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“About a year after you left, Joanne returned to us,” he continued, breaking me from all thoughts. “As she and Rita grew close, she asked that we look out for you. It wasn’t easy finding you again after you’d left, but when I did, I stuck around for a while to make sure you were doing alright. Didn’t seem to be going too well, though. Seemed to be trouble in paradise with your man. Had him followed too, just to make sure he wasn’t a fuckhead taking advantage of one of our own. Wasn’t long after that before you disappeared on him. He went to prison, came back out a Scorpion. Men on the inside said he did some heavy shit for Finley, earned himself a free pass into the Scorpions. Which means he must have done some
really
impressive shit inside those walls. Two peas in a pod now, him and Finley.

             
“Don’t gotta give you all the answers right now, birdy. I just want you to understand you’re not here to get hurt. Ain’t no one gonna do anything to you while I’m here.” His face leaned down to mine, the intensity in his eyes showing me, once again, how honest he was being.

             
Still, he frightened me too. How I could feel at peace and yet in fear at the same time in the presence of one man, I didn’t even try to understand it. There was such a hardness about him. The way his jaw ticked, the way his shoulders tensed, how big he was and how puny I felt beside him. At the same time, there was gentleness in his eyes when he wanted to show it. And right now, he wanted to show me it. The softness crept into my being, relaxing the tension in my arms that had been holding tight my knees to my chest.

             
“Will you let me go?” I asked him.

             
“Not yet,” he answered.

             
“Why not?”

             
“Because I said so.”

             
Because he wanted to know about his brother, I figured. How would he feel after I told him? Would he turn back on his word? He was going to lose his shit.

             
“You’re scared.” His lips flattened as he regarded me. “Whatever you say, birdy, I’m not here to harm you. Understand?” When I didn’t nod, his warm hand took mine.

             
“You’re frozen,” he murmured. He got up and, to my surprise, took me with him. Wrapping both arms around me, he picked me up effortlessly off the ground and settled me back into the bed, tucking the blue doona around me. The gesture was uncomfortably gentle. I didn’t want to feel good around him.

             
I warmed up quickly, and he regarded me as though he could see right through me. The only person that ever made me feel so bare was Jaxon; he read me like a book, so watching Remy do the same with equal intensity made me even more uncomfortable. I was falling into a stupid mindset, recalling all those nights as a kid I’d spent envisioning this man. Sometimes I’d been tempted to ask a bikie about him, but of course fear prevailed over desire.

             
Now here he was; the stranger I’d met for such a brief amount of time that I’d crushed on for years until I became whole with Jaxon. Which was why I was pushing all these unwanted feelings right out of me. I didn’t need a complication. And just thinking about Jaxon made me remember where my loyalty rested. But not even that made any fucking sense. I’d just agreed to let him go on that ride back with –
oh, fuck.
“Is Damien okay?” I asked.

             
Remy gave a single nod. “He’s a big guy. Was breathing. Out like a light from impact, but alive nonetheless.”

             
“Was that…” I couldn’t make eye contact, so I looked down at the square pattern in the doona as I asked the question. “Was that what you intended? For him to survive?”

             
His hand went under my chin, and he brought it up so that our eyes met. Darkest eyes I’d ever seen stared into my own, once again discerning every thought I’d tried to hide away. “I’m not some kind of monster,” he whispered gently. “Ain’t no life that don’t deserve takin’ is gonna get taken by my hands. Alright?”

             
I nodded. He rested his hand down and licked his bottom lip before he spoke next. “Sara, it’s time for you to be honest with me. Time to come clean. You know by now I’ve done nothing but protect you your whole life to the best of my abilities. I’m sure I didn’t stop every bad situation, but I’m hoping I helped make things easier on you.

             
“It’s time for you to give a little back. Trust in me. Trust that I’m not going to go back on my word. That I regard you as a girl with the same innocence I met on those swings all those years ago. I need information. I need your trust, and I need your help. I need to know what happened to my brother. Can you give me that, birdy?”

             
We sat in silence for a long while after that. He was beyond patient. I half expected him to nudge me for an answer when I was taking too long. But he didn’t. My mind was on overdrive, thinking over everything he said, what it might mean if I came clean about his brother. Trying to determine every element of danger that might arise, trying so damn hard to control this to my advantage.

             
I wanted to cry from the frustration. The conclusion to my thoughts directed me to a dead end. There really was no way out of this. It couldn’t be controlled. Whatever was going to happen, it was out of my hands. Life is a bitch that way; an unpredictable mess of choices and consequences, and people caught in the middle. I’d been the unlucky one caught in the centre of this bizarre kind of situation, and the more I thought about it, the more hopeless I felt.

             
This was going to get ugly, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.

             
With a deep breath, I made my decision.

Remy

He wanted her something fierce.
Had wanted her for years.

             
Girl was fucking beautiful. Her gentle curves; silky brown hair; auburn eyes that looked on with intensity at everything around her as she observed her small unobstructed world; her slender arms; her round ass; her tanned skin; her gorgeously pouty fucking lips that looked so sinfully tasty; the scowl she wore on her face twenty fucking four seven that only softened when she saw…
him
.

