Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3)

by Jessica Gadziala

  "That was so juvenile," I lowered my eyes at him, crossing my hands over my chest.

  "Yep," he agreed, pushing his plate almost completely across the table toward me like he didn't even want it anywhere near him. He took my coffee cup from my hands and took a sip himself.

  I wanted to be annoyed at him. I really did. He crossed a line. It wasn't a particularly bad line to cross, but it wasn't cool and I wanted him to know that. But that being said, I was happy he was himself again. I was too relieved to hold onto my indignation.

  "Are you alright?" I asked when the silence stretched on.

  "Yeah."

  Augh. I needed more than that.

  "You sure? Because you were pretty, ah, shaken up not that long ago."

  "Over it."

  Over it? Over it?

  Alright so my hands weren't exactly clean. I've had blood on them before. I'd done some things and I had gotten over them. Some things needed to be done. But still, he went full on rage monster to the point where there wasn't an inch of him that hadn't been covered in blood. Hell his hand looked like it had reached into someone's chest cavity and pulled out their heart. That was how much blood he had staining his skin and shoved under his fingernails. He couldn't just be... over that.

  "Wolf..."

  "Tired," he said, getting up so fast the chair scratched across the floor then tipped over. He walked toward the bed without picking it back up.

  I took a deep breath, steeling myself for beating my head up against a brick wall. I mean... talking to Wolf. I righted the chair and skirted around the opposite side of the bed. He was facing the door to the bathroom, away from me. I got on my knees behind him.

  "You need to talk about it."

  "No."

  "Okay well then... I need to hear about it."

  "No you don't."

  I closed my eyes, willing myself to stay calm. How could he know what I did and did not need to hear? "Did you kill Lex Keith?" I asked and when I opened my eyes again, Wolf had rolled onto his back, his eyes boring into me.

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "You have nightmares."

  "Plenty of people have nightmares. Are you going to kill the elementary school teacher who used to make me wake up crying because of that one time he yelled at me in front of my whole class?"

  "Janie, he raped you."

  Those words landed like a blow, pushing all the air out of my stomach. It was one thing to know it, to have lived through it and tried to move on from it. It was another thing to hear someone else say it. No one had said it before, not to me, not about me, not around me. Lo had been careful to use phrases like 'what happened to you' or 'what that bastard did'. They were phrases that almost detached me from the act, let it seem something impersonal. But putting it the way Wolf just did, it threw me right into it. Lex raped me. It didn't get more personal than that.

  I swallowed hard. "Women get raped every day, Wolf. In fact, a woman is raped every two minutes in the United States alone. Are you going to track down all those men and kill them too?"

  "Someone should."

  "Answer the fucking question."

  He sighed. "No."

  "Then why?"

  "Drop it."

  "No."

  "Fucking stubborn," he said, shaking his head before his arm swung out, snagged me around the waist, and pulled me down to his chest.

  "Yeah, well you're pretty fucking stubborn too. But, guess what?"

  "What?"

  "I'm pretty freaking sure I can out-stubborn you."

  "You can try."

  "You need to talk about..."

  "Shut it."

  I tried to jerk upward, but his arm tightened around my hips, holding me in place. "Did you just tell me to shut it?" I sputtered.

  "Yep."

  Then I stole a page right out of his book; I growled. Which only succeeded in making him chuckle, his body shaking beneath me. "Let me go."

  "Nah."

  "I'm angry with you," I reasoned.

  "You'll get over it."

  "Yeah maybe if you stop being such a pain in my ass."

  "Not gonna happen."

  "This isn't over."

  "Sure it ain't."

  "It's not," I insisted, but I could feel my commitment to the argument dwindling. That was always how I was- I burned hot and fast and fizzled out just as quickly. He could totally out-stubborn me, damn it.

  "Go to sleep."

  "Stop being so freaking bossy."

  "Stop making everything difficult."

  "Did you just use two words with three syllables in each in one sentence? I think hell might have just frozen over."

  "Woman..." his voice held warning this time.

