No Second Thoughts (Seven Devils MC Book 2) (5 page)

But now, with the EMTs, the police would be here and the likelihood of them just taking her in on the spot was great. She would be facing whatever charges on their time instead of being able to get herself ready for them. She had to put those thoughts aside and go down to help Jason who was now tying the man up.

"What are you doing at my house? How did you know to find me?" Jason asked.

The man did not respond and Blanche sensed that it might be because he spoke no English, so she repeated the question in Spanish and while she did, she agitated his wound a little. He reluctantly answered. Jason turned to her and remarked with a twinkle in his eye, "You are vicious." But it worked.  She got the answer he needed: 

El Salvador, an urban legend whose description was never quite agreed upon. El Salvador was sometimes described as a huge man, a small woman, a blonde, a brunette. The truth was, El Salvador was a squad of hit people working for one of the most fierce drug cartels in Central America, Texas, and California: the Norte Mexicali.

Blanche and Jason just bagged an El Salvador. He was assigned to track Jason and make him tell them where Blanche was. The only way the Norte Mexicali would consider the debt paid for Blanche's betrayal was with a body.

Hers.

And they wanted it. Now that this El Salvador was bested, he was in a very similar position as Blanche. His best option now was to join forces with them…after he recovered from a pretty painful bullet wound.

The EMTs found their way up to Jason's cabin. Blanche felt pretty vulnerable and Jason was decidedly protective of her. A couple of Gold Creek deputies came out along with the deputy District Attorney, Tim Paisley. His presence really unnerved Jason and Blanche, but he seemed really to be in favor of working with them to work against the Norte Mexicali. He was cordial to Blanche in a way that the sheriff of Gold Creek, Dana Levington, had not been to Blanche. Gold Creek meant Seven Devils Motorcycle Club and that group felt betrayed by Blanche. As a former hit person for Norte Mexicali, she had come to town to kill their captain. But that was before she fell in love with him.

After they loaded the wounded Norte Mexicali member up into the ambulance and the police cleared out, Jason got Tim to agree that it was best for Blanche to stay with him, at least for the night, because they had both been drinking. The best he could promise was a day-by-day reprieve. Blanche wanted to blurt out that, for even one more night with Jason Fowler, she would take it.

As quickly as everything was loud and chaotic, crawling with people and drama, it was quiet. Everyone receded back down the hill and the forest was once again still. The day was gone and the air got a slight chill. The sunlight was leaving the cabin itself. Jason turned on the gas-burning fireplace and broke out the liquor.

The second round of excitement restored Jason's appetite with a vengeance. The bear had eaten their fish, but the steak he carted up had been spared and Jason cooked them up with a bourbon glazing. Blanche mixed dough to rise overnight for the morning and tossed a salad for dinner. They worked in silence, but as they finally sat for their meal, they spoke.

It was more like an eruption.  "Jesus," Jason burst forth. He cracked a little from the shock of two unbelievable events in one night. Blanche felt a heavy shame that all of this was her fault. When her face knitted up with emotion, he read her loud and clear. "Listen," he reached gently at the nape of her neck. "I know you came to town to kill me," he said making a dark joke about it.

"It's not funny," Blanche chastised, a dam of emotion just about to gush forth.

"Baby, there are gazillion El Salvadors. You said so yourself. I haven't worked it out completely, but you were a kid when you got involved with these people. My guys are coming around to understand that. The Seven Devils are the good guys. Now we don't like to be threatened, but you made good. You have now backed me several times over." He spilled a little bourbon into her glass and lifted it to her lips. "Here. For medicinal purposes."

She turned her head, now sulking.

"Oh, don't do that. This is a beautiful dinner and I will not have my cooking go unappreciated." He was flirting with her and the chemistry between them was so strong, so narcotic, and was, indeed, good medicine.

