Page 7 of Bullet

Fuck.

By and large, I’ve had only myself to depend on for my survival. The club is a brotherhood, but I find it almost impossible to share the deepest parts of myself. I’m not closed off, but I’m not forthcoming either. Sex feels like the same thing. Like peeling back a part of myself and letting someone touch the innermost layers. I haven’t found a person I’d want to do that with, and maybe it’s odd, but I want it to mean something. I’ve found other outlets when I need them.

It’s all the more annoying to me that now I have an exceptionally rare raging hard-on when these assholes come to get me out of the cuffs and show me the hell out of here.

Great time and great place for this to happen.

“What are you staring at?” Lynette demands, but her voice is dead and flat. I’m not fooled. She’s forcing her calm.

“You.”

She stares right back, boldly, to the point of rude. Her attempt to dominate the situation is so hot that my cock throbs.

“I’m going to get the surveillance video from the nightclub. That should be enough to exonerate you. If you didn’t beat that guy, or even if you did, but you were trying to defend yourself, that will be enough.”

“He headbutted me,” I insist, the memory scalding like acid at the back of my throat. It’s fucking humiliating that I didn’t see it coming.

I knew Harold’s kid was bad news, but I had no idea what a piece of spoiled shit he’d be. I was at the club to watch him and make sure nothing got out of control. To make sure he was okay. Tyrant asked me to do it, and so I did. We should have made the asshole go alone. If he had, maybe he would have gotten the ass kicking he deserved. Then again, maybe he would have been drunk off his face the way he was, assaulted a woman, or got himself killed in some accident or by antagonizing the wrong man and Harold would have held us responsible all the same.

“Will that be clear from the video?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to where the club had their cameras. I was too busy babysitting.”

“Why on earth did you go out to a club with someone like that?” She saysclublike it’s the last place she’d ever want to be. Other than here with me right now, that is. I can just imagine the tongue lashing her sister got when she had to ask for this favor. Poor girl.

“We were down here for a ride. It’s a long story, but Harold lives in Hart and his kid is going to law school here. He wants to be a hotshot lawyer like his dad. I was asked to watch him so that he wouldn’t get himself in trouble. He couldn’t convince any of the guys from the club to go with him, so I got tasked with him as a job.”

She looks at me like that’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. Honestly, I’m starting to think it might be. She glances at her watch, a real one, not that digital crap that everyone wearsnow. It’s dainty, a little oval face with a ring of diamonds and a gold band. It looks antique, maybe something passed down in her family. “I have twenty minutes. I’ll wait for you outside.”

She stalks from the room, the door banging shut behind her again.

Christ. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t straight up blown away by this woman. I still have a boner problem that I’m also blown away by, so I actually hope those assholes take a minute to come get me.

Alas, I’m definitely on the universe’s shit list because the same douchebag cops who manhandled me this morning even though I was perfectly cooperative, walk through the door muttering under their breath, digging for a set of keys.

Lynette George is waiting outside for me. In a legal capacity. To go over details of my court date and the case, no doubt.

Logically, I know this weekend could get worse. There’s still all of Sunday to get through. I’m not going to jinx myself by asking myself what else could go wrong, but that little snarky voice inside my head whispers it all the same.

Chapter 3

Lynette

Unfortunately for me, when Hamish Aberdeen passes through the front glass doors of the station and down the few concrete steps, I can see why Willa found him attractive.

I thought it was the whole bad boy aura, but when she said biker, I pictured a man of average height and build, bad tattoos blobbed over his leathery skin, a straggly beard, grimy clothes, gaudy rings, thick steel chains, a rundown bike, grease-stained hands, broken nails, and a mean scowl, lips pulled back from yellowed teeth.

Basically, I pictured Ricky, the asshole piece of human waste our mom dated after Willa’s dad decided he didn’t want to play house any longer. It was a mercy for all of us. Of course, Willa doesn’t remember the drunken rages, foul friends, or wandering, lingering eyes, but I do. Ricky was even worse. I’m still haunted by the evil he perpetrated on our mother.

Hamish tilts his head up to the flag snapping in the stiff breeze, offset against a dreary gunmetal sky promising yet another day of rain.

His eyes land on me next. There’s no shrewdness in the soft velvet brown. Nothing conniving, crafty, or cruel. From his towering height to the massive breadth of him, there’s nothingaverageabout this man. My heart stutters and kicks to life with a roar, just like the engine of his damn bike, which probably isn’told and nasty at all. A man like this, who takes obvious care in his appearance, would take pride in his bike.

Hamish isn’t angry. His lips, which are almost too full to belong on a man, and certainly on a hardened biker, would be irresistible curved in a smile.

From his file, I know he dropped out of high school, faked his age, and enlisted when he was fourteen. I couldn’t believe it when I read it, thinking that surely there was a mistake, but looking at the man now, I can see him as a teenager, grown suddenly into the body of a man. With a good forged ID, he probably could have passed for a baby-faced eighteen. He got out when he was almost thirty-three, and went pretty much straight into another family of sorts—his club.

He’s forty-one now but looks much younger. His hair probably isn’t long by biker standards. It brushes his neckline, a dark brown without a single gray that I can pick out. His impressive beard is the same dark mahogany.

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