“You call me darling one more time and I’m shoving that darling up your ass.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time—”
Her eyebrows shot up her forehead.
“Wouldn’t bet on it being the last, either. But I haven’t called you darling once.” He had emphasized the G. “Darling,” again drawing out the G, “is used by uptight, rich motherfuckin’ snobs, which,” he drew a hand in the air from his head to his boots, “I ain’t.”
“No shit,” she muttered.
“Called you darlin’. Since pigs are supposed to be so fuckin’ detail-oriented, you shoulda picked up on that.” He took another step forward until the tip of his boots bumped hers. “Now, darlin’—”
“Step back,” she ordered.
“Never been a day I’ve taken orders from a woman. Not one fuckin’ day. And today’s not that day, either.”
“Rook, I’m warning you, step the fuck back.”
He dropped his head until his face was just above hers. She was panting softly. He bet, if he could see them, her eyes would be dilated.
He also bet her pulse was racing in her throat.
All of that could mean one of two things. She was interested in way more than his criminal past.
Or she was scared of him.
The second would surprise him since she didn’t act scared of him at all, but if it was the first, he wanted to know why. Because he had seen the way she looked at him every time she’d been at the garage.
Maybe she just wanted to taste something she couldn’t have.
That forbidden fruit.
Yeah, he might not know shit about the bible but he knew Eve had eaten an apple she shouldn’t have.
Maybe Rook was that apple. And Jet was Eve trying to resist that ultimate temptation.
That apple was enticing her to pick it. Bite it. Savor it.
Every time she’d shown up at the garage, while Rev and Whip fawned all over her and preened their cocky feathers in front of her, Rook had always kept his distance.
Yeah, she was hot. But what she wore, what she was, turned him cold.
He smiled.
She didn’t. “Step. Back.”
“Or what?” he whispered, lowering his mouth to barely inches above hers. “Whatchya gonna do, darlin’?”
The crackling sound made his blood instantly turn to ice before his body went stiff and he lost all control of it. He dropped like a crash test dummy to the dirt, unable to move, unable to think, since his heart, his muscles and his brain had seized.
He was fucking helpless right now but he only had to wait it out. The second she released the trigger on her taser, he’d be able to move again. That very fucking second.
He just had to wait.
Wait.
She didn’t release the trigger until after using her boot to roll him onto his stomach. The second the voltage stopped coursing through his body, she had a hold of his right arm and yanked up behind his back with his thumb cranked all the way to his forearm. Unfortunately for him, his wrist didn’t bend naturally like that.
He tried to suck in air as she drove a knee into his back with all her weight. She wasn’t heavy, thank fuck, but it still hurt like hell.
As he tried to roll and dislodge her weight, she jerked his hand higher, almost to his neck. He heard the familiar clicking sound of metal teeth and a millisecond later the bite of the cuff as she slapped it on his right wrist. Then, his Beretta was gone.
“Fuckin’ son of a bitch!” he shouted. The way she had his arm pulled up, if he struggled he’d risk popping it from his shoulder socket.
He knew this dance. All too well. Pain used as a tool to make him comply.
If he fought her, she’d add resisting arrest to any charges she might drum up on him. He only needed to wait it out. See what game she was playing. Whether she was taking him in or teaching him a lesson.
He clenched his teeth when she ordered, “Give me your other hand. Or are you going to fight me on this?”
He took one breath. Then another. “Fuck you,” he growled, but gave her what she wanted. The cold metal bracelet cinched tight on his left wrist, too. A second later the knife was removed from its sheath. Now he was hobbled on the ground with his face in the fucking dirt without a weapon.
Fucking motherfucker.
He should’ve shot her.
He could have dragged her body up the mountain and her family would blame the Shirleys for her death. Simple. Then, instead of the war between the clan and the club, it would be between the clan and the PD.
Because if those oinkers thought the Shirleys did something to one of their own? The Brysons would decimate that mountain and everyone on it. Maybe they’d do it legally, unlike the club, but it would be done and the club’s hands would be washed free of that problem.