When he stands, I scowl, ignoring the low throb left between my thighs. “You’re an asshole.”
Making this low growling sound that makes my toes curl and my heart flutter, I see it in his eyes. The anger. Thehunger.He’s jerking his head away, giving me his response as the thump of the door of the room as he leaves, abandoning me altogether.
What a dick.
4
Destiny
I sleep like a brick. Not even the thrum of distant music can pierce the fog, not until the sun itself glares through the thin curtains, a silent partner in the crime of waking me.
My eyes crack open, gritty with last night’s exhaustion. I expect to see the broad, unforgiving line of his back. Instead, the space beside me is empty, the sheets cool. A flicker of what should be relief is snuffed out before it can catch; the heavy feeling of being watched is a physical weight on my skin.
He’s there, propped against the wall. He’s frowning, his eyes shadowed and fixed on me. A couple of plastic bags sit at his boots, rustling softly in the draft from the window. He looks wrecked.
“Watching me sleep?” I push myself up, the movement sending a dull ache through my shoulders. I try to curl my fingers and… nothing. A dead, numb weight. My frown deepens, and I hate, I truly hate, the wave of pathetic relief that washesthrough me when he pushes off the wall and pulls a key from his pocket.
He doesn’t even bother denying it. The cold metal falls away from my wrist, and the click as he reattaches the cuff to his belt is the loudest sound in the room.
“I got you things to wear.” The words are bitten off, angry. He jerks his chin toward the bags. “Find something that fits.”
My eyebrows lift before I can school my features. Why? Why go to the trouble? Keeping him in my peripheral vision, I slide off the bed, my bare feet cold on the grimy floor. I approach the bags as if they might bite.
Inside, a jumble of shirts and jeans in different sizes, all basic, washed-out colors. My fingers brush against a plastic-wrapped pack of cotton underwear, and a small smile touches my lips. I can just picture him, a mountain of a man, flushed with humiliation in some supermarket aisle. But as I dig deeper, my smile falters. No bra. Of course not. The thought probably never even crossed his mind. His expertise in women clearly doesn’t extend past restraint.
I stare at the small pile of fabric, my brows pulling together. This… this must have cost him. A not-insignificant chunk of the cash he probably stuffs in his pocket.
“Let me guess, not good enough?” An impatient, gruff sound rumbles from him. When I look up, his frown has deepened, etched into his face like stone.
I decide on honesty, the plastic crinkling nervously in my grip. “I don’t understand.” I meet his gaze, holding it. “Why would you do this?”
He tears his eyes away, a defensive wall slamming down as his arms cross over his chest. “If you have no place to go, then this is going to have to be your home until… you leave. You’re going to need clothes. Penelope wrote up a list for me. You’llfind razors and toothbrushes in one of those bags. Make sure to thank her when we get breakfast.”
The longer I stare at him, trying to figure out his angle, the more he shifts in discomfort. A memory, hot and unwelcome, flashes behind my eyes. Last night. His calloused hands, not restraining but… freeing. The shock of a pleasure so addicting, it numbed the pain. A flush creeps up my neck, and I have to look away, focusing on a crack in the floorboards.
Clearing his throat, he drifts toward the door. “Get dressed.”
Before he can leave, words leave my lips that I never expected to be aimed at someone wearing leather.
“Thank you. For this, I mean.” Forthis.Not for the rest of it. Not for the cuffs or the confusion or the memory of his hands that I can’t seem to scrub from my mind.
He grunts, a low sound that vibrates in the small space. “I’ll be on the other side. Don’t take all day.”
When the door shuts, I’m left alone with my clouded thoughts and the new clothes. As I’m ripping off tags, my chest aches with a torrent of conflicting feelings. The practical part of me catalogs his kindness, the frightened part remembers his violence, and a treacherous, newly awakened part is still humming from his touch.
I can’t let any more tears spill. What’s done is done. For now, I’ll play this carefully and figure out what I need to do while I’m here.
Getting dressed, I find him where he said he’d be. With a pinched expression, he’s staring down the long hall of doors, a sentinel in leather and denim.
“Where are we?” Clearing my throat, I shift under his eyes when he turns his gaze my way. The intensity of it makes my skin prickle up with goosebumps. “Meadow Falls?”
“Willowbrook Ridge.” He purses his lips and starts shrugging off his vest—the one that marks him as theirs—before I stop him.
“I’ll be fine.” The lie is for both of us. Moving before he can notice the fresh flush on my skin, I lead while he follows, hyper-aware of his presence at my back. “So, what is this? Some kind of hideout?”
“Steelwood MC’s clubhouse.” He grunts his displeasure as he eliminates the space between us with his longer strides. “It’s our hangout spot.”
Entering a room with a couch and a table, he points to the door that separates us from the music playing on the other side. Pushing through, I take in the back of the bar. When I stop, I feel his heat seeping into my back. He’s so sturdy, it’s laughable.
