Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
She was going to leave in a matter of moments, he decided. Bolt the fuck out of here like she was being chased: Her hands alternated between being locked on her knees and rubbing up and down her thighs like she was having to force herself to stay in place. As she checked her watch again, he wondered what she was waiting for.
Except again that, like whatever dumbass dick-posturing was going on in front of him, was not his business.
Taking out his burner phone, he fired up a photograph he’d snapped earlier, and—
“Yeah, I’m totally in,” one of the males said. Then he motioned at Nate. “Tall, dark, and tatted is in. You’re up for it, too? Good. Let’s settle this, boys.”
Nate looked up from his cell and frowned at all the high-fiving.
Then he leaned down and clamped a hold on the shoulder pad of the loose-lipped jack-off who’d volunteered him for whatever game they were playing. The guy jumped like he’d been goosed in the ass, and as a set of pale eyes met Nate’s, he bared his fangs at the aristocrat.
“Don’t you ever speak for me again. Are we clear.”
With a shift of his torso, he made it so that his leather jacket fell open and the forty he had holstered under his arm caught the black light. The second the message was received was obvious as those glymera peepers peeled wide.
“Um, yeah. Cool—”
Shuli cut through the apology, raising up from his seat across the way like he wanted a fistfight. “Will you fucking relax, and stop waving that fucking gun around.”
“That’s up to him, not me,” Nate shot back.
The aristocrat between them put both hands in the air, stickup style. “No, no, it’s good, Shuli. It was my bad. I’m sorry.”
Nate straightened and went back to his burner phone, following through with a text under the image of Mickey Trix, who he’d gutted like a deer and left for dead in the ring of trees by his log cabin.
Then he hit send and stared across the VIP section.
Over by the entrance, the receiving cell was obviously on vibrate, as Uncle abruptly dipped a hand into his slick suit jacket and took out a device. He was talking to somebody as he glanced at the screen, and his mouth immediately stopped moving as he checked what had been sent.
The mobster stiffened, his hand whipping out in an STFU to the guy next to him. Then came the rager. Richard Montiere started yelling at everyone sitting around him, jabbing his finger into the men’s faces, snarling so that his bulldog-ugly face got even uglier. And just like the aristocrat’s submission, all kinds of palms went up with wasn’t-me, nope, nuttin’-boss.
Interesting. Unless all those wise guys, including Uncle, had Oscar-worthy acting skills, Mickey hadn’t been sent by the bosses.
That was all he needed to know.
With one last look at the female he never, ever wanted to see again, Nate turned to the fire door—
Rahvyn is not coming back to you. She was mated thirty fucking years ago, okay? And she was never yours to begin with.
“Fuck you, Shuli,” he muttered.
Punching the release bar, he was slapped in the face with the cold, but he liked the sizzle in his pores and the fresh-ish air: However bad Caldwell’s back alleys smelled, it was better than the human sweat stew in the club, and God, he hated the stink of alcohol in his nose.
As the steel panel slammed shut behind him and cut off most of the music, he sent his instincts down both directions of the alley, even though he didn’t expect to catch the sweet roadkill bouquet of the enemy. The address at Bathe was a little too good for lessers. The field of combat had always been farther west, where the buildings were shitty and empty, the humans less likely to have cell phones, and the city’s monitoring project, with all those fucking cameras, had long ago petered out.
The door opened behind him. “Where the hell are you going.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the non-question. Shuli was leaning out of the club, and the male’s expression was as dirty as his white suit, stains of disgust, anger, and frustration marking up all that handsome.
“I told the Brothers we’d be down here.” Shuli pointed to his loafers. “They’re gonna want to talk to you after that shit you pulled in the middle of Market Street.”
Later, Nate would wonder why he went back over to the guy.
Searching his friend’s face, he remembered where they had started. He didn’t often go into his memory banks as there was nothing good in them, and sure enough, mental images of those early nights after his transition, hammering nails and painting the garage at Luchas House with Shuli, made his chest feel tight.
Especially when he thought about what had happened to make him never, ever go back to that farmhouse again.