Page 32 of Bullet

“With a custom paint job that is no less exciting than your bikes,” Willa fires back. “To me, at any rate.”

“That’s right. To each their own,” Bullet agrees easily.

The pink car talk has bled the tension right out of me. I don’t know if that was intentional on his part or not, but I do notice theway his eyes keep flicking back to me, as if to check that I’m not going to fall over.

“Are you really going to come spend the night with us for real? We only have two bedrooms, but I’m sure Lynette would feel so much safer with you close by.”

“Willa!” I hiss in her ear, grabbing her hand and pressing my thumb into her palm, not hard, but as a warning.

“Yes, I’ll be staying. The couch will be more than fine. It’s not like I’ll be sleeping.”

“The couch sucks.” Willa tugs away and shoots me her most innocent expression. “The house is tiny. It’s an apartment-sized sectional. You probably shouldn’t sit on it. It would likely break.” She whispers under her breath, right in my ear as she passes by me, already walking back to her car, “I think you’d enjoy it if he broke other things.”

While Willa gets behind the wheel and waits, and while I climb back into my car and finally hang up my phone, the bikers start peeling off, heading in a group down the opposite side of the road, back to Hart. I watch Willa’s face as they pull out, slightly exasperated at the look of awe, wonder, and no small amount of thrill at the thunderous bikes and the leather-clad beasts who race off on them like demons driving their dark chariots into the black night.

I know my face must have looked pretty much the same when I pulled out of the compound, but unlike my sister, I’m not going to spend the next few weeks while we are basically in hiding slash captivity, flirting with outlaws. I’ll admit that they might be okay after all, but that doesn’t mean I want my sister getting attached to one.

And I certainly don’t want Bullet to breakother things.

Not my will, not my mind, and certainly not my body.

I might have changed my mind about the club and the men in it based on their willingness to go to bat for us tonight without even knowing us. That’s a damn generous thing to do, and I know it was done without asking for anything in return. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to allow anything Willa said to me about having fun and getting laid to creep into my mind and take root.

This has to be a professional transaction in every way.

I turn it into a mantra that I repeat while locked firmly between Willa and Bullet, all the way back to the city.

Chapter 9

Lynette

Iknew our house was small, but having a man Bullet’s size in it makes it feel little better than a dollhouse.

The second we walked through the door, Willa gave me a sly look and announced that she was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. She reasoned that we’d have to be up early to pack our things tomorrow, then walked off to her room, whispering to me that since she’d be wearing her earbuds to bed, I should feel free to make as much noise as I wanted while I wasgoingto bed.

As in, not sleeping. As in, getting my pussy broken by a man who looks big enough to be a total freak in the sheets and very likely tear me in half.

And now, twenty minutes later, I’m just trying to keep it together. I haven’t gone to change into something less formal. I’ve kept my clothing on like a suit of armor.

It’s taken Bullet all this time to search the small garage, the tiny backyard, and to make sure the house was secure. He did a sweep of everything before he even let us inside.

He comes through the kitchen door, shutting it softly behind him. The locks click into place methodically. I’m standing by the fridge, my arms crossed over my chest, but it’s mostly to hide the fact that my nipples are harder than stones. Adrenaline still sings through my body so brutally that it makes me dizzy, but I have to admit that most of it isn’t from what happened tonight.It’s because there’s a huge man in my kitchen who looks every bit like a dangerous predator. A wolf in very obvious wolf’s clothing.

I’ll admit that his face doesn’t match. It’s the same hard face, but the magnetic pull he has probably comes from the fact that somehow his eyes always manage to remain soft. Not soft as in teddy bear soft, but soft as in inherently trustworthy.

“Are you hungry?” I can’t say that I am, but I suddenly remember the poor failed pie left behind at the club. At the very least, it was a way to keep my hands busy.

“I suppose I could be.” His dark eyes sweep over me and a strange restlessness bursts to life in my stomach. It’s like a reactor at my core, sending off enough energy that I could go out there and compete in a car race, but on foot.

“Do you want a sandwich?” My mind goes to a dark place, of me being the sandwich, pressed up between Bullet’s hard body with the wall at my back.

“Yes, thank you.” He pulls out a seat at the table and sinks down into the wooden chair. It’s a solid set, one of the first things I bought new after purchasing the house, but it creaks under his weight.

I find mayo, roast beef from the deli, lettuce, a dubious tomato, and a jar of pickles with only two left. I set that on the counter next to a bag of buns I hope aren’t rock hard.

“There’s not much choice. I haven’t gone out for groceries all week. I was… busy working on other things.” I wanted to give him an update on the security footage, but I didn’t want to do it over the phone. I got it on Wednesday, but since I was heading to the club on Friday, I thought I’d tell him everything then.

“The nightclub gave you the video?”

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