hehena
➸ Ginger ☆
Building a legal business takes time and patience. Illegal businesses are quick and dirty. As much as I should embrace the former, I’m emotionally drawn to the latter. I don’t do “normal” well. Staying at the B&B is driving me frickin bonkers. I can’t stand how pristine everything is. Or how sitting on the front porch gives everyone in Rawlins a view. I’m past ready to move into the townhomes complex with its massive security fence and privacy brush.
More than anything, I want to fuck Oz. No, maybe I’d rather have never met him. I both love and hate the way he makes me feel. Meeting his kids calmed my fears about his role as a father while also freaking me out about having a role as a mother. Nothing is ever easy, and I’m struggling to deal with my restless emotions.
At breakfast, Pepper says she heard a courier working for the Heretics has a bad habit of delivering less product to Rawlins than he’s given in Little Rock. I get it into my head that this problem is now my problem, and I will handle it. After all, I can crush thieves with my eyes closed.
Relationships equal emotional havoc. Beating up assholes equals a relaxed sense of purpose. No real downside there.
Tracking down the asshole, I give him a textbook beatdown until Oz shows up to piss on my good mood.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Oz growls and yanks back my hand doing the punching.
Frowning up at his brilliantly sexy face, I wish I could smack him in the same way I am the courier. Oz’s expression nearly reduces me to the needs of a child wanting his approval. I’ll do anything to turn his frown upside down. Then I remember how he ought to be worrying about my smiles since he’s the one interrupting my work.
“I didn’t do nothing!” the fathead courier cries when I only glare at Oz.
Frowning, I shove him against a tree. “He isn’t talking to you.”
“I’ve got this handled,” Oz says, trying to remove my hand form the turd’s dirty shirt.
“I was just about to say the same.”
Oz leans down, erasing several inches between our heights. “This is my responsibility. If you don’t think so, give your buddy, Joker, a call.”
“You aren’t handling him, though. I know that because he’s still breathing.”
“I gave him a final warning.”
“Screw that warning. I believe in making an example of someone, so the flock is aware of what happens when they step out of line.”
“I. Have. This. Handled,” Oz says, emphasizing each word.
The courier nods and tells me, “He has this handled.”
I retrieve my bowie knife from the holster in my jacket. “I’ll eviscerate him and use his intestines to tie him to a tree. That’s how you make someone respect your word.”
“Only the weak need to embrace such overkill,” Oz says.
“What would you suggest?”
“I say you cut off his eyelids, ears, and tongue. Fingers and toes too. Let him live to scare the flock as you call them. People should have a constant reminder of what happens when I’m unhappy. Your way is too fast.”
“What keeps him from ratting you out or coming for revenge?”
“What’s he going to do with no fingers?”
“You’d be surprised what he could accomplish. I knew a guy who was missing a hand and several fingers, and he still became a bomb maker in Memphis. Death might not scar the sheep psychically as much as your idea, but death means he can’t come back to screw with you.”
“I’m not good with either option,” the courier says.
I slam the handle of my blade into his nose, breaking the bone. “Don’t speak to me.”
“I have this handled,” Oz says again as if I’ll become entranced by the repetition.
“You can’t stop wagging your dick long enough to admit I’m right.”
“And you can’t stop puffing out your chest long enough to admit you’re wrong.”
Shoving my chest out, I glare at him. “If you and your boys can’t keep your people in line, don’t be surprised when my girls and I step in to fix your shit.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with this asshole,” he says, knocking the guy down and stomping on his fingers. “You’re distracting yourself from how badly you need fucking and how much you know I’m the one to do the job.”
“You’re the one who brings up fucking so much. I think you’re the one with a problem.”
Oz grabs a half-used bottle of water from a nearby picnic table. After tearing off the lid, he splashes the drink against my chest.
“If you’re not hornier than a teenage boy in a whorehouse, then how come your nipples are pointing daggers at me?”
I grab the bottle from his hand and throw it at his face. The plastic makes a boinking sound when it ricochets off his forehead. Oz only smiles and gestures toward my wet chest.
“You’re a terrible human being,” I sneer, wanting to tear someone apart.
“Hi, pot, meet kettle.”
I let out a primal roar that normally would be followed by a violent blitz. Since I can’t carve up this infuriating, handsome bastard, I take off running toward my Harley with the plan of getting the fuck away from him before someone besides the loser ends up bloody.