“I meant alone, Odin. After the day I’ve had, I need time to…unwind from it all.” Boy, did she. Even if she hadn’t had to deal with Aaron and Shannon’s appearance at the gym and Aaron’s shocking announcement, she also had the embarrassment of knowing Odin had been there to hear and see Aaron at his worst…toward her.
She was a warrior. She was one of only a handful as skilled and deadly as she was. Yet…she was still a human woman. With human weaknesses, and a woman’s needs. But she had shit taste in men and no idea how to get one evil jerk to leave her alone to live in peace.
“You don’t really want to be alone,” Odin purred into her ear, making her shudder once more, though her fury rose with the goosebumps.
“Of course, I do! I’ve peopled too much already today, and the thought of having to spend another minute with anyone makes me want to break something.”
Odin finally loosened his hold on her waist, his arms sliding out from around her, gripping her hips with his large hands instead.
“You want to break something, Goddess? Well, good, because I intend to break your headboard tonight.”
Struck dumb by the man’s audacity—and the raw sexual hunger his words evoked—she fought her dry throat and kiss-swollen lips to say a single word when he pressed a quick kiss to her lips, told her he’d be at her place in an hour because he had a last-minute errand to run, and that she’d better be at home when he got there.
The man knew exactly what he was going; kiss her silent and leave before she could object. It was a solid plan…because she’d fallen in line each time.
Tessa, who’d been annoyingly absent when Skathi had needed a buffer, slid up next to Skathi, her face flushed and her eyes wide.
“Hole-y shit, Sky! That man is going to eat you alive.”
Skide…she’d probably like that, too. Fear rippled through her, a fear tinged with a tantalizing zing of excitement.
Apparently, she was going home, just as she’d planned. The unplanned bit was what made her quiver. Truth was, part of her—her aching, traitorous pussy—didn’t mind being eaten…the other part—her heart—was terrified of being completely devoured.
“Ineed everything you have on Aaron Mason,” Odin demanded into the phone, his brother and club cyber specialist AFK on the other end alreadytip-tappingaway on his prez’s orders.
When he’d walked into the MMA gym, he hadn’t really known what to expect. He’d wanted to see his woman, wanted to see her in her element—kickin’ ass and takin’ names. Unlike some men who were turned off by a woman who could clean their clocks, Odin loved how his goddess—his Valkyrie—could literally kill with her bare hands. It made his cock hard to think that all that power, all that fierceness and passion, was inside a deliciously well-built package.
His woman had it all: beauty, brains, bare-knuckle skills, and a body that made him weep. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d jacked off to thoughts of her submitting to him…after a few rounds of hand-to-hand. Yeah, he was a sick motherfucker, but it took a special breed of man to take on a woman like Skathi.
It took a man like him to see her for what she really was—a goddess among infinitely inferior mortal women.
So, when he walked into Steele and saw that motherfucker Aaron “The Brick Brained Douche” Mason—a man he knew about because he’d seen his fight at the MGM Grand almost two years ago—getting in his woman’s face, a holy, godlike rage filled him, flooding his muscles with venom and his chest with fire. And after it was all done and Aaron was taken out like the trash he was, and his Skathi fell into his embrace like a woman carrying far too much on her shoulders, he wanted to take care of her, despite her ridiculous words about wanting to be alone. Hecouldn’tleave her alone. His need to be with her was an addiction, an ache in his bones he never wanted to alleviate, because being with her, touching her, gave him something he’d never felt before.
Peace.
She gave him peace. And a feeling of…completion that only a little over a week ago he’d believed impossible.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. How the gods have tumbled from the heavens. He’d gone from feeling like no woman could ever fill his needs to knowing that only one woman could.
Skathi Odinsdottir had become his everything in the blink of an eye, and the possibility of a future with her—a possibility that he would make a reality—fueled him like nothing before ever had.
“Ah,” AFK remarked monosyllabically, “you finally going to let me loose on Miss Odinsdottir?” Apparently, AFK had found a connection between the asshole and Odin’s woman.
That week between the time he’d been put on his proverbially ass by Skathi and their reunion at Lock ‘n’ Load, he’d been tempted to order AFK to find her. He’d only known her first name and what she looked like, but AFK had worked miracles before with less. Problem was, Odin didn’t want the guilt of uncovering potentially private things about his woman without her permission. Things he’d rather learn from her own lips as they got to know one another. Yeah, he done the same—sent AFK on an information expedition—and worse to others, like the women who’d sought work at Sex & Candy, but Skathi was different. She was a Valkyrie, his Goddess. She deserved more than an invasive and possibly ugly cyber stalking. He’d learn all there was to know about his woman as he seduced every last secret out of her. And he’d enjoy the fuck out of it, too.
Now though, he wanted to know everything about the man who’d dared to speak to Skathi like that, to raise a hand against her. No man should ever strike a woman—especially one claimed by the Savage Raiders. And once he’d made it known that Skathi was his old lady, she would come under the protection of the fiercest MC in Nevada.
“I only need any information tied to her asshole ex, not anything about Skathi directly. Besides, I doubt there’s much you can find about her that won’t ping a few government databases. We don’t want to bring anything down on our heads right now, not when it comes to her.”
AFK snickered, “Fuck yeah, sounds like any other Saturday night to me, Prez, but I get what you mean. It’ll take an hour or so. I’ll send whatever I find to your phone.”
With that done, Odin called Hawk. Even though he was headed into an evening with his woman, he still had shit to get off his mental desk. Business was business, and he was the motherfucking king of Vegas. He’d sleep when he was dead.
Hawk answered on the first ring. “Prez, what can I do for you?”
“You on assignment right now?” he asked, knowing their security business Savage Protection was booming yet not having the schedule with assignment rotations memorized. Lots of high rollers coming into town looking to protect their assets and their asses, not to mention the celebrities that came to perform and fuck around in Vegas who needed a little extra dedicated attention.
“I just got off from a week babysitting a Greek heiress who, apparently, has a crush on one of the fancy-ass acrobats in the Cirque show. Which means I just spent the last week sitting around their penthouse at The Venetian listening to them fuck like double-jointed rabbits when they weren’t ordering room service. Get this…lots and lots of tapioca. That shit is fucking nasty! And I don’t even want to know what the hell they were doing with all of that.”
