Stephanie Tyler - Vipers Run

“I should probably leave it with you, then.”

“That’d be best. I’ll make you a copy, though,” he told me. “Wait—you said leave it with me. That means . . . ?”

I nodded. I’d met a protector in Bernie and now I had a friend and protector in Tenn. But with Cage, I might be able to have it all.

I left Tenn and went out to face the music. Cage was waiting, stretched out on the couch, his big black boots on the coffee table. His still-smoldering gaze met mine, as intense as a physical touch.

“I already figured that any woman who fights a dying man’s wishes isn’t going down easy,” he said.

I felt the need to point out the obvious. “You said you weren’t going to die.”

“So you did believe some of what I told you.”

“That situation was one of a kind. Intense.”

“So it would’ve been like that with anyone?”

I crossed my arms across my chest. Shielding myself from him had already proven impossible, but I was stubborn. “Yes.”

“Bullshit. When did you start lying to yourself?”

For survival, I wanted to shout . Because I was busy mourning you, when I couldn’t finally do with you what I’d never done with anyone else.

So I didn’t answer him. He got up in one swift movement, and I backed away a step or two, but no, he wasn’t letting that happen. Mr. Tall, Dark and Commanding closed that space rapidly, leaving just enough room for me to not be completely threatened.

“Kiss me.”

“You can’t order someone to kiss you.”

“I’m not ordering someone . I’m telling you to kiss me .”

My tongue darted out to lick the corner of my lip as I considered this. Very dangerous—or it could possibly prove that this pretense of attraction was just that. “Okay, fine.”

He raised his brows in that “I’m waiting” way.

I put my mouth on him and was rewarded with a bruising, brutal kiss that devastated my nervous system. Hands down destroyed it as he’d proved I’d been lying to myself.

“Damn you,” I murmured against his mouth, and then I stopped thinking. His arms came around me, steel bands, but warm. His whole body was so damned warm.

He murmured against my cheek, “Every second I was on that goddamned concrete floor, bleeding and waiting for help, I thought about you. Every single day I was in that hospital, I thought about you.”

“You hung up.”

“I had to concentrate on not dying, Calla,” he said fiercely, then softened. “I want you to realize that I’m not going anywhere. Correction—I’m not going anywhere without you.”

I thought about him lying on the concrete floor, then in a hospital bed, clinging to life. Thinking about me. Heady stuff, and I couldn’t deny that it made me feel better about the uncertainty I’d faced so far. “You expect women to fall at your feet. I’m sure they do. It’s not happening this time.”

He leaned into me again, the scruff of his cheek brushing my ear. “It’s already happened, Calla. So fucking deal with it.”

Was it time to surrender to the inevitable? What could it hurt?

It could break your heart, baby girl.

My mother’s voice. Grams’s too. Both strong women almost done in by equally strong and dangerous men.

Although no, that wasn’t right—those men were dangerous, but not strong. Because they’d never come back to do what was right. Cage was here, despite everything, despite the threats to his own life. According to Tenn, Cage had risked it again to come make sure I was all right. How could I walk away from that?

God, I was in so much trouble. I should run, out the door, down the street, beg the nearest police officer to get me home . . .

Home.

Where’s that again, Calla?

But no, I wouldn’t do that, because I had nowhere else to go. I’d never let myself be defeated, and I wouldn’t start now.

I’d had dark, dangerous men circle me before. I seemed to be a magnet for them. I was independent and they took that as a personal affront or challenge. But that’s not why I did it. Not at all.

I saw what dangerous men did to the women in my family, how it left them with nothing, beat up and destroyed. It started with Grams, continued with Mom, who loved a bad man while never giving Jameson Bradley a second chance. And it continued with me trusting the wrong boy.

I’d watched love ravage those women until they’d become nearly unrecognizable. Loving the wrong man wasn’t a crime, but I began to believe that it should’ve been. Because it rendered both my mom and Grams incapable of loving any other man—any good man—and there were several in each of their lives that came calling.

I never went as far as to say my family was cursed, but if you looked at the long line of disappointments, I don’t know if you’d agree or not. Or maybe you’d simply say it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. And maybe it was, but I wasn’t planning on getting near any dangerous man to find out. I’d already done it with that phone call, fallen in love with a dying, dangerous man who stole my heart in ten minutes and would never let it go.

Or maybe I was just protecting myself. To let Cage walk away seemed like a foolish, selfish thing to do when I’d been given a second chance with him.

I’d already fallen too fast—completely, ridiculously, head-spinningly fast—and there was no escape from it. But I couldn’t shake from my mind one notion that my mother ingrained in me.

You take a man’s money, you give him power.

And I was never giving the only thing I had away. And that was why I’d never touched the settlement money from Jeffrey Harris’s family.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tenn come back into the room. I glanced over at him, then gave Cage a hard stare. “I’ll go with you. For protection. Obviously, there’s a connection between us. I’ll share your bed, but I’m not yours to order around. You don’t own me, Cage. No one ever will.”

Cage stared. Tenn gave a low whistle, but, smart man that he was, said nothing.

Cage was either very stupid or very brave, because he did speak. “In or out of bed?”

“What?”

“You said you’re not mine to order around—is that in or out of bed?”

I swallowed hard, hated the thrill that went through me at the thought of Cage and bed. “Neither.”

He shook his head slowly. “You can think that it’ll end there, sweetheart. But the MC doesn’t work like that. I don’t work like that. It’s a different world, like nothing you’ve ever been involved in before. It’s going to blow your mind. I’m as goddamned possessive as I know you are. You want to go in thinking we’ll play this fast and loose, make it a casual thing—you try it.”

“You’re saying it’s not going to work?”

“I’m saying that my MC doesn’t fuck its way through women like you. They’ll be hands-off because of me. Every MC woman wants the opposite of what you just said. Every guy too, if he’s not too stupid to admit it.”

“Do you?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I can’t tell if that’s guilt.”

“I don’t fuck who I pity.” His harsh language, self-absorbedness all clenched in my belly, fueling the already big ball of want. “So if I don’t own you, then you don’t own me? You can handle that?”

Behind me, Tenn cursed, a warning, and I had to stand my ground. “I can.”

I’d just lied to him, and it wasn’t the first time.

Calla was still packing when Cage heard the unmistakable roar of tricked-out bikes breaking the quiet of the North Carolina night.

Tenn stilled. “That’s not Tals.”