Page 15 of Satisfied
“I wouldn’t call the Steel Rebels small-time criminals.”
“Neither would I,” he says with a grin. “But it wasn’t them I stole from originally. A few months ago, the Steel Rebels got into some kind of conflict with another MC, the Chrome Vipers.”
“Oh my God, I heard about that on the news. Is it true the Chrome Vipers were auctioning women?”
“They were, and the Steel Rebels took them down.” He waits several beats before dropping a bombshell. “The gentlemen’s club they used for their nasty activities was turned into a women’s shelter.”
I gasp. “Haven House?”
“Exactly.”
My brows draw together. “Okay, but what does any of this have to do with you?”
“I’m getting to it, sweetheart,” he says, laughing at the impatience he reads in my eyes. “So while this was going on, the two MCs fighting and the cops getting involved, I decided to take advantage of the chaos and dip my fingers into the Chrome Vipers’ assets before it could all be confiscated by the state. Stole half a million dollars from one of their old accounts that had been inactive for a while. I thought maybe no one even knew about it.”
“What happened next?”
“Turns out the Vipers’ money wasn’t going to be confiscated after all. The president had registered everything in his daughter’s name so she would take the fall for their activities, and with him out of the way, it all went to her. The daughterjoined hands with the Steel Rebels to use the dirty money to open up a shelter.”
I gasp as it all falls into place. “So essentially, you stole from the Rebels. But you couldn’t have known what that money was going to be used for.”
“No, I had no idea, or I wouldn’t have touched it,” he says. “I found out about it when Hound tracked me down.”
I shake my head at the story. Never in a million years would I have imagined anything like this. “So, did you give back the money?”
“Yeah, I sent back what I had left and what I could come up with. They forgave the rest of the debt when I agreed to work for them.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t kill you,” I say, hesitating for a second. “I’ve heard terrible things about the Rebels.”
“A lot of which is true, but my sister CJ is part of the reason I’m alive. She offered herself as collateral until I could pay them back.”
“Oh my God, is she okay? You said she’s engaged—”
“She fell in love with the bastard that took her.” He chuckles, looking down at our joined hands. “Here I was working my ass off, terrified they were keeping her in some torture chamber, and she was busy falling in love with the bastard. I would argue it was a case of Stockholm syndrome if the fool wasn’t pathetically in love with her right back.”
“He makes her happy?”
He nods, and his eyes lift to mine and stay there long enough to send a blush climbing up my neck. “I know the feeling all too well,” he says, pushing the tray to the side before sliding his hand up my nape. My heart leaps into my throat when he leans in, our lips almost touching.
“Y-you mean me?”
“I know you’ve been hurt, but do you think you can open your heart to me?” he asks, his eyes fastening on my mouth. “I’ll do anything to be a man who’s worthy of you, who won’t cause you pain like he did.”
I realize for the first time that Ransom has no idea how Jack and I came to be. He probably thinks I actually had feelings for the man at some point.
“He’s never been in my heart,” I assure him. “Our parents brought us together because they thought we would be the perfect match. He’s never had my heart, not once in the six months we dated. Not the way you do.” I draw back and frame his face in my hands, my heart swelling with affection in ways it never has for anyone else before. “Never in the way you do.”
His mouth crashes against mine, and I moan when his tongue sweeps over mine. I slide my fingers to his back and up his neck, sliding my fingers through his curls and fisting them as I let him push me back down onto the pillows.
I love you.
It’s too soon and way too fast to have these feelings, let alone speak them out loud, but there’s no changing the fact that he’s wormed his way into my heart. No, I never felt anything remotely close to this with Jack—or anyone else, for that matter. This hacker is it for me, and it’s a truth I’m beginning to accept.
“Mine,” he rasps between kisses. “You’re mine, Abby. I’ll protect you with my life.”
“Yours,” I choke out, pulling him into an embrace and burying my face in his hair.
Ransom is very much mine, as I am his.
