Page 6

Chapter Six

Sutton

T ynan didn’t say a word—didn’t make a sound as he scanned over me. Forget the man stabbed to the wall, Tynan’s very first concern was me. Through the heavy blanket of rage covering him, I felt the glimmer of softness in his gaze, the way it assessed every inch of me, from my undone hair to the blood on my chest. The tenderness there was as subtle and threatening as a knife against my throat, and I caught my breath before I could stop myself from being affected.

I wasn’t affected. Couldn’t be. The only person I could trust to look out for me was myself.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said low and watched him sheath that tenderness in the blink of an eye.

His jaw clenched so hard I swore it was going to break as he turned his attention to the rest of the scene with a kind of calm that felt explosive.He processed the knife protruding from Jack’s hand, his crooked nose and the blood staining his lower face, and then his damaged shirt, hanging open to show how I’d cut his chest.

A low growl finally worked its way from his chest.

“Please, man. Help me,” Jack begged, looking at the knife in his hand that he was now fully capable—but too chickenshit—to remove himself.

Tynan took two steps over to him, yanked his shirt wide to see what I’d done, and then whipped his head back around to me.

“Wait for me on my bike,” he ordered with such a low rumble it was almost a purr.

Goose bumps scattered over my skin, running from the heat of his words. I should be relieved hewasn’t turning me into the police. Not yet, at least. Instead, all I felt was my rage. Already unleashed on Jack for his role in what happened to Mara, I couldn’t turn it off. Like a storm that had made landfall, I couldn’t control what—or who—it tried to decimate.

Lifting my chin, I reached and gathered my hair into a thick rope, winding it around my single bloody knife and anchoring it up again on my head. The whole time I held Tynan’s gaze like I wasn’t going anywhere.

The tick in his jaw threatened to detonate as he stepped closer and lowered his head, his face hardly an inch from mine. “Now, little wasp.”

It wasn’t his fury but his unexpected endearment, a tenderness in the midst of fury, that broke my cycle and caused a crack in my reckless fury.

I let out a slow, unsteady breath, and then turned on my heel.

As my boots thumped down the street, I heard Jack’s scream of pain as Tynan pulled the knife from his hand.

Pig.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Was Tynan my enemy? I still wasn’t sure.

From the back of his rumbling Harley, I watched him free Jack and send him on his way with a clear warning. But to me, Tynan said nothing. Not when he returned to the motorcycle. Not when he climbed on in front of me. Not when I pressed my blood-covered front to his back.

I half-expected him to take me to the police station. He’d caught me red-handed. Literally. Jack’s blood had hardened around my dark nails and streaked my skin like a bad tattoo. But he didn’t. The beast of a motorcycle chewed up the stretch of highway between San Francisco and Carmel Cove until we were pulling into the gated garage of the townhouse.

It was actually unnerving that he wasn’t saying anything. I anticipated fury. Confusion. Questions. Demands. But there was nothing…and I didn’t know how to react to nothing.

Just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.

The reminder stilled me. It straightened my spine and kept my breaths evenly paced. His conditions might be changing, but mine wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be afraid of what was coming. Punishment, imprisonment, or otherwise. I didn’t care what he said or threatened me with. He meant nothing to me in comparison to Mara. And now that I knew she was in danger, I’d brave anything to save her.

My boots thumped along the hardwood in the hall, desperate to grow the space between us. Forget dealing with his anger, I’d had to deal with his proximity for the last hour. Riding from his garage to this house was one thing, but a whole hour pressed to the hard heat of him while his bike vibrated underneath me, the image of him coming for me like some kind of leathered guardian angel…it was enough to make me want things I shouldn’t want. And the fact I had no underwear on the whole time was nothing more than an insult to injury.

I spun and faced him, catching the way his shoulders slumped as the door shut behind him. He looked up, his silver eyes slicing into mine, and I braced myself.

He came closer, but I wouldn’t move away. I’d take whatever anger he threw at me. God knew, I’d survived much worse than a man’s anger.

Tynan stopped when he was in front of me, and again, his eyes scoured over me in the light. An army of goose bumps lifted from my skin, but somehow, it felt like no defense against the heat of him.

“Go ahead,” I muttered. “Ask your questions.” So I can muster up anger and adrenaline to mask the real reason for my racing heart.

Tynan’s jaw twitched, and the second it took him to answer seemed to stretch for minutes.

“Is any of that blood yours?”

My lips parted, my chest deflating as air rushed from my lungs. Of all the questions…all the things…and then I glimpsed the full depths of his ache. That assessing look. The hard line of his jaw. He wanted to wipe the blood from my skin—to clean it as surely as if it could wipe away everything that happened.

And for a nanosecond, I wanted to let him.

“No.”

An impressive shudder racked his big frame. “Good.”

I stiffened. “You’re not responsible for me.” No one was. No one had been for a long damn time.

“No?” He stepped closer and invaded what little space was left between us as surely as the knife had punctured Jack’s skin, anger and frustration seeping into the air like blood on our breaths. “You just stabbed a man?—”

“His hand,” I hissed.

This close, I could see the shadow of his beard. The slivers of silver in his dark eyes. Every breath brought the heady scent of sweat mingled with leather and his spicy musk.

“And carved ‘ PIG’ into his chest,” Tynan growled, and I felt his gaze searching. I felt the claws of his curiosity trying to dig into me and uncover the truth.

“He was lucky that was all I did.”

“No,” he said, his voice lowering, and then I felt his fingers clasp my chin.His hold was firm, but it was only fingers. I could’ve pulled back. Moved away. But to be touched by someone—even just the pads of his fingertips—it was like a thousand tiny lightning bolts to my skin. “He was lucky that none of this blood is yours.”

I hated to admit how long it took for my brain to register what he said, what he meant.

“I don’t mind bleeding.” I slid my tongue along my bottom lip, watching his eyes follow the movement.

His lip twitched, something feral flashing in his eyes. “I fucking mind,” he said hoarsely, his look like an animal about to bite. And then his steel-gleamed gaze snapped to mine. “I would’ve fucking killed him if he touched you.”

I let out a sad excuse for a laugh and answered, “So would I.”

The worst part was he didn’t think I was serious. Even after all I’d done, he doubted I could’ve gone that far. Jack would’ve doubted, too. And that was the problem with the both of them.

I jerked out of his hold and put some space between us.

“Take a shower and go to bed,” Tynan rasped, the roughness of his voice a soft caress on my adrenaline-soaked skin. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

I cocked my head. “That’s it?”

He grunted and stepped around me, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair. “I think that’s plenty for tonight.”

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t even bother to look over his shoulder as he headed to the living room and answered, “Staying here.”

“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes so hard I was surprised he didn’t hear them spin through the back of my head.

“You’re not the girl with the dragon tattoo, Sutton.”

I paused, fury burning through me, but I managed to swallow it down. For Mara.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

It would be a battle to get out from underneath Tynan’s thumb now, but battling him for my freedom wasn’t the answer. Letting him see what he wanted to see was.

“You’re right,” I conceded and turned my head but not fully over my shoulder as I added, “Mine’s a scorpion.”