STELLA

It felt strange and oddly wrong being in the war room. This room was for the men only. That had always been the rule around the compound. However, not only was I sitting at the large, wooden desk, but Charlotte was, also.

“It really needs some knick-knacks and a bit of a dust, doesn’t it?” Charlotte leaned over and whispered in my ear, making me giggle.

“Something funny there, Honey?” Booth looked at me with his eyebrows raised and his mouth in a thin line. He looked pissed, but his beautiful grey eyes were twinkling at me. It was so unreal to see him like this. I mean, yeah, he was pissed a lot of the time, which I was used to, along with the nasty comments I didn’t like that had been thrown my way.

But now he had a calmness about him. Like our claim on one another, just ten minutes ago, had flipped a switch. We weren’t out of the woods yet by any stretch, but there was light at the end of the tunnel, and my prize was Booth.

I tried for an innocent look and batted my eyes at him. “Yes, handsome, but you have to be a woman to understand it, and sorry, military man, but that is something you are far from.” As I sassed at him, I let my gaze drift up and down his sculptured perfection. Oh, Lord, the things I wanted to do to that body. Thinking about one of my go-to categories on Pornhub, one particular video came to mind. My eyes travelled back up to his, and what I saw had me biting my lip. Hmm… He was so sexy.

“Well, that’s good for you, Honey. Now behave and take a seat. Teach, you too. Both of you sit at the end of the table where we can all see you.” Booth, giving me a wink to take a bit of the sting out of his words and the situation I had managed to get myself in, took his seat at the head of the table, opposite from where Charlotte and I were sitting. I wasn’t sure why I was sitting so far away from him, but I was sure there was a reason for it. Booth never did anything without prior thought. The other guys were also at the other end of the table, three on either side of Booth. Ford made up the sixth.

“Creed.” Booth motioned with his chin at his brother, his voice suddenly different. Now he was the leader of the Wounded Souls, not the man who had held me gently in his arms and asked me to be his.

“Stella, who is hitting you?” Creed asked.

Okay, then. Q and A it was. I shouldn’t have been surprised that they would lead with this, but I would rather not have to answer it. I was glad Booth gave Creed the lead on the questioning because I wasn’t too sure I could have answered them otherwise, which was something I was quite sure my man already knew.

I felt my hand grabbed under the table, and Charlotte’s small, warm hand gave me quiet strength. Taking a fortifying breath, I started.

“My stepbrothers and stepfather. They used to always belittle me and torment me when I was a young girl, but my mother was always around to protect me for the most part. Then she got sick, and her illness progressed so quickly and took her life well before we thought it would. So then, there was no one to stop them. They easily graduated to more physically violent attacks on me. It started with pushing, hair pulling, and silly childish things like that. When Mum’s will was read, and we discovered she’d changed it, leaving me the house, they upped the stakes, and the hitting started.” I kept my tone as neutral as I could, my eyes away from Booth. I wanted to make it through this as fast as possible, and I knew if I looked at him, it would be game over, and the sob-fest would begin.

“Why haven’t you come to us with this, Stell?” The question I was sure they all wanted to ask came from the club’s VP.

I liked Cooper Steel, and we had become fast friends. Sometimes I worked at his Bar and Grill when he was short-staffed. Steel was a mountain of a man, not like Darth was—Darth was big everywhere, and it was hard to escape from his size—but Steel, though, was tall. His hair was long and straight, hitting the middle of his back. His chest and arms were massive, which was why he was such a mountain. His face was perfect and could have been on the cover of a hot romance novel. He was gorgeous—amazing green eyes, a constant five o’clock shadow on his strong square jaw and the cutest dimple in the middle of his chin. I could see why Mia was so smitten with the man, but he wasn’t my type. I tended to like the grey-eyed, pissed off kind of guy. The kind who was glaring at me with those narrowed grey eyes as we spoke.

“Honey, you wanna answer the man instead of staring at him like you want to lick him,” Booth said, growling. Holy shit! Did he seriously just say that?

“Seriously, Booth, did you just say that?” I said, repeating my thought aloud.

“You were looking at him for too long. Your fucking eyes were all over him,” Booth said, giving Steel a one-fingered salute when the gorgeous man smirked at him then blew me a kiss.

“She knows quality when she sees it, Pres. What can I say? When you got it, you got it. All the chicks think so,” he replied with a cocky smile on his handsome face. Pig.

“Oh, no, he didn’t.” Charlotte gasped from beside me.

Yes, he certainly did. It was time to bring him down a peg or two.

“But does Mia? Did you know she is going out with the new bartender at the Bar and Grill?” I said as nonchalantly as I could to Charlotte, raising my eyebrow. Charlotte caught on right away, and flicking her long, blonde hair over her shoulder, she looked directly at Steel.

