Page 27 of Property of Prowler (Kings of Anarchy MC: Nevada #1)

Prowler made a mental note to get Monster’s bike fixed for him out of his own pocket, not club coffers. It was the least he could do.

The four men were armed and loaded into the van. The drive to Taylor’s rental seemed to take forever, but only complete morons broke traffic laws when they had a shit ton of unregistered weapons.

Pulling into the neighborhood, they could see it was street parking only.

“Perfect,” Kansas said. “We can do a drive-by and assess without it appearing out of the ordinary if we circle back.”

They did just that.

“There’s her car,” Prowler pointed out.

“We got walkers at three o’clock and a Kravitz at ten.” Everyone turned to where Kansas indicated. There was a family just heading inside of the blue house and a fluttering curtain on another.

“Circle around, we’ll park on the street behind and come up between the buildings. No one seemed to be paying much attention over there.” It wasn’t fully dark, so they couldn’t just pile out of the van with weapons and waltz up to the front door.

Ghoul followed his direction and killed the engine. “Too risky for guns, even suppressors would draw attention in these close quarters. We gotta go old school, brothers.”

Prowler grabbed his bat, and they headed in to save his girl.

Climbing the back wall gave them some cover to get the slider open.

If people only knew how easy those things were to pop, they’d remember to always put the bar down or go old school and use a sawed-off broom handle.

Hell, anything to keep the slider from sliding.

Prowler would have a talk with Taylor about her safety when this was all over.

As Bulldog slid the glass aside, he heard a man who was not Travis. “Now we’re gonna have some fun.”

Prowler didn’t need another syllable or the sounds of a pained scream from Taylor to propel him into motion.

He shoved around Bulldog and down the hall.

There was a burly fucker dragging Taylor into a room by the hair on her head, and he saw red.

If he didn’t think that a snarling, snapping Wolf ripping a man’s throat to shreds would freak Taylor out, he would’ve shifted. Instead, he tackled the fucker.

He was vaguely aware of knocking Taylor away and hoped she hadn’t got hurt. He’d also lost his bat, but fuck it, he’d beat the fucker to death if he had to.

Everything happened so fast it was like he was watching it … through Wolf’s eyes. While he hadn’t shifted, Wolf was definitely in charge.

And Wolf was pissed.

After a few punches, the man turned the tables. He ended up on top and landed a few good ones before Prowler heard a sound he recognized, and the man went limp.

Prowler shoved the dead weight off him. He stood and went straight to Taylor, who was holding his bat.

“Are you okay, babe?” He held her face in his hands, examining her in the low light. Other than a small red spot on her forehead, she looked none the worse for wear. “Talk to me, Taylor. Are you okay?”

When she still didn’t answer, he looked to Ghoul and Kansas, who stood in the hall as Prowler and Taylor were blocking the doorway.

“All clear,” Bulldog said as he joined them.

Ghoul stuck his head in to survey the scene and whistled low. “Looks like someone took care of Travis already. Let me just squeeze by you,” he said as he did just that, checking pulses. “Travis is eighty-six, but this fucker.” Ghoul hauled off and punched him in the face. “He’s still breathing.”

“No.” Taylor finally spoke. “No.” She seemed shocked as she shoved past Prowler.

She kicked the big guy in the nuts, and he groaned. “No,” she said again, this time low and menacing. Then she raised the bat and hit him in the face.

Every one of them recoiled, not expecting that at all.

“No.” She did it again, but the third time, Prowler had to stop her. That was not a woman who was traumatized and fighting her attacker back with rage. He didn’t know what it was, but Taylor was in control. Maybe she was scared.

“Hey, babe, it’s okay. You don’t have to be scared anymore. It’s over.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind.

“I’m not scared, Prowler. I’m pissed.” She turned in his arms. “You have no idea the things he said he wanted to do to Cass. I told him I’d stop him, and I did.”

Amid the blood and bodies, Prowler was bursting with pride and love. Taylor was made for him. He understood the fated mate, the one person perfect for man and beast thing wholeheartedly, looking at her like that. And she was going to be perfect as his ol’ lady.

Some would say it was sick and twisted, but fuck it, he was sick and twisted.

He removed the bat from her hand and held it behind him for someone to grab. The bat left his grasp, and he heard Bulldog speak. “That’s blood in, Prez.”

Ghoul added, “And one hell of a blood in at that.”

Prowler couldn’t hold back any longer. “You’re mine, Taylor. My mate, forever.” His lips descended on hers. It was not a gentle meeting of mouths. It was a frenzy of lips and teeth.

“Let me just scooch past you there,” Ghoul said as he exited the room. Using his booted foot to move a leg, he closed the door, behind him.

“Taylor.” He held her face a little too tight, so she looked him in the eyes. Eyes that were currently amber. He and Wolf were fully bonded.

“Do you accept me as your mate?”

Her pretty green eyes got sadder, if that were possible in the current setting.

“Can you forgive me for cheating?”

“I could if you’d cheated, but I know you didn’t. Either way, I’m sorry for how I reacted. I should’ve been more understanding, especially considering …” He let the words trail off, not wanting to say it but knowing it had to be addressed.

“So, you really did sleep with Allie? I prayed it was a trick or something.”

