Page 36 of Magnetic Temptations

“Good question,” Benji laughs. “Guess you need to figure that out for yourselves because I won’t be telling you any fucking thing.”

Unable to resist the temptation, I march forward, draw back my fist and let it fly, hitting him square in the jaw. “Listen here, you piece of shit. I’ll rip all of your nails from their beds one at a time, then if you still don’t feel like talking, I’ll start removing each digit individually.”

“Ooh, I’m shaking in my boots.” Benji mocks me. “Oh, wait! I’m not wearing any.”

“Smartass motherfucker,” Tex thunders. “Maybe you’d do better if we started removing your teeth first.”

“Aww, you’re going to make me cry,” Benji heckles. “Whatever shall I do without any teeth? It’s not like you’re going to let me live long enough to eat another meal.”

“You got that right,” Gunner interjects. “At least you’re not begging to see another day like Julia did. She was so much fun to chase and catch. When she faced her death, she begged and pleaded.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Benji roars. “Where is she? Where’s my girl?”

“Your girl?” Ella scoffs. “Did she know she was yours?”

“Yes,” he hisses. “We had an understanding. We could see other people but we belonged to each other. From the first day we saw each other. Now tell me, where is she?” Like we’re going to give him that information. He’ll be seeing her soon enough—in Hell where they’ll eternally fry in hellfire.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Tex taunts, hitting the taser trigger and causing Benji to screech like a girl. In fact, if we had been inside, he would’ve broken glass, it was that shrill!

“Huh, well, even though she was a sick twisted bitch, she chased me all over the place,” I muse. “Guess you weren’t as important as you thought after all seeing as she vowed undying and everlasting love to me.”

“It was a ploy,” Benji declares. “It’s how she caught men in her web so she could take them for all they were worth.”

“Are you sure about that, Benji boy?” Kruger asks. “Because from what she said when we mouse trapped her, Mason was the love of her life.” I’m not sure if she said that or not, but when Kruger tells Benji that, he loses his shit and begins thrashing. “Wow. Calm down, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

Benji’s face is so red it’s as if he’s been outside in the heat of the day. There’s a vein in his forehead that’s pulsating and while I’m no doctor, I bet his blood pressure is sky high right now. “Yeah, too bad she wasn’t my type,” I sneer.

“Or a bark burn,” Tex tacks on.

“Doesn’t matter where she is,” Gunner reasons. “You won’t ever see her again. By now, her bones have rotted and Mother Earth has claimed her.”

“You won’t get away with this!” Benji roars.

“Seems we already have,” Hydro states, smirking. He steps forward to make sure Benji’s attention is solely on him. “Now, I’ll ask again. Where is Myles?”

“I’m not telling,” Benji sullenly replies, only to shriek when Tex taps his thigh with the taser. Granted, he didn’t pull the trigger this time, but the threat is there. “The only way you’ll get anything from me is when you take me to where Julia is.”

“This is not a tit for tat situation, you fool,” I inform him. “This is how this shit works, moron. You tell us where my brother is and we give you a quick death. You keep your trap shut and you’ll wish you were never born.”

“Too late,” the asshole states, snarling. “I wished I wasn’t born the day I started thinking for myself and recognized there was something wrong with everyone else.”

“What do you mean by that?” Mane asks, her mind wanting to understand what made him act the way he does.

“The day my balls dropped, my mother started looking at me the way a woman looks at a man. She used me, sold me, and bred me. My dad turned a blind eye to her sickness, and when I was old enough and met Julia, she and I devised a plan to get rid of them. And we did, quite spectacularly.”

“I’m sorry you experienced that, Benji,” Mane says, her tone soft and soothing. “But that’s not an excuse to do the things to people that you have. You don’t want to be like them, do you?”

“I’m nothing like them,” he spits out, his eyes narrowed on my woman.

“Mane,” I say, my tone laced with warning.

She pats me on my thigh and moves away from my arms. I reach out to grab her and pull her back but Gunner stops me, shaking his head.

That pisses me off.

Where’s the overprotective father? You know, the one who inserts himself into her life and tries to manipulate things. The one that learned of my importance in her life and did some digging into files to find out my location and flew out to scope me out.

That’s the man I need right now. This calm, cool, collected son of a bitch is too damn placid for my way of thinking.

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