Lawless (King #3)(28)

“No, you just feel like you don’t,” she corrected.

“I know, but I just don’t give a f*ck.” I turned toward the door.

“Can…can I have some?” she asked. I paused mid-step.

“What?” I asked, turning around. Thia sat up.

“You said you don’t care now. I don’t want to care either,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

“No,” I said without having to think about it.

“Why not!?” she asked angrily, tossing the blanket off her lap and standing up off the bed. She walked toward me, her limp from earlier almost unnoticeable, her braless tits bouncing against the thin material of her tank top as she stalked toward me. “Why do you get to erase your problems and I don’t. Chop told me you aren’t in the MC anymore, so you snort cocaine to make it go away right? To pretend? Well, I want to pretend too.”

Chop had obviously done more than work her over at the MC. Apparently he’d taken the time to run his cocksucking mouth as well.

“No,” I said again, although she had a point. Then I remembered what Ray said and suddenly wished I hadn’t just used the last of my stash.

“It’s okay for you to forget, but I’m not allowed a few minutes to not feel like the world is crumbling around me? Like I’m not all alone? Like I’m not trapped? Like I won’t wind up either dead or rotting in some prison?”

I didn’t want to tell her that if she did go to prison that the MC would likely send an ole lady or a friend of the club to kill her in there.

Prison was like summer camp for the Beach Bastards.

Summer camp with a side of homicide.

Thia was close to me now, so close I could see the agony in her eyes and the freckles across her forehead. I could smell whatever girly soap Ray had given her to use, some sort of vanilla mixed stuff. Her hair was still damp, falling in heavy waves around her shoulders. She was a tiny thing, only coming up to my chest. Her thighs and calves were muscular and surprisingly lean and long for such a little thing. When she stood up on her tiptoes in challenge and was about to say something else I had the sudden urge to bite the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder. “What did he do to you?” I asked, using a much softer tone than I had been. “Chop. Tell me what he did.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

And just like that, with that one question, she began to wilt away again. She lowered herself off her toes and took a step back. Her shoulders fell. She got back in bed, again lifting the covers to her chin. “Nothing,” she lied, turning onto her side, her back to me, effectively shutting me out. “Nothing that matters.”

“I tell you what,” I said. “I’ll make you a deal. You tell me what happened and I’ll help you forget for a while,” I said, and I meant it, just not in the way she was thinking. I wasn’t above bribery.

Actually, I was f*cking amazing at bribery.

Hot damn this was good blow.

“We’ve already established that you don’t care,” she said, throwing my words from earlier back in my face.

I stomped to the edge of the bed and flipped her onto her back. She tried to swat me away but I caught her wrists and held them still. “You need to take those bloody shorts off, but something has you keeping them on. They’re wet, so I know you didn’t even take them off in the f*cking shower. So why don’t you tell me what the f*ck happened at the MC, before I strip you naked, haul you over my shoulder, and throw you in the f*cking bay.”

“You wouldn’t,” she said, her eyes finally containing the fear I was used to seeing in the eyes of someone I was threatening, yet had been oddly missing from her except for the brief moment she’d first woken up in the bathroom.

“Fucking. Try. Me.” I warned, loving that I was finally getting the reaction out of her I wanted. Vacant and distant was bullshit that pissed me off. Anger. Anger I could work with.

A wayward tear dripped down the side of her face and her shoulders shook silently.

What the f*ck?

“Do what you have to do,” she whimpered, the nothingness from earlier firmly back in place. “I don’t want to talk about it. Any of it.” I let go of her wrists and she rolled over again. “Please, Bear. Leave me alone. I just want to sleep.”

Never in my life had a chick made me so angry. Following through on my threat wouldn’t work on her like this.

I grabbed a bottle of whiskey from my bag and hit the light switch on the way out.

Dude, she’s hot when she’s angry, Preppy chirped in my head.

“Shut up,” I muttered. He was right, but I wouldn’t exactly call her hot. Without makeup or without even having brushed her hair in a while, she was devastatingly sexy, and that didn’t even begin to cover it.

Cock achingly f*ckable was a little closer.

I adjusted myself and settled on the couch for a long f*cking night of avoiding sleep with my buddy Jack Daniels.

*

A violent scream shot through the door. “Fuck you!”

I picked my gun off the table and ran to the door, throwing it open, ready to kill any motherf*cker who was bold enough to come at me in the middle of the f*cking night. Thia was on the bed, screaming like she was being attacked, but the room was empty. Her eyes were closed and her back bowed off the bed with each new outburst. The back of her head hit the wall above the mattress with a thud but it didn’t even slow her down.