Page 8 of True Bastard
“Where is your boyfriend?”
I frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a boyfriend.”
He growled, “Jessup Winston. Goes by the name Pinch?”
I rolled my eyes at that and sighed. Of course he would be here looking for Jessup. “Oh, you mean my soon-to-be ex-husband, if I can ever save up enough money to divorce his ass. He’s not here, and if he knows what’s good for him, he will never show his face around here again.”
“Where is he?” the man growled again.
“Hopefully dead in a ditch somewhere. It would save me a lot of trouble. Then again, I’d have to bury the fucker, and well, I don’t have money for that either. So, your guess is as good as mine at the moment.”
He stared at me, his expression unreadable. The silence stretched thick with unspoken questions and a palpable tension. I could feel his eyes raking over me, cataloging the torn shirt, the bruises just starting to surface. It wasn’t a leering gaze, like Jessup’s, or even like Cade’s dismissive stare.
He was... assessing.
As if he were weighing something, calculating a risk.
“You say you don’t have a boyfriend,” he finally rumbled, his voice a low growl that vibrated in my chest. “But you’ve got trouble clinging to you like cheap perfume. Trouble that smells a lot like Jessup Winston.”
I snorted, a humorless sound. “Jessup’s trouble follows him like his shit-stained underwear. I’m just caught in his damn orbit.” I hugged myself, the ache in my ribs a dull throb. “Look, whatever you want with Jessup has nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to survive this hellhole of a town.” I met his gaze, a flicker of defiance hardening my own. “And I’m pretty sure you’re not here to offer me a loan or a shoulder to cry on.”
His lips curved into a faint, almost imperceptible smile. “You’re right. I’m not.” He took a step closer, his presence filling the doorway, a dark, formidable force. “But I’m here to collect a debt. And it seems your ex-husband has left a rathersignificant bill for me to settle.” His eyes narrowed, a predatory glint entering them. “And you,” he added, his voice dropping to a dangerous murmur, “might just be the collateral I’m looking for.”
My breath hitched.Collateral.The word hung in the air, thick with his unspoken threats. I’d been thrown to the wolves all day, and now this man, this embodiment of danger, was circling. My mind flashed back to Cade’s words:“That man, Kyllian, is the Devil himself in leather.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I could feel the primal fear coiling in my gut, but a stubborn refusal to be anyone’s pawn warred with it. “You want collateral? You want payment?” I blurted out, my voice shaking, but with a new edge of defiance. “You came to the wrong damn house, buddy. Jessup ain’t here, and I ain’t got shit to give you. So you can turn that damn bike around and ride your devilish ass back to whatever hellhole spawned you.”
His gaze intensified, the predatory glint sharpening. A slow, unnerving smile spread across his lips, a stark contrast to the grim set of his jaw. “You’ve got fire, Kitten. I like that.” He stepped closer, the movement surprisingly graceful for someone built like a brick wall. He stopped just inches from me, his presence overwhelming, the faint scent of leather and something more primal clinging to him. “But fire without a place to burn is just wasted energy. And you—” He paused, his eyes scanning my bruised face and torn shirt. “You are a whole lot of wasted energy right now.”
He reached out, his large hand hovering near my cheek.
For a terrifying second, I thought he was going to strike me.
Instead, his thumb gently, almost experimentally, brushed against the tender skin beneath my eye. It was a gesture that was both unnerving and strangely soothing—a contradiction that only amplified the danger he represented. “Don’t worry, Kitten,”he rumbled, his voice low and resonant. “I’m not here to hurt you. Not tonight. But Jessup owes me. And since you’re the only thing he left behind, you’ll have to do.”
Chapter Five
Firestride
What the fuck am I doing?
I didn’t have time for this shit. More importantly, I didn’t have time to fuck around with some cheap piece of ass, no matter how good that ass looked and fuck my dick raw... did this bitch look good.
Too damn good for the likes of that shitbag.
The woman was a walking hard-on. Curves for fucking days, tits that spilled out of her bra, and an ass that I could bounce a quarter off. She was fucking stunning. But it was her eyes. Those turquoise, almost crystal-clear blue eyes that grabbed ahold of my dick and wouldn’t let go. They were the eyes of someone who saw too much, someone who understood the rotten core of the world, someone like me.
And that was what scared me most. Seeing that recognition in her gaze, a flicker of shared cynicism and something far more dangerous—a hint of kinship—made the fleeting thrill of conquest suddenly feel... hollow. It was a cheap shot, a betrayal of the carefully constructed wall I’d built around myself, a wall that kept the loneliness from crushing me entirely.
I was supposed to be above this, above the desperation that clawed at decent men. But she... she was a siren song, a beautiful lie whispering promises I couldn’t afford to believe, and yet, my body was already betraying my mind. The battle raging insideme was a brutal war, and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was about to lose.
The rough denim of her torn shorts scraped against my palm as I tugged them down, her skin already marked with the faint beginnings of bruises from that fuckhead’s earlier assault.
She was a walking contradiction, this Kyllian Ward.
A fragile porcelain doll shattered by a brutal fist, yet still possessing a core of defiance that burned hotter than any wildfire. Her eyes—those electric turquoise eyes—locked on mine, and I could see the desperate calculation behind them, the same calculation that drove me, that kept me moving, surviving. I was supposed to be collecting a debt, enforcing a payment, not getting lost in the depths of a woman who was clearly already drowning.
