Page 43 of Hero: Claimed

I just wanted to help him. My dad refused to be helped, but the rules for the Pythons are far different from the rules of the Lords. I only wanted to help a good friend of my man. Give him the shot I couldn’t take with my dad.

“If you let me help… let Caitlin help… there’ll be no reason for the club to—”

“Shut the fuck up!” he screams, dropping his hand between the seat and the door to produce a .22. The shiny, black semiautomatic pistol might not pack the punch of its higher-caliber counterparts, but especially at this range, it could cause me a whole lot of damage. I grew up around guns. If it’s one thing a bunch of druggie assholes shouldn’t play with, it’s guns. But one thing a bunch of druggie assholes got off on playing with on a regular basis, was guns.

I bite my lip, nodding instead of answering, my gaze never wavering from the black steel in his hand. If he keeps waving it around like that, he might accidentally clip the trigger. Really bad news for me.

Okay. What to do?

If I open the door to leap out—I look out the window at the mountains speeding past us and I look out the rear window at the cars behind us—I might survive the impact, but the chances are high that I’d hit my head hard enough to give myself a concussion or worse, knock myself out. The chances are even higher that I’d get run over by one of the cars behind me before they ever have the chance to swerve or stop. So that’s out. Option two is that I could lunge for the gun, take him off guard. But he’s unpredictable and I’d really worry about getting shot. Even if the wound injured rather than killed on the spot, I’d bleed to death because Blaze isn’t dropping my bloody ass at the ER to keep me from dying.

My only choice is to wait it out. What do those detective shows say? If you reach your destination, you’re dead? Yeah, I think that’s it. I don’t want to reach his destination, but it’ll most likely kill me before we ever reach his destination if I attempt an escape now.

After I stay quiet for several minutes, Blaze sets the gun on his lap, barrel pointed in my direction for quick discharge. I take in a lungful of breath, swallow down my fear, and try reasoning with the man again.

“Blaze, you don’t have to do this. We can figure something out.”

“Shut up,” he bites back.

“You’ll hurt Levi if you go through with this. “

“Shut up!” he screams again, this time in my face.

“You don’t want to—”

His fist catches me square in the face and the world turns black.

18.

Levi

I’ve been sitting on the barstool for the past twenty minutes thinking about the fight with Brin. How I left her vulnerable at work and made her feel like she was nothing when she’s fucking everything and that’s the problem. Then there was the talk I had with Blood. And finally, that shit show of a talk with Blaze. I didn’t want to believe it, even though she warned me. But when I sat him down with a beer, his eyes looked wrong. He was twitchy as fuck. I knew she was right.

Even when I promised him we wouldn’t go to Duke yet. We’d get him the help he needed. Yeah, the club has rules, but I couldn’t ever just leave him flapping in the wind with an addiction monkey on his back.

My leg keeps bouncing furiously enough to jackhammer a hole in the floor. She doesn’t want to see me tonight. No—shehas tosee me tonight. I need to make things right. I need to make sure I didn’t screw up the best thing to ever happen to me in my life to the point that it can’t be fixed.

Brinley’s mine.

I close my eyes picturing her legs wrapped around my hips as I thrust inside that tight, wet, heat. Never felt anything like it. Not just on my dick, but inside. All of me. Brinley uses her whole body to let me know how she feels. No woman has ever given her feelings for me using her whole body until Brinley.

Shit!I leap from the stool to jog out to my place.Ourplace. The home and the bed I should’ve slept in last night instead of being a pussy and sleeping in my room in the clubhouse. My jog picks up to a run across the blacktop to the row of trailers. Mine is dark. Brin’s most likely in bed. She remembered to lock the door—that’s good. I told her when we first moved in to always remember to lock the door. We might live on the compound, but in our life, a whole lot of shit happens, and I didn’t want it happening to her.

I fumble with the keys, then letting myself into the black space, I run to the bedroom and flip on the light. The bed’s been slept in. Her head indent is on the pillow and the covers are whipped back like she’d gotten out of bed fast.

“Brinley?” I call out, jogging to the bathroom. Empty.Empty?I check the other rooms. “Bird, baby, come out. We need to talk.”

Silence.

My woman is gone. Shit, she left me? Trying to clear my head, I walk back into the bedroom to check the closet. All of her shirts hang on hangers next to mine.

Next, I check the drawers. Underwear. Pants. Socks. All still in their spots. In the bathroom again, her toothbrush and shampoo remain in the cupholder and shower. Her car. I run back out to the living room to see if her car is gone, but as I step out onto the stoop something catches my eye and I step back inside. The brown jacket I gave her is hanging on the hook next to the door. My gaze drops to the floor where her shoes—her fucking shoes?—rest on the mat where we keep them because she doesn’t like shoes worn on the carpet.

All right, Levi, stay calm, man. Stay calm. I pull the door shut behind me and jog to where her car is parked. And it’s still parked right where we left it the last time we let her drive the thing. She didn’t leave in her car.Think. It shits me to have to wake people with kids up at this time of night, but if she’s with any of them, they have to let me talk to her. We’re sleeping in the same bed tonight.

She’s mine.

I walk across the tarmac to Duke’s place, banging on the door until a grumpy-as-shit, half-dressed president opens the door. “Fuckin’ better have a good reason for waking my house. My boy was asleep and now he ain’t.” He growls at me.

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