Chapter 17 #2
The words land, but not where he wants them to.
A week ago, they might have sent me into that familiar eyes down, stay silent kind of feeling.
Today, the words mostly make me tired. Men like Cade aren’t complicated.
The Rogues had plenty of them, men who learned to make cruelty look like concern and aggression look like vigilance.
They need someone to flinch so they can call the flinch proof.
“What do you want, Cade?”
“I want to know what happens when Saint isn’t around to put his hand on your neck and make everyone pretend you’re worth the trouble.”
I let him step closer as his gaze flicks to my face, then to the ring again, then to the Obsidian cut on my shoulders.
When his hand comes up, it isn’t fast enough to be an attack and not gentle enough to be harmless.
He catches the front of my cut between two fingers and tugs, pulling the leather tight across my shoulders.
“Maybe I don’t give a shit what Saint thinks,” he says.
I look down at his hand on my cut, then back at his face.
“Let go.”
His smile widens. “Or what?”
“Or you’ll have to explain why you put hands on Saint’s husband in an empty hallway while most of the club was off site.
You can say I provoked you, but you’re twice my size and standing between me and the main room.
You can say you were checking the cut, but the garage camera still catches enough of this angle for Moth to build a timeline, and Moth likes timelines more than excuses.
” I keep my voice as steady as I can, even though my heart is nearly beating out of my chest. “You might get one good swing in before someone hears. Maybe two if I hit the ground wrong. But Saint will come home, and I won’t have to say a word because you’re not careful enough to leave no marks. ”
Cade’s fingers tighten in the leather.
I hold his gaze. “Let go.”
For a second, I think pride will make him stupid enough to escalate. His jaw shifts, the hallway seeming to narrow around us. Then a boot scrapes near the far end, and Cade’s attention cuts past my shoulder.
Bricks’ voice comes from behind me. “Problem?”
Cade releases the cut.
I don’t turn immediately. Giving him my back too quickly feels like surrender, and I refuse to hand him even that. His mouth twists as he steps away, hands lifting in a mockery of innocence.
“No problem.”
Bricks comes closer until I feel him behind me. “I didn’t ask if there is one now. I asked if there was one.”
When I finally look over, Bricks already has his phone in his hand. My stomach drops.
“Don’t,” I say quickly.
His eyes move to the wrinkled front of my cut where Cade’s fingers pulled the leather, then to my face. “Too late.”
“It doesn’t have to be a thing.”
“Little Rogue, it became a thing when he put hands on you.”
“He didn’t hurt me.”
Bricks’ face doesn’t change. “That’s not the line Saint drew.”
Cade scoffs, trying to recover the room now that someone else has entered it. “I touched leather. Everyone needs to calm the fuck down.”
Bricks lifts the phone to his ear without looking away from him.
“Yeah, boss. Garage hallway. Cade got stupid.” He listens, eyes steady, then says, “No blood. Oisín says it doesn’t have to be a thing.
” Whatever Saint says on the other end makes Bricks’ mouth pull tight. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
By the time Saint arrives, the club is filing back from the run.
Engines roll into the lot in waves, then boots hit the floor, men returning with dust on their jeans and road noise still in their shoulders.
I stand near the edge of the main room with Tally beside me, her hand hovering near my elbow without touching.
Cade is in the center, trying to look furious instead of nervous. Bricks stands behind him, arms crossed.
Then Saint walks in and his eyes find me first, moving over my face, my throat, my hands, and the front of my cut. I see the exact moment he catches the wrinkled leather near my chest.
“Saint,” I say, because I can feel him about to do something stupid.
His gaze stays on Cade. “Quiet.”
The word hits the room like an order meant for everyone, but it lands on me as if he put his hand over my mouth. Anger cuts through the fear so sharply I almost speak anyway.
Bricks fills the silence. “He cornered him in the garage hallway and put hands on the cut.”
Cade snaps, “I grabbed leather. That’s it.”
Saint narrows his eyes. “You grabbed what’s mine.”
Cade’s face hardens because men like him can’t survive that sentence quietly. “Your Rogue husband was wandering where he shouldn’t be. Somebody had to—”
Saint hits him before the sentence finishes.
The punch lands with a crack that silences the clubhouse.
Cade stumbles sideways into a table, knocking a glass to the floor, but Saint catches him by the front of his shirt before he can fall.
The second blow splits his lip. The third drives him down to one knee.
Men move back, chairs scraping across the floor, no one stepping in because everyone understands this isn’t a fight.
It’s a message, and Saint is delivering it in a language every man in the room understands fluently.
I stand frozen with my hands at my sides, the ring cold against my finger.
Saint hauls Cade upright and forces him toward the center of the room. “Look at him.”
Cade spits blood onto the floor, his chest heaving, though he refuses to lift his eyes.
Saint’s hand closes around the back of Cade’s neck, and he shoves his face in my direction. “Look at him.”
Cade’s gaze drags up, unfocused and furious.
“That man is my husband,” Saint states, voice low enough that every person has to quiet fully to hear him. “He wears my ring, my cut, and my name. If I tell you not to touch him, that means you don’t touch his skin, his clothes, his chair, or his fucking shadow unless he invites you to.”
Cade tries to speak. Saint drives a knee into his stomach, and the words collapse into a wet cough.
I step forward. “Saint.”
Cade is stubborn enough to keep trying to rise, stupid enough to keep giving Saint reasons to put him back down. Blood marks the floor. Someone mutters a curse and then shuts up.
When Saint finally stops, Cade is on the floor with one hand pressed to his ribs, breathing through blood and humiliation. The club has understood the message. It understood it three punches ago. Saint understood that too and kept going anyway.
