Page 29 of Gunner

The third, red velvet cupcakes.

Then tuna casserole, lasagna, blueberry cheesecake, lemon bars.

There won’t be anything tonight. The prospects at the door doing guard duty were instructed to send her away and refuse the food. Something they’ll find disappointing if she does show up, as will the rest of the men here who feasted on the best baking and cooking they’ve had in a good long time.

Their words.

I didn’t touch any of it. I couldn’t bear to know I’d never taste her cooking again. She asked me to leave her alone and I will. I need to go, even if she begged me to stay I couldn’t. I can’t endanger her any longer. I broke my own rules, punched straight through that barrier I erected. I don’t know why she’s trying to draw me back, but it’s even more reason to leave Hart and never return to a town I shouldn’t have stepped foot into in the first place.

If anyone bothered looking me in the eye tonight, they’d see the same bright, cold blue, but they’d probably note that tonight, they’re not dead and empty. Tonight, they’re broken.

All of this hurts like a motherfucker. It burns like gas and fire and is agony like the aftermath.

I can take it.

There’s no alternative.

I lean a little bit harder against the brick wall than I normally do. My eyes are wet from the smoke bothering them, but I still scan the room, taking in the thick wood beams, the hardwood floors, the bricks, the tables, the chairs, the people. I memorized the details long ago in photographs mapped on my brain, but one last time and all. It’s a real thing.

The smoke swirls at the entrance, parting around an apparition. A goddess of leather and lace, knee high stiletto boots and fishnet. A ghost summoned straight out of the sludges of my black sinful soul to taunt and torment me.

I truly believe that what I’m seeing is just for me alone. Diletta. Not the sweet little kindergarten teacher with cutesy outfits, but a sleek, vixen, predatory in her own right.Scarlet lipstick, dark eyeliner, smoky eyes, an aggressive slash of bangs over her sleek bob, curves no longer understated, but aggressively encased in a leather miniskirt, her breasts overflowing from a black lace bra with a fishnet shirt overtop, five inches taller than she normally is because of the boots that climb past her knees and hug her sexy golden legs.

My dark queen.

Mine.

But then, heads turn. Men gape. The women give guarded, wary looks and edge closer to the men they’re with tonight. Darts freeze in hands, pool cues halt mid-shot.

My blood normally runs cold. I don’t have to raise my voice to be heard. I can stop a man with a single, deadly look.

As it slams into my brain with all the subtleness of a car crash that this apparition is indeed real, Diletta like I’ve never seen her or imagined her, a woman bathed in sin, sex, and anarchy, a red haze coats my vision.

Jonathan, who just patched in recently and doesn’t even have a club name yet, happens to be the first poor fucker in my line of sight. He’s gaping at Diletta, practically slobbering. I stalk past him and miraculously, I don’t deprive him of his eyeballs. I do slam my fist straight into his face, knuckles meeting his jaw and sending him sprawling.

I no longer have a cut. Mine got wrecked, no amount of dry cleaning would get the blood out. Tyrant was going to get me a new one, but I told him not to bother since I was leaving. I just have my black Henley on tonight.

The crowd parts for me fucking. Fast.

Men get their heads turned right around or divert their eyes. The other half land on me. I rip my shirt over my head so fast it practically tears, grasp Diletta by the arm, and shove it over her head, covering her half naked body.

“What the fuck?” I hiss in her ear, inhaling her sweet, intoxicating scent. I’m too close. Far too close to this. I’m leaving.

But.

But this is my woman in here, mine, wearing nothing more than a goddamn bra and a skirt that’s short enough to show her round ass cheeks at the bottom. She walked in here dressed like a club whore, which would explain how she got past the prospects at the door. She’s not the sweet girl bearing inexplicable baking. She’s a sexy, sultry goddess who demanded to be let in and they thought, as with the other women, that she belonged. Was invited. There to be taken on her own terms, but taken nonetheless.

More red. The room is painted in it. Drenched. The furniture drips with it. I can’t breathe. I’m gonna stroke out over this. I won’t need to leave because I’ll be dead.

I might not be much of anything anymore, but I do have immaculate control. Usually. It snaps now, an inferno of fire spreading through me, eating at my insides like it once licked over my skin.

The first man to reach me is Bullet. He saw Diletta at the cookout and on her doorstep that morning they picked me up, but I’ve refused to answer any questions. To their credit, no one has asked, other than Tyrant checking in to make sure that I was okay after going AWOL that night.

I’m barely human. It’s not me who grabs Bullet by the shoulder and gets my hand around his throat, driving him into the wall. I squeeze hard against his hot skin, his pulse hammering maniacally against my grip.

“What the fuck! Gunner!” Raiden comes at me from behind. He latches both arms around my middle and tries to haul me off.

It takes Atlas, Decay, Scythe, and Reaper to finally pull me off Bullet and I still come away swinging, a mad beast, gnashing my teeth at all of them. Atlas gets up in my face with his pretty boy mug. My blood surges with violence. I snap my teeth at him, but can’t do much more because my arms are pinned behind my back.

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