Page 16 of Wolf.e
Wolfe just looks down at me. Even in heels, I’m no match for his great height. He could swallow me whole. I suck in a breath, not knowing what to expect. I watch as his wide jaw ticks like he’s annoyed at my simple existence. He angles his head to watch my rapidly beating pulse in my neck, his lips popping open as if he may just swoop in and take a bite out of me.
“Brinley…” His low voice is clear in the noisy room, and the sound of it has me feeling like I’m hearing my own name for the first time. “The good girl with the smart mouth?” he asks low, his knuckles still grazing my arm in a static connection. “If you aren’t careful, little hummingbird, I may have to use that mouth to set you straight.” He leans in closer, and my knees go weak as his lips hover over my ear. “But maybe that’s exactly what you want…maybe you’re sick of being good, yeah?”
“Excuse me?” I ask, my voice another octave altogether as I realize he just threatened me, at least I think he did?
“When you figure it out, come and find me,” he adds as he backs away, giving me one last look and heads into the crowd.
It takes me a full ten seconds to blink and recover.
My stomach drops as I realize his threat doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it excites me.
Chapter 6
Gabriel
Didn’t really give a fuck about attending this party. I’m here only out of duty as Sean’s lifelong friend. He’s like a brother to me. I hate weddings and everything about them. Two people lying to each other about loving one another for eternity is simple bullshit we make up to make our souls feel less empty. The world would be a much better place if people just accepted that and embraced that truth. We’d be less distracted.
Problem is, everyone is hoping their lives will be like the works of literature my mother read to me over and over as a boy.
Those books are an excellent escape, no doubt. But there’s a reason why they’re called fiction.
The word fiction comes from the Old French wordficcion—meaning ruse. And that’s what love is, a fucking ruse. Romantic love, at least.
Maybe I should be in a better mood, this is a party after all. I’m just too fucking tired to pretend I give a fuck that Ax has found his soulmate, when less than a year ago he wasfucking his way through every sweetbutt who came into my clubhouse.
I focus on the necessary. That this wedding of his will prove useful to the club. It’s the perfect, secluded place to take the piece of shit we’ve been hunting and get some answers from him before we gut him from the inside out for fucking Mason’s underage sister. Brian “Gator” Freeland. We’ve been watching him at the safe house he’s staying in, owned by the Disciples of Sin. They’re our rival club and we’ve been keeping track of his movements there for over ten days, ever since we got word he was in Lakeshore—about thirty minutes from Harmony.
We’ve been learning his habits, who’s protecting him, how to get in, how to get out. The mission we’ve planned to get him out tomorrow afternoon and to Tybee Island rests fully on me. If anyone is hurt, it’s on my back as president. On the flip side, if we ruin Ax’s wedding…again, I’m to blame, and that would be worse because I’ll answer to Shelly on that one. No one wants to answer to Shelly, I’ve seen that woman shoot a man in the kneecap for accusing her son of stealing.
Ruin his wedding? I’m a fucking dead man.
Between nabbing our soon-to-be prisoner Gator without any of my men getting hurt, getting a new clinic supplied in Savannah by Saturday to make up for stolen product, and Kai and me finishing a custom paint job on a bike for a Braves player, all I want to do tonight is knock around the heavy bag, head to my shop to catch up on some work and maybe get some fucking peace and quiet.
I thrive on regiment. Routine and control. My men know I’m a very prepared leader, not easily surprised. I normally know every single person about to step foot into this clubhouse,so color me fucking shocked when I was on my way to the bar to congratulate the bride, and a little hummingbird flew into my crosshairs.
Brinley Rose Beaumont.
The woman whose pulse I can see thrumming away in her slender, silky throat from here. The woman I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I first laid eyes on her sitting at the coffee shop over a week ago, turning away from me like I may corrupt her just from looking at her. It’s highly fucking unusual I even remember her, because normally I don’t think of a woman at all after I make the decision to either stop looking at her or pull my dick out of her.
Whichever happens first.
But this woman’s mere existence, for some reason, just fucking thunderstruck me.
The moment I saw her, I had the uncontrollable urge to pull her into the alley, tie her wrists together with that shirt around her waist, and make her scream my name until she was begging me instead of snubbing me.
At first, I thought she was a tourist, but something about the way she didn’t even really look up in surprise when she heard our bikes and the way her body tensed told me she knew my club and that she was local. That, and the Georgia plates on the car she got into when she left the dress shop. I forced myself to stop watching her out the window, the way she walked, unsure of her beauty, unassuming, probably tapped on the hand with a ruler as a child every time she got out of line. Shoulders back, quick little ladylike strides.
She screamed ballet lessons and cotillion.
I rationalized that I’d probably find out she’s too young, boring as fuck, maybe had the same preppy boyfriend sinceshe was in high school, but still, there was something about her I couldn’t get out of my head. Enough to make me hand Kai her license plate number when I got back to the clubhouse and order him to tell me everything about her.
Turns out, I was right.
She is young—almost nine years younger than me—she is exactly who I thought she was, the daughter of an upscale Atlanta real estate lawyer, her whole family belonged to the Crested River Country Club, she was a fucking debutant, and she does have a preppy boyfriend in Atlanta. So, I shouldn’t give one fuck who she is or why she’s brought her heart-shaped ass into my clubhouse.
Except now that she’s standing here in front of me, I can’t look away, and I find myself wondering how fucking stupid her Atlanta boyfriend is.
The answer is a special kind of stupid to ever let her come in here looking like this. He might as well have served her up on a silver fucking platter for my taking.
