Page 25 of The Oath We Take

Ember crosses her arms in front of her chest. “So, why are you here, not Dad?”

“As I explained, he was still in the fucking tank when I left. Plus, your dad’s got shit to deal with in Sturgis. Business. You got camera footage?”

She rolls her eyes. Again.

“Defiant little girls don’t last long around me.”

“From what I hear, no one lasts long around you. Perhapsyouare the problem.”

Her baiting does something to my cock. Fucking love brat taming. I place my hand around the back of her neck and squeeze firmly. Her pupils go wide at the action. “Don’t test me, Ember. Not today.”

I release her, though what I really want to do is tug her to me and kiss that mouth of hers. Perhaps even test how far she’d let me go.

8

EMBER

It must be a curse.

Or I was a horrible person in another life.

Because there is no way on God’s green earth that Atom could be the only man on the planet who really makes me feel things.

Not just tingly things between my legs, but emotionally deep things. Like, in every lifetime, we were meant to be together.

Soul mates even.

I had a really good time with Rocco. It was fun. We had a lot in common. He’s career-focused but starting to feel like something more is missing in his life…like I do.

The guy stood there and took a beating for me.

Yet my heart never raced the way it did when I opened the door to find Atom standing there, looking like a total snack with the dirt of the road ingrained in the lines of his face.

While Rocco smelled of bodywash and sharp cologne, Atom smells musky in a way that bizarrely makes my mouth water.

And that stunt he just pulled on my neck? There’s got to be a moral code somewhere that says men who turned you down, then spent years making you feel invisible around them, shouldn’t have the right to do that to you anymore.

Yeah. It must be karma from some epic wrong I committed four lifetimes ago.

But…he came for me. He heard there was trouble, and from the look of him, rode straight here to check on me.

“Fine. Come in. The footage is on my laptop in my apartment. Wait here. I’ll bring it down.”

I move through the bar, grateful my team did such a good job of putting the place to rights at the end of the previous evening. I popped down here at one point and told them all to leave via the front of the bar, and I offered to pay for a ride for anyone who needed it. Staff safety is one of my biggest concerns.

When I get to the door at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the apartment, I feel his presence behind me.

“You should be locking this internal door every time you come to the bar,” he says.

“The front and rear doors to the bar are locked. They’d have to break through those first. Plus, there is another door at the top of these stairs too. That one is definitely locked.” I look over my shoulder at him. “I told you to wait in the bar.”

He shrugs. “Not happening, sweetheart.”

Urgh. I refuse to melt in a puddle at the bare minimum, but…seriously…sweetheart.

“I’ll tell my father you pushed your way into my apartment.”

He leans closer to me. “And I’ll tell him you objected to having the club interfere with your business and refused to hand over the tapes. We all know who he’ll believe.”

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