"Stop calling me that," he snarls, grabbing my upper arms. His grip is tight, possessive, desperate. "I never planned for us to happen. Yeah, the rescue center idea came up fast, but it’s legit. And yeah, I told Logan I had you handled because I needed him off my back so I could be with you. I was protecting you from club politics, Cassandra."
"By lying to me?" I shake him off, stepping back. "By manipulating me?"
"I never lied about how I want you," he says, his voice rough, pleading. "I never faked a single touch. You felt it. You felt me."
"You engineered every sensation," I say, my voice dead. "And I'm done playing my part."
I reach into my portfolio and pull out a document I prepared in the hotel room, just in case. I toss it onto the desk.
"This is a formal notice. I am stepping back from the negotiations. My firm will send a junior associate to handle the final hearings. I'm recommending the council review the permit with extreme scrutiny regarding the timeline of the application."
Logan pushes off the filing cabinet, his face dark. "You're declaring war, lady."
"No," I say, looking straight at Chase, watching the heartbreak fracture his beautiful, deceitful face. "I'm just doing my job. Like you did yours."
"Don't walk out that door," Chase says, and for the first time, he sounds predatory and inevitable. "Because the second you cross that threshold, the hunt begins. I’ve had my seed inside you, Counselor. I’ve marked your skin. You can run to the city, butyou’re carrying the brand of a Gunnar, and I’m coming to take back what belongs to me."
"If you come near me," I say, my voice shaking, tears finally threatening to spill, "I will file a harassment suit that will bury this club in litigation for the next decade. Stay away from me, Chase."
I turn on my heel and walk out.
It takes everything I have not to run. I feel the heavy, magnetic pull of him behind me, a physical tether trying to snap me back into his orbit. I expect him to grab me, to haul me back against the wall and kiss the doubt out of me until I’m mindless and pliable again. Part of me—the weak, traitorous part—hopes he will.
But he doesn't.
I burst out onto Main Street, into the blinding afternoon sun. I gasp for air, my lungs burning, my heart shattered in my chest. I won. I kept my professional integrity. I didn't let the bad boy win.
So why does it feel like I just lost everything?
I start walking toward the hotel, my vision blurred. I need to pack. I need to leave Pine Valley before the sun sets. Because if I spend one more night in this mountain air, smelling the pine and the leather scent clinging to my skin, I know I’ll go back. And next time, I won't have the strength to leave.
Behind me, in the window of the Outfitters, I see a shadow watching me go. Dark, imposing, and still. The Enforcer is watching. And I know, with a terrifying certainty, that this isn'tover. He doesn't lose. And he definitely doesn't let things that are "his" just walk away.
8
CHASE
The silence she leaves behind rings louder than a gunshot. It whines in my ears, drowning out the hum of the refrigerator in the back room of Peak Wilderness Outfitters.
Logan stands near the weapon rack, arms crossed over his massive chest. He holds his silence. He watches me with that dark stare that sees too much.
"She’s gone." The words taste like a catastrophic failure.
"I heard," Logan rumbles. "She thinks you played her."
"I didn't." The denial rips out as a snarl. I spin, kicking a heavy crate of climbing gear. It skids across the concrete floor and slams into the wall, but the crash doesn't fix the hole in my chest. "I tried to keep the club out of her business. I told you I had it 'handled' so you wouldn't send Blake or Tristan to intimidate her. I tried to protect her from us."
Logan tilts his head. "And now she thinks she was just a job."
"She was never a job." The words bleed out of me. "Not for a second. Even when I wanted to strangle her with red tape, I wanted her."
The temperature in the room drops. Logan drops his arms, eyes narrowing at the devastation on my face. He knows what it looks like when a Gunnar man falls. He fell hard for Savannah in a blizzard, and he knows there’s no coming back from the drop.
"Is she yours, Chase?" Logan asks. The question carries the weight of the patch and the family bloodline.
I don't hesitate. The answer brands itself into my bone marrow. "She's mine. Body and soul. If she leaves this town, I burn."
Logan’s chin drops in a sharp, military jerk. "Then why are you still standing here talking to me? Go get her."
