This house was for her. Seychelle. It was beautiful. The property was beautiful with the views. He’d put in a state-of-the-art security system. He’d taken his time, watching her, learning the things she liked and finding furniture he thought she would love. He walked through the house to the master bedroom, where the very large sliding glass door revealed a deck that led to a private courtyard. He stood at the glass door, looking out into the courtyard, where he had set up multiple targets—mannequins. He practiced his craft every single day. Now he practiced more than once a day.
Like the other men of Torpedo Ink, he had to command his body to work when he was desperate for relief. He could flog a woman and let her blow him and he’d be okay for a short while if he was lucky. But he never could do this—be who he was. Become Savage the whip master. The real man. He wouldn’t give that to just anyone. The moment he lay on the hospital bed beside Seychelle, he thought of nothing else. He thought of no one else. He would give this part of him to one woman. The only woman. She would have to accept the real man, and deep down, where rage and pain came together in a black-and-red swirling mass of raw, violent energy, he knew the only woman he had a shot with was Seychelle.
He stood for a long time looking at the mannequins and the patterns he’d cut into the thin paper he’d covered them with. He didn’t want to admit, even to himself, that minute by minute, thinking of having his own woman accepting him totally, and giving him her tears freely, just as she’d given them to him that first night in her hospital room, aroused him like nothing else ever had. He had so many sins damning his soul that asking her to love him was just adding to them. Still . . .
He sighed, shook his head and turned to go find her. The ride on his Harley helped calm the turbulence raging in his gut as he moved with the machine, the wind battering at him the way his thoughts did. He had always known there was only one way to end it. He had always held that option open to himself, knowing if the rage in him got too bad and he couldn’t bleed it off enough to relieve the pressure, he’d take that option before he ever hurt an innocent. Now there was Seychelle. He just had to work it out in his mind. Find a balance.
She wasn’t at the cottage. Her car was gone. Little Miss Independence. He knew she would have already gone to Doris Fendris’s home to make certain the woman was doing okay with all the bikers showing up with tools and wood to fix both porches for her. They were going to have the work done fast, and it would be done right. He knew Doris would be in her element, ready to lord it over her friends—especially Inez.
There was a row of bikes parked in front of Doris’s home, and Savage backed his Harley into the spot at the end. Glitch, one of the prospects, nodded to him. Savage sat straddling his motorcycle. He didn’t look up. He wanted to hear her first. He knew right where she’d be—with Doris, out front. Probably sitting in the ridiculous lawn furniture that looked as if it had seen better days. He’d seen it the day before, when he’d come to collect his woman.
There it was. The single sound he was waiting for. Laughter. Magical. Soft, yet the sound carried. He looked up, and sure enough there were the notes, gold, drifting through the blue sky. His heart clenched hard in his chest. How the hell was he supposed to give that up? Worse, how was he supposed to drag her down to his level? Ask her to let him hurt her? Cursing under his breath, he swung his leg off his bike and started up the walkway toward her. As long as she was in the world, he’d be drawn to her.
Jackson Deveau, the deputy sheriff—clearly off duty, wearing casual clothes, jeans and a tee and eating Alena’s famous chicken—came walking toward him. He stopped right in front of Savage, preventing him from passing on the narrow sidewalk, clearly inclined to talk, when the man rarely said a damn word.
“Nice thing you did here, Savage.”
“Didn’t do it. That was all Seychelle.”
“Not the way I heard it. You walk on water, according to Doris Fendris. She said you came in and ordered the wood for her and had your brothers working to put the porches and stairs in today, right along with feeding the crew.”
Savage nodded. “I think that might be as true as the story circulating about you and the Dardens. The way I heard it, Clyde Darden has this special greenhouse where he grows prize flowers he names after real-life heroes. He’s got this real hot one, flame red, very rare and unusual. I know because although he said the place is sacred, he let little Zoe go in. Said he named that flower Jackson Fire and won the grand prize with it.”