Page 7

Knuckles

I… was fucked. In the metaphorical and, I really hoped, the physical sense. There were so many parts of the English language where fuck would be appropriate in this very moment I’d never run out of creative ways to use it. I’d known this was a mistake. Knew it before I told her I was gonna kiss her. But my body had other ideas and little head took over big head. Or something.

I just wanted to push her a little. To see where all those looks she was throwing me were going. More than twenty years in prison made my social skills a little rusty. If I’d ever had any. Women always fell into my lap whether I wanted them or not. My rank in the most powerful club in the area made me a prime target for club whores looking to cash in. It was harder to keep the women off me than it was to keep the police in line. This woman, though…

If I never kissed another woman after this, I’d consider myself lucky to have had the chance to kiss Hannah. And if my brothers ever heard that poetic shit, I’d get laughed out of the club.

But sweet God Almighty, the woman was delicious in a way I’d never imagined. There was the bite of the warrior I’d seen mixed with a strange hesitancy that felt like anxious energy. And then it hit me. And I had my answers. I knew why Hannah did what she did, and as much as I wanted to take this kiss further, as much as I wanted to make good on my promise to spread her out and eat her pussy until she passed out, it wasn’t happening tonight. At least, not until we got a few things straight.

I let her take the lead, which didn’t help my resolve not to take her as far as she’d go. Once the sensations settled around her, she was more demanding, almost desperate. Hannah was punishing herself, and I was pretty sure that now was part of her self-imposed punishment. I absolutely could not let that happen. I would not let her lump me in with any other men she’d slept with because I knew that was what would happen. I also had a sickening feeling, given how hard I’d been told Hannah had taken it when Gunnar had gone to prison, she wasn’t as experienced in mind as she was in body. Which I should have thought of before I kissed her, but here we were.

I pulled back, my breathing heavy, and pressed my forehead against hers. “Fuck, Hannah,” I whispered her name like a prayer.

“Why’d you stop?” Hannah shuddered in my arms. I wasn’t even sure when I’d wrapped myself around her, but she was solidly against me and that’s where I wanted to keep her. She tried to pull me back by my beard. “Please, Knuckles.”

“Much as I want your tight little pussy around my cock tonight, I can’t until we have a serious conversation. The last thing in the world I want is to take advantage of you or hurt you worse than you’ve already been hurt.” My voice was rough with need. I wanted to kick my own ass. Both for not realizing what was going on with Hannah, and for not taking what she obviously wanted to give. Because I had no doubt I could make her feel as good as she made me feel. She’d never look at me again, though. She might not do it intentionally, but taking what I wanted from her would make me just like all the other men she’d been with.

“I’m not hurt, Knuckles. And you’re not taking advantage of me. I know exactly what I’m doing. Like you said, if I don’t like what you’re doing, I’m more than capable of handing you your ass.”

“I know you are. But this conversation has to happen, one way or another, and I’m not fuckin’ you until it does.”

She stiffened in my arms. “What? Why the hell not? You said --”

“I know what I said.” I leaned in and touched her forehead with mine, cupping the back of her head to hold her steady. “I meant every fuckin’ word. You tell me you’re not holdin’ onto some big feelings goin’ back to the night things went to shit when you and Gunnar were kids, and I’ll fuck your ever-lovin’ brains out. But you’re gonna have to make me believe it, and we’ve already established you can’t lie for shit.”

She gave a frustrated grunt before pushing me away. I didn’t let her push me far. I’d get out of her personal space, but I wasn’t letting her more than an arm’s length away from me. “What was the play here? You think you can get me all worked up and I’ll just spill my guts?”

“No, honey. I’m a selfish bastard, though.”

“No! Really?” Her mock surprise made me raise an eyebrow.

“Is that sass?”

“Nope. It’s sarcasm.”

I tilted my head, moving closer to her. I gripped her waist and lifted her to sit on the counter. She gasped, her hands going automatically to my shoulders. Even though it was wise to put some distance between us, I knew I couldn’t give her too much. I also had this overwhelming drive to push her. Just a little. I shoved her knees apart and stepped between them, moving my hands to rest beside her hips with my palms flat on the counter.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen, Hannah. You’re gonna tell me exactly what you’ve been doing since that night. And you’re gonna tell me exactly what you hoped to accomplish.”

She sucked in a breath. “I… what?”

“When did you start targetin’ abusers?”

I didn’t think she was going to answer me, but she finally gave a heavy sigh, like the weight of the world was on her shoulders, and leaned forward to rest her forehead on my chest. “I didn’t set out to do this. It started when I was in college. My roommate had trouble with her boyfriend one semester. When it came time for Christmas break, I helped her make plans to get away from him. She didn’t have family anywhere who could help her. He’d isolated her financially and was working on whittling away at her friends.”