Jason speared a chunk of perfectly flavored, juicy grilled steak and put it to her lips. "Open," he said. Blanche did as she was told. "As long as the word is out that our little town is sitting on gold, we will attract attention from all kinds of people. You weren't the first Norte Mexicali who tried to cut me down; you obviously weren't the last."

"Why don't you put the gold somewhere where they can't get it, so they know it's ridiculous to even try?" Blanche asked.  Jason flashed a huge, warm smile. Blanche thought he had perhaps the most handsome face she had ever seen. His teeth were so even and white, perfectly cut. His lips had just the amount of fullness. He was in need of a shave, but the growth was becoming. Blanche wanted to stick her tongue in his mouth.

"We do have some we mined, but the gold is in the ground. It's in the real estate. They want the town. And it would be easy to do that. Just spread their drug business around and the town people would sign over everything they had.

"That's how they found out about the gold in the first place. A dope fiend, a friend of Denise Cranston's ex-husband, was high and started rambling off at the mouth. When we first discovered the gold, we worked it so that each person in the town had an equal interest. We had to tell him to get clean or get out. He was in treatment when he was murdered. And, as we both know, she was widowed in much the same way. Her husband got it in the back when he was running for his front door."

Blanche offered quietly, "Norte Mexicali."

"Yep. They thought they could squeeze something out the two men they hadn't already turned over." Jason's anger seemed to subside and was replaced by a philosophical attitude.

"You know, Dana may be the sheriff of Gold Creek, but you're like the mayor," Blanche observed. 

Jason reached under the table and lifted her legs over his lap, affectionately. "Mayor, hmm? You know, we have had a crazy day to say the least. I kinda lost it there after the bear thing. How are you doing?"  He fed her another bite of food.

CHAPTER SEVEN

They ate slowly until it was gone.  They made slow, quiet love on the rustic luxury of the feather mattress. In the morning, they had a light breakfast. Jason filled a thermos of coffee and packed up some water and granola to lead them on a modest hike.

The San Gabriel Mountains were so spectacular as the buttery light of the sun sprayed down through the treetops. He led them to the bottom of the hill to a secured enclosure painted barn red.  It was where Jason kept his bike. He got them each a helmet and fired it up. Blanche thought there was just about nothing sexier than the sound of a Harley engine…except for when the rider was so romantically handsome as Jason was. 

His unkempt hair spilled around his head. His sun-tanned biceps bulged beneath the faded T and burst in the crisp black jeans that he wore. Blanche's jeans were peg-legged and snug fitting, almost like denim tights. She spooned her legs against him as closely as she could with the Harley engine wickedly vibrating the both of them. She wrenched her arms around his magnificent torso. It was heaven to hold him this way.

Blanche was more than a little nervous to basically turn herself in. She had killed a man. It was either kill him or let him kill Jason. It was a no-brainer, but finally, the authorities agreed that there had been no crime. After getting the formalities of that out of the way, she would ultimately have to face the Seven Devils.

Jason summoned a meeting of his club. Usually he held important meetings at the Motorcycle Place, which was the garage where everyone with a bike went for repairs, but this was more than just a meeting of his club. This was a town meeting.

All the members of the Gold Creek Corporation would be there, everyone who had ownership in the gold that the Norte Mexicali was after. Jason was going to give them a status update: another of the so-called El Salvador hit men had done their best to get him, but, thanks to Blanche, was unsuccessful.

Of all the situations where Blanche should have been filled with fear and was not, facing the possible reaction of Gold Creek and the Seven Devils was perhaps the hardest thing she ever had to do ever. Their reception was chilly. Jason reminded them that the law had decided she was exonerated of all charges and that she acted in self-defense.

The good part of having Blanche in town was that she knew the Norte Mexicali better than anyone else and she could serve as critical security for them. There was also the possibility of having the second El Salvador doing the same. The Seven Devils wanted some assurance of her loyalty. There was a heavy pause.  Jason didn't have an answer for them as to how they could be certain that Blanche or the other assassin wouldn't play for the team that paid the highest bidder.

