“Me. I want to know how many times I need to wash these sheets.”
He shakes his head, running his hand through his hair. “Yeah, babe, I’ve fucked in that bed. About ten times. So have all the other club members. It’s a clubhouse.”
“Ew,” I say, leaping off it and quickly stripping all the sheets off the bed. “Tell me there’s washing powder or something in this place?”
He smirks as I rush past him, and take all the sheets into the laundry room, shoving them into the machine, and tipping a heap of powder in. I set the machine and then turn. “There goes the idea of sleeping being the first thing I do.”
He nods his head towards the kitchen. “Don’t know about you, but I’m fuckin’ hungry.”
My stomach growls. “Is there even any food up here?”
He nods. “It’s stocked.”
“How?”
He sighs. “What do you mean how?”
“How is it stocked?”
“The boys stocked it.”
“But how?”
He spins around. “For fuck’s sake, woman!”
I cross my arms and stare at him. “Well . . .”
“Fine,” he barks. “There is a track heading up here that can be accessed only by bikes, it may or may not be still open.”
I gape. “Are you fucking serious?” I screech.
He groans and crosses his arms. “Here we go.”
“You made me walk when we could have . . . rode?”
“Yeah, I did, because I can’t fuckin’ be on the roads.”
Dang. He makes a point.
“We could have ridden with your brothers . . .”
“No, we couldn’t. If they got pulled up, they’d be fucked.”
I huff and walk towards the kitchen. “I hope there’s some good food in this place.”
We get into the kitchen and I pull open the fridge. There’s a good load of food in there ranging from fresh fruit and vegetables, to deli meats and bread. My stomach grumbles. I’m exhausted, and I know for a fact I don’t have energy to make anything special. I pull out some bread, ham and cheese and spin around, placing them on the counter.
“You eat this?” I ask, laying the bread out.
Krypt hands me a chopping board and knife. “I’ll eat whatever you give me.”
I prepare the sandwiches and grab a few sodas out of the fridge. We both drop down onto the couch and sigh. My legs are aching. I wish this place had a bath. Really, that would be awesome. I lift my sandwich and take a bite. Krypt has half of his gone in, like, three mouthfuls. I give him a disgusted look.
“What?” he mutters.
“That’s wrong. Seriously.”
“I’m a man. I eat; I don’t nibble.”
“I’m not nibbling.” I pout.
“Yeah, you fuckin’ are. Eat like a man, babe.”
I roll my eyes and keep eating at my own pace.
“You’re settlin’ very well for a prisoner.”
“It could be worse,” I say. “You could have killed me.”
“I was never goin’ to kill you, Ash.”
The sincerity in his voice has me turning and staring at him. He meets my gaze, and an intense silence fills the room. Oh boy. “You weren’t?” I finally ask.
“I don’t kill women unless it comes down to life or death, for me or someone I cared about. You weren’t one of them; I knew that. I wasn’t goin’ to let you take a bullet. I was just bein’ an asshole when I said the club would kill you.” He winks.
I give him a weak smile. “Well, thanks.”
“You trust me, don’t you?”
I blink at him. “Pardon?”
“You trust me. I can tell you do. You’re not scared, and you’ve only tried to run once.”
I shrug. “I saw you in there; I never thought you would hurt me. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t terrified when your guys shot and killed the guards, but it didn’t take me long to realize I was not in any immediate danger.”
“You’re in danger, though; you do know that, right?”
“How so?”
“There is a war brewin’, and while you’re with us you’re right in the middle of it.”
“It would seem I wasn’t really that safe where I was, anyway.”
“No. You were bein’ used.”
“Do you really think they were using me?” I ask, turning towards him and crossing my legs.
“Did you get asked constant questions about me? Did they ask you what I’d told you? What you’d learned?”
I gasp. Tristan asked me every day if I’d gotten new information out of Krypt. He was setting me up because he knew I had a connection with the prisoners? He was trying to use that connection to get information. Then he went out of his way to put me in that truck for the transfer. My chest seizes at the realization that someone I cared about had been using me and because of that, I was nearly killed.