"He's here, Tiff," I say, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears—cold, mechanical. "He's not searching anymore. He's hunting. And he won't stop until one of us ends up in the ground."
I sheathe the knife and finally turn to her. The sight of her hits me like a sledgehammer to the sternum. She looks so small in my bed, surrounded by the rough-hewn timber walls of the clubhouse. Too soft for this life. Too pure for the blood about to spill.
But she is mine.
The realization brings no peace, only a terrifying clarity. I cross the room in two strides, the heavy tread of my boots vibrating through the floor. I don't ask for permission or hesitate. I reach out and cup her face in my rough, calloused hands, tilting her head back until she has no choice but to look into the abyss of my eyes.
"I need you to listen to me," I command, the tone low in my throat. "I am not a good man. You know this. I have done things in the sandbox that would make you sick. I have hurt people. I have killed people."
Her breath hitches, her pupils dilating as she searches my face.
"But every single bad thing I have ever done," I continue, brushing my thumb over the pulse hammering frantically in her neck, "was practice for today. Everything I learned about pain, about death, about how to dismantle a human being... I’m going to use it all. I will burn the world down if that’s what it takes to keep his hands off you."
She doesn't flinch. Instead, she leans into my touch, her hand coming up to grip my wrist. Her fingers are warm, grounding me in the present, pulling me back from the edge of the flashback that always lurks in the periphery of my vision.
"Just come back to me," she whispers. "Don't get lost in the fire, Blake. Come back."
I don't just kiss her; I lunge across the bed and seize her, my hand tangling in her hair to snap her head back. I crush my mouth to hers, my tongue invading her with a brutal, territorial demand. I bite her bottom lip until I taste the copper tang of her blood, drinking the sound of her startled moan. I need to taste her life before I go out to deal in death.
My free hand finds the opening of the comforter, sliding over her bare, sensitive skin until I find her heavy breasts. I squeeze them hard, the sound of my palms slapping against her skin punctuating her gasps as my thumb rakes over her nipple until she arches against me.
Even now, with a war at the door, my cock is a rigid, throbbing weight against my fly. I want to rip that comforter away and spend hours marking every inch of her with my teeth, leaving bruises that would tell the whole world she belongs to a Gunnar.
I pull back just an inch, my breath hot against her swollen lips. "You stay in my bed," I say, my voice jagged. "You keep that pussy wet and full of my seed. I’m coming back to finish what I started. I’ve marked every inch of you, Tiffany. You don't belong to a ghost; you belong to a Gunnar who’s coming back to claim his prize."
I pull back, resting my forehead against hers. "I always come back. I’m a Gunnar. We’re too stubborn to die."
A heavy pounding on the door shatters the quiet.
"Blake," Logan’s voice booms from the hallway, deep and authoritative. "Church. Now. We have a situation."
I pull away, the loss of her heat making the air feel thin. I don't just toss the flannel; I grab it and shove it into her hands.
"Cover yourself," I order, my eyes lingering on her flushed skin for one last, hungry second. "Now. You don’t leave my side. If a bullet flies, you’re behind me. If I tell you to run, you don't look back. You are mine, Tiffany, and I’m not losing my soul today."
She scrambles to pull the shirt over her head and drag on her jeans, the thick fabric hiding the bruised, swollen skin I’d just been marking. She looks small, but as she stands up, her jaw sets with a lethal kind of resolve. The "asset" Logan wanted was a ghost. This is my woman, forged in the heat of my bed and the threat of my world.
I open the door. The hallway crackles with tension. Logan isn't alone. Austin paces behind him like a caged tiger. Shane leans against the wall, cleaning his nails with a switchblade, his face a mask of bored violence. Tristan stands silently in the back, his eyes dark and calculating.
The pack is assembled.
"Talk to me," I say, stepping into the hall, pulling Tiffany out behind me. I keep one hand on the small of her back, a constant point of contact.
Logan looks at Tiffany, his expression softening for a fraction of a second before hardening back into the stone-faced President of Broken Halos. "We got a call from the Sheriff. And a text from a burner number sent to the club phone."
He holds up a tablet. "He's not coming up the mountain, Blake. He knows we have the high ground. He knows the Forge is a kill box and the clubhouse is a fortress. Sterling tried to kick him out of the Lodge an hour ago, but Ramon’s legal team threw a stay of execution at him. It was a decoy. While the lawyers distracted Sterling and the Sheriff, Ramon’s tactical team breached the bakery’s service basement."
"So where is he?" I ask, though a sick feeling already churned in my gut. I know the answer. Ramon is a sadist, but he is a strategic one. He knows how to hurt people without touching them.
Logan taps the screen and turns the tablet toward me. It is a live stream. Grainy footage, likely from a phone propped up on a counter. Cold lead settles in my veins.
It is Sweet Pine Bakery.
The glass display cases, usually filled with the croissants and danishes Tiffany wakes up at 3:00 a.m. to bake, lie in ruins. Glass litters the floor like diamonds. The tables are overturned. The pastel walls, which she had painted herself, are smeared with something dark. And sitting in the middle of the chaos, at one of the few remaining tables, is a man in an expensive suit.He eats a muffin, looking directly into the camera lens with a calm, dead smile.
Ramon.
"He's got guys at the front and back," Austin says through gritted teeth, his hands flexing into fists. "Sheriff says he can't move in. Ramon claims he has the place rigged. Says if he sees a uniform, he lights a match. The whole block goes up. Sweet Pine, the hardware store, the apartments above."
