Page 107 of Running on Empty

“You know.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “You fucking know. He’s the twin of the girl who crept up into a tree.” A nod to Jax. “He’s the one who’s the match for the woman who gets up every day and keeps on fighting.” A slight shift of his focus to Ash. “But me?” His hand went over the knife blade, pressing it harder against him, even as I fought to stop it. “I’m the other half of your dark side, the part of you that won’t stay down, no matter if it's smarter to do so.” He grabbed my other hand and placed it on his hips, running my fingers over the scars there. “The part that doesn’t think twice about hurting those who wronged you…” A long, shuddering breath escaped him. “Even if it’s yourself.”

“You’re mine?”

Ash wanted to say something about this, he and Jax moving restlessly beside their brother, but I didn’t pay them any attention. I stared him down, whoever he was, needing all his focus on me.

His eyes glittered with a hectic light, the brightest green I’d ever seen, right before his brows creased slightly. A look of pain, I realised slowly, one that only seemed to deepen the longer he stared at me.

“You ask that? What the fuck do you think I am?”

“Ronan—!” Ash snapped as his brother’s hands slapped down on my shoulders, Ronan’s knife still pressed to his gut.

“I am entirely yours,” he told me, this creature occupying Ronan. “I was created from the fires of longing for you, hammered straight by that frustrated need. He worried that I’d hurt you.” A dark look shot at Ash before the knife was jerked upwards, placed against his throat. “But I’ll slit my own throat before that happens.”

“Ronan—?” I yelped as the point of the blade pressed against the throbbing artery in his neck.

“I can’t hurt you.” That was said seriously, right before his eyes began to glitter. “But you can hurt me plenty.” Then his focus shifted back to his brother. “And to keep him from getting his panties in a bunch, he can control it.”

“What?”

Jax and I said that, but Ronan stared at his brother and Ash stared back.

“That’s what you want, don’t you, brother?” Ronan’s voice was a silky purr. “To have us all jumping to your tune.”

“I…” We both watched Ash falter, his lips pressing together, then he nodded. “More than fucking anything.” And when his eyes met mine, I saw it there, an unquenchable desire to control everything.

And a plea for me to let him.

I wouldn’t always, I knew that. Ash might be a dom or whatever, but he’d saddled himself to a woman who was more than a brat. I was just as capable of grinding his nuts under my heel, as I was getting to my knees and submitting.

If I decided he deserved it.

“So that’s what we’re doing?” Jax said, eyeing the lot of us. “Stevie’s gonna carve Ronan up.”

“Not cutting. That’s blood play and is a whole other thing,” Ash replied in a snippy tone.

“Something I like just fine. I’ll bleed if my beautiful girl wants me to,” Ronan replied with a lazy grin.

“But not today. We were supposed to hammer this shit out with clear heads, establish parameters.” Ash raked a hand through his hair. “Not let emotion run the show but—”

“And when would that point be?” I asked. “When are you ever able to look at any of us with any sort of objectivity?”

“But what I read said that safe, sane and—” Ash replied and that’s when I shut him down.

“That’s your problem right there. None of us are sane or safe. Hasn’t the deaths of four men, the destruction of several properties and the deployment of fucking thermite grenades made that clear?”

I watched a war wage in Ash’s eyes but knew who’d won when he shook his head slowly.

“I’m going to need you to be very, very obedient during this whole thing, omega,” he growled.

I won. Of course I had, so I nodded my head and shot him a graceful smile in recognition of this allowance.

“Of course, daddy.”

Chapter62

Ash

“Tell me you’ve got a knife that’s blunter than that on you?” I asked Ronan, or whoever the fuck had the reins right now. I was going to talk to Charlie about this whole situation afterwards, in detail, even if I had to pay some exorbitant rate to get to her to make time for us. But right now I focused on my brother.

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