Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
“Yeah.” His grip tightens on my neck. “We take down Papa. We take out whoever the fuck owns the other stables. Then you and me…we settle up.”
“Fair enough.” I pull back, locking my hand with his, sealing in that promise. And fulfilling another. “Tusk is dead.”
“Good. You’ve got Cherry?”
I nod. Yeah, I’ve got her. And I intend to keep her.
I should drop off her sweet ass in the nearest town and never look back. But Papa and all the fuckers running the Cage will be searching for her.
Instead of them finding her, though, Cherry’s going to give me what I need to find them.
But that’s not the purpose in front of me as I head back to the truck. Instead I’m still seeing Tusk, pinning her beneath him. Instead I’m hearing Cherry scream. Instead I’m remembering the moment I realized that he’d gotten to her, and feeling like my whole world was about to end.
My whole world. If I needed a measure of how fucked up my head is, that’s it right there. Because she’s not even a fraction of my world.
She’s just a girl I kissed in a bar. A girl who couldn’t ever be anything more to me than that. Because she’s a girl who’s all about saving her own skin—and trusting a girl like that, a man not only risks himself but all his brothers, too.
I thought she did right by Crash? Nah. She did the bare fucking minimum.
That’s the thought I hold onto as I jump into the back of the truck. The memory of Cherry out of her cell, with a fucking blade that she could have used at any goddamn time. The memory of Handlebar choking up.
Still gagged, she’s sitting where I left her, back braced against wheel well and watching the barns burn. I crouch beside her.
“You’re going to pay for every fucking lying word that came out of your mouth. You understand?”
Tusk’s dead. But I’ve got one thing left to keep me going. And I know this girl now. She’ll do what it takes to save her own skin.
Except she’s not even listening.
I grip her chin, bring her emerald eyes around to meet mine. “You understand?”
Quickly she nods.
Yeah. She’ll agree to any goddamn thing, and knowing that curls more rot through my stomach. I search her eyes, looking for the rage that I liked so damn much. Looking for any sign that she’ll push back—like she did only a little while ago, when I threatened to let the fighters pull a train on her. Even gagged, she all but dared me to. Like she knew it was bullshit. But now there’s nothing.
I shouldn’t want her to do anything but fall in line…but fucking hell, I want to see something more in her than this. But the only flames in her eyes are flickering reflections from the flames consuming the compound. Jaw clenched, I let her go.
My head’s so fucked up. And my heart, too. Because it took until now for me to ask Gunner, “Anna?”
“Safe.”
A knot loosens in my chest. “And the fucker who touched her?”
“Taken care of.”
Dead. The unwinding knot moves up into my throat as Zoomie climbs into the truck. Spiral’s behind the wheel, Blowback’s heading our direction. More trucks are being loaded up with fighters and getting the fuck out of here. Just about the whole club showed up to break me out. And it looks like it went off clean. No brothers lost.
But they’d have risked their lives for me. That’s fucking everything.
And it’s too much.
“I love a goddamn bonfire.” Grinning, Zoomie takes a seat on the opposite tire well. “But we forgot the fucking marshmallows.”
My throat’s so damn tight. “Next time.”
“Aw, look at you, you big asshole, promising to get kidnapped again just for me.” She reaches over to playfully shove at my head before nodding to the woman beside me. “Who’s the nurse?”
In that tiny outfit, still gagged by the panties I shoved into her mouth and the stocking that I tied around her head. The little skirt hardly covers her bare ass, and she’s got her legs folded and tucked in so she isn’t flashing everyone.
“Cherry,” Gunner says.
She’s staring at him. Not like girls usually stare at his pretty face. I’m the one who threatened her but she looks more afraid of him.
“Cherry?” Eyes narrowing dangerously, Zoomie says, “So why aren’t we roasting her instead?”
“Because I’ve got something else in mind for her.” That pulls her emerald gaze to me, and she draws in on herself when I add, “And I’m going to take a real long time to do it.”
There. A little spark. A defiant lift of her chin. Just like when she was sucking my cock, making me come. When she was making the rot stop hurting so goddamn much.
But the hurt’s what I deserve. So I focus on what I should be doing, instead—and that’s what comes next.