Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
It had taken little effort to get the asshole to release my wrists.
Once released, I did what he told me to and stripped out of my dress. Then I used my womanly wiles to placate him before I used my legs to snap his neck. Just in case I ran into the two thugs from before, I left my dress where it was and went in search of Hunter.
I glanced around the barren room until my eyes landed on Hunter. They had removed his clothes too but were kind enough to leave him his boxers. His eyes widened at my appearance. He took a step toward me, then stopped, and gave me a clinical once over.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“I thought—”
“Really, Hunter, I’m okay,” I answered as I cut him off.
It would take more than a forced disrobing to rattle my cage. After everything I had experienced, it was child’s play. Besides, if they wanted to break me, they needed to try harder than making me walk naked through the halls. They thought they could, but I was made from tougher stock.
Being raped didn’t scare me, because I knew the outcome.
They would rue the day they ever touched me.
Their lives would end with a dick in their mouth and their own balls in a bloody pile in the middle of their chest. So while they’re choking on their own cock, they could die knowing even if they survived, they would never know the feeling of a pussy ever again.
“Where the hell did you put it?” Hunter asked as he tried and failed to ignore my obvious state of undress.
“You don’t want to know,” I told him as I shifted my stance.
“Hellcat, you didn’t swallow it, did you?”
“I don’t swallow,” I deadpanned.
“Not the time for joking.”
“Lightens the mood. Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
“Seriously, where’d you hide it?”
“I pointed.”
Confusion crossed his face.
“I shoved it up my hoo-ha, okay?”
He visibly cringed, causing me to giggle.
“Is that specific enough for you?”
“I’ve got nothing,” he told me.
“Then shut up and let me get us out of this.”
“Naked?” he asked.
I placed my hands on my hips. “Do you have any better ideas, Mighty Mouse?”
He glanced down. “They were the only ones I had clean,” he groaned.
“Why you even have a pair to begin with is beyond me. Aren’t you too young to have a clue who he is?”
“Says the chick who knew who he was with one glance,” he retorted.
“It was a cute cartoon,” I responded, shrugging my shoulders as I tried not to laugh.
“You know, there’s something emasculating about being rescued by a chick,” he told me.
What did I do before we left, you might ask?
Exactly what I told you I wanted to do.
I doused the whole place in gasoline, threw barricades across all the entrances and exits, lit a match and set that baby on fire.
* * *
I couldn’t wait until we got home so I could have a long ass shower in my private bathroom.
Not all the dorm rooms were fitted with a bathroom, so I was lucky. The reason they gave me a room with a bathroom wasn’t completely because I was a chick. It was because I was no longer a prospect. I was a full-fledged member, even though I had to confer with my brother over most things that I did. My dream was to be the first female VP, but I wasn’t sure how easily that would come to fruition. They patched me in, but I still had a lot of work to do before I got to that point.
Who knew what the future held?
I could end up with a bullet in the brain on my next run.
No one knew what tomorrow held, which was likely why I focused on today. Unless I was working on a case, of course. Then I had to focus on all the probable outcomes. There were scenarios to everything and choices caused effects to be different. They all needed to be evaluated to come to the correct decision.
I wholeheartedly believed in the butterfly effect.
I wanted to encourage change in a positive direction, even if I had to do something truly negative to get the results I wanted. I didn’t care if my hands had to get bloody so that the kindergarten teacher at the local school didn’t have to deal with a psycho stalker ex. If I had to kill five people so that I could help twenty girls escape the evil clutches of a person who trafficked them into slavery, sexual or otherwise, then I would.
I didn’t have to believe in heaven and hell to know where I was going.
Six feet under was where I would rest when this was all over. Whether I got caught in the crossfire or my brazen activities take my life too soon, I would end up where everyone goes.
A box in the ground.
So, until that moment, I would continue to work at making this world a better place, one day at a time.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hunter asked when we entered the hallway of our clubhouse.
“Just another day in the life of Harleigh West,” I responded.
It wasn’t that nothing scared me. Fear affected me just as much as the next person. I was especially scared of the one thing almost guaranteed in the world I lived in.
Death.
Reminding myself I could die any day, regardless of what I did, made things better.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hunter asked as we walked down the hall towards our room.
“Not really,” I answered, evading the question.
I never wanted to talk about my feelings. Not with the school shrink, my brothers, or even Ana. Talking helped nothing, so what was the use of dredging up all the dark and gloomy secrets of my past? There were other ways to work through my frustrations. None of them involved a long drawn out conversation or immersing myself in the club's atmosphere. After the events of the night, I wasn’t in the mood to check on the bar and I didn’t exactly care what was happening down there tonight. I just wanted to have a hot shower and crawl into bed.
“You forget I know you, Hellcat. Being locked up in there bothered you more than you’d care to admit.”
“You’re the last person I would want to talk to about this,” I groaned.
“I’m the only person who was there,” he argued.
“Hunter, I’m not the emotional type.”
“As if I could forget that,” he grumbled under his breath.
“You should know by now that I don’t get all sappy over shit I have no control over.”
I didn’t even cry when my mom died.
Hunter followed me into my room.
His eyes wandered over every detail of my personal space. It wasn’t often he came in here, but when he did, it was like he wanted to commit it to memory. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. It wouldn’t change, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
“I thought I almost lost you tonight,” he told me as he reached out and placed an errand strand of my hair behind my ear.
“Hunter,” I whispered.
“Don’t say anything,” he whispered as he brought his lips to mine. His hand grasped the side of my throat as he deepened the kiss. A pulse shot between my legs as I molded my body into his. Then all too soon, he pulled back, and released me. Hunter took a step back.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Hunter raised his hand close to my face, hesitated, then dropped it. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he responded as he turned and walked to the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he glanced back one more time.
Facing the mirror, my eyes connected with his.
Holding his eyes, my hands went to the tie of my wraparound dress. A zing of adrenaline rushed through me. There was no way he didn’t want me. The brat in me wanted to see what he would do, so I undid it. There was no way in hell he would expect me to have nothing beneath it. I opened the dress up, and in two seconds flat it tumbled to the floor, pooling around my stiletto heels.
“Jesus, Hellcat,” he cursed. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Would it be so bad?” I asked.
“The worst,” he whispered.
Then, without another word, he turned and walked back out into the hallway. A click resonated through the room as he shut the door behind him. Part of me wondered if the bastard knew exactly what he was doing. Then again, maybe he didn’t because as much as these guys thought they knew me, I doubted many of them ever would. He left me standing naked, horny and a little bit bereft.
Little did he know, he would live to regret it.
I knew multiple ways to make men beg for mercy.
Only he would be given none.