Fear me.
Realize I was nothing but a dead end because I was pretty sure she and I had been a couple of haphazard seconds from rushing full steam ahead.
But since this woman seemed to steal all logic, I was standing there under the cover of trees wondering if it’d gone the opposite.
Imagining she was making full use of my gift.
Imagining she was making the same desirous sounds she’d been making at the dinner table.
Would it be my name slipping out of that smart mouth as she came?
Fuck me. This wasn’t helping, and I had business to attend to.
You know, just theinsignificanttask of keeping her and Elena alive.
This whole family alive.
Both my blood and the men who were under my charge.
I scrubbed my palms over my face, hoping it would eradicate the visions from my mind, and I sucked a clearing breath into my lungs before I turned on my heel and forced myself to move.
Night gathered thick, and stars glinted through the breaks in the trees as I trudged across the property in the direction of the clubhouse.
In the distance, I could hear the hoots and hollers of my crew. The dull thud of heavy music echoed through the forest. The drumbeat chanting its depravity that they were undoubtedly losing themselves in.
With each step that I took, the volume increased. It might as well have been the driving force for the way my heart took to hammering at my ribcage.
Every cell in my body hardened as I prepared to take on the severity I wore as Crimson Crows’s president.
No, it wasn’t a façade, per se.
I guess it was just allowing who I really was to rise to the surface.
The second I broke out of the cover of the trees, the clubhouse came into view. My boots thudded on the ground as I crossed over the gravel road that cut through to the back part of the land and led to the houses I’d just left behind.
Lights glowed from the enormous building, and a bonfire leapt high into the darkened sky.
Licking flames that stirred the air like a warning of what was coming.
Omens of blood and death and perversion.
A slew of motorcycles were parked in a semi-circle around the entire boundary, gleaming against the flames, and about a dozen guys drank beers around the fire.
They were laughing and jesting. Giving each other shit the way they always did. My men might have oozed peril, but they were the closest of friends. Sworn to have each other’s backs.
There were no women tonight. They were forbidden on Church nights.
When Dice saw me coming, he put two fingers into his mouth and gave a shrill whistle.
“Yo, President,” he shouted behind it.
Everyone’s heads swiveled my way.
“Ah, the man of the hour,” Brody called, full tease in his voice.
“That’s the man of every hour,” Trevan corrected with a grin.
“Ah, he likes to think so, but his younger brother just might steal some of the limelight.” Brody was all cocky arrogance but with that goodness interlacing it.
