“Even Kane Allen, he decides to play a Good Samaritan, is gonna drop the victim of a drive-by at the police station. Not claim her as his and ride out to hunt down the perpetrators unless he’s,” he leaned forward, “claiming her as his.”

Uh-oh.

“Okay, I can see that as bad but he’s doing it. I made no such declaration.”

“Then you wanna tell me why Tack was there during the drive-by?”

“He was at my house when I got home this morning.”

“So?”

“He wanted to talk.”

“So?”

“So, he promised not to say anything to freak me out so I agreed to talk.”

“All right, Sweet Pea, let’s go back to why you weren’t somewhere else this morning, for instance,” he took a threatening step forward, “here.”

Uh-oh.

“Hawk –”

I stopped talking when he took another threatening step forward and seeing as his legs were so long, this meant he was close. Too close. Really scary close.

“Yesterday,” he said in a terrifying, quiet voice and got closer so I slid away from the column and took a step back. “I left here,” he kept coming at me so I kept stepping back, “and when I left here,” I kept moving, he kept coming, “you were sweet and cute.”

I hit bookshelves and was forced to stop. Hawk didn’t stop. He pinned me in, his head tipping down to look at me but he didn’t touch me. He pinned me in with the sheer force of his badassness.

“Then,” he went on, “yesterday afternoon, I get this fuckin’ note with a fuckin’ check. The note, I don’t get. The check, babe, the check is a smack in the fuckin’ face.”

Hmm. Maybe I didn’t think that out very well.

“So I check the device on your car and see you’ve holed up with a cop,” he continued.

“You have a device on my car?” I whispered and his scary, angry face turned scarier and angrier so I shut my mouth.

“I come home,” he stayed with his subject, “and I got a message from Gayle. So I get the note because I get that you heard her message and then you listened to some bullshit that your friend fed you and you didn’t pick up the phone or get your ass to my place so you could talk to me. You went off half-cocked and, doin’ it, pissed me way, the fuck, off.”

All right, so we were on this subject then we had to talk about this subject.

“I know about Your Days,” I whispered.

“Yeah? You do?”

“Yeah,” I kept whispering, “I do. And I know I’m filler.”

“No,” he returned. “You know a bunch of cops with shit for brains and nothin’ better to do with their time called you that. And somethin’ else, babe, that shit is totally made up. It’s complete bullshit. Gayle calls herself Thursday because she’s got another man who doesn’t do it for her and he goes out and gets shitfaced on Thursdays and doesn’t come home until the bars close so I feel like her, I visit her. I don’t have a schedule. The only woman I’ve investigated with any thoroughness and the only one I watch is you.”

“But you said when you make a woman yours, you do your –”

“No, Gwen, forget about what you thought you read into what I said. I’m tellin’ you now, straight out, how it is. And I’m not gonna feed you shit about there not bein’ others, there are others. And I think you get that I’m not a man inclined to waste my time doin’ precisely what I’m doin’ right fuckin’ now, explaining myself.”

Oh shit. Now I was getting mad.

“I see,” I stated quietly. “We’re right back where we started.”

“No, if we were back where we started, somewhere in the last couple of days I’d have had a piece of your sweet ass.”

My mouth dropped open.

He could not be believed!

“I don’t believe you!” I yelled.

“It’s not true?” he asked.

“No, see, the last couple of days my sister’s shit has leaked into my life. Did I do anything wrong? No! I don’t live in your world. I knew Dog. I knew he was good for Ginger. I figured he’d sort her out. I didn’t know what would happen when I went to Ride! How the hell would I know? I didn’t open the door to the guy who broke in! I didn’t guide the firebombers to my parents’ house and hurl a flaming bottle through the window! I went home today, that’s it. I just went home and got caught in a hail of gunfire! But after that was over, I just did what I was told. I’d never been shot at before. Tack seemed to know what he was doing so I figured it would be good to be with someone who knew what they were doing. I didn’t know he was going to lock me in his Compound and start a war! I’ve just been doing the best I can do in a seriously bad situation. No! In multiple seriously bad situations!”

“Gwen –”

“And I don’t need you to be a jerk on top of it.”

“Gwen –”

I threw my hands out to the sides. “My living room was shot up today. With me in it!” I screeched.

His hands came to my jaws. “Baby, calm down.”

“You calm down! You can walk through walls and silently down bikers. I don’t have those abilities, Hawk. I was in another situation where I needed a crowbar! That sucks! And after that, I need cookie dough. Or at the very least really good Chinese food, from Twin Dragon or, better yet, Imperial.”

His thumbs swept my jaws and he said quietly, “All right, baby, I’ll get you Imperial.”

I shook my head but unfortunately didn’t shake his hands free. “No, the other night, I liked you. Tonight, I don’t,” I announced. “I mean, thank you for saving me from biker prison but now I want to go home…” It was then I realized I didn’t have a home, my parents’ didn’t have a home and therefore I was fucked so I finished lamely, “Or… wherever.”

“You are where you’re gonna be until whatever the fuck is happening is over, babe,” Hawk declared.

“Hello?” I called. “Let me remind you that you live in Badass World and I do not. You can’t tell me where to be.”

“I sure as fuck can, Gwen,” he replied.

“No, you can’t,” I returned, his hands slid to my neck and his fingers curled deep.

