TWENTY-NINE

Dog

The smile on Mel’s face is undeniable as she follows me through to the garage. Thank fuck there’s something that makes me happy I decided to go through with it. Don’t get me wrong; I love to hunt. I originally organized the permit knowing I’d need the time away after dinner with my family. I just didn’t plan on walking out before I’d thought through the fact all my gear is still in my old room after last season.

“You should fit my old clothes,” I tell her as she waits on me to start the bike. “I’ve still got the smaller shit I wore when I was a kid.”

“Is it weird I’m looking forward to dressing up in it and looking like I almost know what I’m doing?”

I chuckle, turning the key and pressing the starter. “Weird, nope. Funny, yeah.”

She climbs on behind me, the shuffle of her hips as she settles into the seat having twice the effect after she stopped us short of crossing that final line. To think I offered to go camping with the woman; just the two of us, alone, no one to hear the things we might get up to. Fuck my life. It could never have ended any other way.

“We’ll stop off and get what things we’re short after I pick the gear up from my old man’s,” I explain as we pull out of the garage.

The prospects wheel the gate open as we approach, giving a wave as we pass through.

“I probably should have told someone what I’m doing,” she shouts over the roar of the engine as I accelerate onto the road.

“I’ll message Callum when we get there.” There’s a reason why I didn’t say anything before we left the property, and that’s because I didn’t want to face what Hooch might have done if he knew I was taking his sister away for a few nights.

Yeah, the big guy’s preoccupied with club business, but damn, a brother’s love ain’t anything to be messing with.

Mel’s still legally dead. I’m literally transporting a ghost on main roads and highways for the second time in as many weeks. How many times can we fuck with chance before the jig is up? I blame you for this, little fella. Goddamn, thinking with my dick again.

All I wanted to do was cheer her up. Bullshit. All I wanted to do was keep her to myself a little longer. Who knows what’ll happen when we get back this time? Mel will most likely get dragged back down to Fort Worth, and then there’ll be me, begging at my president’s door for a transfer because I’m one pussy-whipped motherfucker.

Mel settles into the same old comfortable position as we reach the open road, her hands placed against the muscles that dip below my belt line. I lean a little more than I should into the corners, seeing if I can get her to slip her hold a little bit lower. Yet she holds steady—a pro.

Sure enough, by the time we pull up outside my old man’s place, I’m sporting the convoy cock from hell at the most inappropriate time.

“What have we stopped here for?”

I sigh, looking at the ostentatious split-level house. “This is my dad’s place.”

“Oh.” She stretches, messing with her hair so it sits a little straighter. “I thought he had a farm or something.”

Yeah. She’s heard the bullshit lie too. I guess in a way that should make me happy. After all, it goes to show I did a good job of making people believe what I wanted them to.

“Nope. This is his.”

Mel climbs off, leaning left to right to flex her stiff back.

“Wait here.” I lean the bike on its stand and dismount. “I’ll be back out real soon.”

She frowns, but still, she nods and leans her ass against the side of my seat, arms folded as she watches me approach the house.

Hopefully the fucker isn’t home, but when he does half of his work from here, my chances aren’t all that great. It doesn’t take long before I find out the answer.

“You dare come back here after you accuse Derek of the things you did?” my father shouts as he swings the front door wide open. He advances onto the stoop, hands braced on his hips. His tie is undone, loose around his throat, and he’s kicked his shoes off, standing in his suit pants barefoot.

Must be working on something important. He’s always put together, presentable, unless he’s been buried in his office working through a proposal. Then again, Derek did say he was terminal. Might explain the pale skin and dark circles under his eyes.

“Got a few things I want to collect.” I reach his position and stop, giving him time to decide what he wants to do. “I’ll take my things and then you won’t see me again. Ever.”

If he chooses to throw down on the spot, then I’m all fucking for it. But his style is more verbal. His tongue cuts like a knife, leaving no visible scars and yet the damage is so severe I swear he’s taken years off my life.

“Nothing in here is yours anymore, Koen.” He jerks his chin higher.

“What the fuck, old man?” I try to pass him, but the solid fucker moves right in my way.

“My house. My things.”

Is he for real? I narrow my gaze, tilting my head to the side. “I earned that shit; paid for it with my own money.”

He shrugs. The motherfucking asshole just shrugs.

“Move.” I stand toe-to-toe, shoulder-to-shoulder. And yet, he could be a whole three feet shorter than me and still retain that dominance he developed as his unique parenting style.

He pushes back. “Leave.” Rollan’s filthy gaze drifts right.

I know what he looks at, and I don’t like it, one fucking bit.

“I’m over here, asshole.”

He jerks his chin toward Mel. “Did you honestly bring your filthy disease ridden whore to my house?” His eyes crinkle at the corners as he sizes up Mel.

