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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DAKOTA

“I think I messed it all up,” I whisper.

I’m standing in front of a bakery counter, looking at the pastries and wondering why I’m here when I don’t need to eat any of this stuff. But I want it all. I didn’t sleep again last night. I lay in bed all night long, staring at the ceiling of the hotel room and wondering where the hell I went wrong.

“Hey,” a girl with bouncing curls says from the other side of the counter. She appears to be in her late teens, maybe early twenties, and she’s beautiful. Not just cute, though she is that, too, but downright beautiful. “Can I help you?”

I’m staring. I know I am. Shaking my head a couple of times, I clear my throat before I point to the éclairs. “Can I have an éclair, please?”

She hums, then reaches into the case and grabs one, placing it in a small box before her eyes meet mine again. “Anything else from the case?”

“I want it all, but no thanks. Just the éclair.”

“Cool,” she says with a smirk. She walks over to the cash register and places the little box down, then she punches a few buttons on the iPad in front of her. “Anything else? A coffee maybe?”

“I wouldn’t even know what to order,” I murmur.

It’s true. Briana always brings me different coffees, and while I haven’t had one that I don’t like, I also have no clue what she brings me. She says there’s a great little café just a couple of doors down from our apartment complex. Obviously, I’ve never been, but she surprises me on Saturday mornings when she’s around.

“The brown sugar latte with almond milk is my absolute favorite. Not for any reason other than I think that the almond milk tastes sweeter than regular.”

“Then I’ll take one,” I say.

Her smile widens, and she turns her back to me to walk over to the coffee machine. Instead of just making the drink, she starts talking to me. I watch her move and wonder just how someone can work so effortlessly. She seriously looks and acts like she’s on a stage, a ballerina or something, gracefully making the coffee for me.

“So, where are you from? Just here on vacation?” she calls out.

I snort and wonder how much I should even say. Then I decide, fuck it, I have nobody else to talk to other than Briana, and she’s dead asleep right now, thanks to the time difference. “My father was from here, but he passed away, and I came to handle his estate.”

She stops making the coffee, then turns to look over at me, and I can see the pain etched on her face. She feels for me, or maybe she knows exactly how I’m feeling. “I’m really sorry to hear that,” she whispers. “I lost my dad when I was ten. It’s hard.”

“Harder when you know him, I would imagine. He’s a stranger to me.”

“That’s just as hard, I think,” she whispers. “You don’t know what you could have had. So you have to mourn what could have been.”

She’s right, but she’s also wrong. As she hands me the coffee, I pass my card over to her. “Not sure if it’s harder to mourn what could have been or to mourn what was and the promise of what could be.”

“Your mom’s gone, too?” she asks.

“How’d you know?”

She shrugs a shoulder. “Seems like you know what it’s like to love and lose, and you didn’t know your dad. I guessed.”

“Yeah,” I exhale.

“I hope you stay here for a while. See what Thunder Rock has to offer,” she says with a wink.

I let out a heavy exhale, then reach for the coffee and the pastry. “I don’t know. I’ve met some people, and I think it’s time to go.”

“Who?” she asks. “Being as I own the shop, I know almost everyone who actually lives in town. There’s also not that many people here.”

My lips curve up into a grin. “You probably don’t know him. I don’t think this is his kind of place,” I murmur.

“Try me,” she quips.

Laughing softly, I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, lifting my coffee to my mouth and releasing my lip before I take a sip of the light-brown liquid. I close my eyes, and my whole body pauses, and even my heart stops beating before I exhale.

Opening my eyes, I connect my gaze to hers. “My god, that’s amazing,” I whisper.

She winks. “Told you.”

“Bullet,” I blurt out.

Something dark flashes through her eyes, and then her breath hitches before she physically forces herself to appear normal and nonchalant. But I can tell she knows exactly who I’m talking about, and I decide that I need to know everything.

I need to know what she knows.

Because, without knowledge, I can’t make an informed decision, and right now, my head is telling me to run, my heart is telling me to stay, and my body is screaming at me to strip down and wait for him spread-eagled in his bed.

I’m in a conundrum.

BULLET

Waiting is not something I am inherently good at. I am ready to fucking act right now. I want to go to her motel, walk in, fuck her hard, and remind her who the fuck she belongs to. Then demand that she not sell a fucking thing, pack her shit, and stay here for fucking ever.

