“You want to play with fire, Nightingale? Let me show you how it can burn.” He guides me over to the leather chair, angled to face the flat-screen television mounted on the wall. Sinking onto the cushion, he pulls me over his lap, onto my belly.
“No. What are you doing?” I push myself up, and he presses on the small of my back, forcing me down.
Wrapping an arm around my legs, he forces me into his lap.
“You want to act like a senseless brat? That’s exactly how I’ll treat you.”
He yanks down my black dress pants and underwear. Stunned, my entire body rejects his punishment. I buck, and he holds tight. His large hands come down hard. Crack. I arch, stunned by the sharp pain, only to be hit three more times on opposite cheeks.
“You are worth everything. You will not put yourself at risk needlessly.” Every slap of his hand goes straight to my pussy.
I’m dripping like an ice cream cone melting in the sun. My heart races like I’m running a marathon. Horrified but completely turned on by the spanking, I’m an overwhelmed mix of emotions. Tears spill from my eyes, and I go boneless across him as the grief cracks my chest open and release flows through me like raging rapid. I sob for the man my father never was and the pain of rejection. His blows have stopped, but the purge he set into motion won’t be denied. Exhausted, I go limp, draping myself over him as I hug his knees.
He rubs my ass, soothing the burn.
“Isn’t that better? I wasn’t telling you what you could or couldn’t do. I wanted you to plan the safest way to go about it.” His smooth baritone is a salve to my soul and bruised heart.
I want to believe this is real, but I know better. Still, I can allow myself this moment of peace before diving back into the deep waters threatening to drown me.
***
Cutter
“Where’s your shadow tonight?” Tank asks.
I roll my eyes. “Putting her old man to rest with the rest of his club. Which you damn well know.”
I toy with the label on the brown beer bottle. I hated watching her leave, knowing she was walking into the den of hungry beasts who want to devour her. But this was a club thing. They wouldn’t welcome my presence, and hers was sure as fuck required for this last ride they were taking her father’s ashes on.
“I do,” Tank agrees slowly. “You trust her out there with them alone?”
“Yeah. Is that so hard to believe?” I stare at him from across the table.
“You always been more cautious than this,” Speedy observes.
“I survived by trusting my gut. You used to depend on it too,” I say gruffly.
Tank sighs. “Ain’t no dick that good, brother. She’s going to stay loyal to her –.”
“Doc agreed to let Scar have Nadia. We both know he’d have eaten her alive and broke her spirit.” Saying it aloud brings back all the fury I felt on her behalf. I know Doc never really wanted a kid, but that shit was barbaric and cruel.
“What the fuck,” Tank whispers.
“Yeah, the Nomad overseeing the rest of the charter coming in was too happy to tell her that. Then he listed all the things the Feral Wolves thought were wrong with her.” I grind my teeth.
I should’ve laid the asshole out and dealt with the fallout afterward. But a man doesn’t get to be thirty-five in this life by acting impulsively.
“Brother, I got no words.” Tank sits up straight in his chair as his face turns contemplative.
“You still think she’d stick her neck out for the Wolves, Shotgun?”
The paranoid bastard sneers at me. “People do stupid shit all the time. It’s my job to anticipate the worst.” It was the closest he’d come to saying no.
“They’re a different breed. Feral Wolves have drifted far from the clubhouse we used to be chill with.”
It happens. People lose sight of the reasons they started their sets. Blinded by money, fast women, and clout, they go bad like eggs left too long in the sun.
“You think the entire club was in on their shifting loyalties?” Shotgun asks as he sips on a beer at the bar.