Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
She nodded in understanding then swung off, that skirt hiked up so high it gave me a peep of satiny white underwear.
Fuck me.
This temptress had to be doing it on purpose.
Maybe she was the demon in this whole scenario.
Pure succubus who’d been sent to distract me from the objective.
Ending the monsters who’d hurt my sister and uncountable others.
My only goal destroying their kind.
There would be no rest until they were extinct, and I still had no idea if her brother was going to come through or end up a casualty of that.
How badly would she hate me then?
I swung off and stood on my feet. “This way.”
I gestured for her to go ahead of me.
Another terrible idea but one that was necessary.
I needed to be able to keep an eye in every direction of her.
Watching who was out ahead all while being a writhing, human shield from behind.
A virtual catastrophe since it meant those hips were sashaying back and forth, right in my line of sight.
Hypnotizing.
Fisting my hands, I inhaled a breath and forced my attention up where it belonged.
The double doors swished open as we approached, and the second she was inside, Brinley turned and cut through the store, heading to the cosmetics and self-care at the back.
She went directly for the hair products, scanning before she picked up a bottle to inspect its ingredients.
I peered over her shoulder.
Heat protectant and detangler.
“Are you shitting me?”
She flung half her body around, wide-eyed and innocent. “What?”
“You demanded someone take you into town so you could buy hair detangler?”
On all things holy, she might be worse than Elena. At least she hadn’t beelined to the glitter section.
I figured she’d started her period or some shit, and we were on a tampon run.
“Have you seen my hair?” She said it like she was suffering a tragedy. “These curls are impossible.”
She flicked one over her shoulder as evidence.
She was what was impossible.
But she didn’t know.
Had no real clue that every time she stepped out of the shelter of the club, she was taking a risk.
Yeah, I warned her.
But unless you were in the thick of it?
Unless you’d seen it firsthand?
You couldn’t quite fully grasp it.
Didn’t mean I wasn’t irritated as fuck.
“You heard of this little thing called delivery?”
Brinley huffed. “I haven’t had my detangler for two mornings in a row, and I’m afraid if I go one more day, the only option left will be to cut it off.”
On second thought, this was an emergency.
I had to stop myself from reaching and twining my finger around one of the wild, wayward locks.
Those curls were honestly a hot mess.
A riot of brown woven with those reds and golds.
A thousand times worse—or better, however you wanted to look at it—since she’d been on the back of my bike.
“Guess that won’t do, now, will it?” My voice went low and gruff.
Severity arced between us, and something shifted in her gaze.
Confusion and flickers of need.
Did she feel it?
The attraction that buzzed across my flesh?
Funny how you always wanted the things you couldn’t have.
“My mom’s hair was just like this,” she suddenly whispered, vulnerability slipping into the words. “I’ve been growing it for years.”
That fierce veil dropped for a beat, and it allowed a river of sorrow to flood through.
Fuck.
I knew that kind of pain.
Knew that she was talking about her mother in the past tense.
Knew the gutting sense of missing something that you were never going to get back.
My throat felt too fucking thick, and I had no clue what was happening to me. “I bet she was beautiful.”
Brinley’s face pinched in an old sort of agony. “There was no one like her.”
“There was no one like my mother, either.” Couldn’t believe that I gave her that when I never mentioned my mother to anyone but my family, and even with them, the words were brutal.
Dispatched like tragedy and grief.
A moment was held between us. Something like understanding and camaraderie passing in the bare, shivery space.
Then she blinked frantically and turned away, rushed as she grabbed two more bottles.
“I think I’m ready.” It was a rasp of her own tragedy and grief.
I stepped back, giving her space because I was in dire need of it, too.
Had no clue what it was about her.
Why this stranger, this woman who was under my charge and my protection, had me twisted up the way she did.
She was so off-limits, touching her would be no less than a religious desecration.
The oath I made to Dereck a badge of my loyalty.
Not that the twat deserved it, but Brinley did.
But it was the oath made to my family and crew that mattered.
She was collateral.
Resource and reserve.
A down payment that her piece of shit brother would come through.
And going there would be treachery.
She moved into line, and her attention snagged on the snacks set up near the register.