“Kelly. I want you to listen to me. I know things have been hard for you. You had to grow up awfully fast, and it wasn’t an easy ride. But, baby, you don’t have to make things even more difficult for yourself. That man in there is bad news. I knew it from the moment he walked into the diner. What he did to those two men, I can’t even bring myself to say it.”
“You mean, when he stopped them from raping me?” I said back.
I had never spoken like this to Grace in my life and it felt horrible. I felt like I was challenging everything she stood for. It felt like I was throwing back in her face, all the kind things she’d done over the years for me and Luke. She looked back at me and let out a deep sigh.
“Yes, that may be true. But he didn’t just stop them, my dear. He nearly beat them to death. And I don’t see any remorse, do you? I know not to judge a book by its cover, but look at him, Kelly? Is that what a respectable man looks like? Covered in tattoos, reeking of whiskey first thing in the morning? Is that who you want to spend your time with? Is that who you want Lucas to spend time with? How does this end well for you? He’s only going to hurt you, baby.”
I looked back at Hunter as he sat with Luke. His hair draped perfectly across his face. His strong jaw moved up and down as he chewed his food. The way his arm rippled every time he dug his fork into his plate sent shivers down my spine. More than that, the way Lucas didn’t seem to be afraid of him, that said something. It was the same with me. I wasn’t afraid of him. They call that instinct, and in my experience, it’s usually correct.
Was Hunter bad news? In theory, yes. He was capable of awful things and had done every lowdown deed one could think of at some point in his life. He hurt people, a lot of people. But what I found out in the last twenty-four hours was that he could never hurt me. He could try, but he would always stop himself before doing it. We were connected in a raw, animal way that somehow spoke to his violent, messed up nature. He had claimed me now. That might not mean much to a more civilized, standard type of guy, but to a man like Hunter, that meant everything. I was his, and he knew it. There was no escape for me and I didn’t want there to be. He was the only man I could ever love, and somehow, I knew it. It wasn’t just a crush. It wasn’t just in my head. It was real. I knew it. Hunter knew it. And soon enough, Grace would know it. This was my life, not Grace’s life, and it was my job to make the difficult decisions. That was one thing I’d learned losing my parents so young. Life wasn’t something that just flowed along calmly, like a lullaby. Life was real. Shit was real. And if you didn’t take what you wanted and make it happen, it wouldn’t happen, and you would be left with nothing.
My life and Hunter’s life were forever going to be one, but only if I had the strength to make sure that happened. It would mean a rocky road, but having him there by my side meant that everything would be better in the end. It was in my power to make it happen, or it was in my power to let all that die. And I knew which road I had to take.
“That is what a man looks like, Grace,” I said plainly as I stared out at him. “Honesty, integrity, strength, is that not what makes a man?”
For all the bad in him, I knew that at his core, Hunter stood for everything a man should be. Unapologetic power, in every sense of what that meant. Good and bad, he was both at the same time, and it was everything a man should be.
“Kelly, I can see he is handsome. I’m old, but I’m not blind, dear. It just seems to me that you’re letting a little crush cloud your vision here. There is nothing honorable in the way that boy walks around, destroying everything in his path.”
“That man,” I broke in. “That man sitting at the table has rescued me twice. That man is who I want to be around. That man has chosen me, and you will just have to get on board with it. He’s the one for me, Grace. I know it. I don’t just want it to be the truth. It is the truth.”
I turned on my heel and walked back down the hall. I could hear Grace huff in the other room but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to upset her. She was one of the most important people in the world to me, but today there was someone even more important. She would have to make room and that’s just the way it was.
“How are we doing in here, gentlemen?” I asked as I walked back into the kitchen and stood next to Hunter, placing my arm around his neck.
“Oh, just fucking peachy, darling.”
He pulled me onto his lap and kissed my neck, causing a smile to break out on my face and waves of heat to rush from where his lips touched my neck down to the butterflies in my stomach.
“Gross,” Luke cried.
Hunter shot a look across the table as if he forgot Luke was even in the room.
“Hey, you don’t like it, pal, there’s the door.”
“This is my house, pal,” Lucas fired back and, to my surprise, Hunter barely reacted.
“Not anymore,” he said plainly, as Lucas just laughed and finished up his eggs.
“Kelly, Hunter said we could go to his farm with him today. Can we go? Please, can we?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and looked at Hunter. He just took a swig of his coffee and looked out the window.
“Um, I guess that could be, I mean, if Hunter wants that.”
“He was the one who said we should come. He said he’d show me how to throw a football as soon as you two were finished talking grown up things in the house and I finished my homework.”
Hunter tightened his hold around my waist and leaned his lips into my ear.
“There’s no way I can go a day without feeling your pussy wrapped around my cock,” he whispered as he slipped the tip of his tongue in my ear and bit down on my earlobe. “You know, grown up things. What do you say, darling?”
He took his teeth off me and turned his head away from mine. I immediately wanted to be alone with him and to have him put his mouth back on me.
“Well, I think that sounds like a fine idea for the day,” I said and smiled as I felt Hunter’s hand slide down the back of my shorts.
