The buzz of his phone pulled Jules out of his semi-awake state. Blinking madly, trying to get awake, he picked up the phone from the side table. It was Todd, and the time was five-twenty in the morning.

 

“Jules,” he whispered.

 

“Jules! It’s Todd. We made the hit, but we’re in deep shit. We took out their lab, but they made us. We’ve gone to ground, trying to wait for the hornet’s nest to settle, but you, Fish, and Bell need to be on your toes. The cartel, they’re going to be pissed, and they will probably come at us head-on now.”

 

“Fuck…” Jules whispered. “Everyone okay?”

 

“We lost Noodles and Skip. Lonnie is shot up, but he can still ride.”

 

“Let me call Fish and Bell and get them headed…”

 

“No! That will only get them killed or lead the cartel right to us. We’re hurt, but we kicked them right in the balls. The drug lab? It was a fucking warehouse! We are three or four miles away and I can still see the glow from that bitch burning! That’ll teach ‘em to fucking mess with Forsaken 99!”

 

After Todd hung up, Jules paced around the room as he thought. How could Todd be so stupid as to let Forsaken 99 be recognized? They had set it up so the Andres Cartel wouldn’t know if it was the Cuervo Cartel or Forsaken 99 that had hit them. The cartel might have suspected Forsaken 99 was responsible, but if they didn’t know for sure, they wouldn’t know who to retaliate against. But now that they knew, they may come in and raze the town. Fuck! That was the problem with Todd… he always charged into shit without thinking things through.

 

At seven, he called Bell and Fish on a three-way call, and gave them an update. At first they were jubilant, but when Jules reminded them that the Andres Cartel was known for killing the family and friends of their enemies, they lost a lot of their enthusiasm.

 

“I need you and Bell to come to the bar as soon as you can tonight. Bring Kristen, too, Fish. You have anyone, Bell?”

 

“No, I’m clear,” Bell said.

 

“We’ll setup a perimeter on HNH and watch the front and the back. We’ll keep Kristen inside where she will be safe,” Jules continued.

 

“Where will you be?” Fish asked.

 

“Inside, as always. If the cartel comes in guns blazing, it will fall on you and Bell, but if they play it smart, and come inside first, we need someone in there.”

 

“Why don’t all three of us set up inside? We can mount a better defense from there,” Fish asked.

 

“Yeah, but if they hose the place down with heavy weapons, we will all be pinned down, too. Better to give ourselves some options. Don’t worry, Fish; I will keep Kristen safe.”

 

“Maybe we should come there now,” Bell suggested.

 

“Place doesn’t open until four. If they’re going to hit there, it will be after that for maximum shock value. Fish, just have Kristen come straight to the bar from work.”

 

Fish was quiet and Jules could tell he was thinking it over. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you right after work.”

 

“Me, too,” Bell said just before he dropped out of the call.

 

“Fish!”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Bring the Ars for you and Bell.”

 

“How about you?”

 

“No. I don’t want to start a panic. I’m depending on you and Bell to pick them up if they show up with heavy firepower.”

 

***

 

“Rachel… we have an issue,” he said the moment she stepped into the living room.

 

“What?” she asked as she struggled to throw off the mantle of sleep.

 

“Forsaken 99 hit the drug lab last night. Well, early this morning, actually, but the cartel made us. It may have not made any difference, but now they know it was us and not the Cuervo Cartel.”

 

“What are you telling me?”

 

“I’m telling you that you are in danger. Don’t go to the bar tonight. Don’t open.”

 

“It’s Friday, Jules – one of my two biggest nights.”

 

“I know, but I can’t predict the cartel’s next move. I’m afraid they may hit the bar since it is associated with us.”

 

“Jules, I appreciate all you have done for me, but this is my livelihood. I can’t close just because something might happen. If I do that often, I won’t have a livelihood. Do you know they’re going to hit the bar?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then I have to open. I will do whatever you want me to do to keep my customers safe, but I can’t close because you are nervous. I’m sorry.”

 

“I know… but I had to try. I’m bringing Fish and Bell in to help. They’re going to be watching the outside. Kristen is going to be inside with us.”

 

“Kristen… Fish’s girlfriend, old lady, whatever you call her?”

 

“Yes. She will be safer at the bar than at home alone.”

 

Rachel looked into Jules’s eyes. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes. Very.”

 

“Shit… I’m going to get my shower. Coat closet by the front door, on the shelf, right side, is the double-ought buck. Get it. Better safe than sorry.”

 

***

 

Jules was sitting at the bar, grinning like a fool, as Kristen teased him mercilessly about how now that he had found himself a woman, he would be settling down in a nice little house with a white picket fence, two point five kids and a mortgage. He would deal with Fish, the obvious source of her information, later.