A pressure pent up within her and while they had been talking about her as though she wasn't even there, she blurted out, "Because I love him!"

The room quieted and they collectively turned their head towards her, all pretty much gape-jawed, including Jason. The admission made her sick to her stomach. She finally realized what it was that had been driving her moods, making her unsure of herself.

She had fallen in love with Jason Fowler, the man her former employer hired her to kill.

As soon as she said those words out loud, she knew she fell in love with him for good.  The entire room looked at her as though she had just pulled a stunt, but she was instantly fevered. A film of perspiration formed on her brow and she was bombarded with hot flashes. She looked to Jason, silently pleading with him to just accept what she was saying and to leave it. 

"I don't blame you for not liking me, not wanting me around, not trusting me. It is asking a lot to ask you to let me stay here in your wonderful town. I am not grandstanding. I mean what I say. I do love Jason and I don’t want anyone harm here. Jason, I don't feel well."

Jason addressed his motorcycle club, "I invite you to talk to each other and I will honor whatever you decide. But for now, I am taking her to my place. I would like it if I could get a couple of guys to come with us. We definitely have to stick together until we nail this thing down."

Watching him, Blanche could see why he was the captain of the Seven Devils Motorcycle Club.  He had such a genuine, calm approach over such a touchy matter. While he seemed to be there for his club members, he was really putting it all on the line for her.

She was somber and composed as he took her to his home. The one thing that made Blanche feel better about the situation was that Jason could be in his own home at long last. The cabin, though rustic, was wonderful and cozy, but she knew that there was something about being at home. She could not remember when she had a home of her own, and so it was something she really appreciated. Even though she had spent such a little time in Jason's Gold Creek home, she liked returning to it. Secretly, she wished it were hers.

CHAPTER EIGHT

As she expected, Jason drew a bath for her. He tenderly washed her hair and let her alone to relax against a bath pillow so she could soak in the warm, lavender scented water that was up around her neck. He returned eventually, just as she was pruning, to let the water out. He gently exfoliated her feet and toes and coaxed her up to a standing position so that he could rub her down with a special botanical blended lotion. The effect was so sensual. She was relaxed from head to toe, inside and out. It made her feel positively lazy. The blast of illness had, at least for the time, passed.

Jason guided her to his bed. She laid her towel-dried body, still heated from the hot tub, on the bed. The temperature of the fresh clean bed linen was a luscious contrast to her own. There was something wicked and wanton about being so openly naked in the wide-open room.

The vaulted ceiling, the stone hearth fir place, the wide-planked flooring all made the room feel as rustic as the cabin had been, but it was so much more civilized and more luxurious. The night was bit too warm for a fire, though, and Blanche yearned to experience the bed in the wintertime. There would be snow outside for sure. 

As she lay back on the bed, she peered out the sliding glass door, whose curtain was pulled back so that it was almost like being naked outside. Jason gently took hold of her thighs bearing the soft delicate flesh between. He crouched, his shoulders working like a wild beast slowly moving in to feast on his prize. Though still as electric, still as arousing, there was something different in his touch. Almost as though he knew she was his, like a barrier between them had been lifted.

He plunged his pointed tongue into her, pressing against the wet and pliant walls of her erotically-charged entrance. He stroked and stroked her then touched the tip of her engorged bud at the apex of her sex with the lightest brush. His tongue was just firm enough, but also featherweight and the combination undid her. Her body gushed with arousal as little tremors overtook her.

They gathered as they traveled until they consumed her. They racked and they rocked her, but Jason was unrelenting. He licked, coaxing every spasm until the wild, intense orgasm was at its peak all the way through to the end. When she was finally calmed, he entered her.

It was as though he were claiming her. He quietly pumped into her, savoring her body as they gazed into each other's eyes. The shadows of night began to settle outside, taking the light of the room as it did. He continued for a long time, roaming his hands on her buttocks, impelling himself deeply into her in a position that was less adventure and more about connecting. Every part of him pressed against every part of her.