Page 5 of Defiant
Damn it.
When I pulled it out of my pocket, my spirits sunk when I saw who it was. I glanced to Jaz, extending a hand toward her instead of picking it up right away. “Your phone,” I demanded, once she made no moves to do anything.
She frowned—a ridiculously cute expression on her otherwise beautiful face—and rolled onto her side to retrieve it from her back pocket. Jaz practically slammed it onto my palm, muttering, “Happy now, Dante?”
Ah, seemed she chose to call me Dante instead of Storm. I could work with that.
As my fingers curled around her phone, I stood up and answered mine, moving toward the door to get some semblance of privacy. “Hey,” I spoke quietly, glancing over my shoulder, at Jaz on the bed.
My cock twinged with need when I wished I could be on that bed with her. Seriously, feeling her underneath me was the best feeling in the world.
“Where the fuck are you?” The voice on the other line was not happy.
“I’m, uh, out of town for the moment.” Hedging wasn’t something you did with the man who could crush you and your soul with his fist, but it was what I chose to do, mostly because I knew, unless I dragged Jaz with me, he would only yank me back.
He wanted it to be her decision, but I said fuck that.
It was a while before he growled out, “Out of town? Out of fucking town? And where might you have run off to, Storm? I really hope you’re not doing what I strictly told you not to.” There was a pause, and I could hear his hard, ragged breathing. When he got mad, he got furious. Zero to one hundred in less than two seconds.
I kept my mouth shut, though I did glance at Jaz again. It wasn’t like I could lie to him; he’d know. He wasn’t our leader because he was gullible.
“I take it your silence means you are where I told you not to go,” he growled out, rumbling on the other line. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Storm? I told you, if you want to eventually run the Skulls, you have to start acting like a leader. Running off and doing exactly what I told you not to does not make me believe you’d be good at leading the gang.”
He wasn’t wrong, but…fuck. Couldn’t he understand why I ran off and did the opposite of what he’d said? Didn’t he care that I had her here with me, right now, that I was going to bring her back? I’d just brought her here to give her the gist of it away from Midpark High and its hoity-toity students, but the plan was to continue east, to go home.
To bring her home, where she belonged.
“I—” I was not able to get a word more in, edgewise.
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care what your plan was, but it’s done.”
My blood ran hot. I didn’t like hearing him talk like that.
“You’re too rash, Storm. Your actions could put us at risk, and I can’t have that. Whatever the reason you went off and did the opposite of what you were told, I don’t give a shit,” he said. “Don’t come back. Don’t you dare fucking come back until that head of yours is screwed on straight—do you understand?”
He was…banishing me from coming back? How the fuck was I…
“And don’t try to come back until I give you the all-clear. You know what kind of welcome will greet you if you do.” With that, he hung up, leaving me to stare in shock at my phone.
What the absolute fuck was this?
I tried to call him back, but it went straight to voicemail. Shit. He wasn’t one to make needless threats, which meant…which meant I couldn’t go back, and I sure as hell couldn’t bring Jaz with me.
Fuck it all. I’d planned this, wanted to bring her home with me, be the savior of the fucking princess, and now I was effectively exiled.
No way the exile would last forever. No fucking way.
I moved deeper into the room, saying nothing as I sat on the edge of the bed, away from Jaz. She couldn’t see my face, she had my back, but with my slumping posture, she was bound to realize something was wrong.
Shit. I knew sometimes I made rash decisions, but to be exiled? Seemed a bit harsh, didn’t it? I was pretty much stuck in Midpark now, because if I went home without getting word that he’d changed his mind about the verdict, the others wouldn’t hesitate to beat me to a bloody pulp and toss me back out.
We were brothers and sisters, but loyalty to the gang mattered above all else, loyalty to the king. To Skull.
I didn’t hand her her phone back, keeping it together with mine, my stare on my lap. Well, if anything was a boner-killer, that last conversation was. Sex was the last thing on my mind as I sat there, lost in my own thoughts.
The Skulls had been my family for so long. They’d raised me while my father was in prison and my mother wasted her body away with whatever drugs she could get ahold of. I needed them. I needed…I needed to be patient. Skull would welcome me back. He had to.
Until then, maybe I should keep my focus on Jaz. She was the reason I was here, after all. If I could make her trust me, get onto her good side…
