Chapter Four #2
“You have so many enemies that you don’t know?” she asks. But her voice has a note that suggests I’m not completely correct about her motivation.
“I didn’t hurt you personally. There’s nothing connecting us.”
Her lips return to that thin line. She’s either regained control or she’s afraid I’m on the right track.
“Are you doing this for someone else?”
There’s a barely noticeable movement in her throat from a small swallow.
“You weren’t hired, but you are acting on behalf of another. Is this an act of altruism? Man, volunteer work sure has gotten weird.”
She turns her head away, breaking the connection between us. Suddenly, I want to force her attention back to me and wrap my hand around her throat to keep it there. But I know if I move, she’ll attack.
“Who did I hurt so badly that you decided to kill for them? I’ve looked into you. I don’t know any of your friends or family.”
She refuses to meet my eyes.
“June?”
The sound of her name on my lips must piss her off because she jerks her head back and bears her teeth at me, lifting so her face is even closer to mine. “Fuck you!”
“Ask nicely.”
She drops back to the ground, letting out a seething breath through her nose. A whiff of something crisp and sweet fills my nose, like juniper and apple pie.
I can’t help it. The pinched expression on her face is fucking hot, and my pants are so damn tight.
I lower some of my weight, pressing our hips together.
I know she feels how hard I am because she sucks in a breath, and her eyes go wide.
But she doesn’t try to pull away. In fact, I could swear her pupils expand.
I wonder what I’d find if I were to reach down and dip my hand into her pants.
“I’ll fuck you all night if you ask,” I say, rolling my hips against her and relishing the little hitch in her breath.
“I will kill you.” She tugs her pinned hands and tries to pull her knee up to throw me off balance. Despite the desire I’m pretty sure I see in her eyes, she won’t give in to that. If I try to push her further, I’ll just get distracted, which she’ll use to her advantage.
So, I still my hips and lift slightly to create much-needed distance.
“I know I’m not a good person, but I don’t think I’ve done anything murder-worthy. At least, not in the last several months.”
She scoffs.
“You disagree?”
Nothing.
“Tell me, what did I do to earn such a fatal punishment?” I think of all the people I’ve hurt, stolen from, betrayed, and even killed, wondering if one of the lives I’ve taken was connected to June somehow.
“The fact that you don’t know speaks volumes to who you are.”
I frown, more confused than ever.
“Did I fuck your friend or something? Or…” I think through the rest of what I know about her life. Outside of her friends, volunteering, and following me, the only other thing she does is work.
It hits me.
“This is for one of your patients, isn’t it?”
The slight widening of her eyes is all the confirmation I need.
“So you’re getting revenge for a patient? That’s taking your job a bit too far, don’t you think?”
Her burning anger is tangible in the heat of her skin.
“How many times have you done this? Killed for a patient?”
She doesn’t answer, of course, but her eyes do flick away for a second. I can’t help grinning at this sexy, unhinged, violent little murderer I have pinned under me.
“But I’m the bad guy?”
“No one I’ve ever hurt has been innocent!” she says, finally losing control of the lock on her mouth. “I’ve never killed someone helpless.”
“No, you just drug them before they can fight back.”
“They deserved it. All of them.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“You deserve it!” she yells, pulling at my grip and arching her back to try and break free.
“Probably.”
“Let me go!”
“If I do that, you’ll try to kill me again. And I can’t have that.”
“So, what are you going to do? Kill me instead?”
“I should,” I say. I really should. This woman isn’t as innocent as she appears.
I can’t go to the cops with a story that a seemingly law-abiding twenty-seven-year-old woman half my size tried to kill me, the notorious leader of a motorcycle club everyone knows is part of the one percent of MCs that engage in criminal activity.
The cops would throw me in jail for the sheer ridiculousness of the suggestion.
But I can’t let her go, because her next attempt might not fail.
She’s a threat, no matter what she looks like on the outside.
My job is to eliminate threats, both to myself and the rest of the Saints.
The only real option I have is to kill her.
But I don’t want to. She’s just so intriguing .
“So, kill me. It’s not like you have a problem killing women.”
“No, I don’t,” I say, honestly. “I don’t discriminate based on gender. If someone needs killing, it doesn’t matter what they’ve got going on between their legs, I’ll get the job done.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I like to think of myself as a feminist,” I say. “Equal rights and all that.”
“That’s fucked up logic.”
“What would you have me do? Let you go just because you’ve got a pussy? Right after you tried to kill me?”
“Either let me go or kill me, because we can’t lie here forever.”
Fuck she’s right, we can’t.
“Okay. How about a compromise?”
She freezes, her lips parted. Confusion and disbelief replace the anger in her blue eyes.
“A compromise?”
“Yes, little reaper. A compromise.” I smile again at the scowl on her face from the nickname. “You came here because you wanted to kill me, right?”
She slowly nods, as if unsure where I’m going with this. Honestly, so am I.
“Well, are your plans time sensitive?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you have to kill me tonight, or can it wait?”
Her mouth opens, then closes, like she doesn’t know how to answer.
“Your motive for killing me is some misguided sense of justice based on one side of a story you got from a patient. I assume that your weeks of following me have not just been to learn my schedule, but to prove to yourself that I’m the type of man deserving of death.”
She bites her bottom lip, and I know I’m right.
“You can’t really get to know someone from a hundred yards away. I’m not saying that I’m a good man, because I’m not, but I also might not meet whatever your necessary criteria is before you kill someone.”
“You definitely meet the criteria.”
“I probably do. But you don’t know that. Not yet. So, here’s the compromise. You have to wait one month, then you can kill me.”
It’s obvious that’s not what she expected. She freezes, blinking at me with shock. “What?”
I nod, realizing how fucking stupid this is but not able to stop myself. “You can kill me in a month, and I swear, I won’t stop you.”
The gears visibly turn in her head. She frowns, searching for the trick in my words. “Why? What’s the catch?”
Clever little reaper .
“The catch is that for that month, you don’t get to follow me from a distance. You have to be right by my side.”
A wrinkle forms in her forehead as her frown deepens.
James is going to stab me for this when I get home.
“For the next month, June Graves, you’re mine. You’re a Saint of Purgatory.”