Well, he did rip Aedar to pieces. It shouldn’t surprise me.
“Grim? I don’t think your friends want to hurt you.”
My head moved slightly against his chest. The bikers in my peripheral were crouching, looking like animals ready to pounce.
“I’m protecting you,” his velvet voice called to me. Grim buried his nose on the top of my head, taking slow tantalizing breaths.
“Me??” I asked, flabbergasted. No one had ever protected me in all the years I’d been alive. “Why would you do that? I’m no one special.”
The men in the room faded away. They became empty faces of the void. The loneliness I felt soon joined them when he whispered into my ear, “You are mine to protect.”
Holy crap. You just met me.
Grim relaxed, my fingers still tangled in his vest. His grip loosened, and he set me down.
Hell, he was cradling me like a baby.
“I’m in charge of her now,” he announced.
“He can’t.” Sizzle jolted from his seat. “He will put the entire club in danger. He can’t be allowed to do this! For what? Some quick lay?”
Grim let me go, then jumped over the table so quickly I barely saw it.
The woman in the corner dashed to my side, holding her arm out to keep me from interfering. She had a tall, muscular build. Her beautiful, dark skin looked like velvet under the light as she looked back at me.
She had feline-like eyes, gold and beautiful. Her lip curled at one end when her gaze met mine.
Things were not right, even if this was a biker gang.
Grim pinned Sizzle to the floor on his back. I cringed, hearing the cracking of bone so I turned my head. I could hear the continued beats of fists to face. I raised my shoulders to my ears.
“You’re scaring her,” Locke said as he remained in his seat while Grim’s punches slowed. Grim’s thick breathing echoed into the quiet room. Sizzle spat out blood.
“Sizzle, not everything is about a fuck,” Locke deadpanned. “You get to sit in the confinement room on the member floor while you heal. Have Bones look at him. Make sure this hothead heals properly,” Locke ordered Hawke and Switch as they picked Sizzle up by his shoulders.
“Oh, my god.” My body shook as I gazed at the trauma.
Sizzle didn’t look the same. His blonde hair and pretty face had been brutally beat out of place. Blood, so much blood, I should be used to that by now. Grim growled at Sizzle until Switch and Hawke dragged him out the door.
“Let it be a warning,” Grim declared to the room. He took three long strides toward me.
My mind wanted me to back away from this biker. He was damned dangerous, and now he’d staked some sort of claim on me. I didn’t hate the idea, though. There was an undeniable, strange, gravitational force pulling me towards him.
It felt good to be protected, to be in his arms. He had saved me physically from that hellhole, and now he defended me when I grew upset.
“I–” I began, only for him to pull me to his side and tug me out the door.
My head jerked back, watching the faces of his friends staring at his back in shock.
Grim stayed silent, weaving me through the old church building. Not one of the other bikers came out of the office to stop him. No one challenged him even when our feet stepped outside of the worn-down church and into the brisk air.
“W-what just happened?” I squeaked when he pulled me into his embrace, carrying me like a damsel in distress. “What are you doing? Y-you can’t do this!”
Of course, my body did the opposite of what I wanted, and I instantly wrapped my arms around his neck.
Oh, hell.
I wanted to fear him and scream from the highest mountain tops that this was not okay. That I was not to be pushed around from one owner to another, that I was my own person. I didn’t want anyone to own me, to keep me.
