Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Master turned his back on the president of his club, unable to look at him. Unable to face what he’d known all along—he wasn’t what the others were. He never was. He’d been thrown into the prison by Sorbacov when he was a little boy, and he’d never really managed to get the filth off of him from that place. He’d been taken back to the basement, used, beaten and bloody, only to be returned the moment he was deemed healed enough. He’d learned tears didn’t matter. Pleas didn’t mean a thing. Promises meant nothing.
He picked up his guitar, laying the familiar wide strap around his neck, keeping his gaze on the strings while he tuned an already tuned instrument. Music poured into him, through him, found its way inside until it ran like wildfire through his bloodstream and gave him back life the moment thoughts of prison had taken all humanity away.
The darkness faded to the background in him, leaving him able to hear the notes needed to drive the music under the catchy lyrics Seychelle and Rashad sang in harmony. The band was close to the right melody, a pop beat that would bring most people to their feet, or at least make them want to sing along. Still he turned inward, melded with the music flowing in him, spreading through his heart to his arteries and veins, carried to his tissues throughout his body until he was the music.
The perfect notes found their way to the strings of his guitar, flowing like gold from the symphony in his bloodstream to his fingers. He played the way he always did, the music streaming from him to his fingers to the guitar. His band followed the way it always did, catching the notes, enhancing them, so they sprang to life and soared. Seychelle and Rashad did the rest. Within minutes the entire room was singing the chorus to Jackson’s song:
They need a red-hot hero
Not a poser or a zero
Deputy desire
You know I’m your live wire
Of fun . . .
Red Hot Jackson
The moment “Red Hot Jackson” was sung, it was loud and emphasized, just the way Savage had hoped. Seychelle and Rashad sang the verses, and Torpedo Ink and their spouses took up the chorus with enormous enthusiasm. Savage led them with his extraordinary voice, encouraging them all to be boisterous and ecstatic, as if partying. They wanted the song to be distinct, to be remembered once heard.
Master finally managed to look at Ambrielle. She had dutifully joined Amanda, Marcus and Adam. Clearly, she’d been talking with them until the music had really taken off and then they’d been singing—the others, not her. She watched him intently with those eyes of hers, eyes only for him. The moment their gaze met, she smiled, and that smile was for him alone.
His fuckin’ treacherous heart lurched. He could tell himself to be cautious and not let his emotions go any further, not let her wind any tighter around his insides, but she’d already pierced his skin and sent her little demonic arrows deep. There was a special hell for men like him. He thought he might have a chance after watching Savage find Seychelle. Savage was a dangerous man. A bad man, some might even say. Savage was the club enforcer. He killed for the club. Took men apart for information for the club. Like all of them, Savage ruthlessly hunted pedophiles and took back children anytime he found them.
But Master knew the reasons he was never climbing out of the muck he was buried in. He didn’t feel remorse for the things he did. When he became that man without feelings, that stone-cold killer in prison, capable of taking apart human beings, he didn’t feel a damn thing and he didn’t look back. He never would. That child they raped over and over so brutally, the one they kicked and forced to perform vile acts for their pleasure and amusement, had learned their lessons and become the master.
He knew every con in prison. The smallest scam. The largest corruptions. He knew how to get in and out of cells without detection and how to kill without anyone’s knowledge. Most of all, he knew how to protect what was left of his humanity with that ice-cold man who never felt remorse. That man deserved the hell he was living in now.
Master allowed his gaze to drift over his princess, with her hourglass figure and wild, untamed hair. Her hair fell in a dark waterfall of waves around her face and down her back, reminding him of the way it looked spilling across his pillows or over his arms when he fucked her. She was worth it—worth every single second of the agony he would be facing after she was gone—because he had her now, that intensity of her single-minded devotion. He’d never thought he’d ever have such a thing in his lifetime.