Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 133975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
“Tell me more of your bullshit reasons why we don’t work.”
“They aren’t bull, Keys. It’s all solid evidence. You like yes-women. You say something and you expect the woman to do whatever you tell her, when you tell her. Bossy as hell. Arrogant enough to think you can get away with it.”
“I can,” he agreed.
“There you go. You can when they want something from you. Those women treat you like you’re a…a…”
“Cock,” he supplied.
“Yep,” she agreed. “They don’t treat you like a man. They don’t see the man. They want what you can give them, so they do whatever it takes to persuade you to do that.”
“Kind of like I treat them is what you’re saying. I don’t see the woman, just the available pussy.”
“Exactly, so you can get away with telling them what to do because if they don’t follow what you say to the letter, you dump them and go find someone else. Isn’t that right?”
“Yep.” He wasn’t going to apologize for his lifestyle. On the other hand, she wasn’t asking him to; she was explaining why they weren’t compatible. He detested that she thought that, but he could see her skewed reasoning. He did treat women as fuck toys because that’s what they were to him. In turn, they treated him the same way, and that allowed him to walk away with no strings to try to hold him down.
He lived free. He rode free. He didn’t live within the accepted society rules and thought most of them were bullshit.
“It’s much more difficult to get a woman to do exactly what you say when you don’t have a hold over her,” she pointed out.
Now she was getting into dangerous territory. Really dangerous. First, she was his whether she knew it or not. He didn’t give a damn that he didn’t know what he was going to do with her. He did know if another man got near her, that man wouldn’t live long.
“Your face is swollen, babe. Eyes have turned black.”
“Are you saying I look like a raccoon?”
“Not a good look. Makes me want to backtrack and burn those bodies all over again.”
He felt the puff of heat on his chest as she gave an unladylike snort. “It stunk. I don’t think I’ll ever eat meat again.”
Bog, but she was beat-up, her body black-and-blue. Even her breasts. Those bastards had put her through so much. His club would come for them, and they wouldn’t come alone. The Trinity chapter was close. They could and would take down the Headed for Hell club just for what they’d done to Lyric. If he named her his old lady, claimed her for his own, there wouldn’t be any question. They all knew the Headed for Hell club was dirty. Every one of them. They might keep a low profile, but they were using the mountains to run their products.
Keys and Destroyer were the kind of men a club would recruit, but there wasn’t a single bite. That meant the club had locked their shit down tight because there was a reason. Czar had pulled them when he could see it was a waste of time to leave valuable resources in play when they weren’t getting anywhere.
Keys needed distraction from his thoughts. He needed to know every one of Lyric’s objections to their merger. “Keep going with your reasons you believe we aren’t compatible, even though we spend every fuckin’ day together and know more about each other than anyone else.”
She was silent for a long moment. The fire crackled and popped. He needed to lay their clothes out to get them dry, but he was too comfortable with Lyric lying on top of him. He wanted to know what she was thinking, but after that brief hesitation, she resumed her bullshit list.
“Did you know that statistics show that a tall man and a short woman will rarely stay together? He gets tired of always bending down. Hurts his back and neck. She gets tired of always standing on her toes. Just doesn’t work.”
“Where the hell did you read that shit?”
“Internet. You can find all kinds of obscure data on the internet. You’re nearly a foot taller than me…”
“Nearly? Even when you wore those ridiculous heels to the bar that one night, I was over a foot taller.”
“My point.”
She was beginning to thaw. Their skin-to-skin was not only heating her but scorching him. Keys did his best to ignore his body’s reaction.
“I’m skinny. No curves—well, not much in that department. I’m totally inexperienced, and don’t pretend you don’t know that. I go my own way, which puts you in some kind of rabid rage, mostly because you think of it as defiance when really, I’m being logical.”
That statement only brought back that moment when Merrit had turned the gun on Lyric, and he’d only had seconds to take the gunman out with a pair of hairdresser’s scissors. “Now is not the time to remind me that I’m pissed as hell at you over that.”