“Honestly? Because you know she’ll just get worried and upset and Lyon will go mental about his precious lady being unhappy. They’re coming up on the wedding in what, four weeks?” he asks, getting off the elliptical and grabbing a towel to mop up the sweat we’ve both built up.
I follow, not at all into the workout anymore because I feel restless and edgy with the worry I have for Mika.
Jake’s right though. I can’t exactly go up to Leila four weeks before her wedding and stress her out about Mika. That leaves me though, and shit, I have no fucking idea what to do about this. I’m not a sensitive guy. Hell, I’m the antithesis of sensitive. It gave me the creeps just talking to Mika about her feelings last night, and the woman didn’t even tell me a thing.
I’m more likely to piss her off at this point, which I don’t want to do because she’ll just tell Lyon, and as laidback as he is, the man will beat the heck out of me if he gets pissed.
“Hell, you’re right,” I mutter, sighing loudly, my tone aggrieved as Jake grins at me and tosses me more water.
“I am. So, what are you gonna do? And what are we doing about this ex of hers?”
Hell if I know. My first instinct is to find him, make him dead, and go bury his body in a concrete barrel out in the swamp. Call it a remnant of my days playing it as a mob heavy for eight years.
I can’t do that though because Ma made me promise that I would only murder bad guys and take my temper out on the men I’m sent to target. A promise is a promise, I think sourly, scowling at the need to calm down and think things through.
“I don’t know, but I can tell you with all honesty I don’t want to get too involved in this. The woman goes for the balls when she gets mad. Lynx had to convince one of his crew not to press charges when she balled him because he almost got the site shut down by violating safety regulations.”
Jake chuckles, as do I, because you gotta understand, Mika is five three, if she’s lucky, and I’m being generous. She’s this itty bitty little thing with white-blond hair and brown eyes, and she looks like a kid she’s so small and cute.
Well, okay, not a kid, because then the way I sometimes check her out would be gross, but she is small. And she’s got a mean lip and right hook when she loses her temper.
And trust me, it isn’t pretty when that happens. That poor asshole she nailed in the nuts walked funny for two days, and he only stopped at laying a charge when Lynx told him he’d have him blackballed and he’d be working the checkout at the local supermarket.
“Look, man, I’ll shoot straight with you, okay? Mika is a good woman, one I’d be glad to call my own if not for the hottie I have in my arms every night. She’s sweet and funny and feisty, and she has a lot of baggage she’s dragging with her. I know you’re not into getting close to people, for whatever reason, but I do know that you’re involved.”
“I am not. I don’t even like her,” I protest, knowing it for a lie.
I may not want to like her, but the truth is that I have had some very bad dreams about that woman, and it pisses me off when I wake up coming all over myself just dreaming about those deep brown eyes.
“Bullshit. I saw the way you looked at her. Your dick definitely liked her,” he laughs, making me grin because I can deal with sexual shit, not the emotional garbage Jake is always spewing.
“Yeah, but he’s liked a lot of women over the years, pal.”
“True. You are a man whore.”
“You jealous?” I laugh, pulling my sneakers off to go shower.
“Nah, man, you seen my wife? Why’d I want to go somewhere else when I got the most beautiful woman in the world in my bed every night?”
He crows that shit, and I feel my chest tighten because it’s true and I envy him that. I haven’t ever met someone I want that with, so my life is more of empty sex and whispered goodbyes than true happiness.
I tell myself all the time I like it that way, but the truth is that I’m not sure I do. I like the women who’ve joined our family over the years, and I adore the way my brothers are now, happy and content.
“Yeah. Come on, man. You know I’m not the one to talk to Mika. I’d say something, and she’d just lose her temper. Hell, I took her home last night, and she all but flew into the house instead of talking to me.”
Jake grins and shrugs, conceding my point and pissing me off as well. You think I don’t want to be the guy she can talk to—
Okay, well, I don’t. That’s true, but I do want to help her if I can, and I can only do that if she talks to me. Which isn’t happening because the woman despises me.
