Chapter 20

Why is life so much like a game of Monopoly? Nobody ever reads the rules until a fight breaks out.

-Fact of life

Wolf

Sated and comfortable for the first time in twelve straight hours, I closed my eyes and pulled my woman closer into my chest.

My hand went to my name that had a new permanent home on Raven’s hip, and a surge of pure possessiveness spread through me once again.

“Goddamn, I like having my name on your skin,” I told her again, pressing my lips to the back of her neck and dragging them along the length of her shoulder.

She shivered as goosebumps raised over her skin.

“Stop touching me, I’m trying to go to sleep. I have to be at work by eight tomorrow morning.” She slapped my hand which was inching up the length of her torso.

I paused just beneath her bare breast and squeezed.

“I…” I was interrupted by the ringing of my phone from my discarded pants pocket, and it took everything I had in me to roll over and let her go.

“Damn it all to hell,” I muttered as I let Raven go and reached for my pants.

Raven rolled and buried her face into my pillow, presenting me with her back.

Peeling my eyes away from Raven’s backside, I answered the phone.

“Yeah?” I asked.

When nothing came, I growled in frustration.

“Dammit, Goody. If you’re not going to talk, why did you call?” I asked the stupid fucker.

“H-how do you always know it’s me?”

Because you’re stupid and call from the same gas station phone every single time you call me.

I didn’t tell him that, though. I liked knowing when it was him.

Sometimes I didn’t want to deal with his shit.

“Goody,” I sighed. “What do you need?”

“I think I need you to bring your friends. I just saw some girl get shot and thrown into the water.”

I stiffened and immediately stood, dislodging Raven’s legs from mine.

“Goody, where are you?” I asked him, grabbing my pants.

Raven ripped them from my hands and shoved the leg holes back where they belonged, then tossed me a pair of underwear while she untangled the belt and the gun from the waistband.

“I’m at the diner,” he whispered, fear shaking his voice.

I stood up from putting my underwear on, and immediately grabbed the pants that Raven was holding out for me.

“The diner. I’ll be there,” I tried for calm. “I’m going to stay on the line with you, okay?”

My eyes connected with Raven, and I gave her a nod of thanks.

“No, he said at the diner,” Raven was saying into her phone. “Didn’t say much else. He’s freaked out.”

Raven picked up a shirt of mine that she’d been wearing earlier, and I slipped it on over my head, holding the phone away from my face just long enough to get it into place. She continued to dress herself in between helping me.

In that half a second, though, something happened, and the last thing I heard was Goody screaming.

“Fuck me,” I growled when the line went dead.

“Which do you want?” Raven asked as she held up two options.

I pointed at my boots and sat down on the bed and quickly shoved my feet into socks she left on the bed for me, adrenaline pumping through my entire body.

Goody wasn’t anything much to me, but he was a fucking person.

He was a human being who really had no business doing what he was doing, but a human being nonetheless.

“Is anyone on their way to you?” I asked Raven.

“Yes,” she said. “Mig, I think.”

I nodded my head.

I stuffed my feet into my boots, holstered my gun into my belt, and then hooked on my badge that was sitting on the bed beside my phone and keys.

Once everything was in place, I had Raven finish dressing and placed my spare gun down the waistband of her jeans. I took her hand and led her down the hallway.

“Wolf,” she said, already protesting. “I don’t think it’s necessary that I go in there.”

I stopped outside of the panic room door.

“You can come out when Mig gets here,” I told her, holding her face in my hands. “You’ll see him on the monitors.”

“Mig…”

I shook my head.

“I lost my wife. My kid. Please, don’t fight me on this. I know how fucked up people are, and they won’t care that you’re an innocent. They’ll see you as my woman, and they’ll take advantage of that,” I hesitated. “I really don’t want to come home to you shot in the head like my wife was. I wouldn’t recover from that.”

She closed her eyes, then turned without another word and punched the code into the panel behind the photo that hung on the wall next to the door.

When I had this house built, that’d been the first thing that I told the builder I needed.

The builder had gone above and beyond, leaving me with a room that no one, not even the president himself, could get into.

Not if I didn’t want them to, anyway.

“Be careful,” Raven whispered as she backed into the room.

I nodded my head. “I will be.”

That was the last thing I ever said to her as the man I once was.