Page 76 of Zeke

“You know what you did. You flaunted your little tryst with the biker boys in front of my face, knowing I would have to do something. Youwantedme to show you how serious I am because you didn’t believe how much I love you. You needed me to prove it. That was why I told you to stop ignoring me. I hoped it would be enough to get you to stop, but you wenthomewith them. That was when I knew you needed to be taken away from the temptation. From the source of your bad behavior. You wanted me to punish you, to show you I’m the boss so you can start behaving like a good girl.”

There it is again.Good girl.I almost gag when he says it because all I can do is think about Zeke… Zeke, who would never scare me like this. Who stayed away from me when he was angry, and not even at me but because he didn’t want to end up taking any of that anger out on me.

Unlike this creep, who used his anger over something he had no right to be mad about as an excuse to kidnap me.

“I’m not,” I say quietly, looking down at the mattress.

Steve pauses in his pacing and looks at me in confusion, his brow furrowed.

“You’re not what, sweetie?” he asks, suddenly taking on a kinder demeanor, as though he thinks he’s finally gotten through to me.

Too bad for him, I’m not one to give up so easily.

“I’m not a good girl,” I say, looking up to meet his eyes.

He shakes his head in surprise, like I’ve hit him. I’m sure my words feel like a strike, but I’m not done yet. “I’m not yours. I don’t take ‘punishment’ from crazy pieces of shit who stalk teenage girls and kidnap people when they feel ignored because they know they won’t ever have anyone love them without forcing someone!”

By the end of my rant, I’m shouting and barely conscious of what I’m saying. I’ve never spoken like this to anyone. Then again, no one else has ever pointed a gun at me to get me into a car so they could drive me out to the middle of nowhere and do whatever they want with me.

I guess there’s a first time for everything.

Steve takes a slow step toward me, and I see the gun in his hand shaking. I tremble, worried that I took it too far and he’s going to kill me.

But he doesn’t point the gun at me. He opens his mouth and takes a quivering breath.

“You’re going to make me put you in your place, aren’t you?” he asks, stalking toward me.

“No,” I say, sitting up to face him eye to eye. If I’m about to end up on the wrong end of whatever he’s going to do to me, I want to make sure I earn it by getting the last word in first. “My place is wherever the hell I decide it is. You have no say in my place, and you definitely have no say in my life or who I spend my time with. And that includes my biker boyfriend, who, by the way, is the best sex I’ve ever had.”

Steve turns bright red and away from me, all but running to the bathroom. I lean forward. The only reason I’m not already running is my shock that he’d leave me alone.

But then he re-emerges within seconds with a green glass bottle and a washcloth that looks like it might have been white at one point but is now as stained and filthy as the mattress I’m kneeling on.

“You’ll learn,” he says frantically, pouring liquid onto the cloth, his eyes darting all over the place as he closes the bottle and walks over to me, gun still in hand.

I know what it is before he makes it to the bed. Chloroform. He is going to knock me out, and I’ll have no way to defend myself against whatever he plans to do.

My other choice is to take a bullet, but if I do that, Zeke will never find me alive.

I stare him down. The cloth is only inches from my face when I get that last word in for real.

“He’s going to kill you. I just figured you should know,” I spit at him.

Then, he presses the fabric to my face, and everything goes black.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-EIGHT

Zeke

It takes only seconds of us discussing where we’ll go for the plan to be in place. Eden gives me the option of either location, and without hesitation, I look at her and say, “The cabin. It would be stupid to not have anyone check out the apartment too, just in case, but I think the odds of this guy staying in town are pretty low. He clearly isn’t that smart if he’s messing with someone associated with us, but I doubt he’s so stupid as to hide right where we’d find him the fastest.”

Eden nods. “Then that’s the plan.” She looks at Savage. “You’re going to the apartment.”

“And you’re not?” Savage asks, crossing his arms in a clear show of his displeasure about the situation.

“No,” she says. “I’m going with Zeke and Eli.”

Eli’s head shoots up, and he looks at her. I do the same. The three of us are going. Together. We haven’t done that since before Kira entered the picture.

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