I heard Grace scoff from down the hall, and the screen door slam as she walked out the door.
“Luke, why don’t you go pack a bag with what you need and we’ll leave in ten minutes?”
He shot out of his seat and ran down the hall to his room. As soon as he was out of sight, Hunter spun me around on his lap and pulled my lips into his. I could feel him getting hard against me and I started to grind myself into him.
He pulled his face away and looked up into my eyes.
“Might as well let the bad ideas ride, sweetheart.”
I drove my lips into his and sunk my nails into his shoulders as his hard cock slid up and down between my legs from inside his pants.
I had no idea what was happening, and at the same time, I felt more sure than ever that it was right.
Chapter 41
Hunter
I stepped out to the porch and lit a cigarette. I must have been drunk as fuck or out of my mind or both because I actually felt good about what I had just suggested. Kelly was mine and I didn’t want it any other way. Even if that meant she brought along her family, that was fine by me. A real man has to take his woman the way she is, not spend his life wishing she was different. That’s basically the equivalent of being a coward. The way I see it, if you can’t accept the reality that’s in front of you, you have no business calling yourself a man. Women are complicated, and men have to be able to take that.
Plus, the kid wasn’t half bad. He kind of reminded me of what I might have been like if I hadn’t been taken in by Boston’s version of the Capone family. He had balls for a little kid, enough to sit across from the likes of me and not shit his pants. I had to give him credit for that.
“You smoke?” Lucas asked, with a disgusted look in his eyes as he ran past me toward his sister’s car.
“You don’t?” I said as I walked toward him.
“Grace says it’s bad for you and stops you from growing big and tall.”
I towered over him, and looked dow
n as I blew out a thick cloud of smoke.
“Seems like Grace fucking lied to you, little man.”
I ripped his bag off his shoulder and threw it in the trunk of Kelly’s car. Lucas just stood there speechless for the first time since I met him and shuffled his foot across the gravel. I slammed the trunk and walked back around the car.
“But she’s right. It’s fucking bad for you and I’ll beat your ass if I ever see you doing it.”
I shoved him gently into the side of the car and he laughed.
You’re actually not half bad, kid.
“Careful, Hunter. That’s a tough guy you’re messing with.”
I turned around and saw Kelly making her way down the stairs.
“Holy hell.”
I couldn’t tell whether I had thought it or said it outloud. I hadn’t slept in over a day and still had some booze coursing through my veins, but I knew for goddamn sure that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
“Hunter, language,” she scolded.
She motioned to Lucas standing behind me. I guess I said it, but I couldn’t fucking care less. She had put on a little red and white polka dot dress that hugged every curve of her perfect body and flowed out as soon as it passed her thighs. Her tits bounced as she came down the staircase and I watched her milky white legs as she sauntered her way past me and put her bag in the trunk. As she closed the trunk she ran her hand through her hair, stretched and yawned. The way she looked in that moment, I knew I never wanted anyone else ever again. She was fucking perfection. She looked the way I’d always dreamed my woman would look, and she fucked like her pussy was made especially for me. My cock was getting hard and I thought twice about locking the kid in the house and taking Kelly away from here forever. I was done sharing her with anyone else. It had been a couple hours and I was fucking hard as a rock.
“Well, boys, shall we?”
She opened the door for Lucas and closed it behind him. I made my way to the driver’s side and she glided to the passenger. She stopped as she opened the door and looked at me with those big, green eyes, smiling and then turning away like she was shy.
You are fucking done, pal. That’s your girl.
I tossed my cigarette and got in the car.
“So where is this place exactly,” Kelly said, and then stopped herself and mouthed, “Is it safe?”
“It’s not far, sweetheart. And you don’t ever have to worry about safety when you’re with me. That’s not a brag. It’s the fucking truth.”
She smiled and sunk back into her seat as I started the car.
I wasn’t lying to her. Deacon had checked out the place hours ago and given me the all clear. More than that, I could be driving her into the seventh circle of hell and she’d be perfectly fucking safe. I’d die before I let anything happen to her, or her kid brother, and I wasn’t fucking dying anytime soon. That’s the thing she was slowly learning. When you ride with the fucking devil, all the goddamned demons in the world can’t do shit to you. Wherever she went from now on, she was with me. And that meant she was fucking safe. Nothing could hurt her except me and I was going to make goddamn sure that never happened.
“Lucas, put on your seatbelt,” Kelly said into the backseat.
“Hunter isn’t wearing one,” he protested.
“Hunter is a grown fucking man and can do what he wants,” I said, to no one in particular.
I felt Kelly’s hand gently slap my shoulder as I pulled the car out of the driveway. Lucas buckled up.
Yeah, yeah, darling. Language. It’s not going to get any fucking better so quit that shit right now.
I reached into my pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and lit it. Kelly looked over at me and then motioned to Lucas in the back seat.
“Oh, I’m sorry, baby. Lucas, you want a smoke, buddy?” I asked knowing full well that wasn’t what she meant.
“Sure,” he called from the backseat.
“Lucas. Over my dead body,” Kelly said sternly, as she glared at me.
