Page 5 of The Vigilant

Still, I didn’t stop until I’d reached the far side of the garage, grabbed one of the rolling stools from off the wall, and dumped her insolent ass onto it.

As soon as I did and started to straighten, the thick rubber sole of her black boot detonated in my abdomen. I stumbled back, wheezing as stars popped in my vision.Holy fuck.I’d endured gunshots with less force than her damn kick. It was swift. Targeted. Powerful. Jon would be happy to know that her black belt in tae kwon do was well-deserved.

I caught my balance quick and lifted my arms, instinct kicking in and preparing me for an attack.And I wasn’t the only one.

Sutton sat on the chair, her back against the wall, and a slender knife pointed with lethal steadiness at me.

“You had no right to touch me.” Herwhite teeth bared with a feral kind of anger.

Damn there was a fucking fire raging inside her.

I lifted my hands to signal a truce and then lowered my arms. “You had no right to touch that bike,” I countered, my voice still hoarse from her wrecking-ball kick. “I don’t know what the hell happened to you in the last six years, but in here, you get what you give. You disrespect my property, I’ll disrespect yours.”

It took her a beat to swallow down my words, but then an incredible thing happened. I watched her box up all the pieces of her exploded anger and bury it behind an expression of nonchalance in a way that had taken me decades to master.

“So, you went from white knight to…motorcycle mechanic?” She arched her eyebrow. The one that was pierced.

“And you went from fairy princess to…criminal heathen.” I held her gaze.

She stilled, and then a wide smile broke over her face. For that first second, the smile was real, and then it became something restrained.

“Reformed criminal heathen,” she corrected, relaxing back against the wall and folding her arms. My eyes instantly dropped to her chest. The swell of her tits was more than enough to make my dick thicken, but this close, even the pitch black of her shirt couldn’t hide the hard bars studded through her nipples.

Her tits were fucking pierced, too.

Raging, destructive lust pumped through me. For a second, I was nothing more than a Neanderthal with the primal urge to rip her clothes off and mark her with my teeth.

I exhaled tightly. Slowly. Leashing the unbridled lust back into a cage.

She shouldn’t be here. Not with that dangerous mouth and her pierced fucking tits.

But I had zero room to complain. My cock had six fucking bars pierced through the shaft. They were meant for pleasure, but fuck me, because right now all they caused was pain. With her hidden lip tattoos and braless pierced nipples, she was like some kind of Gothic Medusa sent to turn my cock to stone.

I yanked another chair out from under the wall desk and held it in front of me—something to take the brunt of my frustration and block the evidence of my arousal.

Fucking hell.This was what solitude got me. A hard-on for my mentor’s fucking daughter.

“Why are you here, Sutton?”

She looked up at me from underneath her lashes. “You heard the man. I violated my parole, and now I need a babysitter to make sure I’m on my best behavior for the next six weeks.”

“Where’s your mother?”And why wasn’t she the first person you were taken to?

Sutton’s scoff called me an idiot. A chill moving like an ice cube along my spine just before she replied, “Dead.”

I stiffened. The news was far too devastating for the kind of nonchalance she had about it.Angela was dead? Christ. How had I not known? Not heard—because I cut myself off from everyone and everything except this garage.

“I didn’t…I’m sorry.”

Sutton shrugged, and it was the first time she gave me a glimpse of her real pain. “It was a while ago. No big deal.”

Damn, her walls were wrapped in electrified barbed wire.It would be highly impressive if they weren’t being used against me.

“What were you in juvie for?”

Her nonchalance disappeared, and there was no other word for her expression than deadly. “None of your business.”

I gritted my teeth. I wanted to clap back that I could very well make it my business and find out, but juvie records were sealed, which meant I’d have to get someone to hack it.No, it didn’t matter.

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