Page 10 of Savage Heart

God, stop thinking about him. He can fuck whoever he wants. He always has.

Sucking in a breath, she knew she had to get out of the car. She refused to let Trouble think that he got to her, that his presence in her life bothered her. They were long over. His betrayal no longer stung. She was over it. Over him.

Now, to tell her heart and mind…andbodythat.

Fuck him for still being the sexiest asshole she’d ever seen. With his shoulder-length golden blond hair, striking green eyes, the laugh lines that crinkled just right when he smiled, the deep, delicious dimples that not even the perfectly scruffy beard on his face could hide. And…God…his body.

She jerked her head back, realizing where her mind was going.

Ugh. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t go there. He wasn’t hers anymore. Actually…he’d never been hers. She’d givenherself to him and he’d been handing out pieces of himself to whichever wet hole he’d wanted. Holes like Bonnie.

Holes like Amelia.

Aaaaand…she was done. Thinking about Amelia only ever made Liz want to chew glass.

Opening the car door and swinging her legs out—and grateful she was wearing her boss-bitch cream slacks, because showing her thick legs at an MC compound never felt right—she hurried toward the back of her gently used dark blue Escalade. She’d bought it that first month she’d started work at VIP, because she’d needed something big for carting around medical supplies, and safe for carting around her most precious cargo.

After grabbing her rolling case of supplies, she headed into the building. Mentally crossing her fingers, she hoped against hope thathewasn’t in the main room drinking or rubbing all over that club slut, Amelia.

Amelia.

Without thinking, she sneered. Damn, she hated Amelia, and it wasn’t because the woman was a club whore. Liz enjoyed spending time with Rosa and Daisy, two other clubwhores. She had no problem with the way they lived and what they did with the club brothers. Liz hated Amelia because Amelia was a bitch. Plain and simple. Rosa and Daisy were fun, sweet, and shared a little too much about what they did with the brothers, but they werealwayscareful tonottalk about what they did or had done with Trouble. Not that they knew she and Trouble had a….troubledhistory, but they could probably sense there was tension. It wasn’t like she hid her disgust at the man whenever he was around—and hewasaround. All the freaking time. It was like he had an “ex” radar that pinged whenever she crossed through the gates of the compound.

More like whoever was on gate duty texted him to tell him she was there. Like a warning that the bitch ex was on her way.

Thinking back tothatnight, the night she’d caught him and Bonnie together…yeah, nothing had changed among the brothers. They were still looking out for their VP, not giving a shit if they made things difficult for her.

Which was why she was surprised he wasn’t lounging in the corner, waiting for her. Waiting to glare at her, or smirk at her, or just stare at her without a single emotion showing on his too fucking gorgeous face. And sometimes…Amelia was there, too, straddling him, or mouth fucking him, or on her knees in front of him, her hand on his belt buckle—

Ugh.

Aaaaand…she was thinking about that slattern again. It made sick sense, though, since Trouble and Amelia were never far from each other, it wasn’t a leap that thinking about one would make the other come knocking on her brain.

Knowing she was working on borrowed time, and remembering she had a mother-daughter date with her baby girl that evening and she didn’t want to ruin her chance at a fun evening by having a run in with her asshole baby-daddy, she hurried through the main room, her red-soled stilettos click-clacking on the hardwood floor as she ignored the looks from Slick and Dragon, and headed toward the hallway leading to the new club medical clinic.

When Odin had approached her with the offer to be the club doctor, and she’d demanded an actual medical room, Odin had come through big time. He’d ordered the rarely used bottom floor office space to be ripped out and remodeled into a pretty freaking awesome medical exam room. There were two beds, medical storage for triage supplies, an x-ray machine, and a high-tech medicine cabinet, complete with state-of-the-art biometric lock. To get to the narcotics inside, you had to have authorization in the form of a thumbprint. The only people with access to the hard drugs were her, Odin, and Trouble. Thecabinet was another demand of hers. Odin wanted a complete medical space, which meant high-powered pain meds on hand in case of broken bones, bullet wounds, and the like. She’d pushed back; her experiences as a doctor—and fucking commonsense—telling her that having opioids anywhere near hard partying bikers and their friends was a recipe for disaster. Odin was pissed that she’d had so little faith in his brothers, but she’d persisted. He’d finally caved and installed the cabinet, requiring that he and his VP had access as well.

She grudgingly trusted Odin to not do anything stupid—he was with Skathi, who’d literally kick his ass if he turned into a junkie. Her trust in Trouble, however, was about as deep as a puddle, and just as murky.

Inside the medical room, she moved to the supplies closet, which was as large as a walk-in pantry. There were ten deep shelves, each shelf labeled with the supplies it held, which made it easy for her to catalog and reorder what was needed.

Dragging the rolling case behind her, she opened it and got to work refilling the empty or nearly empty shelves. As she worked, her mind slipped right back to where she never liked going—to Erik. Despite the pain, the humiliation, and the years…he was rarely far from her thoughts, no matter how hard she fought to be rid of him. He’d marked her. And not just because he’d given her a daughter.

Ten years ago, she’d fallen in love with him—love at first sight—and she’d spent months with him, that love growing, deepening. He’d marked her irrevocably, her heart, her soul, her body, her future. And she was a fool.

A fool who never got over him. Over how he’d made her feel those months when things were good.

When things were a lie.

And she would never get over how she felt the night it had all shattered at her feet.

“Surprised to see you up and around,” a voice rumbled from behind her, violently pulling her from her thoughts. It was a voice she knew intimately. A voice that, at one time, would whisper across her ear as the man wielding it made love to her.

Jerking upright, Liz forced indifference onto her face, into her body.

Never let him see….

Sighing, she turned to face the man she’d once loved more than life itself.

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