Page 113 of Lamb

Wolf’s chest heaved with lumbered breaths, tremoring with rage and exhaustion. His hair was wild and loose, clinging to his sweat-slicked skin. Brown eyes glowered down at his vice president, hellfire burning within them.

“Fuck you,” Wolf spat.

With one last scathing glare, the man turned and walked away.

The Red Sea parted for the giant, swallowing his wide form into the ocean of people before it disappeared. Onlookers stole glances at Lamb’s limp body collapsed against the picnic bench before dispersing, leaving the two of us alone and abandoned in the car park.

I stared at the picnic bench, at Lamb as he winced and jostled his bruised and battered body, questions that had been smothered now bubbling to the surface. They struggled to find form, confusion and chaos causing interference.

“What just … happened?” I blinked, looking at him, half-dead, and then to the doorway where his opponent had vanished.

Lamb lifted a weak arm, draping his hand over his eyes, and I watched in horror as the corners of his mouth began to turn, twisting into a smile.

“Are you okay?” I moved next to him, my hands hovering in the air, unsure what to do or what to touch. “Did you hit your head? Do you have a concussion?”

Please, let it be a concussion.

“I’m beat.” Lamb chuckled, the noise raspy and crisp between staggered breaths.

“Yeah, you had the seven bells smacked out of you,” I quipped, disappointed to see it wasn’t a concussion. The man was just insane. “Was there not a more prideful way for you to lose?”

The hand shielding his face slipped away, the smirk flickering for just a second, away from humour and into a sternness that captured my eyes in his. The warmth had disappeared, and the robot inside looked back.

“I didn’t lose.”

“What?”

The robot powered down, and Lamb’s smile fluttered back into place as he looked up to the bright blue sky above, a rarity in the approaching winter.“I didn’t lose.”

For a moment, a vision popped into my mind—the moment Lamb had pressed his face against Wolf’s. The grapple that had lasted too long for an attack, but too short for a hug.

I leaned over, my shadow darkening Lamb’s face. I grabbed his wrist, moved his arm, and held his eyes.

“What did you say to him?” I whispered, tracing his long, pale eyelashes flickering with the movements of his eyes. They jumped back and forth between mine as I stared down into the machine.

Lamb jerked faster than I could react.

Lips pressed against mine, warmth rushing over my cold skin as a hand latched around the back of my neck, blocking my escape.

I tasted the sweat of his skin and the iron of his blood. It was both disgusting and stimulating as I sunk into the powerful, prehistorical pull, danger alarms screaming in my brain, silenced by his firm, commanding lips.

When he let go, that smile stayed fixed on his split lip. “A secret.”

I’d almost forgotten the question as Lamb’s answer permeated my ears.

He slid around me with an ease an injured man should not have, hopping up onto his feet with pep and wandering back to the clubhouse.

I turned, staring at his wide, blank back for a moment, unsure how to feel about the satisfied look on his face between the blood and the brewing bruises. Lamb was always up to something, that much was guaranteed. But there was something off about this. Something different.

Something dangerous.

Ihad a new home.

The corner of the clubroom bar had become my safe space. It was far from prying eyes and out of the way of anyone who would think better of picking a fight while I nursed my lukewarm lemon water. There were not many openly hostile to me, but the blizzard that plagued the club in my presence still felt icy cold down to my bones. Silence was my only company; neither a word nor a gesture was thrown my way by any club member no matter how much time moved. I would see millennia pass before they would even begin to thaw.

It had been a week since I had been ejected from Lamb’s house and locked down in the clubhouse, and even if my social position remained static, my body had changed. My tremors had lessened, and my headaches were further apart. Most nights, sleep still eluded me, and even when it took, nightmares often followed. My body was recovering, but my mind still had some catching up.

Lamb’s confidence in me outweighed my own, as he’d grown comfortable leaving me alone in the club while he went out to finish various deals and business matters. Putting his work on hold while he had plotted and successfully managed to kidnap me had caused a backlog he was now catching up on.

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