Chapter One
Miguel ‘Smoke’ Santos
From my vantage point in the empty shithole house I’d bought on the outskirts of Houston, I watched the most beautiful woman in the world get into her reliable old car with a flash of her mile long legs that made my cock twitch. Fuck, everything about that fine piece of ass made my cock twitch, but the fantasy of her legs wrapped around my head while I make her scream my name was one of my favorites. As she started her car up, I idly wondered once again if the hair on her little pussy matched the blonde on her head, or if she shaved her sweet cunt bald.
It was just after five o’clock, and the street was getting busy with all the blue-collar workers coming home from a hard day on the job. The woman whose life I was in charge of protecting pulled out of her driveway and I smiled at the sight of her moving in her seat to the music. I focused my binoculars on her full, naturally pink lips, but she was driving down the street before I could get a good look and figure out what song made her happy like that. As soon as her car was out of my sight, I picked up my phone and called Vance, my right-hand man and the vice president of the security company I own. He’s also a brother—not a brother by blood, but a brother by choice. We go back, way back, to Marine basic training; even though he can be a real asshole, I trust him.
He answered right away. “I’ve got her.”
“Any sign of trouble?”
Vance sighed, and I wanted to reach through the phone and punch him. “No. In the fifteen seconds she’s been out of your sight there’s been no sign of trouble.”
“Fuck you.”
Vance’s laughter filled the large room I was in, and I stood up to stretch my back and groaned. The only pieces of furniture in the whole house were an air mattress, two lamps, the chair, and a small breakfast table with a computer. That’s it. But it was all we needed. This wasn’t a home; this was a stakeout house.
“Anything happens to her and it’s your ass I’m coming for.”
“Sensitive.” Mirth still filled Vance’s voice. “You gonna go sniff her panties before work? Bet her pussy smells like baby powder and tastes like sugar.”
That pissed me off. “Don’t you ever fucking talk about her like that. Got me, brother?”
“Easy, Smoke. I got you.” He was silent for a moment and a horn beeped in the background. “You talk to Beach yet?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“He wants me to bring Swan in.”
“Are you going to?”
In yet another sign that I’d totally lost my mind over this bitch, I bit out, “I’m not going to disrupt her life just because of some fucked up shit her mom did.”
“This isn’t just about her mom, Smoke. If it was just about that old bitch I’d say fuck it, but if we don’t find Sarah soon, Beach is going to lose his fucking mind. And we all know bad shit happens when Beach loses it. Think about how many people would like to get back at Beach by fucking up or killing his old lady ... or her identical twin sister. If anyone, anyone at all, touches Swan ... there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
I rubbed the space between my eyes, then paced to the back door and opened it to a blast of hot Texas summer air. Even having lived in Austin for the past nine years I was still momentarily stunned by the humidity that seemed to blanket Houston. I took a deep breath before I shut the door behind me and crossed the short distance between my house and Swan’s little hovel. Okay, so maybe her home wasn’t that bad, but I had a deep and abiding need to get her the fuck out of there, take her away from that working class ghetto, and give her the kind of life she deserved. I wanted to spoil her, to love her, and I wished with all my fucking rotten heart that this shitty situation she was currently and unknowingly in was different.
“Look,”—I glanced out the window to make sure no unexpected guests had shown up at Swan’s—“I gotta go. I’ll be at the titty bar in a couple hours.”
“Roger that,” Vance said, and we hung up as I fit my key into the back door of the house where the most innocent woman in the world lived.
As soon as I was inside, I shoved my phone into my pocket with one hand and disabled her security system with the other. While I approved of the ornate wrought iron bars covering all of her windows and doors, I didn’t like her security system. It was cheap and easy to hack into, but I understood that it was all that she could afford. As soon as the beeping stopped, I took a deep breath of the air that smelled like her delicate scent and began my daily stalking routine. Even on my days off I came and visited her home to check for any contact from her relatives. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the men and women who worked for me to check her home in a professional manner, but I didn’t want anyone breathing Swan’s scent but me.
A quick glance around showed the usual cheap-ass plywood furniture mixed with second-hand items that she used to decorate her place. She made decent money as a server, but most of it went toward paying for school. I knew that little fact because I hacked into her computer and looked through her bills and bank account. It pissed me off that she lived like this because her dad was loaded, but for whatever reason, she didn’t want anything to do with his money. Maybe she knew it wasn’t legally earned. I had found ripped up checks for tens of thousands of dollars from him. Just thinking about Swan’s dad pissed me off, and I shoved him from my mind.
Motherfucker was one of the biggest arms dealers in the country, and from what I’d learned from Sarah, he was a complete psycho who loved his daughters more than anything in the world, but was just as ruthless with them in his own way.
Then again, some might consider me a bit fucked in the head, because I spent every day trying to learn as much about Swan as I could by going through her home while she was at work or out running errands.
