The lion roared in my head, ready to break through the cage he’d been pacing in since the moment I’d seen Jacob touch Sloane.
Sloane.
Stepping back, I sucked in a breath and waited for Jacob to round the corner. His eyes were on the ground as he took clunky steps forward that sent him on a zigzag path away from the streetlights, and in the very direction I had been hiding.
I watched as he cursed under his breath.
I watched as he looked back over his shoulder and mouthed something to my brothers.
I watched as he reached inside his pocket and pulled out his cell.
I watched as the screen lit up his tweaking face.
I watched as he brought it to his ear, getting closer… closer… closer…
Until he’d slipped into the darkness of the path that cut through the back of Rusty’s leading out into an open space where all the waste and storage units for the diner were sitting.
His feet crunched the gravel beneath his feet, and he was just about to open his mouth and speak to whoever the hell was on the end of the phone when I made my move.
“Hey. Yeah—”Slam!
Jacob’s phone clattered to the ground the second I grabbed the back of his shirt before I smacked his whole body into the closest brick wall, face forward. He sagged against it instantly, his body crumpling in on itself as a grunt of pain escaped the back of his throat and disappeared into the gargling of the blood that was already collecting in his mouth.
His phone was still lit on the ground, and I crouched down, holding him in place, and reached for it to end the call. The sound of a woman on the other end of the phone calling his name disappeared the second I hit the red button and placed the phone into the depths of my jeans pocket. Then all my attention was on the piece of shit pressed against the wall in front of me.
Play time.
Pushing his face into the harsh brick, I applied some pressure with one hand, my other hand collecting both his wrists and pinning them behind his back.
“S… st… op,” he tried to choke out.
My jaw was tight, my nostrils flaring as I let the power surge through my muscles and hold him in place.
“Please,” he whimpered.
“Now you want to be polite to me,” I growled in his ear, so close that my angry, dry lips brushed against him, every word I spoke smacking his skin with venom.
As soon as he heard my voice, his eyes popped wide open, and he started to struggle. Really struggle. His feet tried to gain traction against the ground. His shoulders wiggled and danced around to try and escape my grip, but he was too fucking high and I was too goddamn angry to let him play. He didn’t deserve a fight. He’d never given Sloane one.
Just the thought of her had me pulling Jacob’s hair back harshly, gripping and twisting the ends of it as far back as I could before I used all my power to drive his head into the wall again. The crunching of his nose lit up the air, and the sound that escaped the back of his throat was filled with pain. His body buckled in my grip, his knees giving way and forcing me to push my knee in between them to keep him standing.
“You still with me, Jakey,” I whispered through a menacing smile. The smell of his blood was drifting under my nose, spurring me forward. Nothing smelled sweeter than the stench of your enemy’s weakness while you grew stronger and stronger from the high of it all.
He grunted, his head rolling as I let go of his hair and curled my hand around his neck, squeezing it tightly.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
The hand holding his wrists together applied more pressure before I began to twist his arms around as uncomfortably as I could, attempting to make a contortionist out of him.
“I’ll admit, this ain’t usually my style,” I began to tell him, manipulating his body so he felt pain in multiple places. “I prefer to look a man in the eyes when I’m handing him his punishment. But let’s see how you dirty predators like it when you’re cornered and slammed up against a wall with nowhere to go, shall we?”
Jacob sucked in a rough breath, his chest rising as he tried to blink his eyes open furiously. His lips parted slightly, and a trickle of blood fell from them, dangling down like a loose ruby red thread that couldn’t be cut free.
“That’s right,” I huffed out through a sadistic laugh. “I know what you did to Sloane Sutton.”
“You…” he gasped, inhaling sharply. The sound of it stuck in the blood in his throat. “Don’t know… shit.”
“You touched our girl, Hove.”
