AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She heard the creak of the door when he opened it behind her, but she didn’t turn around. “Forgot to grab your keys.”
“Keys are important,” he replied calmly.
She was surprised when he didn’t sound angry. Turning at the waist, she looked back at him and found that he was calmly leaning against the doorjamb and was just watching her. Stella didn’t understand the man. Why wasn’t he angry that she hurt him? Why wasn’t he pissed that she tried to get away? Why wasn’t he hauling her back inside and cuffing her back up? None of it made any sense.
“Why aren’t you cuffing me back up?”
Trick released a sigh and ran a hand over his bald head. “I…” He shook his head and waved for her to come inside. “Come on. We have shit to talk about.”
Oh yes, the information he needed from her.
With a sigh, she stood and headed inside. She crossed the space and took a seat at the kitchen table. Not bothering to fight it, she held her arm out next to the table leg and let him cuff her to it.
He rounded the table and took the seat across from her. When she looked at his face, he finally showed some emotion. He looked frustrated and possibly a bit angry.
Stella pushed aside all the bullshit she had swirling on inside of her, and said, “You’re going to need that pad of paper and a pen.”
Trick retrieved the pen and pad that was to his left and set it down in front of him. Putting the tip of the pen to the paper, he stared at her and raised a brow.
“Okay. Well, I guess we should start with the founder. His name is Ambrose C. Thompson, and from what I know, he’s a billionaire. He pulled the academy together in no time. I did a google search on him, and there’s not much that I could find, but there are some vague mentions and a few photos.”
She waited while Trick took notes on what she told him. When he stopped writing and looked her way again, she continued, “Then there are the commanders. We had one to begin with. His name was Commander West. Large, muscular black man who always looks like he’s got the world sitting on his shoulders and he isn’t happy about it. I don’t know much about him, except he has a wife and at least one child. He mentioned a son one time, but I wasn’t there to make friends, so I didn’t ask for more. When I returned from the first Warden’s Pass mission, we had another commander. His name is Richard Cox, and no, I’m not kidding. All I know about him is he’s a dick. Pun intended. Average height. Runner’s build. Short, dark brown hair. Looks like a dark-haired version of Ken.”
Stella paused to let him finish jotting things down. When he looked to be finished, she continued, “Then there are the Elites. Each Elite is in charge of a group of trainees called hunters.”
“And you were an Elite?”
She nodded. “I was… well, still am, but all the privileges that came with that title had been revoked when I returned from Warden’s Pass.” She proceeded to list the other Elites, as well as the proficiency of their skills, while Trick took detailed notes.
“Okay. And what about the hunters? What do you know about them? Their numbers? Names and descriptions? Skills?”
This was going to be much harder, but she would just have to do her best. She spent the next half an hour detailing what she knew of the hunters, then spent another couple of hours answering any questions he had.
When her stomach began to growl, Trick put the pen down, got up, and set about making dinner. Stella watched him while he worked and wished he had never lied to her. She truly liked the man that had spent hours and days with her all those weeks ago. They had worked well together, and there had been a sizzling connection between her and Matthew. But Trick? She didn’t really know him. And Stella had always lived by the motto that strangers were enemies until they proved themselves otherwise. Trick had yet to fully do that, and probably wouldn’t be able to until he stopped cuffing her to tables and headboards.
Her eyes trailed over him, taking in the way his clothes stretched across hard muscles and wide shoulders. Okay… well, until he at least stopped cuffing her to tables.
Chapter Nine
Six days later… Stella
Stelladidn’tknowwhathad Trick’s panties in a wad, but she was tired of him slamming shit around all day. He hadn’t said but a handful of words to her, and they were only because he didn’t have any other choice.
Six days before, she had told him what she knew about the academy. The next three days, he sat at that table all day with a laptop and looked to be focused. When she asked what he was doing, he replied, “Gathering intel.”
She offered to help, since she had some experience in that area, but he had told her he would let her know if he came across something he had questions about. After the third time that he shot her down, she gave up.
During one of his store runs, he had picked her up a few books, and she was grateful for that. It helped pass the time while he did whatever the fuck he was doing on the laptop. The fourth day, he had cuffed her to the headboard and left her there with her book, while he took off to do who-knew-what. She had finished the last of the books while he had been gone and ended up napping the rest of the time.
The fifth day had been pretty uneventful, until Trick had told her to go into the bathroom, where he cuffed her to the pipe under the sink. She didn’t think she’d had too much of an attitude, not enough to warrant that, but she had been on her period for three days, so there was a chance she wasn’t judging that properly. It wasn’t until she heard voices outside the cabin that she realized he had been hiding her.
She considered shouting for help, but she didn’t know who had been out there, and figured the devil she knew was better than an unknown evil. Sure, she wasn’t fond of the betrayals between her and Trick, but he at least kept her from dying by the claws of the president of the Tiger’s Claw MC. Not to mention, he had fed her and provided for her for nearly a week. If the person outside was someone worse than him, she didn’t want to find out how they would treat her. So she kept her mouth shut and tried to listen as intently as she could.
When he had let her out of the bathroom, she asked who it was, but Trick had just shaken his head and started talking about dinner options. His bad mood had started later that evening.
Nearly every night that they had been at the cabin, she had woken up either curled into his side or with him wrapped around her from behind. But after the visitor left, and they went to bed, he put distance between them and stayed there all night. That shouldn’t have bothered her since they weren’t a couple, no matter what he said about mates and all of that, but it did.
After they had gotten up in the morning, he let her use the restroom, then he cuffed her back up and left for an hour or so. When he returned, he uncuffed her, but he prowled around the place like a pissed off… well… bear. He slammed cupboards shut, pounded cans down on the counter, tossed dishes into the sink, kicked chairs out of his way, and made it known to her and the animals nearby that he wasn’t happy.