“Listen to me, Gwendolyn,” he growled and I missed that somewhere he got un-pissed but I wasn’t missing that he was now re-pissed and him saying my full name only underlined it. “As far as intel we got goes, Ginger was nowhere in the vicinity today when you had your drive-by. So that means one of two things. Those shots were meant to take out Tack or they were meant to take you out.”

“No one wants me dead,” I returned.

“No, but they want Ginger to suffer and she’s your sister and they might not know you’re not tight and, last, they’re gettin’ desperate so, like I said, they could have been meant to take you out.”

Holy fucking shit!

I closed my eyes and muttered, “Why does this keep getting worse?”

I opened my eyes when Hawk answered, “Because your sister is a piece of trash.” I was going to let him have that this time but I didn’t get the chance to tell him that because he went on. “Now, we don’t know but we need to assume you’re a target, which means your parents may be targets which means protection. You’re safe here so you’re gonna stay here. I’ll do what I can for them. And I’ll do what I can to bring peace with Tack because I need him as an ally with this shit and I don’t need more to deal with and that includes you giving me lip.”

“You’re going to do what you can for my parents?” I asked and he stared down at me, his fingers flexing into my neck.

“Sweet Pea, look at me.”

“I am looking at you.” And I was!

“No, really, look at me.”

I was really looking at him!

He kept talking. “Gayle’s never been here, she’s never gonna be here and her place got shot up in a drive-by, she asked my advice, I’d tell her to talk to the police. Now, do you get where I’m comin’ from here?”

“Not really,” I told him and his fingers flexed again so I asked, “You said you investigated me and watched me and not them, why?”

He looked over my head and muttered, “Jesus.”

“Now you aren’t looking at me,” I observed and his eyes cut back down to me.

“I’m good, babe, and I know you like it, I know you like what I can do to you but that isn’t it for you with me and now I know it never was. And for me, you’re you. That meant I needed to engage.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“What?” I whispered.

He kept going. “I did the normal shit, looked into you and I found out Ginger was your sister. I found out you showed too much skin when you went out. I found out you talk to strangers like they’re your best friends. I found out you don’t live in the real world, you live in a dream world where you don’t pay a fuckuva lot of attention to what’s happening around you and you make questionable life decisions and I found out you gave what you have to give only to me. Because of that, it became clear you needed looking after. So I did.”

“I can look after myself, Hawk,” I partially lied. This was true in normal circumstances it wasn’t when I was getting shot at.

“Bullshit,” he replied.

I wasn’t going to fight that, not now, not with bullets flying so I decided to fight something else.

“You didn’t complain about too much skin the other night,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, babe, that’s because your ass was in my ride and on my arm the other night and your focus was entirely on me.”

Hmm. That was a good answer.

I kept at it. “I don’t live in a dream world.”

“Gwen, you took one look at me, decided I was the one, I said four words to you and you took me to your goddamned house and your goddamned bed and didn’t say word fuckin’ one when I kept comin’.”

He had a point there.

Time to retreat.

“I’m hungry and I need to go to the bathroom,” I announced.

His fingers flexed on my neck again when he declared, “Christ, you’re a pain in my ass.”

“Okay, then let me use your bathroom and then your phone to call a taxi so I can go to a hotel.”

He glared down at me and flexed his fingers at my neck again but this time he used them to pull me in and up.

“You say I don’t listen to you but you haven’t been listenin’ to me. We’re gonna ride this wave, you and me, what we got, what we had the night before last, even, fuck me, what we have right now. Don’t think for a second you can give me the sweet taste you gave me yesterday morning and then freak out and think you can cut ties. And while we’re doin’ it you’re not getting filled with holes, kidnapped, tortured and mutilated for your fuckin’ sister, not on my watch.”

I had to admit, that last part gave me some relief and made my belly get squishy. Though I didn’t admit this verbally, I just stared.

He held my stare then he sighed, his hands relaxed on my neck and I was able to move away two inches but that was all I got.

“I’m callin’ one of my boys to get Imperial and then you’re callin’ your father and then I’m callin’ Lawson so he can come here and talk to you about what happened at your house today. What do you want from Imperial?”

I was hungry so I wasn’t going to bicker. And anyway, Imperial was the best Chinese food in Denver. It would be a crime against nature to bicker when Imperial was on offer.

“Sesame chicken and hot and sour soup,” I told him then added, “oh, and crab cheese wonton.”

He stared at me then he asked, “Anything else?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I’m usually too full to try their desserts so I don’t know if they’re good so if you don’t have a roll of cookie dough in your fridge, it wouldn’t be unwelcome if one of the commandos swung by King Soopers and got some. Chocolate chip or sugar cookie.”

“I don’t have cookie dough in my fridge.”

I knew this. The morning before I’d checked in his fridge and he had yogurt, cottage cheese, fresh fruit, slices of smoked salmon and veggies. It was a wasteland in there. He didn’t even have condiments.

He studied my face while I thought this then remarked, “Babe, it isn’t a punishable offense not to have cookie dough.”

“Maybe not but you don’t have condiments.”

“Ketchup and cottage cheese don’t go real good together.”

I felt my lip curl in disgust then I watched his lips twitch in amusement as his hands at my neck gentled entirely and one thumb stroked the skin under my ear.

“You good?” he asked softly.

“About what? You and me? My living room being a disaster? Or war with Tack which, by the way, I should note, is not my fault.”

“Any of that,” he answered.