A year ago if you’d told me that I’d be going through the house of some bitch I’d never met, inch by inch, reconstructing her day because I was that fucking obsessed with her, I would’ve told you that you were full of shit, and to go fuck yourself. I might’ve even punched you in the throat for it if I was in a real shitty mood. But now? Now, I treasured every small glimpse I got into the life of Sue Wanda Anderson, known to her friends and family as Swan. The name fit her. She had the body of a goddess and unique elegance, a delicacy around her that drove me crazy. It was the difference between a woman who was a lady, and a woman who was one of the sweet butts at my clubhouse who used her pussy like currency. I didn’t want to think about that shit right then and I paused—as usual—and stared at pictures on the walls of her with her family.
When I was awake all I seemed to do was think about her, and when I slept I dreamed of her—every damn night.
She was an intensely private woman, almost a recluse, but she had a few friends who came over to hang out. In the last year that I’d been watching Swan, all of the friends she had over were female, thank fuck. I would’ve had to kill any asshole who touched her. Sarah, Swan’s sister, had clued me in to a few things about Swan that explained her lack of a dating life, and as always, I wondered how the stunning blonde would react to my touch. Would she shrink from me like I was covered with filth as I stroked the perfectly tanned skin on her freckled shoulders? Or would she purr?
Once again, I got an uncomfortable hard-on and adjusted myself with a grimace.
I looked through her sink to figure out what she had for dinner. Unhealthy crap, as usual. Even though she ate like a frat boy, she had the hottest body I’d ever seen. Long legs, high ass, and big, real breasts topped off by natural pale blonde hair and big, sky-blue eyes. Just a hint of baby fat remained in her cheeks and gave her an innocent look that killed me and every other heterosexual male who saw her. She was a total knockout, but it wasn’t her looks that had me sniffing after her like a stag in heat. No, it was Swan herself. Not only was she beautiful, she was brilliant, kind, and heartbreakingly naïve.
Made me all the more fucking pissed at her complete waste of a mother for exposing Swan to the danger she was in now, even if Swan didn’t know it.
I took a quick glance at the book she was currently reading and frowned in displeasure. It was some chick romance with a ripped guy on the cover smiling at the camera. I had a better body. I was irritated that it wasn’t one of the BDSM romances she seemed to love. I always took a few minutes to read those to see where she’d left off and what kind of fantasies she was learning about. The first time I saw one of those erotic romance books on her coffee table, I knew this beautiful creature had been made for me. I just wished like fuck circumstances were different so I could make her fall in love with me. Fucking hell, I was already more than half in love with her.
Shit, I sounded like a bitch about to have her period.
I went to the small foyer where she kept her mail and sorted through it. Nothing but bills, crap, and more bills. I wanted to take care of all her finances for her and had more than enough money to support her in comfort for the rest of her life. She sure as fuck wouldn’t have to work at any more titty bars.
The thought of the titty bar reminded me the clock was ticking, and I went down the hallway to her bedroom.
The cool, dark room was saturated with her delicious scent. I paused in the doorway, closed my eyes and imagined her here, waiting for me with her legs spread wide and her hands gripping the rails of her brass headboard, anticipating me tying her up then fucking her until she passed out.
My fantasy was so vivid that, for a moment, when I opened my eyes I saw her there, but a heartbeat later, I was just looking at rumpled bed sheets again. I picked up the phone next to her bed and checked her voice mail, hoping that either Sarah or her mom had tried to contact Swan, but there was nothing other than a missed call from her friend, Tansy. After I set the phone down, I completed my daily routine, picked up her pillow and took deep inhalations of her scent. I didn’t know what it was about her, but her fucking smell went straight to my brain like high-grade coke. Her scent amped me up and made my dick go into overdrive; I couldn’t contain the growl of need that escaped me.
I was so fucking addicted to her natural aroma that I couldn’t stand the stink of other bitches now. They smelled spoiled to me, like rotten meat left out in the sun for too long. Yeah, I still had a few of the club sweet butts that I let suck my cock, but I hadn’t fucked a woman since a few months ago when I started spending most of my days sitting in that shitty-ass house nearby and watching over Swan. This whole celibacy thing was new to me, but that little girl had me so wrapped around her finger, all I wanted was her sweet pussy wrapped around my dick.
The sight of the oversized t-shirt she wore to bed on the floor made me really want to pick it up, but I didn’t touch any of her clothing. I had already invaded her privacy like a motherfucker, but even I had standards. So I never touched her drawers or did anything more than take a quick look through her closet.
I glanced over at her computer and wondered if I had enough time to check what kind of porn she watched last night. Despite having no man of any kind in her life, Swan watched an amazing number of dirty movies. First time I went through her browser history, I had to go into her bathroom and jack off like a thirteen-year-old.
