16. Sunni
CHAPTER 16
Sunni
J ust as Raker closed his massive hand firmly around my waist, I saw Leo appear at the door with Elise. They were cousins, both endowed with almost otherworldly beauty, both tall and elegant. Elise had long falls of burnished golden-blonde hair, blue-eyed and beautiful, looking like a fairy queen, and my fiancé Leo was tall with blonde waves and a lean, athletic body, his smile quick and easy.
Altogether the opposite of everything Raker was.
Thankfully
For one wild moment, I thought about ignoring him, pretending like I didn’t know Leo to protect him, but when he saw me with Raker looming over him, he crossed rapidly to my side.
“Sunday? What’s happening? Who is this?”
“He’s nobody,” I said, my chest feeling tight and constricted.
Raker stilled, and I felt anger gathering under his skin, making his fingers flames on me. He turned with a snarl on Leo, stopping him short.
“I’m the man who owns her. Who are you ?”
Raker wrapped a big hand around my palm, his skin feeling hot with an angry energy. I could feel his confidence that I was the same sweet, submissive club girl he had left.
But I wasn’t.
“I am Leo. I’m her fiancé,” he said firmly.
Raker’s eyes sparked with a dangerous fire.
“Fuck that. I’ll never allow her to marry anyone else.”
Then with a firm motion he ripped my engagement ring off as I yelped in distress.
He held it up in the light for a moment, then cast it contemptuously into the fire.
“You need to leave,” Leo said, his face pale but set as he reached for me.
Raker snarled at him, knocking the other man’s hand away.
“You must be fucking blind to think you could take her. She’s bound to me.”
“You left,” Leo replied.
“She put me in jail,” Raker said coldly, and I saw Leo dart a startled look at me.
“Oh no, Sunday wouldn’t do a thing like that. You must be mistaken.”
Oh god
My eyes went to where flames were licking at my ring. I had felt so proud to get it.
Somebody does love me , I had thought.
Raker’s smile was grim with no humor in it.
“I guess you don’t know her very well, do you? She’s a lot harder and tougher than you give her credit for.”
“Don’t act like you know me, Raker,” I protested, trying to twist my wrist out of his grasp.
But he still held tight.
“She bears my marks; I tattooed my fucking name on her shoulder. That makes her my property.”
“Oh, Raker!” I said. “I don’t belong to you anymore.”
His fingers curled around my arm, brushing my long hair aside to expose more of my tattoos.
My skin prickled at his nearness, his power washing over me.
“Look at this,” he breathed. “The serpent. Twined around you, Sunni, so you can never not be mine. And the mark on your thigh is even bigger.”
His fingers moved up, brushing my long hair so it exposed my shoulder.
“My name,” he rumbled to Leo, his voice low and hypnotic, his eyes burning holes in me. “How could you take her with my name, you fool? Wouldn’t you know that meant I’d never let her go?”
But when Raker’s hand reached possessively up to the tip of my shoulder, his big body stilled, and I felt anger radiate from him like a supernova.
“Where is my name, Sunni?” he bit out.
I didn’t have to twist around to look at what he saw.
His name, that he had written with such flourishes, in his distinctive style, was no more, tattooed over with desert flowers and a flowing, shimmering river.
“Gone,” I spat, trying to twist away from him. “And I’ll do the same with the rest of your tattoos as soon as I have the money for it.”
I’d seen Raker angry, but I’d never seen that look on his face before. Dark, chipped steel, and furious.
“Sunni, if we weren’t in public I would put you over my knee!”
“Well, too damn bad,” I said, my heartbeat still pounding and thrumming in my chest. “Your promises weren’t forever. And neither was my love.”
Raker’s arm only gripped me tighter, my belly tensing nervously, and for one horrible moment I was afraid he would take me by force, but then we heard the rumble of motorcycles, getting closer.
“Souls must have caught sight of one Saints motorcycle,” Willow said.
She and Elise had heavy, thick blankets in their arms and were attempting to smother the fire. The smell of acrid, burning wool filled my nostrils.
Raker flicked his eyes back at the road, but I knew he must recognize the truth of this. It was doubtful if even a group of Souls would take him on physically, but they would certainly set fire to his ride.
His massive arm snapped out and he wrapped thick fingers around Leo’s throat.
“I’ll be back,” he said. “Don’t fucking touch her.”
“Raker, stop!” I demanded, waddling over to pull on his waist. His muscles were tensed, coiled violence, and I trembled to think that he might kill Leo.
My fiancé ripped at Raker’s arm, but the MC Prez was too strong.
Finally, he let go and Leo fell gasping to the ground.
“Leave now!” I yelled. “I don’t want to see you again. I hate you, Raker!”
His eyes were chipped and expressionless, and he suddenly caught my face in his hands, big fingers spread across my entire jawline.
“ I will never give you up, Sunni .”
His mouth descended on mine, sending a raw pulsing heat through my body until I wrenched myself out of his arms, kicking him sharply in the shins.
“Let me go, asshole!”
He only gave me another smoldering glance and then with a few strides, he was out the door and on his motorcycle, gunning away as the dirt and smoke of other hogs appeared at the other end of the street.
So much for hoping he would be too cautious to enter Souls territory.
This changed nothing
I was not going to tell Raker the truth.
He had betrayed me; he had broken his promise to me.
So he was never going to know that this baby was his.