“Classic abuser.”

“Yeah.” She looked up at me, her eyes glassy and full of so much pain it nearly took my breath. “I wasn’t ready for the backlash. I helped her get away, but I didn’t get help covering her tracks. When he found her, she called me, screaming.” Two tears overflowed Hannah’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks. “I tried to get to her, but I was an hour away. I listened to him rape and beat her to death, Knuckles.”

It took everything inside me to not react. I knew she needed to get this out. And, honestly, this wasn’t anything I didn’t expect.

She shifted her gaze, her expression hardening. “When I got there, she was already dead. Had been for at least ten minutes.”

“He still alive?”

Hannah shook her head. “No. I killed him that night.”

“You get help cleanin’ up the mess?”

Again, she shook her head. “His parents had a log cabin way out in the middle of nowhere. It’s why it took me so long to get there. It was little more than a hunting cabin, though he made it seem more grandiose. I think he was in shock he’d actually killed her when I found them.” She took several deep breaths then met my gaze steadily. “I walked right up to him and stabbed him in the neck over and over until he stopped moving.”

“How did you get rid of the body?” It was a long time ago, but I might need to do some clean up just in case.

“Burned the place. Took several days and I was terrified I was going to get caught, but I burned everything to ash. Including Calvin.”

“Had to have taken a fuckin’ hot fire. No one saw?”

“When I say this place was way out in the middle of nowhere, I mean literally that. Part of the drive there, I had to take an ATV. It was built at the edge of a clearing, but it had started to grow up. It was my good luck several days of rain followed. I remember the temperature dropping and it stayed just above freezing. I tried to burn it at night so the smoke wasn’t visible. The fire probably was, but no one investigated.”

“So you kept at it until everything was ash?”

“Yes. Then I buried as much of the ash as I could.”

“Not very efficient, but pretty thorough.”

She took another deep breath. She’d put on a good act before, so I paid close attention to her. She was a pretty good actress, but she couldn’t lie for shit. Which, I admit, was a conundrum in itself. “I learned better after the first time.” She finally met my gaze, her lips set in a firm line. “Took me a decade, but I finally became a pretty proficient serial killer.”

I barked out a laugh. I knew she was serious. “I mean, I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

“It’s what it is, Knuckles. I target men who abuse women. I get them to let their guard down. I play the part of a meek, submissive woman, and when they prove they’ll use force to get what they want, or their fists to take out their frustration on a convenient target, I consider them a lost cause and take care of the matter.”

“How many, Hannah?”

Again, she looked away. She might be OK with what she’d done, but in the end she’d still taken lives. And despite the front she tried to put up, she couldn’t fool me. Herself maybe. But not me. “Five. I take my time. I don’t want to get it wrong.”

“If a man’ll hit a woman as hard as that motherfucker hit you and do it in front of a room full of witnesses, he’s a lost cause.”

“I agree,” she continued. “Which is why that’s usually the last test. Though, there were three of the five who didn’t make it that far. They’d have killed me, and I knew they would because the suspicion was they’d already killed at least one woman.”

I waited until she met my gaze once more, this time, pinning her with my stare so I could let the weight of what I was about to say settle over her as fully as it could. “Listen to me, Hannah. I mean no disrespect to you or your abilities. But you will not do this again. Not on your own. You want to continue takin’ these scumbags out, great. But you do it with backup and a solid plan everyone agrees to.”

“This isn’t a worldwide operation, Knuckles. Just me.”

It was my turn to lift my chin. “You’re part of Kiss of Death, ain’t ‘cha?”

“No.” She chuckled. “I’m part of Bones MC. At least, that’s my home.”

“And your twin is part of Kiss of Death MC. That makes you ours. You want to do this, you’ll have help. Help I trust.”

“But --”

I cut her off with a kiss. We weren’t nearly done, but she wasn’t going to argue with me. If that meant I distracted her, I’d enjoy the shit outta distracting her.

My tongue tangled with hers and I loved the silky glide. The sweet taste of her mouth nearly drove me insane with want. I pulled back, my chest heaving as I struggled to maintain control. Hannah’s eyes were dark with desire, her lips swollen from my kiss.

Her hands tangled in my hair, pulling me closer. When I finally broke the kiss, we were both breathing hard. Her pupils were wide, and her face flushed with desire. God, she was beautiful, even with the bruising from that bastard’s fist.

