CHAPTER ONE
Wolf sat in the dark in Crystal’s bedroom, waiting for her to come home. He leaned back on the pink striped chair in the corner of a girly bedroom so at odds with the tough tomboy she portrayed herself to be that it made him smile. He knew better. He knew the Crystal who loved to fuck hard, but kiss soft. She was a complicated contradiction. Tough and edgy on the outside, but with a soft side she only showed on occasion, maybe even only showed him.
On more than one occasion, he’d tried to figure out what it was about her that was so different, that affected him on such a primal level. And then it became clear.
She was the only one that understood the beast inside him. And that beast was hard for anyone to understand, and the fact that he’d found someone who did was truly rare. It wasn’t something he could describe to other women he’d been with. Hell, not that he’d tried.
When he was a boy, he once saw a tiger at the zoo, stalking back and forth in its enclosure. Pacing from one end to the other, a well-worn path along the bars. Its haunches rolling with its gait. Back and forth it moved in agitation.
He knew what that agitation felt like. He often felt it growing inside him, that feeling of a pacing cat, wanting out, wanting…something.
Whenever that feeling grew inside him until it was clawing at his insides, there was only one thing that had ever satisfied it. One place he went to settle that pacing tiger inside him. One place he always went. To Crystal. He’d find himself seeking her out. Every. Single. Time.
Women were all too easy to come by for a member of the Evil Dead MC. And so, he’d tried satisfying that craving with other women. An endless stream of women. None of them ever came close. All roads led him back to her. They always had. Hell, they probably always would.
With her, he’d found something he’d never found with any other woman. And fuck, it wasn’t for lack of trying. But his sexual needs were a little darker than most. He liked to dominate and Crystal liked to be dominated. They clicked. Goddamn, did they ever click. She was the yin to his yang.
Maybe he was more like that big cat than he realized. He’d always heard when cats had sex, the male held the female in place by taking the scruff of her neck in his mouth and pinning her down. Wolf grinned at the thought. He understood that need to dominate.
His mind drifted back months ago to the party at the Evil Dead MC’s clubhouse when everything had started to go wrong, to the place where it all went off track…
Misty, his flavor of the month, the latest in a long line of strippers from Sonny’s, the strip club that the MC was invested in, had shown up. Crystal had gotten jealous and turned to that newbie, Shane, who was now prospecting for the club. And that had pissed him off and gotten him jealous. Not one to have his face rubbed in it, Wolf had let them both know the power a full-patched member of the Evil Dead MC could wield. He’d walked up and taken Crystal away from Shane, and there wasn’t a damn thing the man could do about it, not against a club member. Not in his own damn clubhouse. He’d dragged Crystal upstairs, corralling her against the wall and showing her just who the hell she belonged to, no matter what games they played with each other.
Their passion had always been explosive with all the fire they both stirred in each other. They fought. They loved. They often ended in a frustrating faceoff, neither giving an inch. Their relationship was a constant battle, a constant push and pull of wills.
He remembered growling down at her that night, “You push me away. I pull you back. That’s our game. That’s always been our game, baby. And what’s more, it’s a game you like. And you know it’s a game I love.”
Later that night, he’d started a fight with Shane, and his club brothers had broken it up. After the brawl, his President and VP had enough and ordered him to cut Crystal loose. He couldn’t blame them. In their eyes he was just jerking her chain, leading her on and treating her like his personal fuck toy, and maybe he had. And it was starting to affect the club
But they didn’t understand the connection he and Crystal had, the intense draw they had to one another. The overwhelming, undeniable pull of animal attraction. The only problem was he wasn’t looking for an ol’ lady or to commit. And that’s what Crystal would be, a commitment. She wouldn’t be like all the other women that he used and cast aside one after the other. He knew that if he ever let himself get serious with her that would be it. It would all be over. Done deal. And that scared the shit out of him. He didn’t know if he could do a real relationship, one where things were expected of him, one where he had to live up to someone else’s expectations.
And then fight night had come around. And Mack’s glorious idea that he and their new prospect, Shane, work it out in the cage. Wolf grinned at the memory. He had beat the crap out of Shane that night, and hadn’t that shown Crystal?
But his satisfaction had been short lived. He and Crystal had lashed out at each other, and it had gotten them nowhere.
And now he was ordered to cut her loose. Impossible. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t leave her be. For Wolf, it was all about the chase. Had always been all about the chase. And maybe that fed into his sexual need to dominate. He didn’t know. And he didn’t give a fuck. Whatever the explanation was, it just was. Fuck trying to explain it or understand it.