Page 151 of Wife Number One

KARA

ONE HOUR EARLIER…

My head spun. The room moved in dizzying circles, and my stomach churned.

Men touched me. Fingers sliding up my legs. Tucking notes into the elastic of my underwear.

I jerked away sharply, teetering on the edge of the table and then stepping down off it on wobbly legs.

Amber caught my wrist. “Hey. You okay?”

I wasn’t. “He’s a liar,” I mumbled drunkenly. “And Hayden is alive.”

Amber had been drinking too, but clearly holding it better than I was. “All men are liars,” she told me. “Just don’t expect more from them and then you won’t be disappointed.” She pointed at the men on the couch, watching us with their hands down their pants. “See? All I expect from men like this is a good time and enough money to pay my rent. Then nobody gets hurt.”

She straddled one of the biker’s laps, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Hey, Thunder? You’re going to put a hundred down my bra before I let you fuck me. Right?”

He took the money from his pocket and pressed it between her cleavage.

She glanced back at me. “Take your pick, honey. Hawk ain’t worth getting upset over when there’s a whole room full of men here just dying to fuck your practically virginal pussy.”

I couldn’t listen to it anymore. Couldn’t take the jeers and the taunts from the men. There were suddenly too many of them. Too many unfamiliar faces, all of them seemingly focused on me.

I’d felt safe here for weeks.

Now suddenly that bubble had burst.

The door to the club’s “church” was still closed, Hawk behind it somewhere.

Along with Fang and War.

They’d all lied.

Everyone but Hayden. He’d done bad things. But at least he wasn’t a liar.

I didn’t know what time it was, but he’d be waiting for me at the back gates by now, surely.

Queenie and Aloha were all over each other as I stumbled past, her hips grinding over his while he drank from his beer bottle.

“Hey, sugar!” she called. “You enjoying your first Slayers’ party?”

“I don’t feel well,” I mumbled. “Going to my cabin.”

It wasn’t a lie. But I wasn’t sure if I felt sick because of the amount of alcohol I’d poured down my throat in the last hour, or if it was because even through my drunken haze, I knew the decision I made tonight was one that couldn’t be undone.

I was choosing between Hawk and Hayden. The man I’d spent weeks with, who I was falling for day by day, and the man who’d saved me all those years ago. Who I had a connection with like nothing I’d ever felt before. One so strong, I’d named my daughter for him.

If I chose wrong, there was no coming back.

Hawk wasn’t the sort of man who would just forgive me if I left with Hayden.

He was the sort of man who would declare me dead to him and never look my way again.

Even though he’d lied, my heart didn’t care. My heart only remembered the soft touches. The sweet words he saved only for me. The fire only he could ignite in my body.

The way he’d started to put me back together after Josiah’s years of abuse and Alice’s death had ripped me to shreds.

I didn’t know how to walk away.

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