I knew it wouldn't be gentle. Always knew that about us.
Our first kiss is no storybook moment. It’s a fucking collision. Hungry and angry and certain, like two people who've been pretending this path wasn't inevitably running out of road. We nip. We bite. We push and take and argue with our mouths about things we haven't been able to say out loud.
I grab her under the thighs and hoist her up, swinging her around to set her on the seat of my bike. She spreads her legs, pulling me into the heat of her, her hips grinding against me through layers of denim. My dick is weeping in its own misery, desperate to be buried inside her, to finally find home. But then,reality crashes over her. She yanks her head away, her eyes wide and shattered. Her fingers tremble as she covers her mouth, fear pouring out of her.
Dropping my hold on her, I step back. I pull my hat off and push my fingers through my hair because if I don’t do something with my hands right now, I’m going to reach for her again. “Go ahead. Run away. It’s what you’re best at, Mari. Same ol’ shit, different goddamn day.”
She keeps staring at me with those broken eyes, and something in my chest mirrors it, whether I want it to or not.
“Answer me this,” I growl, the rejection stinging worse than any blade. “What would you do if I fell in love with someone else? Someone who wasn't terrified to love me back? Someone who was as crazy about me as I am them? What would you do then?”
Pain shatters what’s left of her expression. Her smile is brittle, a thin piece of glass about to snap. “Then I’d be happy for you.”
A flash of white-hot fury ignites inside me the moment she lies.
I close the distance, knotting my fingers in her hair and tipping her head back, forcing her to meet my eyes. Our noses almost touch.
“And I’d say you’re a fucking coward, Marigold. Because the truth is, you want me as bad as I want you. You care about me as much as I care about you. The only difference between us is that I'm right here. Ready. So give me one good reason,one,why I shouldn't go find someone who isn't afraid to love me out loud."
She stays silent, but her eyes confess everything her lips won't.
I am hers, just as she is mine. She knows it. I know it. Even the goddamn charged air between us hums with the truth.
“That’s what I thought,” I murmur, brushing a gentle, unarming kiss over her swollen, bitten lips before I let her go.
She slips off the bike, fingers lingering on her lips as she retreats into the waiting shadows.
“You asked if I thought the person who sent the plushie was pathetic,” I call out as she retreats. “The answer is no. But if she were standing in front of me right now, I’d tell her she should love me out loud. Because she’d find out pretty fast that I’m just as obsessed with her as she is with me.”
I head inside, not looking back. She’s already fading into the dark, heading for the motorcycle she thinks I haven’t noticed. I remember all the times I heard a bike revving in the street while I was with another woman. The timing was always too perfect, as if she had a sixth sense for when I was about to find my release.
A smirk tugs at my lips as I face the entryway wall.
If only she knew she was already the one in my head. Whoever I was with was just noise. She was the signal. She always was.
This charade is over. I'm finished with the space, the hesitation, the invisible walls she keeps building between us.
I want her on the back of my bike. In the center of my bed. Taking my fucking cock with my property ink branded dark and permanent along the front of that pretty throat so every goddamn person who looks at her knows exactly whose she is.
It's time to drag my shadow from the darkness and into the light where nothing, least of all us, can ever hide again.
Chapter Thirteen
She’sgood.I’llgivemy woman that.
There’s an expertise in her movements that catches me off guard. A ghost-like fluidity that speaks to a long history of staying out of the light. A few times, when the wind was right, I’ve gotten close enough to hear her muttering some off-the-wall shit to herself. It was cute as fuck, the way she’d hold an entire conversation with no one.
But as good as she is, I’m better.
It didn't take long to spot the tracker on my phone. Once I knew it was there I left it alone, pulled a burner instead and had Cypher clone the original. He didn't push for details. That's the thing about brothers who trust you. They let you run your play and wait for the explanation. I promised him he'd get one. I don't like keeping the brothers in the dark, but I need to catch her on my terms first.
Cypher's a goddamn wizard. He embedded a file inside a link, walked me through the install, told me all she had todo was open it and the program would download itself in the background undetected.
Location pulling straight to my maps the second it was active.
All I needed was the right bait.
My woman has a weakness for cute cat videos, so I made sure to find one that would bait the hook. That should have been my first real clue. If I’d been looking closely enough, I’d have connected her to that cat plushie the second Butcher put it in my hands. My gut was already trying to tell me something when I thought the eyes looked familiar. It didn't register until I watched her face on the security feed, and by then the pieces had already been assembling themselves without my permission.