Not that I blame her. I’ve cultivated that dislike for a while. Unintentionally at first and then as a way to stop from doing something we’ll both regret later.
I want to have sex with her. A lot of it, and it’s not easy to be around her when my cock gets hard just smelling her scent. I don’t even like her, so feeling that way isn’t easy for me. Nor is sitting across the dinner table with one of her dates who clearly isn’t good enough for her.
I want her. Bad. But I don’t ever mix business with pleasure, and I definitely do not do it when I have to see the woman all the time.
“Maybe I should talk to Brass. He likes her, you know, and he’d definitely be up for taking her out.”
Like hell, I snarl, giving him a filthy look. I am a man whore, true, and I am not ashamed to say that I like variety in my women, but Brass is a sleazeball.
The man is my pal, but I won’t lie and give him qualities he doesn’t have, and he does not have sticking power. He’d be in and out of Mika’s bed and life so fast her head would spin.
Nuhuh, not happening.
“No. She’s not into casual sex,” I snarl, stripping down to step into the shower while Jake takes a seat on the long wood bench by the lockers.
The gym at the company’s training center is fully equipped for every man on Bear’s teams, the locker room and showers more of a locker room setup from high school than some luxury spa though.
I don’t mind anyone seeing my bare ass though, not after all the years I spent secretly training with a contact from Bear’s days in the Army.
Every Wylder has had his run in that area, one way or another. I disappeared for a training exercise and stint, serving under Colonel Briggs about four years ago, and I loved it.
Being trained by some of the country’s elite in demolition and explosives was fun, as was the hand-to0hand, weapons. and marksmanship stuff I did. I’ve never been like Bear or the others.
I didn’t just wake up one day and say, ‘This is what I want to do with my life.’ Nah, I just sorta drifted and was content to toe the line as far as life went until I went on that training period.
Bear told everyone who asked that I’d gone down to South America to deal with the cartels and represent his interests, just as he did when Lyon and Lynx needed to train.
It was good for me that time because I became really aware that I have an aptitude for this kind of stuff, ironic because I once told Lyon he was selfish to want to pursue a military career because it scares Mom.
Now it’s my calling and the one thing I have in life that I am good at. Yeah, ironic.
“Hawk? You still with me, man?” Jake asks when I’ve washed off the soap and grab a towel to step out.
“Yeah. What?”
I dry off with an economy of movement and move over to my locker, grabbing my clothes as Jake comes over to sit behind me.
“You just gonna ignore this trouble with Mika? What happens if she’s sick or something? Has that crossed your mind?”
Shit! It has, but I really haven’t wanted to think that way, not after everything I saw when she was sick. Mika and everyone knows that I went to the hospital when she was sick the first time, and that’s true, but what they don’t know is that I would go sit with her at night sometimes to watch over her for Leila.
It was a time I hated and something I don’t think about if I can help it because I won’t forget the way she loo
ked in that bed. Thin to the point of emaciation and half comatose from the drugs they gave her for the pain.
Dying.
I saw it on her and smelled the hopelessness too. No, I don’t want to consider that Mika may have lied about her results because she’s sick again. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Chapter Three
Mika
The strobe lights flash above me, and I groan as my headache gets worse, not even the alcohol I’ve consumed capable of stopping the relentless pounding that’s made worse by the lights and heavy beat in the club.
Sitting back on the couch up in the VIP area, I try not to notice that I’m the only one of my group that hasn’t moved in the last hour. They’re all down on the floor, dancing and having a whale of a time, while it’s all I can do to keep my ass on the couch and not leave for home, where I want to be.
I hate feeling this way when just weeks ago I was living it up and doing the single life with zest. I was oblivious to care, on a roll with the hot guys, and loving my life.
