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Out of respect, I stood there, taking the brunt of her ire, waiting for her to wind down. After a few minutes, her chest heaved, but the lash of her tongue no longer held the same bite.
With my arms crossed over my chest, I asked, “Are you done?”
Before she had the chance to reply, Brandy stepped between us, her teeth biting into her plump bottom lip.
“Thanks for that vivid description of a donkey kicking a man in the balls.” She looked down at my cock, then shook her head as if to clear it, quickly adverted her eyes. “But I don’t want to cause any problems.” The entire thing only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to make my inner asshole smirk. “If it’s that important to…”
“Hunter,” I supplied, watching her eyes widen a fraction before she smoothed out her expression.
Interesting. Her Spanish was flawless, and she not only recognized Ryder’s name, but knew something about me as well. Cherry could be trusted not to run her mouth, so I doubted she’d learned anything from her. It was the main reason Cherry had been with the club for as long as she had. That left me to wonder where Brandy might have gotten her information.
“Hunter.” The way her lips wrapped around the H in my name had me thinking about how they’d look spread around my thick cock. “I can stay with him instead of Cherry. It’s not like I’ll be spending much time in the room, anyway.”
Her voice held an air of confidence that belied the two fingers of her right hand incessantly rubbing together as she snuck glances up at me through her lashes. That contradiction, that hesitation, only made me want to lay claim to her in front of the entire club. To show her, and the rest of them, that she belonged to me. But for now, I’d let my beautiful angel off the hook. Besides, it was my turn to make a move in the game my brother put into play.
Hunter was a tornado of danger and torment, sucking you in with the promise of carnal delights, only to spit you back out of his vortex, leaving you forever damaged. He didn’t even have to be physically touching you to do it either. Those pale blue eyes of his had stroked along my skin, leaving nothing but goose bumps in their wake. There wasn’t a part of me left untouched by the heat of his gaze. Even hours later, sitting in front of the garage’s computer, my skin still tingled from him mapping out the planes of my body with his eyes.
If his eyes had me forgetting my carefully crafted plan of avoiding the Mafia, what could he do with those strong, thickly veined hands? It was a thought that had surfaced repeatedly, like a buoy that refused to sink. What had changed? I could have sworn my vagina was dead, but here she was alive and kicking. For the first time. Ever.
Why did my body have to come alive for him? It could have been anybody else, literally anyone, and things would have been fine. Go figure, the only man I needed to be repulsed by was the one man my body craved. Damn it. I couldn’t crawl into bed with the Mafia. Could I?
If it were solely hormones, maybe I could brush aside whatever pulled me toward him like a magnet. Ignore the attraction. People did it all the time. Sadly, it wasn’t just that. Hunter had seen me in a way that nobody else ever had. Cherry and I might have been identical twins, but we were anything but. She was the one with a cheerleader’s body and the natural grace of a prima ballerina. Everyone was drawn to her. How could they not be with her perpetually sunny disposition and kind heart?
Next to her, most considered me nothing but a pale imitation. A socially awkward nerd who preferred computers to people, snorted when she laughed, and tripped over her own two feet. Even when Cherry wasn’t around, I melted into the background, preferring not to attract too much attention. In my experience, nothing good had ever come from men noticing you. Yet, when his fierce stare had settled on me, and then stayed there, it didn’t make me nervous the way it usually did.
Hunter focusing all of his savage intensity on me could only end in brutal heartache. Unless he figured out what I was doing here, then he’d spare my feelings and simply kill me. It didn’t take a genius to know that by entertaining his interest I was playing with fire. Any sane woman would run far away from Hunter, and the danger he posed, but I’d never claimed to be normal.
His pale gaze might have made me burn, but I wasn’t delusional either. Underneath all the fire I loved so much was ice. A detached coldness that was as beautiful as it was destructive. My warped brain had somehow associated his icy gaze with safety, and my pussy had been all too willing to hop on the bandwagon. Ironically, my body shut down because of one man’s brutality only to be brought back to life with another’s.
A feminine screech rose above the heavy metal music, followed by a loud crash, and the unmistakable clinking of metal hitting cement. My brain did a little stutter step as the past and present converged, the clank of metal being replaced by wood splintering. Logically, I knew the sounds in the back had triggered the angry shouting in my head, but the muscles in my legs refused to listen. They tightened painfully, and I hated I was frozen, caught in the past, unable to get to Stella. To know what the hell was happening to her in the garage.
Bitterness and rage were razors slicing through me as the voices in my head grew louder, while everything, except for the music, had died down in the present. It was two alternate realties dueling for space inside my fucked-up head. Desperate to avoid the past, one I hated, I focused on the old Slayer song that was playing.
As a teenager I had hated this place down deep in my bones. Now, I just despised the dark hole my memories had crawled out of, and wished I could reject them. I guess I’d have to settle for being grateful they were no longer haunting me, a reminder of what humanity was capable of.
Now firmly back in the present, I stood up, pins and needles shooting down my legs as I leaned over the side of my desk. Stella charged like a bull down the hall, a handsome man right behind her.
When we’d come down earlier, it had been just the two of us, and I wasn’t sure when that had changed. I’d have to remain on alert when I switched from balancing the current accounts to searching through the garage’s old records looking for evidence.
Stella stopped right beside my desk and whirled around. Wait a second. I knew who this guy was from the file. Ryder and Tweak looked more like brothers than the cousins I knew them to be. They had the same dark hair, brown eyes, and a tall, muscular build. Tweak’s hair was a little longer on top and his five o’clock shadow was a shade darker, but the most notable difference between the two was in how they carried themselves. Even now, with an irate woman about to chew his ass out, he looked like he was off to hit the bar with his buddies.
“Don’t you dare follow me either!” she yelled, pointing a finger in his direction.
Relief swirled in my chest that Stella didn’t appear to be in any sort of physical danger from Tweak, but I’d remained frozen behind the desk too long, and now there was no way for me to tactfully slip past them. So, I stood there, stuck, hoping neither of them would notice me, or if they did, that I wouldn’t get dragged into the middle of it. Whatever the hell this was.
“Oh, you want to point a finger. Ok, I got one for you.” He stuck up his middle finger, then added a second one from the opposing hand. “What do you know? There’s another one.”
A part of me admired his sarcastic assholery even though internally I shook my head at his stupidity. If looks could kill, this was the part where I’d see his spirit float out of his body like on those old Red Bull commercials.
“You, you… may you get a venereal disease that causes your dick to fall off!”
Damn, had to admire a girl that could hold her own. And that was a hell of a comeback.
He looked nonplussed, despite the threat to his dick, and folded his arms over his chest. “Now that was just uncalled for.”
“Ugh!” She rolled her eyes, and for a split second, I wondered if she was going to punch him before she turned on her heel and muttered, “I’m out of here.”
The little bell danced over the door as it slammed closed. As fights went, it was rather like a sparkler, starting out strong, then just sorta fizzling out. Not that I had any personal experience with romantic relationships, but their fight had an “end of the relationship” vibe that I was familiar with thanks to watching the girls in my old dorm go through breakups. Many, many breakups.
