His words sent a cold shiver through me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, someone wants me dead, and they’re paying someone else to make sure it happens.”
“A hitman?”
“Apparently.”
Goose bumps prickled my skin. “Are you sure?”
“I have reliable informants. They haven’t let me down yet.”
I struggled to swallow, the blood in my veins running cold. The moment was too surreal. My brain scurried to make sense of it.
“Are you okay?” I went to him, my mouth dry, my throat thick. “Who would do this?”
“Last year I made a pretty big enemy when a piece of shit drug dealer moved into our town. I told him he wasn’t welcome. When he didn’t take the warning seriously, we showed him what a mistake that was. But he retaliated and it got bloody.” He ran his hand over his head and turned away from me. “He disappeared before I could put a bullet in his head. But this morning we received some information about him. Good information. About where I could find him. And I thought that this was fucking finally it. I was going to end this motherfucker’s life and…” With his back still to me, he shook his head. “Somehow, the sonofabitch is always one step ahead.”
“Who is this man?” I asked, shakily.
“I’ve already told you too much.”
“Why won’t you tell me who he is?”
“Because I want to protect you from this.”
“But you can’t,” I said calmly despite my racing pulse. I stepped toward him and put a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he calmed a little beneath my touch. “If you can’t tell me who he is, then tell me what he did. Why do you want to find him so bad?”
He swung around and my breath snagged in my throat when I saw the glowing hate in his eyes, and the simmering rage on his face. It was terrifying.
Just thinking about his nemesis had the power to ignite his dark anger.
“Because that sonofabitch doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air that we do,” he seethed. “He is poison. A scourge. He’s a fucking parasite! And someone needs to take him out before he can inflict anymore damage.”
“But why does it have to be you? Look at what it’s doing to you.”
“Because that reptilian fuck came after me and my club. He went after Chastity. And goddammit, if anyone comes after my family, I’ll fucking destroy them!”
I took a step back, alarm spreading through me like fire. “He hurt Chastity?”
Bull explained how this man had sent one of his men to scare Chastity. He pretended to be a cop and pulled her over on an empty highway. He put his hands on her. Threatened her. Said he had a message to pass on to her uncle. But Chastity was a ballsy girl, she’d kneed him in the groin and handcuffed him to the stolen patrol car before he could do her anymore harm.
“He fucked with my family. So I burned his cocaine empire to the fucking ground.”
He went on to tell me how this man ordered his men to storm Chance and Cassidy’s wedding, and how Ruger had been seriously wounded protecting Chastity. How he’d died in surgery but miraculously survived against the odds.
“He won’t ever stop.” Bull’s lust for revenge radiated from him. “Unless I make him.”
I thought about Chastity, my friend, being caught alone on a deserted highway with a thug pretending to be a cop, and my blood began to boil. Then I thought about Ruger lying in a hospital bed on life support with three bullets in him, and how this mystery man had ordered his men to wreak havoc on the club, not caring who got hurt in the process, and I felt shaken.
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know any of this.
I went to Bull and wrapped my fingers around his big hands. Without words, I dragged them to my lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. His eyes softened as they searched mine. When he kissed me, it was tender and giving, intimate, with no rushed agitation, no desperate need to use sex as a way to release his anger.
His kiss became so much more. His touch purposeful and loving. He moved his lips to my jaw, lighting fires in me as he dragged them lower to my throat, his tongue sliding along the curve, the heat of his breath leaving me warm and flush. He held me by the arms, holding me to him, so close that I could feel the wild thunder of his heart.
“God, I need you,” he moaned, lifting his hands to cup my jaw. “I need you so goddamn much.”
The desperation in his voice turned me on, making the pulse between my legs grow to an almost excruciating need.
“Then have me,” I whispered, aching to feel him inside me.
With a growl, he lifted me up in his arms, and I wrapped my legs around his muscular body, enjoying the friction of his jeans rubbing against the flimsy fabric of my camisole as he walked us to my bedroom.