All the Rage

  gets pregnant, it would either be a miracle or because the bitch is cheating on him.” He shuddered. “Fuck, don’t look for her. And for your sake, you better hope that girl doesn’t come back either.” Paco handed me another shot. “Like ever ever.”

  I downed my shot, and as the whiskey burned its way down my throat, the realization of her betrayal set in.

  “You might want to call your uncle and get him in on this after all. You should find her before she finds you,” Paco said, interrupting my thoughts.

  I cracked my knuckles. “No. Rage is my business.” Then I said two words I’d said before, but had suddenly taken on an entirely different meaning. I slammed my beer down on the bar.

  “She’s mine.”

  * * *

  I set a plan in motion where instead of searching the planet for Rage, it would have her running to me as fast as her sexy legs could carry her. It was almost too simple. I was actually mad at myself for not thinking of it sooner.

  Within hours of the idea taking hold inside my brain, I clicked a button on my phone and set my plan in motion. I sat back and put my feet up, breathing in the warm night air.

  Gun in my lap.

  The wait had begun.

  She may have known I was a Warrior, but Rage was about to learn real fucking fast who I was about to become.

  Her worst fucking nightmare.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Rage

  Fuck this shit.

  I left one babysitting job and found myself smack dab in the middle of another. It was my own fault. When King called and said he had something for me, I barely registered what he was saying before asking where and pointing my scooter in that direction.

  The subject of my babysitting job was Thia, who was Bear’s old lady. Bear was the VP of the Beach Bastards, but according to King, Bear was now at war with his own club. Thia needed to be protected because Bear was doing time and knowing Chop, Bear’s ruthless old man, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot through Thia first to get to Bear. It was all very boring really, but the gist of it was that I found myself in the middle of a fucking orange grove in a house that didn’t need to be cleaned, it needed to be burnt to the fucking ground.

  Which I’d suggested.

  Rotting oranges were piled at the bottoms of the trees and the smell was almost unbearable. There was no one around for miles except Thia, who had a funny shade of almost pinkish hair, and her weird skinny dog.

  Which made me think of Murray and his slobber.

  My situation hadn’t changed all that much. I was in a small house. I was babysitting. There was a dog.

  Except it wasn’t the right house or the right dog or…the right person.

  It was, however, the first time I’d gotten to spend time with a girl my age, who I wasn’t imagining one hundred different ways to kill. Okay, maybe for like the first month or so tops, but after that, it was actually okay. It helped that Thia was a good shot. We’d spent hours a day and many boxes of bullets fucking shit up together. And there was no pretending at all. No having to be someone else.

  You weren’t pretending with Nolan.

  I thought about him every other memory. Everything I saw made me want to tell him about it. I wanted to tell him about the grove, about Thia. I thought about when he’d told me about his parents. The overwhelming feeling I’d had to both comfort and devour him.

  While Thia was asleep, I’d patrol the grove and wonder what he was doing…and how much he hated me. With time, I thought all the feelings and urges Nolan had brought out in me would die back down, but if anything they’d only grown stronger. Every memory of our time together had me wound tighter and tighter until my nighttime patrols turned into jogs and then sprints for hours.

  Nothing relieved the ache.

  Not the one in my chest.

  Not the one between my legs.

  Some tall, skinny guy in a suit showed up at the grove one day with a file in his hand. I could tell right away he wasn’t who he said he was when he tried to pass Thia the file and I spotted the Bastards’ skull symbol tattooed on the top of his hand.

  Long story short, I invited him in. Stabbed him through his hand and tied him to a chair.

  It felt good to be back in the game. Back to doing what I was good at, but it also felt empty. Darker.

  I had been contemplated hanging the son of a bitch I’d stabbed in the hand, because why the fuck not? When my phone buzzed in my sports bra, I didn’t answer because I was kind of busy and it was the phone reserved for parental units only. But it kept buzzing and buzzing and it wouldn’t stop.

  I huffed and pulled it out, ready to tell them I was busy and I’d call them back. But it wasn’t a call at all. It was a picture text. The same picture sent over and over and over again.

  Nolan.

  It was a selfie. He looked very much like he did the day I first came to his house. A huge, ridiculous smile on his face. The dimple as deep as ever. Scruff along his square jaw.

