Legend stops two feet from me.
“Royal,” he says, low.
“Legend,” I answer, just as flat.
His eyes flick past me to where Oaks disappeared into the shadows.“You wanna tell me why the hell I walk into a King’s event and see you pinning one of my officers to a support beam like you’re two seconds from gutting him?”
I shrug one shoulder.“Because I was two seconds from gutting him.”
Legend’s nostrils flare.“You got a reason?”
“Yeah,” I say.“He came sniffing around my room.”
Legend’s silence is a slap.
The crowd around us goes quiet.The ring bell clangs.Someone whistles nervously.Legend steps closer, invading my space with that heavy, unavoidable presence that makes men fold.
But I’m not folding.
“You mean the cell,” he says carefully, whispering.“Where you’re keeping Becki chained.”
Hearing her name in his mouth hits something raw in me.Something territorial.Something ugly.
“You’re not in sleepin’ there no more.
True, but I don’t answer.
Legend leans in.“Start talkin’, brother.”
“She’s my responsibility,” I grit out.
“She’s the club’s responsibility,” he snaps, voice cracking like thunder.“And you damn well know the difference.”
“Bullshit.She’s safer with me.”
“And what the fuck makes you think that?”
My jaw pulses.
What makes me think that?
The way she breathes when I enter a room.The way her pulse flares when my hand closes around her wrist.The way she looked at Oaks, detached, and at me, alive.
“She listens to me,” I say simply.“Fuck, you told Father Crowley I’d protect her.”
Legend freezes.“Don’t dare call him that.”
“What, father?He’s a Reverend.”
Legend narrows his eyes.Then he lets it go, lets out a dry laugh.“No, Royal.Becki plays you.Always has.”
Heat lances through my chest.I don’t like that.Don’t like what it implies.Don’t like the reminder of the brat she used to be, the girl who could lie with her eyes and smile with her teeth.
Legend reads the shift in me.He always does.
“You losing your edge?”he asks, voice mocking me.“Because it looks to me like you’re letting that girl get inside your damn head.”
“She’s not…”