  "Fine," I grumbled, relaxing onto his chest. It felt too good to be close to him again to keep ruining it with useless arguments.

  "Thank Christ," he sighed loudly, but tempered the statement with his hand moving into my hair and stroking it in the familiar way he always did.

  A while later, he slept.

  A few hours after that, so did I.

  For the second time in the better part of a decade, dreamlessly.

  --

  "You've got to be freaking kidding me!" I yelled into the cabin, making Harley and Chopper's heads snap up. "Seriously? Seriously?" I ranted, storming over to the bathroom and going in though I already knew it would be empty. I threw the front door open and stomped out. Of course his truck was gone.

  Needless to say, I woke up alone.

  There was also no note this time.

  So I figured he likely wasn't out mutilating more people because that was the only time he actually left me a note. But still. We had things to talk about and argue about and...

  "Christ," I cursed myself, running a hand through my wild hair. I wasn't his girlfriend. I didn't get to demand he leave me notes and tell me his whereabouts. I wasn't even his little hostage anymore so I couldn't rightfully be pissed that he left me alone at all.

  It was my own damn fault that I didn't have a car there or my laptop and books and shit to keep my mind occupied. I needed to stop planning my days around his days. I didn't do shit like that. That wasn't the kind of girl I was. On a firm nod to the strong-woman yelling at me inside my head, I turned back into the house, grabbed a gun, ammo, a coin, slipped into my boots, and headed into the woods for target practice.

  I had just paused to reload the gun for the second time when I heard a throat clear behind me. I snapped the gun back together as I whirled, arm raised, ready to do what might need to be done. Like I was trained to.

  "Aw pumpkin, what'd I ever do to you?" Shooter asked, standing about two yards behind me, hands tucked into his tight black jeans. Yeah, Shooter was the tight black jean kinda guy. He was also the creepers kinda guy. And tattooed, pierced, devilish kinda guy.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" I snapped, my voice dropping low as if someone might overhear us, you know, all out in the deep woods.

  "Nice to see you again, pretty girl," he said, giving me the smile I knew melted panties for miles wide. "Your aim is better."

  "How would you know about my aim at all?" I countered.

  "Hailstorm might watch all of us, sweetheart. But all us small timers keep an eye out too." Small timer? Ha. He was the best contract killer on the East coast. He got paid trunk loads of cash for the jobs he did. The last thing he was, was a small timer. Even if he was a one-man organization. When I didn't speak, his smile got a little boyish. "I know my attractiveness can make women senseless, but we got some shit to talk about."

  I felt my own lips tip up and lowered the gun. "Thanks for killing Lo's ex. He deserved to get dead."

  "He deserved to have his dick shot off first," he said, moving closer.

  "You didn't!" I gasped.

  "Oh, peaches, I sure as fuck did."

  I snorted. "Enough with the pet names, Shoot." I bristled. I was nobody's 'peaches
' or 'pumpkin'. "So what do we need to talk about?"

  "We need to talk about Lex Keith."

  My spine straightened. "What about him?"

  "See? I like a good vacation, getting away from all the killing and pussy. It's good for the psyche. I don't like being forced into a vacation in some sick fuck's basement with nothin' but dimwitted lackeys to keep me company. So I was pleased as punch that you blew that place up and got me, Break, and Alex out of there. I owe you for that."

  "Is that why you're here? To offer me a marker?"

  "I'm here because me and Breaker and Alex are down in fucking Mexico and I'd like for us to be able to come back some day. Can't do that with Lex out there looking for us."

  "That threat is neutralized," I said carefully.

  A slow, appreciative smile grew, making his already handsome face almost unbelievably so. "Look at you. Watch out Beatrix Kiddo, we got a new badass, hot as fuck assassin to inspire a million wet dreams."

  "Beatrix Kiddo is fictional."

  He nodded at me, looked off in the distance, then pinned me with his deep green eyes. "So you're saying we can come back anytime."

  I exhaled. "That depends."

  "On?"

