Page 54 of Caution to the Wind

Anger shivered over my skin. Rationally, I understood he was manipulating me, but I was triggered all the same, my emotional response too immediate to balance out with logic. I had the rolled-up twenty in my hand before I could even think about it.

“’Cause she’s with me.”

The answer didn’t come from me or from Michael.

But I knew without turning exactly who that voice belonged to. The low, quiet weight of Henning’s voice would be familiar to me underwater or whispered down a faulty telephone line. I knew it better than I knew my own.

But why the hell was hehere?

Before I could turn around, a large hand was reaching over my shoulder, gripping Michael by his button-up and then slamming him against the wall on the right side of me. Henning’s body brushed mine as he stepped forward into his caged prey, his profile a snarling menace.

“You like to force women to get high so you can take advantage of them?” he growled into Michael’s face.

I’d never seen Henning like this. So much an outlaw. In his leather cut, the blazing skull motorcycle patch of The Fallen on his back, his hair a mess of waves around his jaw, lips peeled back over strong, sharp teeth, he looked like a wolf trapped in a man’s body. An animal about to snap.

A little shiver worked down my spine, but this time, it was a dark current of arousal.

“She sold this shit tome, man,” Michael argued, struggling against Henning’s grip.

In response, Henning wrapped his other hand around his neck. How strange I’d thought Michael so large when in comparison to Henning, he was only a child.

“Call off your attack dog,” one of the girls, I thought her name was Felicity, hissed to me, gripping my arm too tight.

It was the cold water plunge I needed to shake off my shock.

I stepped forward to place a hand on Henning’s tensed back, the muscles dense as stone. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.”

His head swivelled slowly to face mine, and his feral expression didn’t change. “I’ll deal with you in a second, Mei Zhen. Step off.”

I backed up immediately.

Henning’s was the only authority I’d ever acknowledged, and it was impossible to disobey him when he looked like that.

Capable of murder.

He turned back to Michael, and I watched the way his hands flexed and popped with tightening tendons, squeezing around the teen’s neck.

“You listen to me,” Henning hissed. “You ever heard of The Fallen MC?”

Michael nodded hard. The Fallen was an international organization, but it was Canadian originally, and every citizen knew the motorcycle club. It was a part of the cultural underbelly. Something parents told children about as cautionary, scary stories before bed.

“Good. So you get if you touch one hair on Mei Zhen’s head, I’ll take every one of yours along with your fuckin’ scalp. You get me?”

Tears raced down Michael’s cheeks, but he nodded again, and Henning released him. Done with his threats, Hen turned to me, tagged my hand, and dragged me out of the barn without hesitation. I looked over my shoulder to make sure Michael was okay, but a crowd of girls had swarmed him, and I knew he’d be fine.

“Henning,” I snapped, trying to dig my feet into the hay-strewn ground to wrench my arm out of his hold. “Stop it, you’re acting like a heathen.”

He didn’t acknowledge my words. I focused on keeping up as he took us around the far end of the barn where the shadows were inky thick and quiet. A little gasp fell from my mouth when he whipped me around by my hand and then thrust me back against the wet, warped wood of the building. His teeth snapped next to my throat, a physical threat he couldn’t find the words to embody.

“Hey,” I tried to soothe, smoothing my hands down the bulging arms that held me pinned. “Hey, Henning, I’m okay.”

“You think this isokay?” he mocked, his glower carved like granite into his face. “You think bein’ a seventeen-year-old drug dealer isokay?”

Indignation sparked in my belly. I canted my chin up to peer down my nose at him. “I think doing what’s necessary to find out who killed Kate ismorethan okay. You manhandling me and bullying me is not.”

Henning swore savagely and pushed off me to pace in a tight circle, hands tearing through his hair. I stood frozen in place ’cause even though I knew he would never hurt me, seeing him like this, so…unglued, scared me in a different kind of way. There was a flutter in my heart but also lower, between my thighs.

“You have no fuckin’ clue what you’re involved with,” he finally growled, turning sharply on his boot to crowd me again. “For a smart kid, you’re bein’ a goddamn idiot about this. Why can’t you just leave all this alone? Be a kid while you can. You’re ruinin’ your life with this vendetta bullshit.”