Her foot connected a centimeter away from my balls. I jumped back, caught myself swinging the gun in self defense, but I held back. Christ, the last thing I needed on my conscious was hitting a woman with a gun. I stumbled back and into the counter. I knocked over a display of gum.
The woman jumped and lunged at the counter.
She was freaking beautiful. From the second I walked into the store I picked up on the vibe that something was very wrong. At first I thought it was just because someone so pretty was working at a shit hole store.
She was on the counter, crawling across it. The back of her shirt lifted up, showing some skin. She was also showing me a pink set of panties that were clung to her body as her jeans pulled down a little.
I hurried to tuck my gun away and move to the counter. I slipped my hand around her waist and grabbed her. My face was damn near pressing against her ass as I pulled her off the counter. She threw an elbow and cracked me in the side of the head. I walked backwards and put my other hand around her chest, securing her arms. Shit, if anyone walked in and saw the scene it would look like I was hurting this beautiful woman.
But I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
My forearm pressed against her tits. They were fucking full and soft. Fuck, was I really going to get hard while holding some random chick back from hurting herself?
I twisted to the side and leaned against the wall of cigarettes.
“Hey,” I growled. “I’m not going to fucking hurt you, sweetie. You can’t run right now. You need to tell me what’s going on.”
Slowly, she succumbed to me.
When her body relaxed, she eased against me. My front against her back. My arms still around her. I moved my hands one a time and inched back. My cock was slithering down the inside of my jeans. I ran a hand through my hair and watched as she turned around.
“What the hell was that, sweetie?” I asked.
“You’re one of them,” she said. “The bad guys. The outlaws.”
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Then why are you here?”
I bit my tongue a little. I wasn’t there for anything good. But I wasn’t going to give up club business to her.
“What’s happening in the back right now?”
Her lips shivered. She was damn terrified.
I gritted my teeth. “Look, I have a gun, which you saw. I’m going to take it out and I’m going to walk to the back. If something happens to me, sweetie, my crew is going to be here and really fuck things up. And if you’re holding back on information I need to survive…”
“He’s in trouble,” she said. “My father. I don’t know what’s going on. He told me to stay here. He took all the cash from the register and went to the back. I don’t know how many are there.”
“Who is it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Guys in suits.”
Fuck.
That’s why Sid sent me. This must have been a spot where the gambling shit went down. I was supposed to scope the place out and bolt. Whatever the fuck was happening right then wasn't my business. It wasn’t MC business either. If someone was getting tagged because he was fucking around with some underground gambling shit, then so be it.
But I looked into the woman’s eyes and I couldn’t just walk the fuck away.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” I asked.
“Ava.”
Goddammit.
“Ava,” I said, her name rolling off my tongue with ease. I’d love to spell out her name a hundred times with my tongue as I was buried between her legs. “My name is Jace, sweetie. I’m part of the Bitter Aces MC. And I’m not here to hurt you. You’re going to sit your pretty ass down in that chair again and stay there.”
“Don’t hurt my father,” Ava said.
“I’m going to figure out what the hell is going on here.”
I turned and crept toward the back door of the store. I assumed it led to the back room storage. I held my gun and couldn’t believe what I was about to do. Putting my ass on the line for some random woman and her father.
But maybe it would benefit the MC.
Something big was going down.
I just had no fucking idea how big it actually was…
I snuck through the door without much of a sound. The bottom flap scratched the floor but it didn’t echo. A second later I heard a voice, followed by another. I waited and didn’t hear anything else.
As far as I knew there was only two people in the back. And one of them was Ava’s father.
I took a few more steps and turned to the right.
That’s where the floor was wide open. The back room had the perfect setting and aura for nothing but trouble.
On the floor was an older man, on his knees, holding up cash. The man in front of him wore a nice suit, no tie, and had a set of knuckles on. The old man’s face was fucked up. He had definitely taken a few hits already.