  How did he get this number?

  That’s when I saw it.

  I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand. I made an excuse to Thia about a selfie bat signal, and I’m positive that whatever I told her made no sense whatsoever. It was the very first time I left a job mid-torture, or mid-anything for that matter.

  What initially had made my heart skip a beat and my stomach flutter, turned into something so dark within seconds. Nolan’s selfie was no selfie at all. He had his back to a refrigerator with pictures and recipes stuck to it with all sorts of magnets.

  But it wasn’t his kitchen he was standing in.

  It was my parents’.

  I ran through the grove, hopped onto my scooter, and sped off. I’d never wished I owned something faster before that day. My palms were sweating. The burn that usually started as a simmer was a full blown fucking fire by the time I hit the only stop sign in town.

  Nolan stoked the fire more when, in the same type of letter magnets I’d used to leave him my good-bye message, he had one of his own written out for me on my parents’ fridge.

  FUCK YOU

  HOPE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Rage

  All the lights were off when I got to my parents’ house. I’d parked my scooter up the street and slung my bag around my shoulders. With my gun drawn, I crawled along the fence until I rounded the house to the backyard.

  In the dark, I snuck up the back steps of the porch one by one when I spotted him sitting in a chair in the corner.

  Waiting.

  I aimed my gun and crept up the stairs slowly and quietly until I was standing right behind Nolan. My gun cocking was the only sound.

  “It took you long enough…HOPE,” Nolan said, without turning around.

  “Where the fuck are my parents?” I asked, pushing the gun into the back of his head. “If you hurt them, I’m going to do things to you that your fucking nightmares are too scared to come up with.”

  Nolan chuckled dark and deep, but there was no humor about it, or about him. “Your threats are…adorable.” He stood and turned around, kicking the chair off to the side. My gaze darted to the gun in his hand. “Tell me, Hope, were you going to threaten me before or after you killed me back at the cottage?”

  “I wasn’t going to kill you—” I started, but Nolan interrupted.

  “Bullshit!”

  “You didn’t let me finish!” I yelled, not caring if I woke up every neighbor on the block. “I wasn’t going to kill you until I got the order. Lucky for you, it never came.”

  Nolan gazed up and down my body. “No, but I remember how you felt when you did. On my fingers. On my tongue.”

  My nipples went hard instantly. I hoped he couldn’t see, but when his eyes lingered on my chest and he licked his bottom lip, I knew he had.

  He wore a tight black T-shirt and faded jeans. They sat low on his hips. His ab muscles flexed through the thin fabric of his shirt. His jaw was scruffy. He was barefoot. The only thing that looked different since
I’d seen him last was the addition of dark circles under his eyes. He looked tired.

  And angry.

  Between the two of us, the anger was palpable, radiating off our bodies like mist rising on a hot night.

  My gaze again dropped to his gun.

  “Is this what you’re looking at?” Nolan asked, waving the gun in his hand but not aiming it at me. “If it bothers you, I’ll just get rid of it.” He turned and tossed the gun into the dark yard.

  “That was fucking stupid.”

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. “You know, I planned something different at first. The Warrior part of me thought the best way to deal with you was to put you down, like I would any rat.” His nostrils flared. “But I came up with a punishment I think I’ll enjoy much…much better.”

  “Tell me where the fuck my parents are!” I yelled. Nolan had about ten seconds before I was no longer in control of my trigger finger.

  “They’re alive and unharmed, and that’s all you need to know…for now,” Nolan said taking a step toward me.

  I aimed the gun higher at his chest, and suddenly it hit me that it didn’t feel natural like it always had, like an extension of my arm. Instead, it hung heavy off my wrist and I wanted nothing more than to chuck it into the fucking backyard like Nolan had his.

  But I didn’t

  I couldn’t.

  Could I?

  Nolan took another step then reached for my gun. I tried to squeeze the trigger, but it was like my finger wouldn’t listen to my brain, rebelling against me.

  Just like my emotions have since second Nolan rolled his way into my life.

  My empty life.