 

It was a little before ten and He’s Not Here was rocking when he saw the man come in. That little voice that whispers in a soldier’s ear that prevented him from becoming a dead soldier was shouting. Jules was already rising, drawing his weapon as the man began to pull his own sidearm.

 

Jules’s world went into slow motion. He took a step to the right to clear his firing line as the man recognized Jules as the threat. The gunman’s shot was rushed and it missed, smacking into the wall behind him. At the report of the man’s gun, the crowd began to turn and scramble in panic. The gunman shot again and a man directly to his left cried out as the back of his shoulder sprayed blood and he fell out of his chair to the floor. His wife or girlfriend began to rise in panic, spoiling his firing line, so he stepped once more to the right. The man fired a third time and the bullet shattered something behind him.

 

With his firing line clear, Jules pulled the trigger on is Glock 9mm, the gun roaring in his hand. The gunman took a staggering step backwards just as he fired again, a wild shot pointed up and to his right. Jules took a step forward and fired again. Another step, and another shot. The man continued to stumble backwards as each 9mm slug slammed into his chest.

 

The gunman fired again, but he was off balance and out of control and the shot struck a young woman in the leg. The woman’s scream of pain was drowned out by the roar of Jules’s gun as he took another step forward and fired again. Armor! He’s wearing armor! The little voice screamed.

 

Without thought, Jules’s gun angled up slightly as he took another step forward and squeezed the trigger. The gunman’s face disappeared in a spray of blood and bone as he stepped forward and squeezed the trigger again, tracking the man’s fall to the floor.

 

Rachel saw Jules leap to his feet out of the corner of her eye. She barely had time to turn to see him take two quick steps to the right as his gun came up and pointed at a man just inside the door. Before she could react, the gunman started shooting. She saw a man go down in a spray of blood beside Jules as he walked straight into the gunman’s fire, Jules’s gun popping up with each pull of the trigger. She couldn’t believe that the man was still on his feet after obviously being hit each time Jules’s gun barked, but then Jules shot him twice in the face… and the bar fell deadly silent. It was all over in less than five seconds.

 

Jules still had his gun trained on the gunman when the screams of panic reached him, followed by several sharp cracks of high powered rifle fire outside.

 

“Everyone get down!” Jules screamed, moving toward the door in a combat crouch with his weapon at low ready. He yanked the door open and stepped out, his weapon coming up and settling on a figure just pulling a rifle from his shoulder. He moved back to low ready when he recognized Fish.

 

“Clear!” Jules shouted.

 

Fish whirled on him, his rifle coming up to the ready before freezing as he recognized Jules. “Clear!” he shouted in return as the muzzle of his rifle dropped. They both heard the pounding of running feet and whirled toward the noise, their guns coming to the ready as Bell burst around the corner of the building in his own crouch, gun at the ready, before he pulled up sharply, his rifle muzzle moving to point at the sky.

 

“What the fuck? I heard shots!” Bell shouted.

 

“Kristen?” Fish asked, his eyes wide with fear.

 

“She’s fine, Fish. Bell, stay out here with Fish. We’ve got injured inside. Call 911 and get them rolling. Watch your backs, guys,” Jules ordered as he holstered his gun and burst back through the doors.

 

The quiet scream of several women called Rachel’s attention away from the man she was tending. She instinctively reached for her shotgun before she recognized Jules. “Jules, over here!”

 

He hurried to her side. “Is it bad?”

 

“I don’t know! I’m not a doctor!”

 

“Let me see,” he said gently as he pulled her hand away. “You’re going to be okay, buddy. Just stay with me, okay?”

 

“It hurts like shit!” the man snarled.

 

“That’s good. That means you’re going to be okay.” Jules peeled the man’s shirt back and looked at the wound. It was a clean through and through. “You have a hole all the way through you, but you’re going to be fine. 911 is on the way. Rachel, keep the pressure on; you’re doing great,” he said before he rose to look at the woman.

 

“How you doin’?” he asked the crying woman.

 

“It hurts!” she wailed.

 

“I know. Let me see, okay,” he said as he tried to peel her finger from her calf, but she held tight. “You need to let me look, okay? You’re going to be okay, but you need to let me look.” He gently removed her bloody hands. “I’m just going to cut your pant leg so I can see, okay?” he murmured as he pulled his knife. “Nothing to worry about.” As gently as he could, he sliced open her pant leg and peeled the material back. The bullet had passed through her leg, but it looked like it had hit the bone on the way through. He grimaced in sympathy. “I know it hurts, but you’re going to be okay. Paramedics are on the way. I want you to lay back here and relax until help arrives, okay? You!” he barked at a young man, pointing and snapping his fingers. “You sit here with her. Watch her. Don’t touch her leg. If she gets faint, you find me, got it?”

