just talking out my ass. He’s mad because he’s worried about his two best friends, that’s all.”

  Carson was lying to me, but I let it go. I’d known them for eight years and had too often felt like I was Maddox’s friend only by association with Carson, even if I had met the two of them separately in college. If Maddox was mad because he had wasted the last eight years, I couldn’t help but think that meant he wasted them in a friendship with me that he never really wanted.

  As fragile as I was feeling, hearing Carson confirm my suspicion would have killed me.

  ********************

  Three nights later I was sitting in a booth at the Steel Tide clubhouse, my body tucked against Carson’s. I wore dangly earnings and a matching necklace that Maddox had come by my apartment with, bringing a technician with him because there was a microphone in the necklace piece.

  Carson pressed a kiss against my temple. “I need you here, baby. Just try to relax.”

  I gave the hand he had curled around my hip a small squeeze of obedience. He had accurately guessed that my mind had drifted off to become pre-occupied by something, maybe he even knew that something was my last encounter with Maddox.

  Not an ounce of anger had left that stubborn man. If anything he was even more brusque with me than he had been the day I stumbled into his investigation.

  Focus, Reggie — or do you want Carson to go to jail?

  I shifted against Carson, wanted to bury my face against his broad chest or otherwise blot out our surroundings. It was hard enough not thinking about Maddox, but being mentally present when some of the women were performing sex acts on their men made my skin crawl and itch.