  "Who is Joshua?" I asked, bringing up the name of the guy with the bone sticking out of his leg who screwed up my plans the night of the bombing.

  "Fuck," Shoot said, shaking his head.

  "I'll take that as a 'I know him and he's a problem'. Well, I was in the basement to get Lex and he yelled for help. Had his freaking tibia sticking out of his leg."

  "Nice."

  "Yeah. So I helped him hobble his ass out of there. He can point me out and it is sounding like he could point you out too. I don't think you have anything to worry about with what is left of Lex's enterprise. And while the cops around here are generally inept or crooked, if they decided to lean on him..."

  "So you're saying we should enjoy the beach for a while," Shooter asked, smirking again.

  "Lots of ladies I'm sure you haven't tapped down there."

  "Sold," he smiled and reached out to boop me on the nose. Apparently he was the black skinny jean, creepers, pet name calling, and nose-booping kind of guy. No wonder he got so much tail. "Thanks for the heads-up, sweetheart. If you hear anything worth sharing, let me know, okay?"

  "Enjoy your vacation."

  Shooter gave me a wicked grin. "Think one of them will say 'ay papi' when I get all up in there?" he asked, smiling wider when I couldn't hold his gaze. I was used to dirty jokes; the men at Hailstorm were as filthy as they could get. But there was something about the way Shoot said things like that when he was looking at you, like he'd know what you sounded like saying that to him when he was 'all up in there'. Yeah, it was disarming.

  "Shoot, I think they will say anything you want them to."

  He laughed and sent me a wink. "Enjoy your mountain man," he said, turning and taking off where he had come from.

  My.

  My mountain man.

  I stood there dumbly for a long minute, watching Shoot's easy swagger, his words still heavy on my shoulders because I realized he was right; that was how I saw Wolf: as mine. It was ridiculous and unfounded, but that was how I felt. I was staying in his house, voluntarily now. I was sharing his bed. I washed blood off his naked body. I cooked him food and kinda hoped it was at least edible even though I knew I had no culinary skills. I bonded with his dogs. I cleaned up the evidence of multiple crimes.

  I guess a part of me decided that meant I could claim ownership.

  And the other part of me decided that even if I didn't currently possess it, it was a goal I wanted to work toward.

  It was crazy. Who based a relationship off of screwed up pasts and murder?

  At that, I felt a hysterical little laugh escape my lips. Who? Yeah, I guess that would be Reign and Summer and Cash and Lo. Hell, it even sounded like Breaker and Alex. None of us had the luxury of a clean life, of nervous first dates and awkward third date kisses, of security and comfort. We all dated and fucked and loved like we lived: hard and fast and dirty, never wasting a second because we were never guaranteed the next one.

  So maybe there was a chance for us, beyond all the scars and bloodshed and pain. Maybe there was a way to move on together. I mean... not that I had any idea whether or not Wolf had any interest in that kind of thing. Bikers weren't exactly known for their monogamousness. I didn't blame them. I imagined if I had a dick, I'd want to stick it in a bunch of different club whores too. But if Reign and Cash had settled down, there was hope.

  I mean... not that I was hoping...

  "Augh. I'm being such a girl," I growled at myself, tucking the gun into the waistband of my jeans and making my way back toward the cabin.

  I wasn't good with the girl stuff. There were some women at Hailstorm, but we were definitely outnumbered. And the women that were there were like me and Lo, kinda closed off and private. We chatted. They all bullshitted about sex and men and stuff like normal women do. But we were all very closed-off about our feelings, all of us hiding our own emotional scars. It was a defense mechanism. We all thought we needed to be so hard, stone cold, to be able to compete with the men, to have them take us seriously. I couldn't imagine the wrath of shit I would get if I showed any kind of feminine emotion around them. They would eviscerate me. That was our life. And, up until right then, walking in the woods, I never saw anything wrong with that.

  I didn't want to be soft and feminine. I wanted to be a badass bitch who no one would ever think to second-guess. But how badass was it to hide how you were feeling? I mean I emoted. When I was pissed or frustrated or offended, there was hell to pay. I ranted, I raged. I made grown ass men cower and hide. So what would be wrong with embracing some of the less fun emotions? Like pain and desire, hope and maybe... just maybe... love.

