Page 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sutton

S he wasn’t there.

I tried to get my brain to move past the fact, but the single thought repeated in my mind like a broken record the entire ride back to Sherwood.

Mara wasn’t at the apartment. Only Kang.

It made no sense. It made so much no sense that when I walked into the bedroom of the penthouse and heard the water running in the bathroom, I thought for sure I was going to walk in to find Mara soaking in the tub like she loved to do. My guard had dropped just long enough to cause me to hesitate when I saw Kang standing outside the tub instead.

He reacted faster. Seeing me—my knife—he grabbed a towel and threw it at my face. My arm swung out, his cry confirming that I’d caught him with my blade, but just as I pulled the towel from over my eyes, he shoved me from behind and I fell, my face crashing into the side of the tub. My lip split. My face throbbed. My eyes popped with stars.

What would’ve happened if he hadn’t heard Tynan’s roar from the other room and realized he was outnumbered?

“Sutton.”

I lifted my head off his back, realizing we were back at the garage. Parked. Sitting. Waiting for me.

“Sorry,” I muttered, swallowing down a fresh wave of helplessness. Not again.

Before I could move, I was moved. Tynan swung his leg in front of him, getting off the bike and then lifting me off it like I weighed nothing.

His hand framed the back of my neck, hauling my head higher, so I had no choice but to focus on him.

“We’re going to find her, alright?”

“How?” I croaked. Even though I knew there were other options—other leads like the text Mara had sent to Rob a week ago—it somehow felt a whole helluva lot more hopeless now.

Tynan’s jaw pulsed, and then his hold on me tightened. “I have Kang’s phone. Creed and Rob are bringing the Straw Sandal back to the garage. Something…someone will know where she is.

“Why was Kang there?” I didn’t understand. Not finding Mara was making all these unknowns crush against the side of my skull like a vise. I needed something to make it make sense. “Why would they guard him?”

Tynan didn’t have an answer any more than I did.

“Come on.” He released my neck and took hold of my hand, guiding me inside, through the maze of motorcycles, and then into the office.

I sat on the edge of the table, watching as he slid Kang’s phone onto his desk, plugged it into his computer, and clicked something that made the screen light up.

“Sutton,” he drawled low, and suddenly, I noticed the small tics of anger that he was trying to suppress. His eyes snapped to mine, and the beating thing in my chest recognized what was hurting him even before he spoke. “You went after him…without me. Without protection.”

I stiffened. “I couldn’t let him get away.”

“He had a gun?—”

“I didn’t know that,” I countered, fuming. By the time I’d run out of the apartment to chase him, Kang had already grabbed the gun from the fallen guard outside of the door and was bolting into the stairwell. “Plus, I could’ve handled?—”

“A gun? With your knives?” His nostrils flared, and suddenly, he looked like a massive bull caged inside a china closet. “I know you’re smarter than to think that.”

“Are you going to punish me for it?” I asked, suddenly craving the pain—the release—and the hold of his arms.

He was in front of me in a second, my neck back in his hold.

Dark and stormy eyes gazed into mine, and the power of him—the presence—it calmed my rage that would’ve punished me regardless.

“You better fucking believe I am,” he growled next to my ear, my nipples hardening at the sound. “You almost fucking died right in front of me.”

I sucked in a breath and turned my face toward his, wanting—needing—and then he was gone, drawing back with a curse as he reached in his pocket for his cell. Yet there was no mistaking the length of his cock stretched hard against the front of his jeans.

“Fuck,” he cursed and then answered the call, “What?” He paused, his brows knitting tighter and tighter together. “What do you mean they’re gone? That can’t be right.” Another pause. “See you soon.”

“What is it?” I demanded before he’d even hung up. My whole body felt charged. Between believing that we were walking into that apartment and would find Mara to staring down the barrel of that gun and the bitter rage in Kang’s eyes, I couldn’t take any more surprises.

I felt like a ball of energy—of anger and frustration and pain and defeat—with nowhere to expend it. Nowhere to let loose the emotions that seemed they’d soon start to tear apart the seams of my skin.

“The bodies are gone.”

My jaw dropped. “Wh…What?”

“The driver that Rob left in the dumpster and the men, including Kang, that I shot at the apartment building…Creed secured the Straw Sandal back in the car and then went to clean up and do damage control, and the bodies were already gone.”

“How…”

“No idea. Creed’s going to go back and get more footage from the alley after they bring the Straw Sandal here,” he rumbled.

“So, we’ll wait for them?—”

“No.”

I shivered, his voice taking a tone I hadn’t heard before. “Tynan?—”

“Whatever he knows,” Tynan cut me off. “He won’t be sharing until he’s conscious again.”

Right. Creed had hit him pretty hard. Still, he could wake up at any moment.

“Off the table.”

Gritting my teeth, I slid my feet to the ground. “I want to wait?—”

“And I want to erase the image in my mind of a gun being pointed at your head today,” he seethed, his anger only fueling mine.

