Impulsively (Dante’s Nine MC #3)(31)
Author: Colleen Masters

Brooks runs his hands up along my back, working his fingers through my long red hair. I look at him in the wild, pulsing light, amazed that this person is here before me. I trail my fingers along his chest, tracing his scrawling tattoos. There are so many things I don’t know about him, and even more things he doesn’t know about me. But from the very first, I felt closer to him than…just about anyone. Ever. How can that be?

“You’re incredible, Red,” he grins, lowering his lips to my bare neck.

I close my eyes as his scruffy jaw glances against my skin. I love the feel of his roughness, his jagged edges. I want to memorize each and every one. How am I going to give this up after just another week? I force my eyes to take in the room around us, to commit this moment in time to memory forever. I catalogue every feeling, every sound, every face in the surging crowd—

And across the crowded room, I find two familiar, unfriendly eyes boring into me.

“Oh no…” I whisper, as I meet the graze of Jeff Bruno. My fellow agent is lurking at the end of the bar, not an arms length from where the Wraiths and Nine sit. He sneers at me over Brooks’ shoulder, raising a very full glass of liquor to his puffy lips. A trucker hat obscures most of his face, but there’s no denying that he’s seen me here. On “his turf”.

“What is it?” Brooks asks, looking down into my wide eyes.

“It’s just…I’m…” I splutter, searching for a means of damage control. “I want to get out of here, Brooks. Right now.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” he says, grabbing onto my hand. “Let’s go, Red.”

Brooks tows me across the dance floor toward the door. Unfortunately, that means we’re edging closer and closer to the place where Bruno lies in wait. As Brooks and I reach the edge of the writhing crowd, I tuck behind his massive form, hoping to escape without Bruno calling me out on the spot. The senior agent’s sneer has been replaced by a grimace of pure contempt as he surveys the room. And the purest, most potent part of that contempt is reserved for me.

“Come on,” I urge Brooks, dashing ahead of him, “Hurry.”

I race out of the club, gasping as we emerge into the warm, dark night. Brooks looks at me with concern, catching my face in his hands.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “You’re pale as hell.”

“Just…a little overwhelmed,” I tell him, smiling stiffly. “I feel better now. Let’s just get out of here, Brooks. You and me. That’s all I’ve wanted this whole week.”

“That makes two of us,” he says, his worry ebbing away as desire floods in, “Fuck it. Let’s go. They won’t miss us.”

“Just get me out of here, OK?” I ask, heading for his Harley.

“You got it,” he tells me, “Hop on, Red.”

We roar off into the night again, all alone at last. My heart pounds with fear and desire in equal measure. I’m terrified to have spotted Bruno at the Playpen, and utterly dreading my next meeting with him. But with every inch we put between us and the strip club, it gets harder to worry about my menacing coworker. How can I think of anything but that fact that Brooks and I are finally making a break for it? I tighten my arms around him and will the bike to carry us across the desert as fast as it can.

Together, we retrace our route. The landscape becomes more familiar again as we make our way out of the dangerous, shrouded mountains. I don’t ask where we’re going, because I don’t have to. I trust Brooks implicitly. Not because of how long I’ve known him, but because I know that he’s worthy of my trust. My faith.

Up ahead on our left, the Forty-Five Club rises up, dark and empty. The entire club is partying at the Devil’s Playpen tonight, so the bar is closed up tight. To my surprise, we turn into the parking lot and skid to a stop before the clubhouse.

“Here?” I ask, ripping off my half-shell.

“Why not?” Brooks smiles devilishly.

“Well, it’s locked, for one thing,” I point out.

“Not for long,” Brooks says, producing a thick ring of keys from within his cut.

“They gave you the keys to the bar?” I ask, amazed, “That seems awfully trusting of them. You only just got here.”

“Gave isn’t exactly the right word…” Brooks says, arching an eyebrow.

“You stole the keys to the Forty-Five Club?” I ask, laughing incredulously.

“I borrowed them!” Brooks replies, fitting a key into the padlock on the door. “Declan will never notice. And if he does, I think he’ll forgive me. He’ll understand the…dire nature of our situation.”

A battalion of butterflies tears through my stomach. If Brooks knows there was another reason for my wanting to leave the club, besides my desperate want of him, he’s not letting on. That’s just fine with me. Right now, that’s all I can think about, too.

“There,” Brooks says, as the padlock pops open, “All ours.”

He rips the length of chain from the handle and wrenches open the door. With the flick of a switch, a few dim lights glow to life, lending the bar an impossibly sexy feel. I take a step toward Brooks, sliding my hands along his cut arms. We stand in the open doorway, on the brink of getting what we’ve craved through so many sleepless nights.

“You’re shaking, Red,” Brooks whispers roughly, slipping his arms around my waist.

“Just excited,” I smile. “And maybe a little nervous.”

“Don’t be,” he growls, leading me across the threshold, “You may have never been with a real man before, but you’re nothing if not a real woman. We were built for each other, babe.”

He kicks the door closed with his steel-toed boot, shutting us inside the shadowy bar. My heart is thrashing against my ribs as Brooks presses me back against the heavy wooden door. His powerful hips pin me there as his hands roam the length of my body. I look up at him in the low light, marveling at the passion that sparks in those emerald eyes. Slowly, savoring every moment, I trail my fingertips over the hard panes of his chest, across each defined ab, following the lines of his muscular waist. Finally, my hands alight on the stiff, throbbing length between his legs.

“I can’t believe I get to touch you like this,” I breathe, feeling the sheer enormity of him through the well-worn denim.

“Believe it,” he rasps, cupping my breasts through my thin cotton tee shirt. He rubs his thumbs across the hard peaks of my nipples as I slide my hands along the length of him. I can feel him growing harder by the second.