“I don’t like that.”
“And keep a close eye on them while they’re here. Maybe we can separate them and I’ll interrogate her – find out the truth.”
“What if she’s as dangerous as he is?”
This time, I can’t hold back my laughter. Does Ruger not realize that I held his bloody hands and stared into his murderous eyes, still seeing the man beneath all the darkness for who he really was? There isn’t a person on this earth who can scare me now that I’m married to the same man I saw rip the heads off his enemies and fight for the people he loved.
“I’ll be fine.”
“It’s not funny,” Ruger murmurs, touching his finger to my lips, desperate for another kiss but almost too shy to ask for it. He prefers to speak without his words, anyway. Our bodies readjust so that we’re more than cuddling each other.
“If I’m not fine, I give you permission to kill anyone who hurt me. Does that help?”
Ruger grunts. “I didn’t need your permission, teacher Zayna…”
I haven’t been a teacher in what feels like forever. But I love the way Ruger still sees me as his teacher in so many ways, especially because I’ve learned just as much from loving him.
“We have an agreement then?” I confirm, running my fingers down Ruger’s toned chest. He nods, keeping his eyes locked with mine.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “We have an agreement.”
Chapter Twelve
Zeb
Three Days Later
It’s been torture to sleep in hotel rooms, feed this woman, watch her leave the bathroom fully dressed with her hair up, and not desperately crave more from her. This is the last day of riding for us, and we’ve picked up a bit of a routine between the two of us. Janelle might not have forgotten everything that happened in Boston, but I enjoy watching her loosen up and getting a bit of that girl I met at the bar.
There are many mysteries about Janelle yet to unlock, but the further away I take her from Boston, the worse I feel about touching her and making her life more confusing than it has to be. Most women don’t want to fall for a man in my position, end up with a tattoo on their ass and a lifetime of babies and nonstop danger to make up for it. Janelle has a promising future, I’m sure.
She doesn’t need a fucked up veteran gun runner to make her life a living hell by constantly disappearing on his bike.What if I never come home? What if she leaves?Relationships have never been anything more than threatening to my senseof independence, and I’m not much of a good guy myself. The jealousy I feel alone could burn down an entire city.
I would smother this woman if I let myself get more attached to her than I already am. When I think about what it means to ruin her and ruin myself in the process, I find it easy to keep my hands to myself. There’s nothing that could justify dragging Janelle into my life. Once the coast is clear in Boston, I’ll have to be intentional about severing the ties between us but…
I can’t keep her.
She hates the Midwest, which we both have in common. I don’t bother telling her when we pass the exit that leads to my small town in Missouri, and I definitely don’t share anything about my mom, my siblings, or the fucked up series of life events that led to me enlisting as soon as I was old enough to join.
I tried impersonating Gideon when I was fifteen the first time I tried to enlist. Just to show you how stupid and desperate I was to get away from our tiny patch of nowhere. Her mood doesn’t improve when we get into Oklahoma, which is even more Midwestern than Missouri in a lot of ways – flatter, longer stretches of highway with nothing but gas stations and little Route 66 themed gift shops, then the kitschy little motels we get to stay at now that we’re properly out of the East Coast.
The first place we stop miraculously has vacancies. It’s the off-season and I’m fairly certain Vickie Shaw bought out three of the motels in Oklahoma. Our club connections don't get us a discount, but the girl working behind the counter doesn’t look twice at me or Janelle. She’s tired by the time we get toBarbarian’s Lodge, a not-so-subtly named motel identifying the place as ours. Vickie has it in her mind that success is all about ‘branding’, but Janelle doesn’t care a lick for any branding. She’s cranky – pretty damn pissed at me, honestly. I can feel herenergy towards me shift and wonder what the hell I did to push her away already.
I just want to respect her, even if it gets harder the longer I spend night after night in bed with her soft, supple body.
“While you shower, I’ll go out and look for something to eat,” Janelle says. I look over at her to see if she’s messing around considering how little I’ve wanted her to be away from me the past few days.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“There’s a little taco stand across the road. I’ll be fine.”
Finally, I make eye contact with Janelle. Her efforts to test me and get under my skin are more effective than I want to admit. She can tell that I don’t want to let her out of my sight, even if it’s just across the street.
“I won’t run away,” Janelle says in an effort to convince me to let her go.
“If you’re not back by the time I’m out of the shower, I’ll come and find you.”
“So I can leave?”
