Page 32 of Two Tricks

Jogging down the porch steps, I grabbed the roll cage and jumped in. I couldn’t hold back the smile on my face at the excitement I was feeling at taking this baby out for a spin.

“Here, you’re gonna want these,” Cognac said, handing me a pair of aviator mirror-finish sunglasses.

“How do I look?” I asked, giving him my best duck-lips pose.

“Like the dangerously hot woman I know you are, loba,” Cognac chuckled as he started up the diesel engine.

Looking over at the garage, I saw Sprocket leaning against one of the open doors. Feeling cheeky, I blew him a kiss and waved as Cognac peeled out, kicking up rocks from the driveway. Sprocket just shook his head and went back to work without even waving back.

Rude!

Leaning forward, Cognac turned on the radio and cranked the volume so it was blasting AC/DC. He immediately started drumming on the steering wheel and singing along. I was impressed—he had a good voice with a slight growl to it that fit the feel of the song perfectly. A fan of hard rock myself, I joined in, jamming out as we headed off into the wilderness of their compound.

Being so close to the foothills of the mountains, the ground was hilly with hard soil and full of scrub brush and pine trees. I couldn’t really picture this being a cattle ranch with how barren and dried out everything was. Granted, it had been a very dry summer with hardly any rain, but still. I pictured more bright green pasture lands and open rolling hills when I thought ranch. Guess that’s what I get for being a city girl and never really traveling much out of L.A.

Cognac cut across the ground, clearly very familiar with where we were going, until we reached the tall chain link fence. It seemed they’d taken a nod from the prison system in how they designed their defenses. The fence was twelve feet tall, at least, with barbed wire over the top and motion detectors at regular intervals. This was not what I’d pictured when Cognac said we needed to check the fence, but I shouldn’t have been surprised—being the largest MC came with having enemies who wanted to take your spot in the world.

Apparently, my escape wasn’t going to be quite as easy as I hoped.

As much as she tried to hide it, Dax was angry when she saw the fence that we had put up along the inner part of our eight hundred acres. I wasn’t even going to mention that this was only the four hundred acre mark and that we had even more traps set up outside the safe zone. This was the area that we kept protected for our use as a community.

We all knew that she wasn’t going to willingly stay with us for a month, no matter what bet she made. If we had any chance of making our plan work, we needed to get her to feel like she wasn’t a prisoner so that running away fell from the top of her list. Hearing her talk about how she viewed relationships was a slap in the face, though. Most of my life I’d viewed things the same way, but sitting here next to this tiny woman that was turning our world upside down made me think differently for the first time in years.

Dax was different than any woman we had ever spent time with. She was smart, cunning, and lethal. The fact that she took on Void and only ended up with a bruised cheek was a miracle. And I knew he didn’t hold back, because he didn’t understand the concept of not giving his all in a fight. I could see the respect in his gaze when he looked at her now, and that wasn’t something he ever gave out to women. If there was anyone more closed off than Dax to relationships, it was Void.

Picasso was still keeping his distance for the most part, not completely convinced that this was the right choice, but he wouldn’t deny his brother anything. Eagle was over the moon about this girl, the likes of which I’d never seen before. At dinner last night he would have killed Void for leaving a mark on her if she hadn’t told him off. Eagle was a scary bastard, but she went toe to toe with him, and it was a sight to see. Our beautiful loba was indeed a wolf in a woman’s body, and I couldn’t wait until I got her to unleash that passion on me.

“So, what exactly are we looking for as we ‘check’ the fence?” Dax asked using air quotes.

I turned down the music since it seemed she was interested in talking. “We need to make sure there’s no damaged areas and that all the motion sensors are working. Rooster said that there was a sensor down, so I figured checking out the rest made sense.”

“Ah, so you have a security room then,” Dax ventured, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.

“Crafty little minx. You’re going to need to try harder than that to get that kind of information out of me, loba.” I grinned.

Dax shifted in her seat to look at me easier. “What does that mean, anyway?”

“Loba?” I asked, knowing full well what she meant.

Rolling her eyes, she huffed at me. “Yes, loba. You’ve been calling me that since I got here, figured I should know what it means.”

“What do you think it means?” I asked, enjoyed pushing her buttons.

I could see her frowning at me out of the corner of my eye, but I kept my eyes on the fence as we continued along, attempting to do the job we came out here for.

“If I find out that it means something nasty or rude towards women, I will cut off your dick that you love so much,” Dax growled.

My lips twitched in a grin as I fought to keep my face blank.

“Hmm… low-bah,” Dax said, drawing the word out. “I’m gonna guess it’s some kind of endearment, like babe or something as equally awful.”

“Nope.”

In a flash, she reached over and grabbed my nipple, giving it a good twist.

“FUCK!” I cried, jerking the wheel and almost crashing us into a tree.

Thankfully we weren’t going that fast, and I swerved out of the way in time, then slammed on the brakes.