  "Oh god," I groaned at myself as I broke into the clearing to the cabin.

  I was never like Lo in that department, drooling over romance novels, dying for the hero and heroine to overcome the odds and get together. In fact, I tended to skim over the lovey-dovey crap in the books I read. I guess a part of me rebelled against it because I never considered it a possibility for me. Things had happened to me at such a young age that I hardly had a chance to date, let alone entertain the idea of love. I had been too wrapped up in teenage rebellion and driving my parents crazy to devote any real time to boys. And after, well, the idea turned my stomach.

  But here I was, all un-turned stomach with normal feelings for someone of the opposite sex.

  And, make no mistake, there were feelings.

  There was no denying it. It was in the way my body responded to him, even when I didn't want it to. It was in the way I actually fucking cried around him, in how I hung on his every word (no matter how few they were), and well... missed him when he was gone.

  Hence my sour mood despite a run-in with a man who likely made all other women forget about their boyfriends, husbands, and lovers altogether.

  I dropped down in the middle of the bed on a huff and tried to concentrate on a book. For all of three seconds because then I heard the sound of Wolf's truck rumbling up the drive. I resisted the urge to spring up and run to the door.

  A few minutes later, the door opened and Wolf lumbered in, hands full of bags.

  "You went... shopping?" I asked, nose scrunching up at the idea. It was hard to imagine someone like him doing every day banal tasks like shopping and getting hair cuts and taking the dogs to the vet. Wolf made some kind of grunting noise as he put the bags on the dining table and started fishing items out and putting them into the fridge.

  "That's a lot of food. I think I've proved that I'm useless in a kitchen."

  "I'll cook," he said simply like it was no big deal.

  Meanwhile, it gave me that warm, gooey feeling again.

  Still. Things needed to be discussed.

  "Um, Wolf?" Another grunt. "We, ah, need to talk about some stuf
f." God, I sounded like such a girl.

  He stopped his unpacking and turned, focusing all his attention on me. "Okay." I fumbled for where to start. Apparently all the talking I did was not the same as speaking. Because I was shit at this. "Gonna talk?"

  I took a deep breath. "Why am I here?" I went with.

  "You wanna be," he shrugged.

  "No like... augh!" Okay. I needed to relax. "Do you want me here?" I tried, feeling like a lot was hanging on his answer, my entire future actually. Because if Wolf didn't want to keep me in his cabin... what was left for me in Navesink Bank? I might never feel comfortable at Hailstorm again. Lo forgave me, but would trust ever be the same? Could she convince the other organizations to not come after me? Even if she managed that, none of them would ever look at me the same. I would always be that chick that set bombs on their turf, making them look vulnerable, exploiting their weak spots. If I couldn't find a new reason to stay, well, then it was better to leave.

  "If you wanna be."

  "That's not an answer."

  "It's my answer."

  "Do you even... like me at all?"

  "Killed for you."

  "Yeah, but like... would you have done that for any random girl you saw in my situation?" His silence was all the answer I needed for that particular question. It was an answer that was at once crushing, because his actions weren't out of genuine feelings for me, but also uplifting because, well, he was really just a good guy. I looked down at the bed, too mortified to ask what I was about to ask to watch him while I did so. "Are you... attracted to me?"

  The answer was swift. "Seriously?"

  "Wolf..."

  "Yes," he said and I could finally look up.

  "Is that all you want from me?"

  "Janie stop," he said, shaking his head, going back to unpacking his bags.

  "Stop what? I've barely gotten started, Wolf. I'm trying to understand."

  "Understand what?" he asked, back to me.

  "What I'm doing here. If you actually want me here. If you're just being a good guy and hiding me from the cops. If you actually want anything to do with me or you just want to fuck me because I am close and have the right body parts."

  "I want you here," he said, putting his fists on the surface of the dining room table, making him hunch slightly forward.