She pushed her face against mine, a small noise working its way out of the base of her throat, my tongue leaving my mouth in order to run against the line of her lips. But no sooner had she parted her lips than she was pushing me away, running out of the door for the second time directly after we kissed and leaving me to stare after her in bemusement.
She was like a startled wild animal, nearing and retreating with little to no warning between which she would be choosing. I meant what I was offering her, an olive branch. She was my wife, and I her husband—there was no undoing that. But perhaps we did not both have to remain so unhappy in that arrangement. As much as I would have preferred laying out how things would be and having her accept it, I was made more sympathetic to her position considering my own.
It was why I was going to my father.
I had done as he asked; taken the wife of his choosing. Hell, I was even smoothing that path over as he had requested. It only made sense for him to give me some boon of goodwill in return. His demand that I quit my job as a torpedo and fold more into the business side of things in our family still didn’t sit right within my stomach.
Even with his recent health scares.
I toyed with the keys in my hand, going to unlock my vehicle, when a sudden spray of bullets lodged in the brick just above my head.
My body fell instinctively, dodging to the left at the sound of a weapon being reloaded, and without pause I rolled from the side of the car to the front.
This, this was what I had been worrying about this morning after Shura had left.
“Fuck,” I cursed raggedly, pulling my gun out of its holster and firing blindly back in the direction the bullets had come from. I rolled back to the driver’s side for cover, unlocking and sliding into the seat with an angry snarl. I could hear the bullets tearing through the plastic and metal of the vehicle, even as the engine roared to life, my glare narrowing further as I whipped out of the parking space.
I’d be damned if I fucking died in the club parking lot.
I’d be even more damned if the car appearing in the rearview mirror caught up with me. I wasn’t prepared for this fight yet.
“Fuck your whore mother,” I ground out to the reflection, gunning the gas pedal and peeling out into the street in an attempt to gain some ground before the car caught up with me.