“Fuck you.”
Hunter (I decided not to call him Liam anymore—Liam was a nice name for a nice guy, and it didn’t fit this bastard at all) glanced at his friend, then rubbed a hand over his face. For a minute he looked tired.
Jackass.
I was going to laugh at his funeral.
“Okay, let’s go upstairs,” Hunter announced. He glanced over at poor Sophie, who had gone pale. My anger faded a little, replaced by guilt. I needed to stop worrying about my hurt feelings and start planning our escape. If we had to wait for Dad to find Toke, we might find ourselves dead in a ditch.
Not that I really thought Hunter would kill me … Despite the evidence to the contrary, I just couldn’t fathom him truly hurting me. Denial? Probably. Skid was another story. There was something evil in his eyes.
Hunter pulled out a Leatherman and knelt down at my feet. I considered kicking him in the chin but decided that wouldn’t do me much good strategically. Pity. Then he cut the rope. Skid pulled out a pistol and cocked it loudly.
“You cause trouble, I’ll shoot you,” he said, and I realized I’d succeeded in conveying my homicidal intentions clearly. Yay me! “Hunter’s nice. I’m not.”
Strangely enough his words helped me focus—I’d let myself get worked up over my hurt pride, but I couldn’t let anger take over my brain. I couldn’t afford to do something stupid. Sophie might be a sweetheart, but she wasn’t a Reaper and she had no idea what we were up against. I’d have to be the one to get us out of this.
Sobering thought.
Hunter grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. Then he tugged me up a flight of stairs off to the side of the living room. Behind us I heard Skid and Sophie following. Hunter opened a door on the right and pulled me in, kicking it shut behind us. I looked around. It was a bedroom.
With a bed.
Suddenly the situation took on a new set of implications I hadn’t considered before. Liam’s whole persona might’ve been a great, big, fat fake, but he hadn’t been faking one thing. I’d definitely felt his dick poking my ass earlier. Either he wore a hell of a prosthetic at all times, or he actually wanted to fuck me. Now he had a nice, comfy bed to do it on.
Shit.
His hands grasped mine, and I heard the click of the lock turning on the cuffs. I wasn’t free, though—he held my wrists tight as he pushed me across the room. I refused to move my feet, stalling. He leaned down, speaking softly in my ear.
“Get on the fucking bed, Em.”
Warmth bathed my ear and I could smell him all around. Because there’s something wrong with me, that turned me on.
“That sounds like a bad idea,” I said, trying not to sound nervous. I needed to get on the offense, take some control of the situation. “Let’s talk about this.”
“Talk away,” he muttered, bringing my hands around to the front of my body. He stepped forward, taking both of them in one big hand. I felt his heat behind me, his large body dwarfing and surrounding mine.
I also felt his cock again.
No fucking way I could miss that giant thing digging into my lower back. Double shit. I needed a diversion.
“I don’t think you realize what’s happening,” I said quickly. “I know you want to find Toke. I get that—if someone attacked one of our club brothers, I’d be after him, too. But Toke stabbed me last weekend—”
Hunter froze, then I was moving through the air, lifted straight up against his chest as he carried me. He pushed me down, rolled me to my back, and straddled me all in one smooth move, pinning my arms up and over my head.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.
“Explain how he hurt you,” he said, his voice grim and his eyes cold. “Now.”
I closed my eyes, trying to think.
Oh, I was at this party with all my friends and family, and then this guy I’m supposed to be able to trust got pissy for some reason (that I’m not allowed to know) and he cut me with a big, giant knife. Then my dad tried to shoot him, I got a few stitches, and now we’re all pretending it never happened.
Nope, nothing weird about that.
I’d planned to tell him it was an accident if we got far enough for him to find the bandage hiding under my top. Seemed believable enough to me, seeing as most people don’t go running around with random knife wounds. Not like it was particularly bad. Sure, it hurt a bit if I pulled at it, but it wasn’t exactly deep.
I took a deep breath, trying to figure out the best way to handle this. Toke definitely wasn’t my favorite person right now, but he was still a Reaper and this was our private business. I couldn’t give Hunter anything to use against the club. On other hand, I needed to keep him on my side, what with the not-wanting-to-end-up-dead-in-a-ditch issue.
“It was an accident,” I said slowly, which was sort of true. I was pretty sure Toke had no intention of cutting me, personally, when he’d unsheathed his knife. “We were just fucking around at a party last weekend—”
“Fucking around?” he asked, eyes growing colder, which really shouldn’t have been possible, yet he still managed to pull it off. “What’s the story between you and Toke?”
“Nothing. Shit, nothing, okay? Although why the hell you would care I can’t imagine.”
“You have no idea what I care about.”
“And I could give a shit,” I muttered. “Do you want to hear the details or not?”
“Tell me the fucking details.”
“We were at a party,” I started again. “It wasn’t that late or that crazy, although it was moving in that direction. I went to find my dad and say good night because Sophie and I were heading out. I was walking past a group of guys and then suddenly someone fell against me and his knife caught my rib cage. No big deal.”
Hunter dropped his hands to my sides, running his fingers lightly across the corset, searching for the wound. I gritted my teeth when he found it, refusing to acknowledge the twinge of pain. Something must’ve given it away, because he growled.
Growled.
Like a pissed-off wolf. No, like a whiny dog, I told myself firmly. One of those little yappy ones. Wolves kicked ass and Hunter didn’t. He was a giant, fake asshole.
Then his hands went to the front of the corset and started fumbling with the hooks. This was not okay. I grabbed his wrists, trying to jerk him away, but he ignored me completely. Seriously. He was so much stronger than me that I wasn’t sure he even noticed my protests.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I need to see it,” he said. “You should’ve said something earlier. I could’ve hurt you in the bar. Why the hell didn’t you tell me when it happened?”
My jaw dropped.
“It’s none of your fucking business,” I burst out. “None of it is. And don’t try telling me you care whether or not I’m hurt.”
My breasts popped free as the corset opened. I tried to cover myself, hating the sudden, horrible feeling of vulnerability.
“You are my business,” he told me, his voice grim. He didn’t pause to perv, either. Nope, his touch was impersonal—almost clinical—as he felt around the fresh, white bandage I’d put over it earlier.
“It’s not that big,” he said, looking almost surprised.
“No shit. I told you it wasn’t a big deal. About three inches long, and not even half an inch deep.”
“They take you to the hospital?”
“They took care of me,” I snapped. “They always take care of me. That’s why—if you want to live—you need to let me go and get yourself the hell out of town.”