Now, I’m just tired all the time and it’s all I can do to pretend that I care when I’m with Leila and the Wylders. Lately, I just feel…blah. My friend April finally had a shit fit after I begged off for the third time in as many weeks, not feeling the club scene or even wanting to go to dinner with her and her boy toy Terry.
I know her, and I just know she’ll surprise me with some ‘perfect guy’ she thought would be great for me. I don’t want to date, and one-night stands lost their appeal a few months back when I woke up in a strange bed and realized I don’t know this guy.
I’m not slutty or anything like that, so don’t get all hot under the collar. I just enjoy meeting a hot guy every once in a while and going for it. It’s not a crime, okay, and besides, who doesn’t want to see that hot guy across the room and bang his brains out?
I did, and I did it with relish, because if I was having fun and living free, then I was fulfilling the promise I made when I tried to deal with God to let me live eight years ago.
Now I just don’t care. About anything. Because I am tired and bored and I have a goddamn headache that won’t quit. April bounces up and plops down beside me with a grin, glugging on her G ‘n’ T as if it’s the water of life.
“You’re being a total drag, Mika!” she yells over the music, if that’s what people call this stuff nowadays, and grimaces when I give her the finger.
“I’m fine here, April. I told you when you called that I was tired, but you wouldn’t let up until I said I’d meet you guys. Well, I am tired, so you can suck it up and accept that I’m not in for dancing and drinking until my liver cries blood,” I snarl, sipping at my drink with a shudder when my stomach rolls.
“But it’s ladies’ night! The drinks are half price, and the hot guys have made an appearance. Come on, Mika. Live a little,” she yells, making me smile through the pounding in my head when she whoops and shimmies her boobs at me.
I love April. I do, but the woman is wild sometimes, and I just don’t have the energy to tolerate her happy attitude tonight. I want to go home and sleep all night on this Friday party night and not care that I wake up at twelve and stay in my pajamas until seven.
I want to veg out and not think about why I’m so tired or why the drink I’ve been nursing for three hours is making my stomach turn. Most of all, I want to forget that I feel like crap and I rolled out of bed this morning feeling dizzy.
Because if I can forget all the signs I’ve been trying to ignore lately, then none of it’s real and I won’t have to deal with it.
“I am living!” I yell back, giving her pause because she’s the only friend I kept after college who knows what saying that means to me.
“Oh, Mika, are you okay, honey?”
Oh brother, here comes the maybe we should get you to the doctor speech, the one I hear from everyone if I so much as show signs of a fever. I hate that speech, and honestly, I don’t need it right now.
“I’m fine, asshole! Just tired after working all day. Listen, I’m gonna go get another drink and go to the ladies’ room while I’m at it. You go dance with Terry. Oooooh I see a hot blonde moving his way,” I taunt, giggling when her spine goes stiff and she leaps up.
“She’d better hope those extensions aren’t expensive.”
She’s storming off down the stairs just like I intended, and I rest back with a moan, swallowing the nausea that hits me again. Only this time I feel like my heads going fuzzy from the fatigue.
Stumbling up, I cling to the railing and make it downstairs, gasping because the heat between the writhing bodies is enough to steal my breath.
It takes me forever to make it outside, and when I do, I am so light-headed from the shot of cooler air I fall back into the brick wall and try to breathe my way out of what feels like a faint.
I probably look drunk. No, I definitely look drunk when I manage to fall into the alley between the club and another building and hurl all over the wall, the force of the stomach contractions so hard I feel puke hit my shoes.
I feel terrible, so weak and out of it I almost collapse before hands grab me and pull me into a hard chest. My instinct is to fight, but I stop immediately when I’m turned and look up to see light-blue eyes glaring down at me.
“What the hell are you doing out here alone?!”
Hawk looks pissed at me, and I would totally kick him in the bag and enjoy his pain but I’m unable to do anything but moan and flop my face onto his chest, not caring that I smell like puke and I’m wiping my lips all over his clean shirt.