I put my burning cigarette in my mouth and took a deep drag as I hit the button lowering Lucas’s window.
“You can’t protect him forever, sweetheart. Nobody’s fucking bulletproof.”
Kelly just sighed and leaned her head back. She reached over and put her hand on my thigh.
“Nobody except you, right?”
I took a deep haul of smoke and blew it out, filling the front of the car and then watching as it got sucked out the open windows.
“You’re goddamn right.”
I pulled in front of the auto shop, parked the car, and killed the engine.
“I’ll be right back. You two sit here.”
I got out and walked around to the back of the car and toward the shop.
“Where are you going?” Kelly called out through the passenger window.
I turned around and stomped out my cigarette.
“Don’t you fucking worry, sweetheart. I’m coming back. I’ve just got to grab some shit and let Dennis know I’m not coming in today. Sit there and I’ll be right back.”
Kelly looked genuinely concerned and it fucking bothered me.
Jesus, woman. What the fuck is your issue? I come, I go, but I always come back. I have half a mind to make you fucking wait.
As I made my way around the building to the back door of the garage, I got the same sinking feeling I did when I left the diner the morning before. It was the feeling I got when I left her alone, unprotected. Something primal inside me. Something was wrong. She was all alone and something was fucking wrong.
I hurried into the garage, hurried through the office, and I sprinted toward the front. Looking out the window, I was ready to throw open the door and create a fucking bloodbath in the streets.
But everything was fine. Kelly was sitting in the front and laughing as Lucas goofed around in the back seat. I could feel myself relaxing. I stood there for a moment and just looked at them. It felt good.
I broke my stare away from them and headed back into the shop.
Fuck, Hunter. Fucking focus, you dick. You’re a fucking family man now, asshole? Get your head back in the game.
I grabbed the whiskey bottle from the table and took a swig as I made my way to Dennis’ tow truck.
Let’s not forget why we’re here, you big fucking ape.
I ripped open the door and felt around under the seat until I had it.
I pulled out the duffle bag and unzipped it to make sure everything was still in there. It was. My steel, my pistol, ammo, and a bottle of booze. Between that and the girl in the polka dot dress outside, what more could a man ask for?
I closed Dennis’s truck, threw the half empty bottle of Jack into the bag with the rest, and made my way back out of the shop.
As I walked to the sidewalk, I could see Kelly’s face light up as she saw me.
I put the duffle in the trunk with everyone else’s bags and climbed back into the driver’s side.
See, darling? I always come back.
“What did you have to get?” Kelly asked, only half interested.
I lit another cigarette and rolled the car windows back down as I peeled the car out onto the only road out of town.
“Essentials, baby. Essentials.”
The mountains loomed around us, beautiful and majestic.
Chapter 42
Kelly
The sun was pouring through the window and warming the side of my face as Hunter pulled the car off the highway and down the long dirt road that led to the farm. I could see the house starting to show itself in the distance, the snowy peaks of the mountains looming beyond it. It was a beautiful valley, bathed in the spring sun. It was perfect. I had always imagined having a place like this. A quiet home in the mountains to settle with a good man, nobody but us and the life we shared. Never in a million years did I think it would come true, let alone with somebody like Hunter.
I looked over at him as he hauled away on his cigarette and wheeled the car down the path. I took
in his overwhelming presence. His one arm hanging out the window and the other gripping the wheel, the tattoos that started on his neck and continued down his perfectly sculpted torso, and his piercing blue eyes that looked ahead like he knew exactly what was in front of him. I clung to the moment and drank him all in. He was nothing that I ever pictured for myself, but as I sat there with him, I knew he was who I had been waiting for my whole life. No matter what lay ahead for him or me, he would be there to hold me in those huge arms and carry me through it all, the good and the bad. I felt a calm come over me that I hadn’t felt in years and did my best to hide the smile that was starting to spread across my face. He had come for me and he was never letting me go.
“This place is awesome,” Lucas said excitedly from the back seat. “Is this your house, Hunter?”
“It is now, kid. It belonged to somebody I used to know. He doesn’t need it anymore.”
Hunter just kept his eyes on the road ahead. I couldn’t help but wonder how he came to know about this piece of land and just exactly who it really belonged to.
“So, how did you know this person? How did you get this place?”
He kept staring straight ahead.
“Old business associate of the old man.”
“You sure he won’t be coming around?” I asked nervously.
Hunter just laughed as he pulled the car up to the side of the house and put it in park.
“Fucking positive.”
I could feel myself starting to breathe heavily. I trusted fully that Hunter would not put me or Lucas in harm’s way, but I was beginning to understand that this might not be the quiet piece of heaven that I had dreamt about all these years. This was the man I had always wanted, but the life he brought along with him was far from peaceful.
“Hunter, are we? I mean, is it okay for us to be here?”
He looked back to Lucas in the rearview mirror.
“Hey, pal, why don’t you grab your shit from the trunk and go take a look around this place?”
Lucas threw open the door and bolted around to the back of the car.
“Not too far, Luke. Stay where I can see you,” I shouted to him out the window.
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