“It was a trick, babe. Allie staged the whole thing.” He was loath to dash the joy on her face away, but he had to be honest. “That time. However, the next morning she was in my bed again when Wolf woke me.”

“So, which is it, Prowler? Did you fuck her or not?”

“Wolf won’t tell me, but the way he acted after, I wonder if something started that he woke me up to end. Either way, I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty, I would never cheat on you willingly. Wolf would destroy me if I even thought about it.”

“I love you, Prowler. That’s not a secret to anyone.

I can endure and survive almost anything this life can throw at me because I’m finally strong.

I made myself strong. But if it takes a biological imperative to keep you faithful, I’m not strong enough for that.

So tell me how you feel, driven by love, not instinct. ”

Fuck, he was not a man of words, and he was fucking it all up. He’d changed so much when Allie cheated on him, not just the Wolf part, but he’d walled up his heart. Taylor was worth looking behind that wall and speaking to from his heart as best he could.

“I love you, Taylor. I love how you love my daughter, how you’ve loved me even when we said it was off the table. I love how you make shitty brownies because it will make someone else happy when I know you take your chocolate seriously.” She smiled at him for what felt like the first time.

“And I love how you look at me like you are now. Like you don’t need food or oxygen, you just need me.

Like I am enough to not only sustain you but to feed your soul.

I love how you love me. I love you because you’re you, and I’m me, and together we are the perfect we.

I’ll be faithful because I want to be, choose to be, and because I never want you to look at me any other way than you are right now. ”

“Damn,” she said breathlessly. “You are like a live panty remover 3000. I literally just dropped all my eggs at once.”

He kissed her again.

“And I love how you can joke when we’re surrounded by all this ugliness.” He laughed.

“And I love you because you can make me feel like we’re not.”

What he had to ask next could send her running for the hills.

“Taylor. I need to mark you. Now. It’s the instinct and not the romance you deserve, but I can’t, Wolf can’t, let you walk out that door without our scent on you a minute longer because if we mark you, we can find you, and this kind of thing won’t happen again. ”

He took a deep breath. “I promise you all that romantic bullshit later, but right now, I need to claim you. Hard and fast.”

“Romantic bullshit? You’ve never done traditional romance before, why start now?”

“I wasn’t going to start now, babe. That was the whole point of my speech. Do try to keep up,” he growled. When he lifted her off her feet, she wrapped her legs around him. He took the two steps to the bed and brought them both down.

“This is your last chance, Taylor. If you don’t want to be tied to me forever, stop me. One of my brothers will see you home safe, we’ll get this cleaned up like it never happened, and we can revert back to our original post-situationship agreement.”

Taylor slid her hands up his torso, under his shirt before pulling it over his head.

“Could you really do that, Riley? Go back to being neighbors?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Neither can I.”

“I’m sorry I let this happen. It’ll never happen again. I promise I’ll protect you, no one—” A finger to his lips cut him off.

He made short work of their clothes before sliding down her body to kneel on the floor with her legs over his shoulders.

He nipped that sensitive spot on the inside of her thigh that he knew drove her wild. “This is the most perfect inch of skin in the world. One day, I’m going to mark it.”

His tongue swirled her clit before dipping inside her sweet cunt, wrenching a moan from her. His brothers heard, even without their enhanced hearing, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Oh, Riley. Yes, right there. Don’t stop.”

Not that he needed the encouragement, but it didn’t hurt. When she came with his tongue buried deep inside her, he stood licking his lips.

“Umm.” Kissing his way up her body, he went to kiss her, but when she raised her lips to meet his, he backed up a fraction, just out of her reach. “On your hands and knees, pussycat. I’m going to make you mine.”

He growled his words, his canines extended and slicked with the serum he’d use to imprint his scent on her.

His mate.

It resonated differently inside him in that moment, with her luscious ass in the air as he stroked the head of his cock through her wetness.

Prowler couldn’t wait another second to claim her, so he thrust forward to the hilt, ripping another moan of pleasure from her lips.

Pushing her head down into the mattress, he pummeled into her, moving the bed as he did. He’d feared hurting her during claiming with the way Kansas had described it for naturals, but Taylor was his match in every way. Even this, she was relishing it as much as he was.

“I’m coming, Riley. Oh fuck, I love you.

” The velvet walls wrapped around his cock started to milk him.

Pulling her torso up, he wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her to him.

The other still wrapped in her hair, exposing her neck to him.

She was still coming when he struck. Burying his teeth in her neck as he joined her in bliss.

Kneeling on that bed, they were as connected as two people could be. Pressed together from their thighs to where his teeth were buried in her neck. His cock still sporadically pulsing inside her.

When her flutters had ebbed, he willed his teeth back to those of a man and lowered them both to the mattress.

Instinctively he knew to lick her wound. “It’ll be sore for a while.” He kissed her neck.

“Worth it?” he asked.

“Totally.”

Prowler pulled her tighter into his body at the blissed-out way she’d said it. His cock still nestled in her warmth.

Caressing her thigh, he joked, “Better than your lady porn books?”

Taylor turned in his arms, dislodging his cock. “So much better. I may have to burn them all because there is nothing like the real thing.”