I’m not drunk. Like I said, I had one drink for three hours, and I didn’t even finish the thing.
“Not drunk,” I mumble, groaning when he shoves an arm beneath my knees and lifts me up, cradling me to his chest as my head flops around on his shoulder.
“Yeah, and the sky ain’t blue,” he growls, snarling at a passer-by who gets in his way as he carries me down a ways and juggles me while opening his truck door.
“Not. Not drunk,” I try to tell him again, this time swallowing because he’s pulling away from the curb and the movement of the car is making my stomach pitch.
“Mika, don’t try that shit with me, okay? I just saw you fall into an alley and puke your ass off. You’ve been clubbing for what…it’s one in the morning, so that’s at least four solid hours of drinking,” he accuses, making me want to hit him.
I’ve seen Hawk around a lot when he’s in town, trolling the clubs for ass with those hot friends of his, drinking and having a good time. He has no place judging me for doing exactly what he is. Especially if it’s not true at the moment.
“Hawk.”
He looks over at me, and I try not to hurl when I see two of him, my aching head slamming so hard it feels like by brain is two sizes too big for my skull. He finally notices my face and grimaces, rifling in the glove box while keeping one eye on the road.
“Here.”
I’m not at all surprised when the boy scout pulls a paper bag out and shoves it at me, but what does throw me is the way he gently strokes my head as I close my eyes and try not to embarrass myself by hurling in his truck.
“You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” I mutter weakly, fumbling to open the window because I feel like I’m burning up and I need air.
Hawk growls at me to stop, and I moan when he turns on the air-conditioning and points the vent directly at me. The coolness has a twofold effect on me. I feel my skin chill in that heavenly way that all drunk people get from faceplanting on the bathroom floor, but it also makes me so nauseous I retch and shove the bag in front of my mouth.
“It’ll pass soon. Just keep breathing, babe.”
Breathing? I feel so terrible I could almost wish I was dead, I think sourly, doing as he says and sighing when it passes.
“I’m not drunk,” I say when I can manage to speak.
He gives me a look, and I want to brain him, but I also get that I’m not exactly winning any Oscars for s
ober person of the year either.
“I really am not drunk. I nursed one drink, and I didn’t finish it. I had a headache before I came out tonight, and it got worse fast.”
Hawk narrows his eyes at me, and I gasp when he shoves out a hand and puts the back of it up to my face.
“You’re burning up, Mika!”
He sounds so concerned I want to laugh, but all I can do is moan and shove him away because the man runs hotter than a furnace and I can’t handle the heat anywhere near me right now.
“It’s the headache.”
“We should—”
“Don’t. Don’t say it, okay? I don’t need to go to the hospital or anything like that. It’s just a headache that turned into a migraine. I’ll take something at home and sleep it off.”
Hawk grunts, and I’m starting to think it’s all he’s capable of when the truck stops and he turns off the headlights. My eyes are still closed, and I don’t move until the door beside me opens and arms lift me.
“I can walk.”
“No, you really can’t,” he replies, juggling me while unlocking the door.
I don’t register that fact, or that he shouldn’t have my keys, until I open my eyes and see the darkened living room with the sky-blue walls. I am not at home. Nope, this is his place.
“What…?”
“Shut up, Mika, and don’t argue with me, okay? You’re sleeping in the guest room tonight so I can check on you. Here.”
A soft bed meets my back, stealing my protests when I feel cool sheets all down my back. It feels good and so comfortable I moan, rolling to shove my face in the pillow.
My dress is short, so I guess Hawk can probably see my ass, but I can’t find the energy to care or cover myself because I just feel awful. I hear him sigh and walk away before he’s shaking me and helping me up, my snarls at having to sit up going ignored while he shoves two pills at me and tips a glass of water at my lips.
They go down easy, and why not since I’ve been taking the shit for years, and the water washes the acrid taste of bile from my tongue.
WYLDER Page 61