  “What? You can’t do it? I heard you were ruthless. A fucking killer. The Angel of Death,” Nolan challenged, grabbing the barrel of the gun and pushing it into his chest. “You want to kill me? Then do it. Just fucking do it! I’m not gonna run away like you did.” He lowered his voice. “Not ever.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Nolan,” I said, “or should I call you Goon?” I needed to just pull the trigger and walk away. Find my parents. This should’ve been easy.

  This job. This life. This boy.

  None of it was the way it was supposed to be anymore.

  Not since the day I pulled him from the pool.

  Nolan leaned over, his cool breath against my cheek. “If you wanted to shoot me, you would have already done it.” He glanced down at the gun then back up at me. “You don’t want to shoot me.”

  “Maybe I’m just lining up my shot,” I argued.

  “Fine then, let me help you,” Nolan growled, dropping to his knees and pressing the gun against his forehead. I looked down to meet his eyes again and expected to see anger, but all I saw was hurt.

  “Rage, fucking do it. Shoot me if that’s what you really fucking want!” Nolan roared, his face turning red.

  Something inside of me snapped.

  I can’t do this.

  Not now.

  Not to him.

  Not ever.

  “You’ve already aimed the gun, just pull the fucking trigger,” he spat, jerking the gun against him even harder.

  No.

  Pulling the gun from his grip, I tossed it out into the yard the same way he had and did the only thing I seemed to be good at anymore.

  I ran.

  I ran into the woods as fast as I could, past the clearing where I’d met Smoke, past the tree where I’d taken out my early aggressions. When I reached the man-made lake, I hopped the metal rowboat Cody and I had tied up there when we were kids was still there. When I reached the end, I knelt down and much to my disappointment, the end of the rope was frayed and there was no boat to be seen. The trees rustled nearby, followed by heavy footsteps on the rickety pier that vibrated underneath my feet.

  “What you don’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t matter how far you run. It won’t change a fucking thing. Until you realize what matters, all your running is going to do is just piss me the fuck off!”

  “What matters?” I asked, standing to face him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “All that matters right now is standing right fucking here,” Nolan said, his voice thick and deep. His eyes were the darkest I’d ever seen them, glimmering with wicked intent. One side of his full lips curled upward in a devilish smirk.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I was consumed by him.

  Or at least, from the way he continued to fuck me with his eyes, I knew I was about to be.

  Nolan took a step forward and I took two back. Our little dance made him chuckle, the sound coming from deep within his throat. With just that little laugh, my insides clenched so hard I gasped.

  Nolan’s smirk grew into a knowing smile. His eyes darted to the space between my legs where my shorts had ridden up, exposing every inch of my shaking thighs.

  He licked his bottom lip, tracing it with the tip of his tongue.

  My inner battle raged on between wanting to run away from him, and wanting to run straight into him. Although, it wasn’t like it mattered which option won out in the end. The pier was narrow, and Nolan was blocking my only way out.

  He unbuckled his belt, sliding it out through the loops. Folding it in half, he snapped the leather together. The sound an echoing crack through the damp night air.

  Our dance continued as he took another step toward me and I again retreated. “Since you don’t seem to feel the same way, let me tell you what’s going to happen right now,” Nolan started. “I’m going to make you come on my fingers.” Step. “On my tongue.” Step. “And around my cock.” His last step closed the space between us. “We can worry about who gets to kill who after.”

  My back hit the railing, trapping me between the end of the pier and his hard wall of a chest. My breathing became even more labored, my chest rising and falling in quick succession against his. Pressing against my stomach, I could feel the heat of his hard cock through the worn fabric of his jeans. My nipples hardened as the ache in my core grew into need. “I’m going to fuck you, baby. Hard. And I’m not going to stop fucking you until you realize that this shit between us is all that matters.”

  Every bit of tightness that had been winding up my body over the last six months was nothing compared to having Nolan’s lips within inches of mine, his body pressed up against me, his hard cock nudging against my thigh. “Or maybe I’ll just go straight to the fucking. Since I haven’t been able to think of anything else but being inside you for the last six months.”

  There would be no escaping this time.

  From him.

  From this.

  From us.

  I’d never been so angry in my entire fucking life.

  “I see that look on your face,” Nolan said. “In your eyes. I feel the fucking anger burning off you like wild fire.” He grabbed my hand and pressed it flat against his erection. I moaned, loud