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He takes a deep breath, and I feel the heat of the exhale on my skin.
With a shake of his head, he talks down to me like I’m a child. “Sometimes I forget you don’t know club politics. A club is only as strong as its members’ belief in the person running it. You put doubt in people’s heads and any well-run club will crumble. Rumors got to us before all this that Duke was making a play for Psy’s seat. If word gets out that Psy killed his own VP, the club will want revenge.”
“But what about what Duke did to his sister? Doesn’t that matter?” That should trump everything in my book. You hurt someone who’s family, who’s cared about, you get hurt in return.
It was something I always wanted—someone to care about me. But I got older and soon realized I didn’t need that. I just needed to care for myself and do what I needed to survive.
Even if it was a sad and miserable life.
He shrugs. “It might. But other than you saying it, all they have is a dead sister and a dead VP. No proof.”
“Okay, so how does any of that affect me?” I’m still not seeing how that makes me his wife.
“If a member of the Hounds was taken by someone in the Devils, like Duke, who has a known grudge against any of us, and Duke ends up dead because of it, it would stand to reason that it was a righteous play. Especially if it was an old lady who was taken.”
“Why an old lady?” I say it slowly, my heart starting to beat fast. His words are making me think one thing, and I really want to be wrong.
“Old ladies are respected by many clubs, Devils and Hounds alike. An old lady is the direct property of a club member. They’re their match and a part of them. Taking a man’s old lady is the equivalent of taking his arm or a leg.”
“Okay… still don’t see how this affects me.” I need him to tell me point-blank. I can assume things, but I’ve been an ass before. Didn’t like it. I’ll deny the obvious till I’m blue in the face if I must.
He shakes his head again, this time less pitying than before and with more frustration. “Don’t you get it? The only way you were walking out of there alive was to be an old lady yourself. That was the only way this would work. For your life and Psy’s.”
“You lied and told them I was your old lady.” A lie that will get us both killed by my grandfather.
“No.” Another shake of his head as he looks down at me and moves a strand of hair behind my ear, then holds my chin up to keep eye contact with him as he continues to speak. “I said you are, now and forevermore, my old lady. I’m not your goddamn roommate or your chef. I’m not your babysitter or your ride service. I’m your old man. And in my world, that makes you my wife. And as my wife, I refuse for you to be married to another man when you belong to me.”
I’m too shocked by his words to move away like I should. Too focused on the white noise that rushes through my ears to notice him pinching my chin as his head dips lower.
His lips on mine take my breath away, along with my mind. They’re softer than I thought possible. And when he applies just a little pressure, my lips part, and I let his tongue invade my space.
The second his tongue touches mine, all sense of reason, of right and wrong, flies out of the room, and I respond.
I’m falling in the moment, just this once, and letting myself enjoy it. Letting myself react and caress. To kiss him back.
He growls in approval as he releases my chin and pulls my body flush to his. The sound he draws from me is out of both excitement and surprise. He fits perfectly against me. His height difference seems to only accentuate the dips and curves on me that fit comfortably against him in a way that feels as if we were always one piece broken into two equal parts.
But the moment his hand moves from my back to my side, touching my skin, brushing my bruise and forcing pain to ricochet through my bones, my brain snaps back, the moment of freedom from my thoughts all but forgotten as I push him away.
“What are you doing?”
“Think it was obvious,” he says as he wipes something from the corner of his lips with his thumb before sucking the essence of whatever it was into his mouth. “Kissing my wife.”
“Stop calling me that,” I say in a panic as my heart continues to beat at too high a rate for someone my age. I put a hand over it, pressing the heel close as if that would still the triple beat.
“Thought you didn’t want me to lie.”
His eyes sparkle in a way that has me fighting my body’s reaction.
“I don’t,” I say with as much breath as I have, which seems to be none as it comes out breathless.
“Then accept it.” His eyes narrow, and the man I’ve come to see as the club enforcer, not the soft one who occasionally shows himself to me when it’s just us, comes out. “You’re mine.”
I hold his hard stare till I see it soften.
“And I’m yours,” he says gently, as if the words would spook me, like a skittish animal.
And they do. But unlike those who know to run when afraid, I stand there and do nothing.
