Judge (Shady Valley Henchmen 1)

“That’s not going to happen. This is never going to happen again,” I added.

“We’ll see about that,” he said, pulling on his shirt, then striding toward me, grabbing my face, and pressing a hard, possessive kiss to my lips before turning and leaving. “Lock the door,” he demanded before heading out.

As soon as he was gone, I dropped down on the side of the bed, letting out a deep breath.

Before there was a hard rap at the door.

“Said lock the fucking door, baby.”

I just barely managed to bite back a comment about him being the only one I was worried about not coming into my room.

Instead, I got up, walked across the space, and slid the lock.

“Now go away.”

Then he did.

And a part of me really regretted telling him to go.

I had no idea how much I would regret that decision just a couple hours later.

When I was bleeding and alone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Judge

“Christ,” I hissed, leaning back against my room door like my damn legs weren’t going to hold me anymore.

To be fair, I wasn’t sure I’d ever come that hard in my fucking life. So there was some validity to feeling a little worn out.

It was more than that, though. I knew it was.

It was her.

All that damn sweet and soft mixed with that hint of attitude.

There were hints of good nature that came with being a typical small-town girl mingled with the spirit of being a spoiled Irish mafia princess with five doting older brothers.

Insecure in some ways, confident in others. Quick to anger, but close to tears because of its manifestation.

I was intrigued by her.

And that was a problem.

I could deal with just wanting to fuck her. That was easy. It was familiar. I didn’t have to overthink that.

And that was part of it.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t.

That sweet taste of her, the way her pussy closed around my cock like she was built just for me, the way she’d eagerly swallowed my cock, was willing to let me come down her throat.

Yeah.

I was sure I could fuck her every day for a year and not get sick of her.

But the interest in who she was as a person? That was weird as fuck.

It wasn’t like me.

I’d always had friends and then I had women I fucked. There was never any sort of combination of those two things.

Some part of me wanted a bit of both of that with Delaney, though.

It made no fucking sense.

I had one conversation with the woman.

But there was no denying it, whether it was rational or not.

“The fuck?” I hissed, pushing off the door and making my way to the bathroom, running the shower because I needed to get her scent off of me. I wasn’t going to be able to think straight if I kept smelling her all over me.

Finished, I fell into bed, figuring the long day, the drinking, and all the fucking would make me pass out in just a couple minutes.

But I found myself awake almost until sun-up, only managing to get a couple hours of sleep before Crow was knocking at my door.

I comforted myself with the fact that Crow and Sway looked equally as rough as I did as we loaded up the SUV and waited for Slash to show up.

“He’s never late,” Sway said, putting shades on to defend his sleep-deprived eyes against the unyielding morning sun.

“Maybe he got laid,” I suggested. “What?” I asked when the two of them shared a look.

“Doesn’t happen a lot,” Sway told me, shrugging.

“What? The scars?” I asked, figuring that there were women who were into that kind of shit.

“That and the voice and the fact that he’s not overly friendly,” Sway said.

“I don’t remember the last time I saw him take a woman to his room,” Crow agreed.

“But this is Vegas,” Sway said, “not the small pond that Shady Valley is. Much more likely to find someone here.”

“He did stop off at the hotel bar when we headed back,” I supplied.

There was something niggling at me right then, something about Dell and being in Vegas. Which she would never do alone, right? Which meant she was probably with the dick-hat chick from the bar.

Seemed like the kind of woman who wouldn’t shy away from a couple scars.

And it seemed a little too coincidental that the girls would be in Vegas, at the same hotel, at the exact time we were.

Maybe Slash and Nyx hooked up?

Why they would need to go all the way to Vegas to do that was beyond me, but it certainly explained a lot.

My mind immediately went to Delaney right then, though.

About her being in a hotel room all alone without her best friend there.

Safety in numbers and all that shit.

It wasn’t my place to worry about her.

She wasn’t mine.

She was never going to be mine.