“Watch what you say next, old man,” I warn. “I’m not feelin’ much in control right now.”

He slides his gaze back to mine, sneering. “Found yourself one you like, have you? Took enough failed attempts to get it right.”

The buzz, it’s a feeling I loathe because it usually means I’m either about to do something really fucking painful or stupid. Prickles that dance across my flesh, a heightened awareness of every follicle on my body. It’s the adrenaline as it courses through my body like a couple of hunting dogs on the scent of a rabbit.

I shove the fucker with my shoulder first, taking him by surprise and putting him off balance so that he’s distracted from my end game: throttling the bastard to death. My palms wrap around his thick neck, and he retaliates as predicted, by punching me low and hard in the gut.

“Atta, boy,” he grinds out around my hands choking him. “Show some fucking dedication for once.”

Oh, he’s spot on—I’m dedicated all right. My thumbs ache as I dig them in against his windpipe, the red bloom throughout his face a sensory delight.

“Dog!”

Fuck it. Mel bolts up the path, her brow pinched, hair flowing out behind her as she hauls ass to where I’m trying my damnedest to at least knock the fucker out, if not kill him.

“Let go. This won’t fix anything.”

Rollan grins, his teeth gritted as he crushes my elbows in his vise grip, trying to break my hold. “Listen to your whore, boy.”

Mel’s frown grows deeper, the lines severe as she swings her attention to my old man. “Excuse me?”

I can’t help but snort at the cute as fuck chin tuck she has going on. All she needs now is the raised finger waving side to side.

“What the fuck did you just call me?”

“Whore,” Rollan chokes.

Got to give it to the guy—he’s persistent. A lesser man would have submitted by now, and yet here he is poking the bear.

“Get out of the fucking way,” Mel grumbles at me, shoving me in the chest to break us up.

I back off, handing him over. I was getting bored with it all anyway. The old man is a stubborn bastard; I should have known he wouldn’t go down easily.

“Do you even know what a whore is?” she sasses. “Oh, hold up. Of course you do. An abusive, ugly-hearted asshole like you probably struggles to attract women of any caliber to him through his ‘magnetic’ charm, so you more than likely pay for the services rendered on your vastly undersized member. Am I right?”

The old man simply stares at her; slack jawed. It’s glorious. I should probably take a photo to savor later.

“Therefore you probably realize then that I’m not a whore. I mean, what self-respecting woman who actually wanted to earn a living would get around in a pair of jeans and baggy sweatshirt if she were trying to sell her wares. Huh? I’d probably have something, uh, I don’t know, more revealing on, wouldn’t I?”

“What do I know about the bitches he keeps around that club of his,” Rollan bites having finally woken from his stupor. “For all I know this is how you biker cunts dress.”

I cover my smirk with a loose fist, enjoying this way too much. Bringing her along was the best gamble ever—period.

“You’ve just proven my point,” Mel counters. “You said you have no idea what the property girls—by the way, that’s what they’re called, not biker cunts—wear. So you’ve just cemented that you had no grounds to assume that I was one simply by the fact I’m A, female, and B, standing beside your son’s bike.”

“You finished?”

“Are you?” she snaps with a quick tuck of her chin, eyebrows raised.

As much as I’d love to pull up a lawn chair and see where this goes, we’ve pretty much solidified the asshole’s resolve not to let us in.

“Come on.” I rest my hand on Mel’s bicep. “We’ll sort something else out.”

She sighs, her lips pressed in a thin line as she looks between Rollan and myself. “Fine.” She turns and heads for the bike, but not without tossing back over her shoulder, “I should have left him to choke you.”

“Pretty sure that’s more your thing,” Rollan quips as I step off the stoop to join Mel.

She spins on the spot and lunges for him, yet I manage to catch her around the waist and haul her kicking and cursing, back down the path to the bike. “Not today, babe.” Not if I want this “dead” girl to stay off the local PD’s radar.

“Don’t know about you,” I say to Mel as I set her down. “But I could use a drink.”

“Amen to that.” She climbs on after me, still staring down the asshole like an angry mutt sizing a smug cat on the wrong side of the fence. “I don’t know how you can let him talk to you like that.”

“Habit,” I reply before starting the bike and pulling away from the curb.

How could I ever think this girl and I were too different for a relationship to work? How much more perfect could she get when she not only tears strips off the old man, calling him out on his bullshit, but lifts that inked hand high and gives the asshole a one fingered salute as we leave.

A year in solitude has done nothing to dampen this woman’s spirit. She might have been unsure and out of sorts when she first got back, but as the weeks have gone by she’s simply gone from strength to strength.

She’s every bit the born leader she professes not to be.

A warrior’s heart packed into one spitfire of a package.

Perfection.