Page 64 of Wolf

“I had to make sure you didn’t end up with any dangerous nutters,” she whined at me in a pitifuldefense.

“Dangerous nutters?” I let out a loudlaugh.

Well, she has a point, I thought, thinking about it. Jax, specifically. They were all weirdos. Dangerous, too. Not to me,though.

“They good to you?” Ash’s voice suddenly turned serious, and I was caught off guard as she lay there, looking at me, her glare, even through her sunglasses,intense.

“Yeah,” I said honestly. “They’regood.”

“Good,” she said. “I won’t shoot themagain,then.”

“Too right, you won’t,” I growled. “Only I get toshootthem.”

“Tell me, then,” she said softly, lying back down, head propped up by a tanned arm. “Tell me thestory,”

“All right,” I said, getting comfy, kicking my feet up on the bed and propping up a pillow. “Once upon a time...,” I began, watching Ash roll her eyes. And then I told her everything in detail this time, not brief like during our last meetups. I told her about how I got to Fellpeak. How I joined the Black Angels. And how Wolf and I cametobe.

And Ash listened quietly thewholetime.

She didn’t smile or joke. She simply listened to me as I told mystory.

And when I finished, we both curled up in bed and fell asleep next to each other for the first time in alongtime.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Wolf

To saytensions were high would have been anunderstatement.

Ash sat at the bar, her head turning as she overlooked the room through her dark sunglasses. As I assessed her from my leather seat on the furthest end of the room, I noticed how her gaze didn’t linger on the knife marks in the doors, nor the bloodstains that we hadn’t managed to get off the paint, nor the big and burly brothers who usually drew attention. No, it was focusing on the cracks in the walls, the slight lift of some of the floor boards, and the precise order of the alcohol lined up on the shelves; a bottle of Jack Daniels inparticular.

I must not have been the only one watching, because Lamb reached up to the shelf, lifted the bottle from its place, and broke the seal on the unopened bottle. He set a glass in front of Ash and poured a double measure before pushing ittowardher.

I waited for her to take the glass, and sodidLamb.

She didn’t take it. Instead, we watched as she reached down into the backpack she had apparently stored at Anna’s house before coming to her rescue—which Anna had sent a brother to go collect, compared to last time—and unzipped the tattered thing, reached in, and pulled out a glassbottle.

She uncapped it, put the Jack Daniels bottle to her lips, and took a long mouthful before continuing to peruse the minute details oftheroom.

I expected Lamb to annoy her about it like he would if it had been anything else. But ever since her arrival, Ash hadn’t been the only one on guard. Lamb may not have been looking at her directly, but his attention was glued to her. The calculative air about him that he normally hid was on full display as he took the abandoned glass, downed the whiskey, and put the bottle of Jack back in its rightfulplace.

He had barely put the bottle back before Sweets leaned over the bar, her chest almost falling out of her little skimpy shirt. “Lamb,” she purred, flipping her long blonde hair, drawing his attention. Lamb turned slowly and leaned his hips back against the shelves, folding his arms over his chest as he looked Sweets straight in the eye, not giving her tits a singleglance.

He crooked a blond eyebrow at her, taunting her to tryharder.

That was the Lamb I knew. Seeing his playful albeit sadistic side come out of the muted coldness relieved the slight restlessness inside of me. It had been there the second my eyes had landed on Ash, and I hadn’t been able to shake it since. The skin of my leg ached in memory of the gunshot wound in my leg. It was barely an ache, a flesh wound like she had said, and didn’t bother my walking like I had expected, despite having been shot only adayago.

I had thought Anna was wild when I’d first seen her. Now I was beginning to see that she wasn’t the only one. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know whotaughtwhom.

Thinking of Anna made me realize that she wasn’t there. My eyes scoured across the clubroom like lightning, and I knew for sure she wasn’t in the bedroom nor my office after she had stained my expensive oak desk because she was pissyatme.

An unwarranted growl left my lips, and the noise drew attention from a few of the passing girls, all of them skittering quickly out of my line ofsight.

I looked up, seeing Ash almost completely done with her bottle of Jack in the five minutes I wasn’t glaring holes into her, and I was sure she was a little unsteady. I looked to Lamb, wondering if he would take the bottle away from her, but noticed that he had long since abandoned the bar and joined Pretty on the couch, along with Sweets, Ember, and Georgia. He had probably lost interest in herafterall.

Just as my gaze left Lamb, I spotted one of the weekender’s old lady walk in Ash’s direction. I recognized the tall, busty brunette as Moon’s old lady of about two weeks—Michelle? Misty?—as she propped her hands on her hips, stopping in frontofAsh.

It wasn’t hard to hear her snap even on the other side of the room. “You need to stop perving on my old man,” she hissed, flipping her hairather.

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