Page 2 of The Vow

“I wouldn’t lie to you.” He tipped his head back against the seat, the slight shift in posture accentuating the thick cords of his neck before they were restrained by the collar of his shirt.

Saliva pooled in my mouth, and I quickly swallowed. Fifteen years, and no one had ever been able to affect me the way Damon had. Fifteen years, and I made sure no one else had ever had the chance.

“I think you would do anything to get what you want,” I clipped. I wasn’t sure exactly what that was yet, but I was going to find out.

“You’re right.” I felt the second his dark eyes landed on me, the smolder of my skin left in their path. “I would do anything to get my wife back.”

My teeth locked, wanting to scream. His words were like acid in an open wound, caustic and painful, seeping into every fragmented crack and shattered piece, a torturous reminder that just because something was broken didn’t mean it couldn’t feel. But I didn’t cry out. Or hit him again—miraculously.Instead, I forced out a level response, “I’m not your wife.”

His low chuckle grated on something raw in my chest. “The law says otherwise.”

Technically—unfortunately—he was right. Legally, I was married to the most wanted criminal in the world. But not for long. Now that he was here—now that I had him, I was going to get everything I needed from him, namely the truth and my freedom.

“Like you, I stopped caring about the law a long time ago,” I quipped nonchalantly.

I was sixteen when my parents were killed and nineteen when their legacy was stolen from me. Naively, I became obsessed with seeking justice. An elusive hope for I quickly learned that justice was nothing more than a scale weighted in favor of money and power, losing all ability to triumph the ones who’d been trodden. And that meant the only justice I could count on was the kind delivered with my own two hands, the kind fueled by vengeance and grit to punish those for whom the law looked the other way.

So, I did. Along with Harm, Dare, and the rest of their unit, we formed a vigilante motorcycle club, and I spent every moment, every breath, taking down criminals who thought they were above the law. Men like Magnus Sinclair. Men like Bernard Belmont.

And men like Damon Remington.

“I can see that,” Damon murmured, his gaze roaming over me appreciatively. “Aiding and abetting a fugitive. We’re like a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.”

My jaw spasmed from clenching. “For now.”

I loathed the thought that I was helping him, but Damon had offered me something I couldn’t turn down—the opportunity to finally bring justice to the man who’d had my parents killed.

“As ever, Robyn, you take my breath away,” hemurmured, his gaze continuing to roam over me as though I were an oasis in the middle of his deceitful desert. Like our marriage, he would soon learn it was nothing more than a mirage.

“If you keep talking like that, I will take it away permanently,” I returned with a feigned sweet smile.

I hated his low chuckle that followed. The way it coursed smooth and quick, like I’d tapped it from a long-buried well inside his chest. The feeling that I could access pieces of him no one else got was something I didn’t need and couldn’t afford to want.

“Did you miss me?” he continued, exquisitely undeterred.

Again, I fought to not react, though the question was like a roundhouse kick to my chest. My breath burst from the impact, but I managed to hold the leash keeping taut every muscle in my body.

The key to being a good hunter is being invisible to your prey. Not necessarily unseen, but disguised. Appearing safe and unthreatening, though nothing could be further from the truth. And that was what I needed to become to Damon—the bait and the trap. The lure that made him want to get closer and the thing that would spell his downfall.

“Only at night,” I murmured, letting a husk drench my voice. A thrill of triumph oozing through me when he made a low noise and then shifted in the seat again.

It was a dangerous game to use myself as bait, one that could easily leave me just as snared as my prey if I wasn’t careful.

“How did you miss me at night, Robyn?” Damon drawled, his tone smooth and layered in sin, clearly believing this conversation had taken a drastic turn.

I waited a moment, watching his hand slowly creep up his thigh toward his groin, and then tore my eyes away before itreached its destination. These were the kind of lines I had to be careful not to cross.

A slow, bitter smile crept up my cheeks, and I replied in a similar tone, “Like Prometheus misses the eagle.”

His first, swift inhale was the sound of my fired barb sinking home.

According to Greek myth, the god Prometheus bestowed the gift of fire to humans, for which he was punished by Zeus. Chained to a rock face, Prometheus was tortured by an eagle who ate his liver during the day. At night, his liver would regenerate, and the next day, the torture would repeat, to continue for all of eternity.

Prometheus would never miss the eagle. He would never miss in the solace of night the thing that caused him agony day after day.And neither would I.

Damon tipped forward, a rogue lock of hair trespassing onto his forehead as he chuckled again. The sound was as warm and threatening as flame coasting close to my skin, lifting goose bumps to the surface; a warning if I’d ever felt one.

“I miss eating you out every day, too,” he drawled slowly.

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