Page 237 of Sweet Temptation

Piper was looking around the room, taking everything in, his cold, serious eyes finally landing on Sanchuk on the floor. And me standing over him with my ridiculous shiv.

There was blood on the floor and the wall. Sanchuk’s blood. His face was beaten, his nose, arm and neck were bleeding, and my knuckles were battered.

I must’ve looked like a fucking psycho.

So maybe I wasn’t so different from any of these guys after all.

Maybe I was just as fucked-up as they all were, and this moment was the hard proof.

It fucking grated me that Piper looked so damn calm. All of them did.

I wasn’t even breathing right.

Piper met my eyes and kinda sighed.

“You gonna waste our time here?” he said. “Make me talk you down from doin’ somethin’ you really don’t wanna do and you’re just gonna regret?”

“Why? ’Cause now you’re the good conscience fairy?”

“I don’t give a fuck about your conscience. But you take this any further, my brother loses a good man on his crew. Your woman loses her bodyguard. And for what? Him?” He glanced at Sanchuk. “That right there is a man who knew the consequences of his actions before he took them, and so do you. So I’m askin’ you. You think this is worth it? Worth losing her over?”

I rubbed a hand over my face. He was talking sense, and I really fucking didn’t like it. He was also talking bullshit. He didn’t give a fuck about me and Summer riding off into the sunset together any more than he cared about my conscience.

He just wanted me to leave him in this room with the dirty little enemy rat who’d burrowed up into his territory.

“Walk away,” Piper said evenly, “and I promise you, I will take care of it.”

“Like you took care of it last time.”

“Last time, he slipped your man, not mine.”

I looked at the five bikers standing in front of me.

Piper walked over to me and I let him take the shiv from my hand. I also let him get in my face. “This isn’t your scene, Sterling.” His words were forceful, but oddly sympathetic. “Take. Off.”

And finally, I backed down. The adrenalin dump was already making me shaky.

I felt sick.

Because Piper was right. I didn’t belong in this situation. I was different than them. I couldn’t follow through with anything worse than I’d already done here.

And that meant the Kings still had a part to play in this whether I liked it or not.

I needed them. Even though I didn’t want to.

Maddox picked up his drill. I saw one of Piper’s guys, wearing gloves, wiping my prints from the remote.

Then Maddox said, “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

He basically removed me from the room… as Sanchuk begged us not to leave. He wanted to negotiate. He’d promise never to come near Summer. He’d give up every Bloody Bastard he knew and his mama too if we’d just stay and talk.

But Piper was right. He was a man who knew the consequences of every bad decision he’d ever made, and he’d made a hell of a lot of them.

That wasn’t on me.

I still felt fucking sick.

The door shut behind us like a bad omen.

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