Total pages in book: 13
Estimated words: 12073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 60(@200wpm)___ 48(@250wpm)___ 40(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 12073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 60(@200wpm)___ 48(@250wpm)___ 40(@300wpm)
He outright laughs at my question. “They’re clean.”
I open my mouth to ask him again about the women, but then slam it shut. It’s none of my business. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.
“And I haven’t had a twinkie in here – or anywhere else – in a long while.”
I don’t respond to him and instead of looking at him across the pillow, I close my eyes. The silence is comfortable. That is until he asks me the question I’ve been dreading.
“Tell me about your husband.”
I don’t open my eyes. With them closed, I feel a sense of security and I need that more than anything when I talk about him.
“We got married when I was eighteen. The first year was okay, but somewhere along the line, he got mixed up with drugs and the wrong people. He started beating me. He beat me more times than I could count. We live in a small town and people at the hospital even looked the other way when it was obvious he was beating me. Nobody goes against Cameron. Well, anyway, he had created a pattern. He would beat me, usually until I passed out, and then he would leave the house and be gone for hours. I guess he thought I wasn’t able to go anywhere so he never worried about me leaving. Those were the only times I was ever alone. Anytime else, he was with me, or had someone with me. So, this last time, I forced myself to get up. I stole one of his cars, drove two towns over and got on a bus for here.”
He asks me a few more questions about his name, his work and the name of the town. I answer him truthfully, but I also worry about him getting involved.
“Look, Jeremy, I don’t want you to do anything. That’s not what this is about. I just need somewhere to stay until I can get on my feet again. That’s all. He doesn’t know anything about you and he won’t come here.”
Sniper
I can hear it in her voice that she honestly believes that. Maybe that’s good though. I want her to feel safe, and as long as she’s here, she will be.
She doesn’t realize that a man like him, one that beats women, is not going to be okay with her running from him. It would be easy to trace where she went on a bus. And this town is small too, not that a lot of people would go against the Exiled Guardians. But there’s still a possibility he will be able to find her.
When the silence is weighing on me, I realize I don’t want her to go to sleep talking about her husband. “So, in here, or just the two of us, I’m Jeremy. Out there, I’m Sniper.”
“Oh.” She pulls the covers up farther across her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I can call you Sniper all the time.”
“No. No, I like when you call me Jeremy,” I admit to her. I can’t remember the last time I heard my birth name before she called me that earlier today. But from her, it just sounds right.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t know a lot about motorcycle gangs,” she starts.
“Clubs. We’re not a gang. It’s a club.”
“Oh, okay, so I don’t know a lot about motorcycle clubs. Earlier when you told your club that I was yours and under club protection, well, that seemed pretty heavy. Not only to me, but by the looks on some of their faces, them too. What does that mean?”
Fuck, I should have known she wouldn’t miss that. And although I’m still working out how I feel, I’m not good at putting feelings into words. I’ve never had to before. My longest relationship has been when I let a woman sleep in my bed overnight. And even that hardly ever happened.
All I know is that I’ve never felt this territorial before. I’ve never claimed a woman before and she’s right: surprise was on their faces. I just knew that I wasn’t going to stand by and wait for someone else to claim her. Ever since I saw her curvy body in Brick’s arms, I wanted her. But it’s a different kind of want. It makes my heart pound in my ears and blood throb in my veins.
But do I tell her all that? She’s here, under my protection, and I don’t want to scare her off. I shrug my shoulders in the dark room. “You’ve been through enough. You don’t need the men, even though they’re good men, fighting over you. I declared you as mine. You’re off limits now. You can heal… take time and get better.”
“Oh,” she mumbles.
I try to look at her face, but the shadows have it hidden from me. Was that disappointment I heard in her voice?