Page 32 of Duke

I LIFT THEcigarette to my lips. Every time I take a drag, the smell of Shanna’s tight pussy wafts from my fingers.

The hot smoke fills my lungs. Blowing it out in rings with a shake of my head, I think about how I almost squandered the sweetest gift a woman could give a man—in a hall closet in a damn bar on the floor.

I’ve become a fucking animal, and I don’t like it.

Bad things happen when a man loses his head. He becomes careless and then everything goes to shit.

I flick the cigarette to the ground, snuffing it out under the heel of my boot. My head tips up to the sky full of a million stars glittering like diamonds.

The back door swings open and she steps into the moonlight.

She’s a goddess; a fucking sea siren that’s enchanted me. She’s a drug that’s dangerously addictive, and I can’t afford to take a fatal hit.

She’s young, pure and innocent and nothing a man like me should’ve ever touched. I need some space and distance from her—from this goddamn town to get my head right.

I push off the wall, she follows, stopping in surprise by the side of the Ford F-150 I drove into town.

“The bike was my father’s.”

She nods her head and opens the door, sliding across the seat.

I’m surprised and alarmed when she curls up next to my thigh like a kitten and leans her head on my shoulder. She’s been spitting at me for days and now she’s docile and rubbing against me in contentment.

What is she up to?

I put the truck into gear and drive her home to her daddy’s house. A place where she belongs… until I can figure out what in the hell I’m going to do—if anything, about her now.

I’ll be damned if that college douche is gonna dip his dick into what’s mine, but I’m not cold enough to bind her to me yet. If I take her V-card, I’m going to give her a platinum band to mark her ring finger but Shanna’s not ready for that shit.

Not yet.

She needs more time to finish school and figure out what she wants to do with the bar, before I rip her away from her world cementing her in mine.

I pull into her drive, putting the truck in park.

She’s asleep.

I put my arm around her, holding her close to my side, wishing for a thousand different things.

I wish she already belonged to me. I’d keep driving to California and tuck her in my bed.

I wish shit weren’t so damn complicated between her father and the club. I’m trying to keep what I owe them to a minimum as it is. She doesn’t fully trust me yet, but I will protect her father and keep what he did buried.

I lift her in my arms and carry her over the threshold of her father’s home.

Seven months.

I’ll give her seven months before I come back and carry her off and over the threshold of my home and she ain’t fucking leaving.

“Duke?” She whispers as I gently place her down in her bed tucking the covers around her.

“Yeah, cherry?”

“Hmmmm… ” She snuggles in lost in slumber. But her plump lips are curled in a soft smile and I rain light kisses over her hair, her face, and the crook of her neck.

Fallujah didn’t kill me but leaving her for seven months might.

I reluctantly push off the bed drinking in the sight of her before opening her nightstand drawer. I find it. She hid it under a few magazines. I grin, grab her vibrator and tuck it into the back pocket of my jeans.

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