She sighed and looked up at him again. This time he read remorse. Her eyes were overbright, a beautiful gem-like sapphire.
“He wanted me to stop him, Savage. He wanted me to shield Doris from him. That opened me up to him. He saw my notes and could trace them just as easily as I could trace his. That was what he wanted from me, a thread. He didn’t have to be stronger. He just needed an in and I gave it to him because I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Baby, you can’t think that way.”
“He wants you gone. Out of his way. I really made him angry. I turned down his invitation of a date, and he’s very vain. Then I interfered with Sahara and got her away from him. Then I did it again with Tessa. You’re mine, Savage. If for no other reason, he’ll try to take you away from me.”
“Before you decide this is all on you, let’s separate what we think is going on here. First, you think Brandon is the one who put out a hit on me. If he’s using a suggestion buried in his voice, he wouldn’t be paying for a hit, Seychelle.”
“No, not unless that’s his backup plan. What are the odds that I wouldn’t come on the run with you, Savage? Even if he did manage to plant a suggestion through Shari, taking away my ability to give you a blow job on this run, he still has to believe you’ll bring me with you.”
Savage rubbed the top of her hand with his thumb. Yeah, that was true, but he had a well-deserved reputation for being a first-class bastard. “If he asked around about me, angel, he’d learn very quickly that I don’t give two fucks about anyone but my club. I’ve never treated the women I’ve used as more than a face fuck. I’ve used them and walked away without looking back. He most likely would think I would fuck another woman right in front of you.”
He didn’t like admitting what a dick he was, but it was necessary if they were going to figure this out. In any case, he wanted to be honest with her. The strange thing was, and he’d never understood it, a few of the women did want a repeat performance, and others, having heard of him or even seen his treatment of the women on runs, because he didn’t hide what he did, begged him to be next.
Her eyes widened, moved over his face as if searching to see if he was telling her the truth. “Would you really do something like that?”
“Before you?” He sighed. “I did a hell of a lot worse. I’ve never tried to hide what I am from you, Seychelle. If anything, I’ve gone out of my way to be very honest, so you had every opportunity to walk away.” He made a point of using the past tense. As far as he was concerned, they’d made a commitment, and it was solid now. She wasn’t backing out, no matter how tough things got.
“I promised you I’m one hundred percent in with you, baby, all the way. I meant it. There will not be other women. I don’t cheat. I expect the same from you.” He caught her chin and looked her straight in the eyes. “I know ways to torture a man, learned that shit starting at an early age in that school I was in, and I’d apply every one of them to any man who dared put his hands on you.”
She gave him a little half smile. “I guess I should have gotten an instructional manual on ways to torture and kill, just in case you go back on your word.”
“I can teach you anything you want to know. You don’t need books or videos on anything, Seychelle.”
Her gaze drifted over the angles and planes of his face for a long time. He let her look until she nodded.
“He’s got to have programmed more than one woman to vie to give you a blow job, Savage, and in the middle of it, or afterward, when you’re not thinking too clearly, she’s going to try to kill you.” Seychelle was certain. “I’m a little insecure in that department, so wherever you’re going, I hope you’re taking me with you.”
He didn’t look away from her. That was an impossibility with what he had to do for the club. “Baby …”
“Damn it, Savage.” She tried to pull her hand out from under his. At the same time, her legs, tucked under her, came down so she could stand, but he refused to release her.
“Stop it, Seychelle. You know I came here to work. The kind of work I do is not something I’m willing for you to see. So no, I’m not taking you with me. You’re going to stay right here at our campsite with several guards on you and wait for me to return. When I come back, most likely I’m going to need you. You’re going to know I haven’t been with another woman.”
“This is such bullshit. I hate this so much. I really do. I suppose all your brothers know what you’ll be doing. Lana, Alena, Lissa and Scarlet will know what you’ll be doing. Only I have to sit here by myself with guards around me, once again the outsider.”
“I’m getting information we need, and I won’t be polite about it,” he said quietly. “Since when don’t you trust me? Has Campbell really managed to mess with your mind to such an extent that you can’t trust me anymore?”
She frowned and pressed her hands over her ears. “I keep hearing laughter and seeing images in my head, Savage. It isn’t you. I told you, he got inside my head.”
“We’ll get him out. Before we do, I need to know if you think any of the other members really could be in danger as well,” he said, suddenly alarmed. He had been thinking in terms of the hit placed on him, not on the other club members being in danger. All of them were dominant men, and most had fairly dark fetishes they indulged in on the runs.
“He’d be spreading himself thin,” Seychelle said. “But I would warn them just in case.”
Savage did, sending out a mass text, including Alena and Lana. He didn’t know what they were into, and he didn’t want either of them caught unaware.
“Brandon hates the Diamondbacks and wants to destroy them,” Savage ventured. He used his own hand to rub her palm up and down his thigh while he puzzled out how Brandon could use his talent to wreak the kind of havoc with the clubs they were seeing. “How would he go about it?”
“He’s using women,” Seychelle said with confidence. “He just has to listen to his half brothers talking and he’d get the structure of the club. Who is important, who is married, who matters. Jealousies. Anything like that. He would be patient and collect the information over time. Remember, for Brandon, it’s all a game. He likes to feel superior and powerful. He doesn’t want you to know you’re even playing the game with him until it’s too late.”
“Shit,” Savage said. “He’d use their old ladies?”
“Once he knows who the wives are, he just accidentally bumps into the ones he wants to influence. He can do that at a coffee shop. Anywhere. He’s charming. No threat. If it’s a Diamondback, he’d be even less of a threat, because four of his brothers are Diamondbacks. It would be so easy to get all the data he needs to undermine very subtly the various club members’ relationships.”
“Such as Plank, the president, and Pierce, his enforcer,” Savage ventured.
“Most definitely,” Seychelle confirmed.
Now that he knew how and why, Savage sent a lengthy text to Czar explaining everything Seychelle had discussed with him.
“Now that we have that out of the way, baby, we have the rest of the evening to get that little bastard out of your head.”