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“Do you think I care what you want?” he snarls. “You’ve kept me waiting for far too long. Now it’s time you showed me how much you love me. Get in there now, before I lose my patience.”
Chapter Four
Zack
I walk down the hallway, stunned at the anger that whirls through me when I see how run down this place is. The door to the building wasn’t even locked. Someone had busted it at some point so it couldn’t close all the way.
I’ve never met Zoey, I don’t even know what she looks like, and yet I find myself thinking about how she deserves so much better than this. I find myself wanting to find the bastard who busted the door and make him pay.
All day it’s been the same, my thoughts rushing ahead of my reason, my imagination flooding with ideas of what Zoey could look like, what she could be like.
But part of me whispers that I already know who she is where it counts.
She’s a kind person, a selfless person, a person who would…
Fuck.
I can’t let myself think like that, but I can’t deny that the thought keeps flurrying into me either.
Yeah, Zoey’s the sort of person who’d make an incredible mother to my children.
That’s the thought which has spiraled into my mind over and over, telling me I can have a family with this woman, a future.
I remind myself that I’m here to give her a piece of my mind as I climb the stairs. She made assumptions in her letter – like I’m a good person, whatever happened to me is okay – and I’m here to put her in her place, not to obsess over her.
“Please,” a woman’s voice rises as I reach the top of the staircase. “Jerry, I don’t want this.”
My instincts prickle when I hear the anguish in the woman’s voice, shivering through her like she’s on the precipice of letting out a scream.
“Do you think I care what you want?” a man snarls. “You’ve kept me waiting for far too long. Now it’s time you showed me how much you love me. Get in there now, before I lose my patience.”
I pick up my pace, walking around the corner with fire flaring in my muscles. I’ve heard that tone of voice before, aimed at women in my gyms, coming from the sort of scraggly rats who think a few sessions with the heavy bag makes them tough.
I emerge to find a tall red-haired man standing over a woman. The man is wide and big, but I can tell right away that his muscles come from steroid use.
When you’ve worked in the martial arts world for as long as I have, it’s easy to read such things.
And then my attention is quickly captivated by the woman standing beneath him.
Her curvy body has been squeezed into a waitress’s uniform, her hips pushing out enticingly, her ass round and plump and gorgeously full. Her hair cascades to her shoulders in dark brown waves, the sort of hair which screams out at me to run my fingers through it.
She turns at the sound of my footsteps, revealing a young fresh face, her cheeks full and flushed, her eyes the same dark shade as her hair. Her breasts heave in the white T-shirt, causing my manhood to twinge despite the circumstances, blood rushing around me at a million miles per hour.
I look closer… her name tag.
This is Zoey.
This queen, the woman I already know I have to claim, I’ll always need to claim for the rest of our lives.
She bites her lip as she stares at me. I wonder if she recognizes me.
Zoey, my Zoey…
And this steroid-using piece of shit is clearly causing her a problem.
“What’s going on here?” I growl, instantly forgetting my desire to give her a talking-to about her letter.
Hell, who am I kidding? I was never going to chew her out about that.
That was all to give me an excuse to be here.
“None of your business,” the man grunts. Jerry, his name is, I remember. “Keep walking.”
The bullying tone in his voice awakens a primal protective urge inside of me. There’s no way I’m going to let this man hurt my woman, my fucking woman, and I don’t give a damn if this is the first time I’ve ever seen her.
She belongs to me now. I know that as certainly as I know my own name.
I’d die – I’d kill – before I let anything happen to Zoey Baker, to the future mother of my children.
I stride over to them, shoulders squared, the potential for violence rushing around my body like some kind of war song. I know what I could do to this man, how simple it would be for me to fold him up like a pretzel, and yet I also know it could land me in jail if I don’t play this right.
