Page 45 of Wild Ride

“How’d you know?”

She shrugs a shoulder. “Seems like you know what it’s like to love and lose, and you didn’t know your dad. I guessed.”

“Yeah,” I exhale.

“I hope you stay here for a while. See what Thunder Rock has to offer,” she says with a wink.

I let out a heavy exhale, then reach for the coffee and the pastry. “I don’t know. I’ve met some people, and I think it’s time to go.”

“Who?” she asks. “Being as I own the shop, I know almost everyone who actually lives in town. There’s also not that many people here.”

My lips curve up into a grin. “You probably don’t know him. I don’t think this is his kind of place,” I murmur.

“Try me,” she quips.

Laughing softly, I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, lifting my coffee to my mouth and releasing my lip before I take a sip of the light-brown liquid. I close my eyes, and my whole body pauses, and even my heart stops beating before I exhale.

Opening my eyes, I connect my gaze to hers. “My god, that’s amazing,” I whisper.

She winks. “Told you.”

“Bullet,” I blurt out.

Something dark flashes through her eyes, and then her breath hitches before she physically forces herself to appear normal and nonchalant. But I can tell she knows exactly who I’m talking about, and I decide that I need to know everything.

I need to know what she knows.

Because, without knowledge, I can’t make an informed decision, and right now, my head is telling me to run, my heart is telling me to stay, and my body is screaming at me to strip down and wait for him spread-eagled in his bed.

I’m in a conundrum.

BULLET

Waiting is not something I am inherently good at. I am ready to fucking act right now. I want to go to her motel, walk in, fuck her hard, and remind her who the fuck she belongs to. Then demand that she not sell a fucking thing, pack her shit, and stay here for fucking ever.

One night without her felt like a goddamn eternity. I’m not sure what the fuck happened, but I think I went and fell in love. Shit. I hated her days ago, I fucked her, and now I love her? What the actual fuck?

My bike hidden around the building, my eyes on the parking lot. I wait for her car to pull into a spot. Chewing on the corner of my bottom lip, I start to go over shit in my head. Maybe it’s not love. Maybe it’s not even lust.

Could it just be that I love and miss Shade so goddamn much that I have to keep this part of him?

And how fucked up isthat?

As I stand and watch the parking lot for a few more moments, I decide that I don’t care how fucked up it is. She was meant tobe mine, and maybe, just maybe, Shade sent her to me. This is where she belongs, with her family.

So I’m going to make damn sure this is where she stays.

No matter what kind of action I am going to be forced to take for that to happen, I will take it, even if that means chaining her sexy ass to the bed. Just as I think about her being chained to a bed naked, as if I manifest her, her car pulls into the parking lot.

She unfolds from the driver’s seat, much like she did the first time I sat here and watched her. My feet move, carrying me toward her quickly. She reaches out to wrap her fingers around the handle of the front door, but before she can actually grab it, I curl my own around her wrist and gently turn her around to face me.

“Let go,” she grinds out, but I can tell in her eyes that she’s silently begging for me to hold on tighter.

Maybe that’s just the self-centered caveman shit inside of me, but I’m going to go with it because I want to hold her closer. Tugging her against me, I hold her hand between us against my chest as I look into her honey eyes.

“Did you think you could come here, sell everything, and walk away without me knowing what the fuck was going on?”

“You defended that horrible woman.”

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