Page 64 of Rugged

Mitch Chapman was a shifter?A guy who kidnapped and trafficked women? Jesus, what did Lyssa get herself into?

This was all so much to assimilate. First to find out that Johnny was a wolf. Then to hear he was an enforcer. So Johnny was a bounty hunter of sorts? One who hunted bad guy shifters and brought them, in and when convicted, killed them instead of handing them over to the police to be put in jail?

“Wait.” I put my hand on his chest. Something cold had crept into my chest. Stiffened it. Made my breath short. I tried to identify the source of my disquiet. I pushed up, my long hair swirling over my shoulders.

I knew Johnny had some anger management issues. I saw it firsthand at Cody’s. He told me about killing his sister’s attacker. I knew that, he told me in his truck that night, and I’d told him I loved him.

I did. I didn’t seem to really care that he killed people for a living or even that he was a fucking wolf.

But something didn’t sit right with me on this.

Then I landed on it. What felt like a betrayal. “So this whole time you were working a case?”

What I was freaking out about was that he used me. That I was here in his bed because he was waiting for me to hear from Chapman. To have me help him find the guy. No, he had used me to help him. He’d wanted me to call him, and I’d pretended to do so.

Johnny’s brows came down in confusion. “Well, yeah. What do you mean?”

“I mean, I was just part of a job. This was all to get at Mitch?”

His eyes flared with understanding. “No, no, no, baby. It wasn’t like that.”

“If he’d been at his ranch, you’d have killed him?” I asked.

“Only if he resisted. We had enforcers around the country go to his various homes and businesses to find him. If he’d been at his ranch, I’d have brought him in for his trial with the Council.”

See? I didn’t really care about that. But I was spiralingbecause I’d thought this was real. That what we had between us, what we shared, was actuallysomething.

I met his dark eyes. “Right after the smoke alarm thing, you asked if he was at the ranch. I told you no.”

He nodded, gave me a reassuring smile. “That’s right. See, you were safe.”

Safe? Maybe from being trafficked. But my heart?

“You seduced me to stay close. To keep tabs on Chapman. You were using me.” I waved my hand over my body. “That was why you kept it all a secret. Why you didn’t tell me about shifters. You were only forced to tell me about them, about what you are, because you bit me.”

His eyes widened in dawning horror. Yeah, I figured it out.

“No. Baby, no.”

I didn’t listen. Didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say.

“That’s why you stayed that night, hoping he’d come back. Have a little fun with the caretaker while you waited.”

“Lys,” he warned.

I pointed. “Don’t Lys me.” Because I wasn’t Lyssa. I never was. How did she do this? Go off and have a fling with a guy and not get her heart involved? God, I told him I loved him!

If I’d just been like Lyssa and kept it fun and easy,then this wouldn’t have mattered. So what if he used me for access to Chapman? I was using him for something wild and fun.

But dumb me, dumb Emma, got her heart involved. And broken.

Because all the while he was feeding me lines about being the one, that I was his, while he was giving me so many orgasms, he was using me. Pumping me for information. Thinking I really was Lyssa and using my connection and contact to the guy he wanted. Keeping me close as his “source.”

He hadn’t said he loved me back.

“You used me.”

“What? No.”

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