One night without her felt like a goddamn eternity. I’m not sure what the fuck happened, but I think I went and fell in love. Shit. I hated her days ago, I fucked her, and now I love her? What the actual fuck?

My bike hidden around the building, my eyes on the parking lot. I wait for her car to pull into a spot. Chewing on the corner of my bottom lip, I start to go over shit in my head. Maybe it’s not love. Maybe it’s not even lust.

Could it just be that I love and miss Shade so goddamn much that I have to keep this part of him?

And how fucked up is that ?

As I stand and watch the parking lot for a few more moments, I decide that I don’t care how fucked up it is. She was meant to be mine, and maybe, just maybe, Shade sent her to me. This is where she belongs, with her family.

So I’m going to make damn sure this is where she stays.

No matter what kind of action I am going to be forced to take for that to happen, I will take it, even if that means chaining her sexy ass to the bed. Just as I think about her being chained to a bed naked, as if I manifest her, her car pulls into the parking lot.

She unfolds from the driver’s seat, much like she did the first time I sat here and watched her. My feet move, carrying me toward her quickly. She reaches out to wrap her fingers around the handle of the front door, but before she can actually grab it, I curl my own around her wrist and gently turn her around to face me.

“Let go,” she grinds out, but I can tell in her eyes that she’s silently begging for me to hold on tighter.

Maybe that’s just the self-centered caveman shit inside of me, but I’m going to go with it because I want to hold her closer. Tugging her against me, I hold her hand between us against my chest as I look into her honey eyes.

“Did you think you could come here, sell everything, and walk away without me knowing what the fuck was going on?”

“You defended that horrible woman.”

My lips twitch into a smirk. Fuck, she’s jealous. Now that is sexy as shit. Lowering my head, I touch my lips to hers.

“I don’t give a fuck about her, baby.”

She tries to scramble away from me, but her attempts fail because all I do is hold her closer. Gripping her wrist tighter and placing my other hand at the center of her back, I hold her against me, not a fucking inch of space between us.

“I only give a fuck about you.”

Dakota tries to shake her head, but I press my mouth to hers, giving her a chaste kiss before I lift my head and look into those eyes that fucking own me. She’s blinking, no doubt attempting to blink tears away because if there is anything I know about her, it’s how she can be somewhat emotional—which I find refreshing.

“That’s not the way it looked, and honestly, I don’t live here, so it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not selling all your father’s shit and running away. This is where you belong.”

She presses her lips together, narrows her eyes on me, and snorts. “It’s not, though. I don’t belong anywhere. Not really. And especially not here. I don’t understand anything that’s happening here. Not a single thing.”

“You will,” I murmur. “I’ll teach you—everything. But you’re not leaving.”

“I can’t stay,” she exhales, although I don’t believe a single one of those words she’s just said. She can and she will stay right fucking here with me.

Clearing my throat, I tilt my head to the side and touch my mouth to hers again. This time, I start soft and easy. My lips brush hers, just a whisper of a touch before my tongue tastes her bottom lip.

She whimpers, her lips parting, and mine do the same. I brush her lips again but don’t slip my tongue into her waiting mouth. Not yet. I stay there for a breath, and then another, before she begins to melt toward me—into me.

That’s what I wanted.

Submission.

Dakota’s submission.

Sliding my tongue inside of her mouth, I taste her. She moans, and I swallow the sound, letting it fuel my desire. Flexing my hips, I press against her belly, knowing for a fact that she can feel my hardening cock behind my jeans.

I nibble on her bottom lip then break the kiss before I drag her around the side of the building, pressing her back against the wall. Lifting my head slightly, I look into her eyes, taking in the absolute gorgeousness of her flushed cheeks and swollen lips.

Just looking at her, I wish there were a way to get her on her knees right here and now, but I don’t think she would do that, and I’m not sure I would want anyone to see her vulnerable in that way.

I’m not sure what it is about her, maybe because she’s not just some whore or woman in town I’m fucking, but she is and was always meant to be mine, and I never want a single fucking person to see her vulnerable.

She is a goddamn queen. Nothing more. Nothing less.

A queen.

“What are you…”