16
TEX
For a second the whole world went quiet.
Rowan stood in front of me, chest rising and falling fast, her eyes wide as she stared up at me, like she couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
My hands were still on her waist. I hadn’t meant to grab her like that, but the moment I’d seen that guy touch her, grab her arm like he had any right to, it was like something in my brain had snapped clean in half.
And now here we were.
Too close.
Way too damn close.
The parking lot lights cast a soft glow over her face, catching in her hair and the faint flush across her cheeks. Her lips were parted slightly, like she’d been about to say something but forgot the words.
I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to.
Something about her pulled at me in a way no woman ever had before.
I’d had women before. Plenty of them. Way more than my fair share of them.
Club girls. Women in bars. Women who knew exactly what they were getting when they hooked up with a biker. But Rowan wasn’t like any of them, and I couldn’t figure out why.
She just made me feel different. Like there was something at stake. Like losing her would actually matter.
It wasn’t about the sex. Hell, I would have given anything to see this woman naked and writhing beneath me as I worked her body into a frenzy, but this was more than that.
Something deeper.
That thought alone should’ve been enough to scare me off. Instead, my eyes drifted to her mouth, again. To her perfect, pink heart-shaped lips that I wanted to kiss, and suck, and nibble on, anddamn.
When I’d seen that guy laughing with her at the bar, I’d felt a type of anger build inside me that I hadn’t ever felt before. A type of feral protectiveness that I’d heard Bear and Moose talk about. The kind of rage and possessiveness that made a man want to kill.
But she wasn’t mine.
I didn’t want her to be mine.
I was good and fine being free and single.
Wasn’t I?
At first I told myself it was nothing. He was just some local asshole friend getting a bit too close and friendly, and so what? What did it matter to me? It was none of my business who she fucked or flirted with.
But then he leaned in closer to her, whispering something in her ear that made her already flushed cheeks turn even pinker. She’d laughed, and suddenly my chest had felt tight in a way I didn’t like. In a way that made my whole body roar…mine.
Outside when he’d grabbed her arm, a feral, hungry look in his eye, a look I’d seen in a man’s eyes before, somethingdarker had taken over me. Something possessive and protective. Something dangerous.
The kind of feeling that got men into trouble.
My grip on her waist loosened slightly.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my voice rougher than usual.
She blinked like she’d been pulled out of a trance. “I… You just knocked him out.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have put his hands on you.”
