Wed to the Bad Boy(95)

“Dude, it isn’t worth it. We don’t kill our own.” Crow grabbed Cullen’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes, bringing him back from that dark place. The dark place that scared even me.

Drew was still breathing. No one was dead.

I silently thanked them.

“Get off me. I’m fine. I’m good.” Cullen seemed to have regained his composure as he tugged down on his cut and looked around. “I said I’m fine,” he barked before grabbing me.

“What the hell are you—” I didn’t have a chance to finish my sentence. I was in the air before I could protest.

He lifted me up and put me over his shoulder like a caveman. Just like he had that woman the other day.

“Put me down!” I shouted, outraged and a little scared.

“She is mine. I claim her. This is my ol’ lady. No one else will touch her, do you understand?” He growled out each and every word as he said them, shouting across the bar. I couldn’t see the looks on anyone else’s faces, but I knew the look on mine. I was absolutely furious. We weren’t anything, and I certainly wasn’t his “ol’ lady.”

I punched him everywhere I could reach, his back, his backside, all of him. “Let me go!”

No one seemed to be interested in my struggles. I could tell from the chuckles and the hoots that they were all enjoying this. Cullen turned and started walking through the bar, back through the hallway to the nest of extra rooms that served as makeshift bedrooms for prospects, club members who had no place else to go and others who were too drunk to go home.

“Put me down! What the hell?”

As soon as he put me down, I decked him.

I cocked my arm back and let it fly, right across the face. I expected it to hurt him. To shock him.

He just smiled at me, his eyes saying, “Is that all you have to give?”

It was. I shook my hand out from the pain. “Dammit.” Furious didn’t even begin to cover it.

“You really need to work on your hands before you go around punching people. Toughen them up. Then it won’t hurt so bad.”

“You misogynist prick. I swear to God.” I reared up, ready to strike him again, but he dodged the blow this time and pulled me into him.

His scent was intoxicating, my anger stirring up the alcohol in my blood. I was dizzy and common sense didn’t mean much right then.

Maybe that was why I thought it was a good idea to kiss him. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve known better. I should’ve stopped myself. But I couldn’t. I wound myself around him as he kissed me back. It was just like the old days. Old lady, indeed.

I swore I could hear the beginnings of a chuckle in his throat.

That brought me back to reality.

I reared back and tried to glare at him. Not an easy thing to do while drunk and so close. “What the hell?” I asked, glaring at him.

“Clock me, then kiss me. No wonder you’re still single, Lala.”

“You asshole!” I wiped my mouth, trying to hide the stupid grin that was twitching at the corners of my lips. “I could’ve handled it.”

“No, you couldn’t have.” He was just as stubborn as me, and I knew it.

“You are so fucking backwards. Picking me up like I’m a sack of potatoes? Is that what you think of me?”

“You think I ‘claimed’ you just for myself? I didn’t have a choice.”

“Oh, yes you did.”

“No, Lala. That’s the reality of the club. Men would’ve kept coming after you, kept trying to do what Drew did. They don’t care about a woman’s rights.”

“Sick fucks.”

“Not in that way. We don’t hurt you all, but if you come in here, drink with us, flirt with us, that makes you game. You consented to our little world. Every girl knows that. Every prospect knows that. Here, you can’t stay untouchable forever without an ol’ man, and you know it. What I did was make you unattainable for every man in that bar. You’re mine. They can’t have you. But if you tell me no, I won’t have you, either.”

I stopped to listen to that. Concentrated on looking him, really seeing him.

He meant it. I hated hearing it. This wasn’t the world I wanted to live in. But he was right. This was how it was.

“I don’t do that rape shit,” he went on. “It’s for losers who can’t get pussy on their own.”

I hadn’t thought he would.

Still, if he was telling the truth, he really did do me a favor.

He seemed to be uncomfortable. It made him keep talking. “What, you want a man like Thrash to claim you, instead? You waiting for him to come along and do it for me? Is that who you want? Just say the words, and I’ll release you and you can go running to him.”