 

The man nodded as he helped Jules ease the woman to her back. “You’re going to be okay,” he said as he gave her hand a squeeze. He looked at the doors when he heard the far off wail of a siren. “Help will be here in a few minutes and they can give you something for the pain, okay? Hang in there.”

 

***

 

As paramedics and police milled about, trying to get organized, Jules looked at Rachel. She was standing in the middle of the room as if in shock, her hands red with the man’s blood. “Come with me,” he said, taking her by the arm and steering her to her office. She moved without protest. “Kristen, Angie, you, too,” he said getting the other women’s attention. Jules led the women to Rachel’s office, picking up Tim, the cook, along the way, and parked them. “Rachel, go wash your hands then stay here until I call for you, okay? There is nothing you can do out there. I will be back in a bit. Tim, can you shoot?”

 

“If I get close enough.”

 

Jules handed him his weapon. “Watch them.”

 

“You got it,” the man replied.

 

“What’s the score?” Jules asked Fish a moment later.

 

“Two dead outside, plus that guy,” Fish said with a nod at the covered body. “He was wearing armor?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You did good,” Bell said.

 

“Not good enough,” Jules said as he watched the paramedics work.

 

“Jules, I need to get your statement,” Marco Medina, the Assistant Police Chief, said. “You two, as well.”

 

***

 

“How you doing?” Jules asked as he settled in the guest chair next to Rachel. The last of the police had just left.

 

“Better.”

 

“That’s good. You ready to go?”

 

“What about the bar?”

 

“What about it? We’ll clean it up tomorrow. You need to get home and get some sleep.”

 

“Yeah, okay,” she said as she rose. As he rose with her, she turned, took him into her arms, and held tightly to him. “Thank you.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For being here. For saving me. For saving us all. I thought you were worried over nothing… but I was wrong. I should have listened to you. I should have closed the bar. People got hurt because I—”

 

“No!” he said sharply. “You didn’t do anything. The cartel got those people hurt, not you,” he added more gently.

 

“But if I had stayed home…”

 

“Then it would have been worse. In the bar he had to pick me out of the crowd. That gave me the time I needed. At home, I might not have been so lucky.”

 

“How did you know?” she whispered.

 

“Something about him just didn’t feel right. The way he looked when he came in, maybe. He was too intense, or something. I just got a feeling and I have learned to listen to that little voice.”

 

She continued to hold him. “What were you thinking?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

She pulled out of his embrace and looked into his eyes. “You were walking right toward him, like you didn’t care if you were shot. Why would you do that?”

 

“I had to neutralize the threat.”

 

“By walking straight into his gunfire?”

 

“I had him back on his heels. So long as I kept firing, he couldn’t aim. The first two shots should have finished him, but he was wearing armor. I had to get in close, to make sure I didn’t hit someone else.”

 

“You could have been killed!”

 

“You could have, too.”

 

She stared deeply into his eyes, trying to read him. “Promise me that wasn’t just you trying to get yourself killed to atone for your past.”

 

He smiled at her and kissed her softly on the lips. “I promise. I wasn’t going all cowboy just to get myself killed.” He kissed her again. “I don’t want to die. Not now. I have too much to live for.”

 

She whimpered softly at his words and put her head on his shoulder. She tried to hold herself together, but she whimpered again as her tears tried to overwhelm her.

 

“Shhh…” he whispered as he slowly stroked her hair. “It’s okay now. It’s okay.”

 

She pulled back from his embrace and offered her lips, lips that he took. She melted into him and began to push at his Forsaken 99 jacket. She needed him. She needed to have him make love to her so she could feel safe and secure again. She needed to feel his touch, his flesh against her own to quieten her fears and doubts. She needed him, here and now.

 

She pulled back from the kiss and began to undress him with shaking hands. “Please, I need you. Please…”

 

He needed no further encouragement, allowing her fingers to work as he held her face and kissed her in a flurry of fleeting touches. He released her face so she could push his shirt down his arms, but then brought his hands back to her, quickly unbuttoning her still crisp white shirt. He slowly removed her shirt and bra, admiring each bit of flesh as it appeared, then slowly lowered himself to his knees as he kissed down her body.

 

She held his head as he kissed her stomach just above the waistband of her clingy black pants. He pushed at her gently and she settled into a chair as he removed her shoes and slipped the pants over her legs. She moved to rise, but the soft touch of his hand stilled her. With a smile, he slowly kissed the inside of her thigh.

 

Jules kissed along the inside of Rachel’s thigh, his fingers softly caressing the back of her leg as she squirmed and moved in the chair. He had played this game many times, but never had he enjoyed it as much as he was enjoying it this evening. He moved slowly toward her most intimate place, breathing softly on her skin, stroking and caressing with his fingers and lips.