Then he turns toward me. My stomach drops before he reaches me, because I know his face. I know that look now, the one that says he hasn’t finished turning fear into ownership.
He comes up behind me in front of everyone and wraps one firm hand around my throat, his palm hot against the place Cade had been too close to touching.
His other hand drops low, palming me through my pants, claiming my body in a way that makes the whole room understand exactly what he means even if no one dares look directly at it.
I go rigid, shock burning through me so fast it steals the breath from my lungs. Heat follows because my body is a traitor, and then shame comes immediately after, thick enough to choke on.
Saint’s mouth is near my ear, but his voice is for the room. “He’s mine. My husband. Anyone wants to fucking touch him, you go through me.”
The club answers in low murmurs. No one argues.
No one laughs. No one looks at me properly, which somehow makes it worse.
Their refusal to look confirms exactly what he has done.
He hasn’t only protected me. He has placed me, publicly and unmistakably, in the same category as everything else he owns.
I pull out of his grip and walk down the hall to the office with my pulse pounding, Saint on my heels.
The anger coming off him follows too, but for once mine is louder. I shove the office door open and turn the second we’re inside, barely waiting for him to close it before the words tear out of me.
“You don’t get to use me like that.”
Saint shuts the door slowly. “Watch your tone.”
“No. You don’t get to drag me in front of everyone and make me part of your punishment because Cade pissed you off. You beat him for touching me, fine. Terrifying, excessive, and apparently very educational for the room. But then you put your hands on me like I was another part of the display.”
His expression hardens. “You nearly disrespected me in front of the whole club.”
I laugh because the alternative is screaming. “I nearly disrespected you? You put your hand on my throat and rubbed me through my pants in front of men who are still deciding whether I’m a spy, a hostage, or your personal entertainment. You don’t get to talk to me about respect after that.”
“What the fuck has gotten into you?”
“What got into me is that for one stupid second I thought I mattered differently here.” The words come out faster now, dragged up from the place they’ve been gathering all week.
“I’m not na?ve enough to think you’ve grown a heart and fallen in love.
I know what this is. I know how you work.
But I thought I was worth something more to you than useful.
I thought when you looked at me, you saw me. ”
Saint steps toward me. “I do see you.”
“No, you saw something of yours getting touched and decided the answer was to show the whole club where I belong.” My throat tightens, but I refuse to stop because he’ll take the room back the second I let him. “Not beside you. Not even behind you. As your little bitch.”
His jaw flexes.
I point toward the door. “That show out there told every man in that room what I am when your temper gets involved. Cade put hands on my cut. You put hands on my body in front of everyone and called it protection.”
Saint closes the distance, using his size the way he does when he wants the room to shrink around him. “He needed to know.”
“He knew when you broke his face.”
“The club needed to know.”
“They knew when you broke his face.”
His hand comes up, and for one second I think he’ll grab my throat again.
Instead, he catches my jaw and kisses me hard enough that pain flashes through my lip where his teeth catch.
It’s a brutal kiss, meant to take the argument out of my mouth and turn it into the language he trusts.
My body answers before pride can stop it, my hands lifting toward him, and the betrayal makes me angry enough to shove both palms against his chest.
Saint moves back half a step, eyes dark.
I drag in a breath. “Promise me you won’t fucking do that again.”
“I’m not promising shit.”
Something inside me steadies around that answer because at least now I know exactly what he’s willing to give me. “Then you’re about to see just how disrespectful I can be.”
I make it three steps toward the hall before his body presses against my back and the door stops me.
He moves so fast I only feel the air change, then he’s there, one hand planted beside my head and the other at my waist, pinning me between wood and heat and the fury I just tried to walk away from. His mouth drops near my ear.
“You don’t fucking walk away from me.”
A moan tears out of me before I can stop it when he grinds his hips into mine
Humiliation follows immediately. My body has the worst timing in the world. Saint goes still behind me, his breath rough against my neck, and I hate that even now, in the middle of this, some part of me wants to soften into him.
I twist around between his body and the door, forcing enough space to look up at him. My eyes burn, and I don’t know when that started. I only know the tears are there now, threatening to make the argument more honest than either of us knows how to survive.
“I need to hear you say it,” I whisper.
His face changes by a fraction. “Say what?”
I hate that I feel this much for a man who doesn’t want me cleanly. I hate that I’m standing here with his ring on my hand and his marks under my clothes and still need words he may not have inside him. My voice comes out smaller than my anger deserves, but I make myself hold his gaze.
“That I’m not just useful.”
Saint stares at me for long enough that my chest starts to ache.
“I don’t love you,” he forces out.
The words hurt, but not the way he thinks they will. Maybe because I already know. Maybe because I wasn’t asking for the thing he’s most afraid to give, and the fact that he reached for it anyway tells me more than he meant to reveal.
“I’m not fucking asking you to.” My voice shakes now, and I let it because I’m too tired to keep bleeding quietly for his comfort. “I’m asking whether or not you want me.”
Saint’s mouth tightens but he doesn’t answer.
For a moment, the office holds only our breathing and the distant noise of the clubhouse beyond the door.
His hand is still at my waist, but the pressure has changed.
He isn’t pushing me into place anymore. He’s holding on.
His eyes move over my face with a softness so brief anyone else would miss it, but I don’t.
I’ve learned to read him in fractions because that’s all he gives.
I’m not going to get the words right.
I reach up, take his face between my hands, and kiss him slowly.
He freezes for the first second because there’s no force in it, no command, no surrender.
I lead it completely, pressing my mouth to his with all the hurt still sitting between us, all the anger, all the want I wish I could put down.
I kiss him like I’m giving him one last chance to understand the shape of what he almost said and didn’t.
Then I pull away before he can take it from me.