Page 14 of Desert Loyalties
She pulls back just enough to breathe, her forehead resting against mine.
“Maybe we should go to bed,” I say, voice low, thick with everything I’m not saying.
She smiles, tired but teasing. “You going to let me test drive?”
I huff a laugh. “To sleep, horndog.”
We both stand, and I point her to the en suite bathroom. She disappears with a grateful sigh, and I dig through a drawer, pulling out a clean shirt, one of my soft old ones, worn thin with time. When she steps back out, face washed, hair loose around her shoulders, I toss it to her.
“Here,” I say.
She changes right there, in front of me. Doing that sexy ass move of taking off her bra through the sleeves. Goddamn she tests my restraint. The hem falls mid-thigh, swamping her in my scent. Something tightens in my chest at the sight. She's barefoot, fresh-faced, wearingmyclothes and that somehow calms the beast in my chest. She’s mine.
We climb into bed, the sheets cool and the room quiet. I tuck her in against me, her back to my chest, my arm draped around her waist.
She reaches for my hand, lacing our fingers together.
I lay there, holding her. Watching her breathe. Every inhale, soft and steady is proof she’s still here. That she chose to fall asleep in my bed, in my shirt, wrapped in me.
And all I can think about is murder.
Not in a poetic sense. Not some vague fantasy. No, I am thinking abouthow, step by step, I’d end the woman who made her feel like trash. Who turned a little girl into a scapegoat. Who made her believe she wasunworthyof love.
Dementia or not, that old bitch knew what she was doing. She planned it. She twisted it. ShestoleSkye’s life. You don’t get to do that and walk into the soft fade of a memory you no longer own. There’s justice, and then there’smykind of justice.
The club went legit.
I didn’t.
Not where Skye’s concerned. Not ever.
And yeah, I could’ve taken her tonight. She was in my bed. I felt her body melt into me. I could feel how badly she needed to be held, to be claimed. Andfuck, it took every scrap of control I had not to bury myself inside her and let her feel what it’s like to beworshipped. But no.
I need her to come to me.Needher to crave me like air. Because once I crack her open, once I take her fully, there’s no walking away. No escape. She’ll see what I really am. What I’ve always been.
And she’ll either love it or burn in it.
But no one,no one, gets to hurt her again. Not her father. Not her so-called family. And sure as fuck not some rotting witch with a hospital bed and a dying conscience.
Skye whimpers in her sleep, pressing closer to my chest. My grip tightens. My lips brush the top of her head.
I’ll make her forget they ever existed. Replace every bad memory with me. I’ll give her a new family, one that starts and ends withus. And if anyone wants to drag her back into the dark, they’ll have to go throughme.
I’ll be smiling when I slit their fuckin’ throat.
Chapter 6
SKYE
I stretch or try to. I’m stopped by about 250 pounds of sleeping, tattooed man using my boob as a pillow.
Correction: I’m inhisbed. With Mandrake. And his face is... yeah, definitely nuzzled into my chest like it’s the world’s best memory foam.
I freeze for half a second, blinking up at the ceiling for guidance. Not because I’m embarrassed about last night’s trauma-dump though, yes, I did spill my life story between fries and almost-tears, but because I’m expecting a delivery this morning. Apart from bartending, I’m also in charge of keeping the clubhouse in stock.
I start to ease out from under him, slowly, carefully. I’m halfway off the bed when a rough hand snakes around my waist andyanksme back into a furnace of muscle and sleep-warmed skin. My back hits his chest and he buries his face against my neck.
“Where are you goin’?” he mumbles, voice thick with sleep but way too clear to fool me. He’s been awake. Probably the second I moved.
