Page 104 of Savage Hearts

She was saved from having to answer right away when our food came. I tapped my fingers on her thighs as I waited for the server to be done, feeling impatient for any morsel of information she was willing to share with me.

Finally, the server left, and I watched as Mila cut into the meat and placed it in her mouth.

Her eyes shut, and she let out a small moan that affected me more than I wanted to admit.

I ignored my food and instead focused on her. When she finally opened her eyes, they widened slightly when she found mine.

I grabbed the napkin on the table and wiped away a bit of sauce that was stuck on the corner of her lips.

The action was surprisingly gentle, considering that not too long ago, these very same hands had pounded a street rat to within an inch of his life, but I found myself wanting to be gentle for her.

Certainly not the kind of gentleness that she deserved, from a good man who would provide her a stable life, but the kind of gentleness I thought I might be capable of, that of a bad man who would do all sorts of unimaginable things just to give her the world.

She cleared her throat. “You want to know about my first date?” she asked, and I couldn’t decide if the tone in her voice held any resentment or not.

“I was in high school,” she continued when I didn’t respond. “He was the captain of the baseball team. Tall, lean, and blonde. He had the brightest blue eyes, and he looked at me in a way that made me feel special.”

I instantly hated the bastard, and I vowed I would get his name by the end of the date and make sure he wished he had never laid eyes on her.

She looked over at my clenched fist on the table, and I might have imagined it, but I swore a glint of amusement flashed in her blue-green eyes.

“He took me to the movies. I forgot what we saw. He paid for the tickets and the popcorn, and when he got a bit too handsy in a theater filled with strangers, I tried to push him off.”

That fucking prick. Forget regretting laying his eyes on her. I was going to make sure he wished he was never born.

She glanced over at me, and I didn’t miss the small smile gracing her lips. She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t look like that. I’m not going to give you his name. Besides, before anything could happen, he was pulled off of me and thrown against the wall.”

I frowned. “By whom?”

“By Sebastian Cline.”

There was that fucking name again. We should have made sure he hadn’t left the clubhouse during the massacre.

“Your dad’s stepbrother?” I asked.

She seemed surprised that I would know that. But we had made Daniel Hayes and everything that went on in his club our business for so long, there was very little about the bastard’s life that I didn’t know about.

Add to that the fact that we learned that Sebastian had been looking all over the city for Mila. The man who’d ambushed her at the company was a freelancer, hired by Cline. The guy worked for anyone willing to pay enough, and there were no lines he wouldn’t cross to get the work done.

The bastard was dead now. His body hung from a metal chain in one of our warehouses, serving as a treat for rats.

She nodded.

“Why would he care? Or, hell, be there on your first date with you?” I asked.

Something wasn’t adding up and I couldn’t tell what Mila was thinking since she wasn’t looking at me.

“He didn’t come on the date with me,” she said quickly. “I didn’t even know he was there until he showed up in the middle of the movie and did that. Um, he’s mysupposedbetrothed.”

“What the fuck?” I said, a little too loudly. So there was some shit I didn’t know. People around us turned their attention our way, but I ignored them.

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

Seven-fucking-teen and the motherfucker was already possessive of her.

I really underestimated Sebastian Cline’s obsession with Mila. It seemed to run deeper and further back than I had thought.

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