The
fucking blonde, long haired hick of a man who’d walk into the fucking bar looking like he’d rolled around in shit all day long. God, Remy fucking hated him. For many reasons aside from him banging the one woman he had vowed to make his. Reasons that were… justified. He didn’t have to name them, for fuck’s sake. Just… reasons. Good fucking ones, okay?

He knew all about Jaxon. Knew he was a little
shit thief back in Gosnells, probably still a fucking thief. No thief deserves a woman like Sara. No fucking way. Knew he was also a little man-whore, probably still a little man-whore too. Great, so now she had a fucking thief, man-whore of a boyfriend.

He gritted his teeth and gulped back his beer as he sent the oblivious man death glares from across the bar. Then he continued watching the sexy waitress in her tiny little white shorts make her way around
to the hick, and seeing right through him.

He didn’t expect to be recognized. It’d been six years since that night he’d found her at the swings. He’d been keeping an eye on her since her loser
“father” walked out on them. Threw her mom a few hundred bills a week, told every Jackal owned store if Sara came around looking for a job to take her on without a moment’s thought.

             
He hadn’t actually been following her personally. He’d sent a few guys over to scope her routine out, see if she was doing well. Turned out she’d been spending an unnatural amount of time down the road in another townhouse.

             
One night, when he was in the neighbourhood, he decided to see what she looked like. He’d remembered cradling her baby form as a kid. Gave her attention when the adults were busy up until she was three and a half. He remembered her vividly, thought of her as his little sister until the day it stopped abruptly. When dumbass Joanne decided to be with a loser instead, forsaking the club, her father, all for a fucking nobody that everyone saw straight through. Except her.

Dumbass Joanne.

He’d only been cruising down the street, looking for the townhouse she frequented when he saw her walk right out the door. She was in non-existent pyjamas with weird, yellow fucking duckies on them or some shit; the top was so short and the shorts so low, he could see all of her creamy tan hips.

His first thought was,
Fuck she’s grown up.

His second thought
was
, What the fuck is she doing out in Jack the Ripper-ville on her fucking own this late at night? Probably to do with that thief of a kid
…

He followed her to the park where she sat on the swings, digging her bare feet into the sand. Her head was down and her hair
was splayed out all around her. She looked lost in her own little world, so deep in thought she didn’t hear him walk to her. He wasn’t even trying to be quiet. He stopped a few feet behind her and just watched her. Her little hands wrapped so tightly around each chain of the swing she was in. She looked so fucking small, yet judging by the growth in her body, she must have been a teenager.

             
Sixteen, he figured. She was probably sixteen or close to it, and fuck she was beautiful. No, beautiful wasn’t the right word. She put beautiful to shame. She was perfection wrapped in an angelic form that made you want to knock the teeth out of any man looking her way.

             
Sixteen
, he thought.
Not yet legal.
He could wait two years. What was seven hundred and thirty days to a patient man? Remy had this. Easy peasy. Especially if it meant waiting for a girl that left him thunderstruck. Absolutely floored. Nothing would go wrong….

             
Except it did.

             
Girl happened to be fourteen. Hell to the no. But what was waiting another two years on top of the other two years? Just fourteen hundred and sixty days…
Epic fuck.

But not even that fucking happened. Remy was too caught up in his own shit. The club was warring hard at the time. He couldn’t abandon post
to chase what his dick wanted. And when shit finally cooled, she’d left fucking town. Left him with a shit load of time to chase her up, and what a bitch that was. Cue more fucking warring with the club against the uprising of the fucking Scorpion gang. Shit was always red hot. Never cool. Never easy. But, again, Remy was a patient man.

             
And now, finally, eleven years after the night at the swings, he had her in his room with nowhere to go. Not even Prez knew he had her…
yet
. She wasn’t at the clubhouse. She was in the bunker --his escape destination if shit hit the fan at the clubhouse. No one was going to find her.

             
“Are you going to let me go?” she’d asked him. Those fucking auburn eyes, red and puffy, seared his heart.

             
“Not yet,” he’d answered.

             
“Why not?”

Because you’re mine.
“Because I said so.” He was tempted to expand. Make up some bullshit that she wasn’t safe. But what a fucking lame ass excuse that would be. Honestly, what did she have to fear? Jaxon was second in command after Finley the douche. And Jaxon wanted her until his last breath. He’d have offered the same kind of protection Remy was offering her.

Still. The Scorpions were nasty when it came to women. There was no possession in their little shitty honour code they abided by. Every chick was a free for all. The idea that Sara would have been put in the middle of that kind of fuelled testosterone made him want to clench his fists and beat every Scorpion to the ground until there was nothing but blood.

Not that the Jackals were the marital, faithful type either, but they certainly never touched a brother’s goods. No fucking way. And although Remy had never taken a woman on for long periods of time, he never entertained the notion of infidelity. It wasn’t what he wanted, not after years of watching his mother get treated like shit by a father that rooted around like his dick was possessed.

This woman, right here and right now, she was it for him. He just knew it. Always knew it. Even when he bedded his short flings, he knew it. He was just waiting for time to pass.
Always waiting. Story of his fucking life.

She was worth the wait.

He spoke his words, bleeding honesty with her. Fuck, he never spoke this gently to a soul in his life. Not even Rita, that annoying little brat that had him wrapped around her little finger. He was well aware he was giving it all he had to get this girl. To get her to believe he was as genuine as he sounded.