 

She shuddered as his lips touched her, the merest feather light brush, but it was enough to send pleasure searing along her nerves. She couldn’t help herself as her legs pulled up and tightened on his head in pleasure as she gasped. As she held his head between her thighs, waiting for the surge of pleasure to subside, he began to probe her slowly with his tongue as he drew the fingers of one hand along the back of her leg. His touch was like electricity and she mewled softly as she twisted to one hip, unable to stay still.

 

He slowly slid his hands inside her thighs and, with gentle but inexorable force, twisted her back to her bottom and eased her legs apart so he could move. Her soft gasps and writhing was seriously turning him on and making him want to give her more, ever more, pleasure. When the pressure on his head eased, he began to probe her more forcefully as he squirmed his face, driving his tongue into all her most intimate places, his tongue touching and sliding about as he watched her face.

 

She couldn’t stand it! She placed her heels in Jules’s back and, using him for leverage, forced her hips up as her hands tangled in his hair. She had to be hurting him, had to be, but he was devastating her and she couldn’t stop.

 

Rachel’s heels began to dig into his back with painful force, but he didn’t care. He leaned into her while his lips snapped and pulled, wrapping his arms around her legs to hold her still as she thrust and twisted in the chair.

 

She was in agony, her orgasm climbing higher and higher as Jules gently pinched and pulled with his lips, his tongue darting and sliding through her wetness. He rose higher up on his knees, driving her harder back into the chair as he focused his tongue firmly on her clit, stroking it forcibly with his tongue. Her eyes snapped open as her orgasm began to take her… and she saw him looking at her, his face both intense and joyous. As her orgasm took her, she cried her delight to the world.

 

While Rachel panted and blew in the chair, coming out from under her orgasm, Jules rose and removed his pants. He crouched and tugged her to the edge of the chair as he took her lips while pushing her legs back and up, curling her up in the chair. She giggled and growled into the kiss as he slid smoothly into her then began to rock her hips in time with him, thrusting herself upon his hardness.

 

Even after that mind-warping climax, Rachel could sense another orgasm, another strong one, lurking… and she wanted Jules to give it to her. She began to thrust in time with him, teasing the release nearer. As much as she was enjoying the position, having never been fucked in a chair before, she needed more. With a push of her legs against his chest, she forced Jules backwards. He resisted, but he could either go to his back on the floor or she could break him in half, because she wouldn’t be denied.

 

Jules relented and allowed Rachel to push him out of her then to the floor. That was fine with him because it relieved the strain of holding his crouching position. She followed his backward tumble, taking him once more inside as soon as they were in position. With a deep sigh of pleasure, she settled on him and began to move.

 

He watched her eyes close in pleasure as she began to move upon him, her breasts swinging and moving in time with her hips. He captured her breasts in his hands and caressed them as he gently pinched and tugged on her nipples. Her shudder and groan as her head tipped back was perhaps the sexist thing Jules had ever seen. He had to feel her against him and taste her lips.

 

She allowed Jules to pull her down on his chest, his arms going tight around her as their lips met. As he drew his legs up, she moaned softly in anticipation of what was to come. When he began to move, driving into her, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, she pulled back from his torrid kiss with a gasp. The lurking orgasm was coming… and coming hard.

 

“Harder…” she begged, needing to feel his sweet violence, his pounding strokes reeling in her orgasm. “Harder, she repeated, urging him on and he responded. “Oh god… harder, please harder,” she begged as she warmed with the approach of her climax.

 

He began to growl, low and deep in his chest as he pounded into Rachel with tender savagery. His orgasm was coming, but he was pushing against it as he pummeled her, wanting to time his release so they reached the peak of pleasure at the same moment.

 

“Come on, Rachel… come on!” he growled as he held her tight, nudging her toward her release. He growled again, hard and feral, as he fought against his orgasm and the burn in his abdomen. He could sense Rachel tightening up with her own orgasm and he grimaced as he drove into her with swift, powerful strokes, determined to push her over the edge.

 

“Fuck!” she gasped, the world long and drawn out, as she tumbled into another withering orgasm. As she shuddered through her own release she heard Jules grunt, long and deep, as he pulled her hard into him, holding her tight as he quivered and shook.

 

They lay still a moment, panting as they relaxed, their lips finding the other’s for a long, tender kiss. As she pulled back, she sighed and laid her head on Jules’s shoulder, once again content at a very deep level. The hard floor had to be uncomfortable for him, but he offered no complaint and she relished the closeness she felt.

 

“Are you ready to go home?” he whispered softly as he continued to stroke her back in soft caresses.

 

“Do we have to?”

 

“My back is breaking,” he admitted with a chuckle.

 

She sighed as she raised her head and kissed him gently. “I guess, but you have to promise to come to bed and hold me for the rest of the night.”

 

His tender kiss provided all the assurances she needed.