Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
My hair stuck to my dewy face, the air thick and humid even with the laboring air conditioning unit that was situated in the corner.
I sipped the beer, grateful for the cold, bubbling liquid sliding down my throat.
“I had fun,” I told Julian honestly.
He raised a bushy brow. “Fun?” he repeated. “You won’t think that by the end of the week.”
It was my turn to raise my brow.
He took a sip of his beer. “You’re the only person other than me who can make coffee correctly in this town, maybe this state. I’m not letting you go without a fight,” he snickered. “I can pay you well above minimum wage. Business is good, and I overcharge for the coffee because everyone else does.” He grinned. “You’re in town for a while, aren’t ya?”
I thought about that while I took another long sip. The plan had been to hop from town to town so I was harder to trace. The thought of leaving Garnett made me feel vaguely sick, though. I hadn’t encountered anything like this place. Hadn’t felt a sense of belonging like this… ever.
Then there was Swiss.
The biker who had rocked my world last night.
No, he blew me right off of my world. I’d landed somewhere else completely foreign and alien, and I liked it.
Choosing to stay here because of a man was dangerous. Reckless.
But leaving somehow felt fatal.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m in town for a while.”
SWISS
She had a kid.
A grown kid.
One thing she’d said last night that I’d been marinating on. Well, one of the many things she’d said from last night I was marinating on. Among the many other things that I was marinating on including her managing to leave without me waking up.
I was in a shitty mood in general, but the kid thing was what I was ruminating on.
It pissed me off.
Not because it turned me off her. Not because I didn’t want to have to deal with another man’s child. No.
It was because the likelihood of her wanting to do it all over again was pretty damn slim considering she’d spent eighteen years being a mother.
The thought hit me square in the ribs.
I wanted kids.
Wanted another chance.
I’d vowed to myself not to think of that weight I carried around. The one that never left even after they took our dead daughter out of my arms. Every single thing I’d done after that moment was in pursuit of something to distract me from that weight. To erase the image of that.
Which was why I never repeated fucks. Never gave women the wrong idea. I was on the hunt. For the woman who would submit to me, fuck dirty, accept every inch of my depravity yet be Old Lady material. I did it because I knew I’d never find it. Never have that chance again.
I’d found that in Kate. The second my eyes found her. It was an ancient instinct, I supposed. Or something not of this world. I didn’t give a fuck about the why of it all, just knew she was mine from the moment I saw her.
Knew it from the first moment my cock landed inside her.
I knew I’d have to go slow because it would scare her. Terrify her. I sensed something in her, a skittishness. She wasn’t completely sure of herself. Of her place in the world. It made sense, considering what she told me about her life before.
I needed to go slow with her. As much as I was fucking aching to claim her in every way I could, have my name on her body, put my kid inside her, I knew there was a risk she might go running.
Although she wouldn’t make it far.
I’d chase her to the ends of the earth.
But I had time.
“Brother?”
I jerked up to see Hansen staring at me. Something in his gaze told me this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to address me. I was sitting at the bar nursing a beer.
“We got a job,” he told me. “Or we’ve got some payback to deal to a bunch of low level gang bangers trying to fuck us over on a gun deal,” he expanded. “Figured you’d want to be in on this one.”
He would’ve figured right in any other scenario. It was either me or Hades the club went to when there were people to be punished. Sure, any brother would deal out vengeance in an instant, but it was Hades and I who truly enjoyed it. Who made a fucking art out of it.
If I hadn’t met her last night, I would’ve been chomping at the bit for this.
“Nah,” I said, abandoning the half full beer. “I’ve got something to do.”
The shock on Hansen’s face was amusing, but I was too far gone to appreciate it.
I was going to get my woman.
Chapter Five