“Yep, and if the kiss they shared in the car park is anything to go by, things are getting pretty hot and heavy. She will have that little problem of hers taken care of in no time.” Charlotte played along, fanning herself. Of course, Charlotte was talking about Mia wanting to get rid of her virginity. Mia had tried with two of the prospects, but those guys knew their place and were all scared shitless of the VP.

Despite Mia’s beauty, none of them was willing to help her.

“Sweetness.” The growl from Deck held a warning tone, but if his smile was anything to go by, he enjoyed seeing his woman happy. Since the car accident and the bombing of her car and Deck’s bike at the prenatal clinic, Charlotte had been a little on edge. She was convinced Deck would be unhappy with her being pregnant, especially so early in their relationship. After all, they had only been together a few months. But unlike the other men, Deck worked in speed-of-light mode and was happy as punch—my word not Deck’s—that he was going to be a dad again.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Steel said, his jaw clenched.

Aha! I knew he was interested. I couldn’t wait to tell Mia.

“Will everyone fucking focus, please. VP, you figure your shit out with Mia later. Teach and Stella, behave yourselves. And Stell, one last warning. Keep those eyes right here,” Booth ordered, pointing to his chest. I knew he meant it, but damn, I liked poking the bear. He was right, though. I needed to focus if I was going to get through this. Shiloh’s birthday party was in a few short hours, and nothing was going to come between that little girl and her big day.

I knew I had to answer Steel’s question, but I didn’t know what it would do to Booth once he heard it. I decided to go with total and complete honesty—it was the only choice. There had been too much secrecy on my part.

“I had no choice. My stepfather is a police officer, a detective, and he said if I was to tell the club, he would bring down so much shit on you all. I couldn’t be the cause of that. This is my family, and I will never do anything that that could ever put Shiloh in danger. Ever. So I said nothing and took my punishment.” I shrugged. There really wasn’t much more than that. My eyes never left Booth. His breaths were coming out in low pants, his hands sitting on the desk in front of him, clenched tightly. Oh, boy.

“Are you telling us that you have been taking brutal bashings to protect us?” Mannix asked, his gaze wary as he looked at Booth, who hadn’t said anything to my answer. Oh, boy.

“It’s okay. I’m fine, really,” I scoffed, waving my hands in the air as if it was no big deal. It was definitely the wrong thing to say, and I knew it the minute the words left my mouth.

“You’re fine? You’re fine. It’s okay?” Booth repeated in a very low, dangerous voice. Like a panther, he got out of his seat and moved towards the big screen TV behind him. Picking up a remote, he turned on the screen. A picture of me with a scratch on my cheek instantly appeared, and I saw it was a security camera image with a time stamp in the top right-hand corner. Pushing another button, another image of me appeared, but this time with a bruise on my jaw. Another showed a cut above my eyebrow. Booth kept pressing the button on the remote, showing dozens of security pictures of me at the club in different rooms but all with the same common theme. Each one showed a bruise or mark that my stepbrothers had left on me.

“Does this look like you are fine, Stella? Do you look okay in these images? What about this one?” He changed the screen, and in the picture, I was crying as I lifted my top to reveal a deep purple bruise on my side. “Really, Stella, this is you being okay? Because, to me, these images show me a woman—my woman—being abused by three fucking cowards. To me, this is you hiding shit from me to protect my club. You have things shit-arse backward, Honey. You should have come to me.” He roared the last part as he threw the remote hard against the wall. I watched helplessly as it smashed into pieces. I jumped in my seat from his outburst, and beside me, Charlotte let out a shriek. He saw this and flinched. Oh, no, I didn’t want him to think I feared him, because I didn’t. Far from it.

Deck got up and made his way to his fiancée as her shriek spurred him into action. His first thought was always to protect his woman. Charlotte and Shiloh were his reason for living, so he would do anything to protect them until the last breath left his body. Putting his hands on her shoulders, Deck glared at Booth.

“Brother, take it easy.” His tone held a warning we all heard loud and clear.

Booth was pacing before the screens with his eyes glued to them. When he’d thrown the remote, he’d lost the ability to change the picture from my bruised face with tears streaming down it as I held my jumper up and inspected the boot print on my ribs. I remembered that day. Bradley had been nasty. Unlike his brother, Michael, who used his fists, Bradley liked to kick, and steel-capped boots were his favourite foot attire. Booth didn’t need to be looking at these. It happened, but now it was over. He would see to it. I believed that down deep in my bones. Booth would protect me now.

Getting up, I made my way to my strong man.

“Booth.” One word.

And then he was one with me.