Shielded Wrongs (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 4)

“Even you don’t believe that, Little Liar,” I said, watching as she retreated for the steps to lock herself away for the night. She stilled for a moment, turning her head back to face me.

“Do yourself a favor and just stop. This won’t end well,” she whispered.

“Who says it has to end?”

“Because it always does,” she murmured, hurrying up the steps to get away from me. I let it slide, giving her the space she needed as I tried to quell the conflicting urges inside me. I wanted to stab the man who’d hurt her so horrendously, but I also felt grateful that he’d walked away from the woman I’d made mine.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

The roar of the bike thrummed beneath me as we swerved between traffic. For years, my bike had been my home on wheels. The place I went to when I needed to feel grounded against all the bullshit circling my world. When I needed to remind myself I was human, that it was okay to feel guilt over all the death in my life, that it served as a reminder that I wasn't a robot without emotions.

Not entirely anyway.

I wasn't Ryker, with no remorse for torture and death. I'd never paint the world red and go home to kiss my wife and kids without a shred of guilt. Even when blood and brain splatter served as my medium on a canvas of death, there were still moments in the aftermath where I wondered if I lived on borrowed time. If the day would come when I lost all traces of who I'd once been and became nothing but the killing machine that roared in my veins the same as my bike thrummed underneath me.

The thought of my bike without Sadie's warmth pressed against my spine as it was in that moment no longer held the same appeal it had before. Where it had once felt like freedom, I suspected all I would feel without her there was the need to have her against me.

She was my new home.

She was my freedom and my redemption. This spunky woman who looked at me as if I held the keys to the chains that trapped her in a cage of her own making. She'd fight it and wouldn't recognize what I already saw in her honey brown eyes when she looked at me, but the clutch of her fingers against my t-shirt as she held on for dear life was more than just a safety precaution. It was the grasp of a woman clinging to everything she wanted, and everything she convinced herself she could never have.

I knew the sentiment better than most. I understood the mentality and recognized it for what it was.

Even if I didn't know what damage plagued her and made her feel unworthy, I'd get to the bottom of it soon enough. There was no part of Sadie that I wouldn't uncover for myself. No piece of her soul that I wouldn't overturn in my quest to make her mine. Her doubts, her fears, her strengths and weaknesses: I'd swallow them whole and claim them as my own. When she was ready, I'd imprint her with my soul until I was a steady pulse inside her, unable to be separated from the woman she'd been before me.

Until death did we part.

Pulling into the parking lot of the gym that meant so much to the woman clinging to me, I tried not to let irrational jealousy consume me. What was it about Sadie that made me jealous of a fucking building?

It couldn't touch her. It couldn't make her scream her pleasure until the very air would remember the addicting sound. I would never forget it, until I took my dying breath. The gym had been the first place I tasted her. The first place I fucked her only the day before. It was the first place I marked her as mine in the most instinctive of ways.

But it was also the place where she raced to the bathroom and washed me from her skin as her own regret sank inside her and swallowed her whole. The fact that she'd been quiet when we went home the night before only deepened the need for me to do it all over again. To remind her that there was no turning back from what happened between us, no matter how much she might try to retreat into her shel

l or hide behind the sass that she showed to all the people who saw only what she wanted them to see.

I was not people to Sadie. I saw beneath the facade to the vulnerable woman lurking just below the surface, hiding in only the distant corners of herself like a puppy who had been kicked down by life...

Like a puppy.

Just like the one curled up on the bottom step of the stairs that led to Sadie's apartment. Weak. Skinny. The unmistakable coloring and shape of its head was that of a blue pit, even curled up into itself to try to stay warm from the cold.

The moment I eased the bike into a parking spot at the side of the building, Sadie vaulted off the back of the bike and dropped her helmet on the pavement. She jogged over to the dog as I switched off the ignition and hurried after her. "Sadie!" I called after her, snatching her hand and making her stop. "He could be dangerous. Cornered and hungry dogs do desperate things," I said.

"Does it look like I give a shit?" she snapped, stomping her booted foot down onto my own with all her might and tugging her hand free in the split second of distraction that followed.

"Sadie!" I yelled.

But Sadie was not to be deterred, striding forward with smooth but purposeful steps until she crouched down in front of the dog. The poor thing lifted its head to sniff the hand she held out, letting her pet his nose gently. "Hi, Baby. It’s okay," she whispered. "Where did you come from?"

With her so close, I moved as slowly as my urgency would allow. I couldn't risk startling the dog and having Sadie hurt. The thought of her bleeding, of her blood being on that canvas of death, threatened to send me careening into a spiral of rage. Shoving it down, reminding myself she was alive and well, with a dog licking her hand adoringly, I stepped up next to her.

The dog made no move to harm either of us, even with me towering over it in what might have been intimidating for most animals. "He doesn't have a collar," I said, though I couldn't be surprised. The dog looked like it hadn't eaten in days, with its ribs starting to hollow out, and what looked like a dry nose.

"Even if he did, I'd be damned if I brought the poor thing back to that owner," Sadie growled in warning. I recognized it instantly, the sound so similar to the way I felt whenever the thought or threat of losing Sadie came over me.

Three minutes had passed.

And she'd already laid claim to the fucking dog.