Page 24 of The Last Time You Break Me

Because I did, I loved her. I had just been too damn stubborn to admit it.

Loathe to accept it and too much of a damn coward to fight for it.

To fight forher.

But that was all about to change.

For too long I had stood by my loyalty. Born and bred to the life and the man who owned the empire. But loving somebody didn’t make me a traitor.

Even if it was my best friend’s daughter.

“Oh, little troublemaker. I always get what I want. You know this. Let’s end the games, because I promise you I’m done fighting this,” I stated with caution as I took another step closer to her and the fire burning in her emerald eyes.

“I don’t think I will. Because when a man claims he gets all that he desires with little to no effort, it’s warranted for a woman like me to bring them down a peg or two. Preferably to their knees. I offered myself to you on a plate, Reggie, but you denied me. Now watch as I deny you. Because you, Bones, have not fuckingearnedme.” She spoke with clear and confident venom in her voice that I knew she wouldn’t relent.

I was many things but an abuser and rapist of women I would never fucking be.

She wanted me to earn her,fine. I would. And most probably in the most unconventional way she had ever before seen.

“Fine, Hellcat. I’ll earn you and when I do, you’ll at long last be on your knees showing me how glorious that quick-witted and always wicked mouth of yours can truly be.”

“You like to dream, Reg. I dig that. Now get the fuckers phone and let’s head to the location.”

I felt like an asshole. As I acted so mediocre and aloof. Like I had not just spent the last four years with blue balls and a heart that fucking ached after it spent so many damn years encased within ice.

I’d given her absolutely no reason to trust me. I was about to change that.

She hopped from the hood and strutted over the man who was slowly dying. If you do it right, you could slit a throat and not kill them instantly. You could part their flesh just enough, they bleed out and you could make them feel every inch of their death. Unless you’d pussy out the last second and get them to the hospital. Determined by what was on his phone, he might have had hope yet.

When I turned, the fucker stared up at me with something condescending in his dying eyes. Almost like he was judging me and my rejection from such a stunning woman.

As I glanced down at the phone, I thumbed in his pin and then clenched it in my hand as I flicked through it.

I strolled over to him and booted him in the head. My untied combat boot stuck him hard and his head flung back, hard into the wall, cracking his skull wide open. The blood splattered and Lara quirked a brow at the mess.

“Got to say though, Reg. He certainly did taste a lot sweeter.”

I snapped together my teeth and gritted my jaw so hard that my molars churned “You’re pushing me, little troublemaker. I’d tread lightly,” I warned with a harsh sneer as my body vibrated from the anger that brewed within my veins.

“I’m heavy-footed as well as heavy-handed. I’m used to it. I’ll also never stop pissing you off, so suck it up, and wrap it in a buttercunt.” She shrugged and I chuckled darkly. “What?” she asked as her smirk dropped.

“The saying is ‘Suck it up buttercup’ Not, wrap it in a buttercunt.”

“Whatever, when have I ever followed the crowd?” she asked, unphased as she strolled toward the passenger door.

“That would be never, love.”

“Exactly,” she mumbled. “The phone?”

“There is nothing here. Just back and forth about the dead man following us and an email to text the info to. They also paid him extra if he was to hurt one of us without killing us.”

“Of course,” she drawled.

“We’ll give it to Techi. He’ll probably be able to find an IP address or something,” I thought out loud as I gestured with a nod over to the car. “Let’s head out.”

We hopped in. I started the engine and reversed the SUV back down the alley. Luckily there was another exit and I hadn’t needed to move the asshole’s car.

So much harder to clean up that mess.

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