“You can’t just kiss me to win an argument,” she whispered, but there was no conviction in her voice. In fact, she had an almost dreamy look on her face, and I began to realize I might have missed more social cues than I first thought. This woman wanted me, but it was more than simple lust. I’d had that with Beth in spades, and knew what that felt like. While there was definitely a healthy dose of lust with Hannah, I wasn’t willing to settle for anything less than her being mine.

“I’m not tryin’ to win,” I murmured against her lips. “I’m tryin’ to make you understand. You’re not alone in this anymore.”

She looked up at me, and I saw something crack in her facade -- a hairline fracture in the armor she’d built around herself since she was seventeen. “I’ve always been alone in this.”

“Not anymore.” I brushed my thumb across her lower lip. “You think I’m just gonna let you keep puttin’ yourself in danger without backup? Without someone watching your six? Think again, baby girl.”

“I’m not your responsibility or under your control. Like I said before, you ain’t the boss of me.” The callback was probably supposed to be funny, but to me it sounded exactly like what it was. Hannah’s attempt to justify her going it alone when she knew she was wrong.

“Nope. You’re mine to protect.”

That got her attention real quick. “What?” She sat up straighter and actually shoved at my chest. “I’m not yours,” she said vehemently. “I’m my own person.”

“Never said you weren’t.”

“I don’t even know you. Not really. You don’t know me either.”

“I bet I know you better than you think. And if I’m right, you’re doing everything in your power to make up for what you perceive as weakness on your part when Gunnar went to prison for killin’ the man who tried to rape you.”

Her tears, which had mostly dried, started again, and she let out a little sob. “He didn’t even tell the cops that much. He said Robert had threatened to hurt me. If he’d said he walked in on us while I was screaming for him to stop or anything other than what he said, he might have gotten off. At the very least he wouldn’t have been locked up as long as he was.”

“He didn’t want any of that to touch you any more than it already had. He thought you havin’ to kill that scumbag was punishment enough. He said it gutted him to think of you havin’ to go through any kind of trial, so he got through it the fastest way he could. He said you’d been through enough.”

“He shouldn’t have been the one to make that decision! Don’t you get it? I should have told Mom and Dad at the very least!”

“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding my head but still gripping her hips so she couldn’t wiggle free. “You shoulda. Gunnar told me he made you promise immediately after he got there you wouldn’t say a word about what happened to anyone. He said he made you promise over and over and over when he knew you were most vulnerable, because he knew you would never break a promise to him. No matter what.”

“That was the one time I should have. Blind obedience is never a good thing.”

“You weren’t blindly obedient to your brother. You respected him enough to keep a promise, even though he’d extracted it under duress. He said you begged him several times to let you tell your parents or Mama and Pops, but he wouldn’t give his blessing.”

“Not even as they were leading him out of the courtroom to go to a juvenile detention center until he was eighteen. Then to a federal prison.” Her gaze was unfocused, obviously remembering the moment she was describing. “I knew he was scared, but he would never give in. For the first couple of years, every time I came to visit, I pleaded with him to let me tell someone. Then I just stopped. He was getting increasingly irritated when I’d bring it up, and I didn’t want him to hate me even more than he already did.”

“You know he never hated you. Right?” It hurt to think Hannah was unsure of her brother’s love. Gunnar adored his twin. If anything, he felt guilty for not going to their dad himself and saving Hannah the pain of him being in prison. But, live and learn. The sixteen-year-old Gunnar did what he thought was best and the thirty-two-year-old Gunnar had learned to live with his decision.

“He should have. He had every right to.”

“Past time you and Gunnar sat down and had a conversation.” I brushed a curl off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “While you’re havin’ that conversation, when you have him all high in his feels, I’ll let him know I’m claimin’ you. Maybe he’ll leave my balls intact.”

She gave me an exasperated look, which made me chuckle. “You’re not claiming me, Knuckles.”

“Tell yourself that all you want, but it’s happenin’.”

“We’ve kissed two times. One of those wasn’t even a real kiss. You were just trying to shut me up.” It seemed like her eyes were shooting daggers at me, but there was something else there…

Realization kicked me in the balls. I don’t think I would have been more surprised if she’d really had kicked me in the balls. “Oh, that sounded suspiciously like a challenge, baby girl. Is that it?”

She bit her lip nervously and I saw the pulse at her neck speed up, fluttering under her delicate skin. “I didn’t say that.” There was a hint of a smile on her face, but I saw the uncertainty also.

“Not sure you had to say it. Your meaning was pretty clear.” I leaned in closer, giving her plenty of time to push me away.

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Then what are you waiting for? If you want to count a second kiss, it’s gotta be a real one.”

“My fuckin’ pleasure.”