Page 33 of Savage Fire

“I never want to see you again. To you, I am dead.”

“Tessa, never. I won’t accept that,” Fang growled, the color in his face returning. His gaze filling with sharp disbelief. “This isn’t over between us.”

She glared at him, her body vibrating with the need to do violence to him.

Rage rose up, blistering and poisonous, pushing back the rush of tears, allowing only bitter anger to bleed from her eyes.

“I hate you.”

She opened the door and hurried from under the portico, down the white gravel driveway, and onto the road. Fang didn’t follow.

In the Uber on the way to her condo, she was silent. The morning playing over and over again in her head, like a horror movie she couldn’t turn off.

It wasn’t until she was standing her in foyer, shaking, her lungs heaving with ragged breaths that she realized her shirt was soaked with her tears.

“Inever want to see you again. To you, I am dead….”

Those words. Those terrible, ugly, rotten, heart-shredding words. Words too similiar to ones he’d spoken from his own mouth seven years ago. And now, the impact was far more decimating. Because they’d come from someone so fucking precious to him, he couldn’t breathe for want of her. For missing her. For remembering with hideous clarity, the look of utter pain on her face. A pain far deeper than the pain he’d seen on her face right after getting fucking shot.

Wiping a rough hand down his face, Fang grunted at Davey, the prospect, who’d placed a steaming mug of coffee on the table in front of him. From all appearances, Davey had been on shift as the clubhouse gopher all night, which meant delivering coffee to the officers for their meeting was probably his last task of the night. He was probably headed out to sleep…or bang the ginger hang-around he’d been chatting with when Fang had come in around 3AM after a long night of throwing back tequila shots at Up to No Good. After Tessa had left, he hadn’t felt like dealing with his Bees, their comments about Tessa, or their questions. Instead, he’d headed to the club-owned bar downtown, got wasted, then sobered up enough to head to his room at the clubhouse and sleep for a couple of hours until he slunk his ass into Church.

Go with God, Davey,he thought, lifting the bitter black gold to his lips for a sip. Shit, the stuff tasted like tar, but it was hitting the spot.

His mental sendoff for Davey did nothing to alleviate the shooting-stabbing ache between his ears, nor the hollow, agonizing pain in his chest. In that moment, he couldn’t determine which hurt worse—his head or his heart.

Your heart, that too knowing, too honest voice inside of him answered.She left. She’s gone. You will never have another chance to be with her.

God-fucking-dammit!

The morning started shitty. Yes, he’d had shitty mornings before; he was a patched member of an MC, which meant he’d had more than his fair share of booze, bitches, and benders. But never—never—had he woken up the next day feeling as god awful as he’d felt that morning. And he knew exactly why. His bed was empty, when it was supposed to have a gorgeous blonde Amazon laying in it. His balls were supposed to be empty after a full night of hard fucking, and a few morning orgasms. He was supposed to finally have the woman he’d been desperate for in his arms. Tessa was finally supposed to be his. Fuckingfinally. But she’d taken his offer to be a member of his Hive, set it on fire, and left him to deal with the ashes.

After Tessa’s spectacular exit, his Bees had been in an uproar, demanding he go after her and tell her off for daring to tell him no. For daring to turn her nose up at their lifestyle choice. But he hadn’t gone after his Tessa, and not because he didn’t want to—God had he wanted to fling open the door, chase her ass down the driveway, and throw himself in the path of her Uber. But he hadn’t. Because he was a fucking coward. When she’d looked into his eyes, her gaze hard and yet filled with anguish and disbelief, he’d been cut off at the knees. Nothing in his life had hit him as hard as the look in her eyes when she’d told him to never talk to her again. That she dead to him.

“I hate you.”

And never in his life had he heard such terrifying words—and he’d lived in fear of Cartel violence his entire childhood. But nothing anyone in the Calderone Cartel could ever utter would be as paralyzingly frightening as the words his Tessa had spoken.

She hated him.

Hatedhim.

And he didn’t know how to recover from that.

He just knew he had to. Somehow.

He groaned, leaning back in his seat, and closing his eyes. The sunlight coming through the windows into the conference room burned his retinas. It was too fucking bright in there, and there was too much noise—all the officers stomping into the room, pulling out their chairs, dropping into them, and then proceeding to have loud conversations without a single consideration for their brother who was suffering the hangover of all hangovers…and it wasn’t even the bottle of tequila that had made it that bad. It was the constant barrage of thoughts. The image of the look on Tessa’s beautiful face when she realized who the women at his table were, and what he’d brought her there for. The haze of wetness over her gorgeous eyes as they filled with tears, hurt, and betrayal. He’d known there was a chance proud Tessa wouldn’t be happy with his offer, but he never believed she’d react that way—

Yes, you did. You were just too arrogant to acknowledge it.

Effectively, she’d torn herself from his life like his heart from his chest. And he had no one to blame but himself. His brothers had warned him—hell, he’d known, deep down, that Tessa wasn’t Hive material, but he’d been so fucking arrogant, so desperate to have her in any way he could, that he overlooked the most important thing about Tessa, his Fire….

She was commitment material.

After having been inside her, tasting her, hearing her moans and gasps and groans of pleasure, he was addicted. Like a fucking tweaker, he’d woken up craving what only Tessa could give him; the heat of her body, the softness of her flesh against his, the ecstasy of slipping inside her hot, wet pussy and filling her with his cum. He’d only had one incredible night with her, and she had ruined him for anyone else. Fuck. So much for the idea he would just insert her into his life without consequence.

“Alright, fuckers, get asses in seats, I don’t have all fucking day. And I’m assuming Stone and his brothers aren’t in the mood to chit chat,” Odin said, commanding the room easily.

Stone Dutchman was a massive, scary-looking motherfucker. At six-foot-five, the man was two inches taller than Fang, a few inches wider in the chest and shoulders, and looked more than capable of tearing boulders apart with his bare hands. Black hair, black eyes, and tatted from knuckle to neck, the Stonecutters MC president was intimidating as fuck, which was good for his allies. Not so good for his enemies.

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