Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
“Fuck,” Canyon muttered as his body tensed up.
For a brief moment, I worried that I had stepped on his toes. I wasn’t the best dancer, but then when had I been given much time to learn to dance? When one did not have a boyfriend, they didn’t get to dance very often.
He stopped dancing, and my eyes flew open to stare up into his rugged, chiseled face. Even the burn scar on his neck, which looked like someone had tried to brand him, was sexy. There was that swagger that few men had, but Canyon had managed to be blessed with it in abundance.
His jaw was clenched tightly as he stared over my head at someone or something behind me. I started to turn around, but his hands grabbed my shoulders and held me in place. He barely glanced down at me, but the brief moment that he did, I saw the apology or perhaps concern in his hazel eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as his grip began to hurt me somewhat, not that I would complain.
I wasn’t one to draw attention to myself. I preferred not to annoy anyone. My best friend, Pepper, had said that she was going to shake that out of me one day. She hated that about me, but it was just because she loved me and felt as if I let others walk all over me.
“You need to go to the back, call your momma to come get you, and leave,” he said in a low voice.
“What?” I asked, blinking in confusion.
Call my momma? To come pick me up at a bar? No way in heck. I wasn’t about to send my momma into an early grave. She’d be madder than a wet hen, and it didn’t matter that I was twenty-one years old—I was not telling her I was at a bar. I had worked two jobs for over two years to be able to afford my own apartment just to get her out of my business.
“Your momma, Dolly. Call her. You need to leave. Now.”
Typically, I would do as I had been told. Not pitch a fit and be difficult. But he was asking something of me I could not do. Not today or in fifteen years. At no point in my life was it gonna be okay to tell my momma to come pick me up at a place like this. I could, however, call Pepper. She’d come and get me.
“Okay,” I replied. “But my phone is in my purse, and I left it at the booth with Bolt.”
Bolt was one of his friends, he let Canyon boss him around. Which was why he was watching my purse—Canyon had told him to.
“Fuck,” he growled.
His body had gotten so tense that I started to apologize for being a problem when he moved me over and then stepped in front of me, shoving me behind him.
I stared at his back, not sure if he now wanted me to stay here or leave.
“You lost, Abe?”
I didn’t recognize the threatening sneer in Canyon’s tone. I shivered. That didn’t sound like the man I knew at all.
“Tread carefully,” the other voice replied.
Whoever he was, I couldn’t see him due to Canyon being six foot two, and even with my heels on, I was only five-six. And oddly enough, the other guy’s first name was my best friend’s surname.
“Don’t think you can come inside my territory and make threats,” Canyon said, holding out his arms, as if to show him something. “This place is packed with Crowns.”
A low, amused chuckle came from the other man, and I tried to peer around Canyon’s body to see who that voice belonged to. There was something familiar about it. It felt as if I knew that voice.
“Perhaps prison slowed your already-addled brain,” the man said in a deep drawl.
I stopped trying to see him then. My heart began to speed up, and my eyes swung back to the leather vest covering Canyon’s back. Had he said prison? As in Canyon had been in prison?
“The building is surrounded by Judgment, and the parking lot is filled with the rest. Did you really think I wouldn’t come for you when they let your sorry ass out?”
My hand flew to my mouth as I covered the gasp. This was bad. My eyes scanned the area that I could see. Men stood with their hands on the guns at their hips. As if, at any minute, the place was going to erupt in gunshots.
“You really want to do this? After five years?” Canyon asked.
“Yeah, it seems I do,” the man replied.
He seemed much more relaxed about this entire thing. Although I couldn’t see him, his voice never rose. The tone didn’t change. He could have been having a polite conversation.
A gunshot rang out then, and I screamed before grabbing Canyon’s vest and burying my face in it.