I glared at him, the seconds stretching long before I stalked from the room and headed for the elevator. I was angry, my anger spilling out through filters of petulance and defiance, but I couldn’t care.

Mara wasn’t there.

I hadn’t saved her. Just like I hadn’t been able to save Dad. Or Mom.

I wasn’t enough for anyone, and at some point, what if I wasn’t enough for Tynan either?

I told myself it was anger that blurred my vision in the elevator. Anger that he stood next to me, so calm. So stoic. So sure that I’d just capitulate to him.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I declared as soon as we entered the cabin, beelining for the bedroom like I didn’t hear the heavy thud of his footsteps stalking after me.

“No, you’re not,” he rumbled low.

Fuck this.

Fuck him.

Fuck me.

I whipped around and threw my jacket on the floor. “Yes. I. Am.” I felt wild. Unhinged. Pain driving every word. Every movement. Every breath.

His jaw pulsed. One hand slid to his waist and undid his belt buckle, and I cursed my body for the traitorous way my pussy clenched at the dangerously sexy sight.

“Get on the bed, Sutton.”

“I don’t want your punishment.” Liar. “Not after this. Not after today.” My breath hitched, feeling myself start to fracture. The pain in my chest wedged like a knife I couldn’t remove.

“Sutton…” He stepped closer to me, his voice still impossibly hard—unbreakable—but coated in a softness I felt as surely as velvet against my skin.

I shook my head like that was all it would take for him to leave me in my misery.

“She wasn’t there. They still have her.” I spat the words, bloody and broken from my chest. “She’s still in danger because of me. Don’t you think that’s punishment enough?”

A cry escaped after my outburst, and I pressed my hand to my chest like I could physically hold back everything else inside me.

“No,” Tynan growled and took my arm.

In an instant, I freed my knife and held it to the corner of his neck, his veins pulsing into the blade.

“Don’t,” I warned, panting hard, all of my skin feeling like it crackled with electricity.

His eyes flashed, but he didn’t balk. Of course, he didn’t. I hated that he knew I wouldn’t hurt him. I could never.

“Put the knife down, Sutton.”

My throat tightened, the twist of a sob trying to drill its way out of my chest, but I wouldn’t let it. I couldn’t. I had to be strong.

“I won’t break,” I said low.

My big, boorish Daddy held my gaze as he released my arm and started to slide his belt from the loops of his pants.

Shit. His hand was one thing, but taking a belt to my ass…I shivered.

“Yes, you will,” he rumbled, slowly folding the leather strip in his big hands. The look in his eyes was wild. Like a lion with claws and teeth bared, ready to protect his pride. Ready to protect me. “You’ll break for me, little wasp, because you know I’ll put you back together.”

Air snagged in my lungs. The idea should be repulsive—abhorrent—but it wasn’t. I felt so full—so clogged and weighted with guilt and anger and despair, stacking them inside my chest for years like the world’s largest Jenga tower.

And now he wanted to make it all crumble.

And he was right, I wanted to let him.

The knife clattered onto the ground at the same moment he grabbed my throat and hauled my mouth to his.

I’d dropped my weapon, foolishly thinking that he was unarmed, too, but the second his tongue speared into my mouth, I realized I was wrong.

He was armed. Weaponized by the way I wanted him.

And our kiss became a battlefield. The lash of tongues, the bite of teeth. I fought the wave of heat rising in the base of my stomach. I didn’t want to give in—didn’t want to go under. But I did want him.

God, how I wanted him.

“You undo me,” he said, his tone ravaged, pulling his face back to look at me.

My heart hiccuped.

For a nanosecond, his gaze was split open and searching, and then it was gone with his next words. “You know what it felt like when I couldn’t get to you? When you disappeared into the stairs with that fucker?”

My chin jutted forward even though it pressed my throat tighter to his hand. “I couldn’t let him get away.”

“Not the fucking point,” he swore and pushed me back, his arm falling to his side as he instructed, “Take off your clothes and bend over the bed.”

I jerked, defiance always my first instinct.

But then I saw the whole of him—the wide spread of his stance, the deep, dragging breaths that inflated his chest. I saw his knuckles were white where he held his belt and the beat of his pulse drumming into the side of his neck.

“I didn’t know he had a gun,” I argued, my heartbeat stampeding through my chest.

“I don’t care.” His jaw twitched. “Clothes. Off.”

My spine straightened and my chin lifted, but there was no part of me, even furious, that would deny the promise in his eyes. To put me back together.

My nipples pebbled under the heat of his stare. My core clenched painfully at the way he licked his lips.

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded as he stepped closer. “We should be up there waiting for them…”

“Because you’re wild and dangerous and defiant, and I wouldn’t change a goddamn thing. I will put you in the sky every goddamn time, even though every moment you’re in danger makes me feel like I’m dying.”

My heart stopped like a timer running out of sand. “Tynan.”

His hand claimed my throat, and I felt a rush of heat between my thighs. His head came close to my ear.

“You really want to go back up there, little wasp, then fight me for it.”