Fucking embarrassing, but knowing her sexual tastes only fueled my daydreams about her. She watched all kinds of kinky shit, and while I would never share her with another man, I was determined to be the only man who actually did most of that kinky shit with her. Thoughts of all the ways I would sexually corrupt her made my dick hard as fuck, and my breath caught as I thought about Swan’s graceful throat wearing my collar and her killer body wearing my patch.
My phone rang and snapped me out of my trance. I answered it and tried to ignore the guilty heat that burned my face as I stared at a pair of her pink lace panties hanging half out of her hamper and how badly I wanted to wrap them around my cock while I jerked off.
“What’s up?”
“Smoke?” The raspy voice on the other end of the call was Beach, President of the Iron Horse MC and one of my best friends. “Anything?”
Part of me wanted to snap that if I’d fucking found anything I would have fucking contacted him, but even as the Sergeant at Arms of the Iron Horse MC I knew better than to lip off to the Prez, especially now. “Nope, nothing new.”
A long stream of swearing came from Beach before he finally said, “Keep an eye on her tonight. One of our informants said there’s a rumor going around the bounty on her mom from those fucking Russians in Las Vegas has been upped. Who knows what dumb fucks might come after Swan now in an effort to find her mom. And don’t forget how much the Russians would love to pimp out a beautiful girl like Swan to pay off her mama’s debt.”
Now it was my turn to curse. “Is that why you want me to bring her in?”
“Yeah. I was hoping Sarah would go to Swan for help, but it’s been two weeks and things are only getting more dangerous for Swan. She needs to go off the grid, and soon.”
As I stared at Swan’s bed, I fought a battle with myself. The small, good guy part of me that my mom and dad had tried so hard to nurture insisted that I should just fucking walk away, that I should give Swan’s protection over to Vance, but I couldn’t. The selfish, tainted part of my soul urged me to tell Beach that I was bringing Swan home with me—for her own protection, of course—right the fuck now. Yeah, having her in my home, in my bed, was totally for her safety.
Even I didn’t believe that bullshit.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Let’s give it a couple more days before we bring her in.” He sighed. “I know Swan and Sarah don’t always get along, but my old lady loves her. If anything happened to Swan while Sarah’s…gone…and I could have prevented it, she’d never forgive me.”
I strode over to the window and took a quick glimpse of the slowly darkening sky before letting the frilly lace curtain fall back into place. “I’m going to head out to her club.”
“You talked to her yet?”
“No, not yet. She’s skittish. I don’t want to freak her out and scare her off.”
I didn’t add that I was unusually nervous around her as well. For the past two nights I sat in her section of the titty bar where she worked, sporting my cut and waited for her to say something to me. I know Sarah said her sister had no idea about the MC life, that Swan was about as sheltered as you could get, but I kept hoping she’d ask me about it. I’d seen her gaze roving over the patches of my vest, but there was no recognition. Not like the sluts that worked at her club. Those bitches saw who I am, and they were all over me like flies on shit. Even though Iron Horse is based in Austin, we’ve got a branch in Houston as well and we’re tight with most of the local motorcycle clubs that run different portions of Houston.
“Well keep an eye on her, man. She’s one of the only links we have to that fucking bitch-ass-crack-whore-skank mother of hers.”
“Got it.”
Beach hung up on me—he wasn’t big on goodbyes—and I strode through Swan’s house, reset her security system and let myself out the back door. While I was inside, night had started to fall. There was still enough light to see by as I opened the garage at the stakeout place I’d bought, wheeled my bike out, and shut it again. The air was still thick with humidity and I found myself wishing I could go swimming in the spring-fed river behind my house.
Beach’s info about the bounty on Swan made my gut clench and I had to resist the urge to call Vance again. My boys were the best of the best at security, all either former military or, ironically enough, law enforcement, and all of ’em were members of Iron Horse MC. We didn’t exactly operate on the right side of the law—our protection had been used for some less than honorable purposes—but it had made us all rich, so I couldn’t fucking complain.
As I drove down the street, my mind was once again focused totally on Swan, and the anticipation heating my blood had me roaring onto the freeway, eager to get close enough to her to see the flecks of silver in her bluer-than-blue eyes.
Yeah, I was fucking whipped, and even more pathetic, I was whipped by a girl who didn’t even know my name.
I weaved my way through traffic and ignored the stares of the civilians as I let my mind fill with dreams of a woman who could really use a fucking hero to save her right now, but instead, she got stuck with me. I’m more of the villain in the story—the one that you fear hovering behind you in a dark alley—certainly not the guy who should be the one rescuing the beautiful princess. But she didn’t need a prince; right now, she needed a warrior. And while I might not ever write her poetry, I would kill for her.
Of that, there was no doubt.
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