She was only something to use when he needed her, and he controlled her with his voice and the promise of amazing sex because she allowed it. She chose that. She had to learn to choose differently in order to save herself. No one else was going to save her; one way or the other, she was going to have to do it. She didn’t know if she could live without him, but then that was a choice as well.
“I’m telling you, Czar,” Savage said, as they approached the Torpedo Ink camp. “The moment Seychelle touches me, she’s going to know Tawny was all over me. What do you think is going to happen then? She was already upset that I left her. She’d asked me not to leave her and I did anyway.”
“You tell her nothing happened,” Czar said.
Savage stopped dead in his tracks. “Do you honestly believe she trusts me after the way I left her? She’s an extremely intelligent woman. She knows damn well she was brought here for a purpose and it wasn’t just because I need her with me. The club needed her at the bar, and now they need her again, but she isn’t included in the reasons why.”
“That’s for her protection, Savage,” Czar pointed out. “You just said it yourself. You don’t have her complete trust. Until you do, it’s too dangerous to her to know everything. If she were to get scared or angry and say something to the wrong people, where the hell would we be then?”
Savage knew Czar was subtly reminding him they’d eliminated all threats to members of the club. No one was eliminating Seychelle. He was in a hell of a position.
“Plank is going to insist she’s introduced to him. You’ve got to get some of the rage pulled out of you. I know this blows, Savage—the timing, everything about it—but we’re walking a tightrope. The Diamondback club is too big for us to take on. We’d be running for the rest of our lives. We have to get out from under this. Absinthe and Scarlet both know if someone is telling the truth, but they can’t tell if a suggestion has been planted. We’ve got names of some of the top Venomous members from Tawny who may be in on the assassination plot. It’s fairly ambitious to try to take out so many top members of one chapter at once. And they aren’t the only chapter here.” Czar rubbed his forehead. “I knew she was needed, I just didn’t know why.”
“I’m aware of the danger our club is in, Czar,” Savage said and glanced at his brother. Reaper understood what he was trying to say. His features might be unreadable, but his eyes held sympathy. He knew what Savage would be facing when he tried to talk to his woman after all but turning his back on her. “I’m telling you, the chances of Seychelle helping us out aren’t quite as good as you seem to think they are.”
He stalked away from the president, the others, and past the two prospects, who looked relieved that he had gotten back. He made his way deeper under the seclusion of the trees where he’d set up the camp. Seychelle sat in a camp chair, fully clothed, including her boots, and a heavy sweater with a vest over it. Not the club jacket, he noted. There was a coffee mug in her hand. She stared into the fire instead of looking up when he arrived.
Savage had washed up before he came to her, but he needed to change out of his clothes. He knew they had Tawny’s scent on them and probably drops of blood, although he’d been careful with her, maximum pain without too much damage. He pulled off his jacket and tee, watching her closely as he tossed them aside. She didn’t even turn her head.
“You going to talk to me?”
“There’s not much to say.”
“We had something unfinished before I had to leave. Let’s start there.”
She tossed the coffee onto the ground and put the mug down with a little sigh. “Just give me the bottom line, Savage. What do you need from me?” She turned then and looked at him. Her gaze slid from him to the clothes he’d tossed aside and then to the jeans he was pulling on. Usually, Seychelle was an open book. Right at that moment, he couldn’t read her at all.
Shit. She wasn’t going to give an inch. He didn’t blame her. If he’d been in her shoes, he would have walked away already. She’d closed herself off to him. That was walking away. He needed to get an explanation in fast before there was any physical contact.
“I want to tell you what went on tonight, and then we’ll talk about the things that we should have talked about before I had to leave. That was fucked up, Seychelle, me leaving when you needed me.”
She pushed out of the camp chair and paced away from him as he stomped his feet back into his boots and reached into his pack for a clean shirt. “I don’t need to know what went on tonight. Really, Savage. There’s no need to tell me.”
There really wasn’t interest in her voice, and that worried him more than anything. She moved restlessly around the firepit as if she couldn’t hold still, skirting carefully around him, keeping a safe distance away. She neared the picnic table, and out of habit she leaned down and picked up his dirty clothes off the ground, her fingers smoothing over his jeans and tee as she started to fold them.
Savage saw the moment images pushed into her mind. She froze, her breath catching. Very slowly, she raised her eyes to his. He expected condemnation. Pain. Agony. A burst of anger. Something. What he didn’t expect was emptiness. She looked at him as if she didn’t know him. As if he were a total stranger to her.
She didn’t drop his clothes on the ground the way he expected. She turned toward the picnic table and continued to fold them, only he saw her remove her engagement ring and push it into the pocket of his jeans.
His belly tightened into a thousand knots, but he kept his features as blank as hers. “Had to interrogate a woman tonight. That’s one of the worst jobs there is. Her name is Tawny. She has a history with our club, which made it even worse.”
She didn’t look at him again but paced away dismissively, as if she couldn’t care less what he said. She couldn’t leave, and that was his only advantage. She had to listen.
Savage kept talking. “She despised every one of us. From our club she went straight to the Diamondbacks and began to make as much trouble for them as she did for us. Code learned that a hit was put out not just on me but on several of the Diamondbacks as well. It turns out other hits were taken out on top members of the Venomous club, which is the club all of us suspected was behind the trouble. Four other members of Torpedo Ink have hits out on them as well as me.”
For the first time, she looked up, her eyes meeting his.
“Reaper, Ice, Storm and Alena are all on the list. That’s a lot of people under death threats.” He shoved his hand through his hair, suddenly tired. “This is such a fuckin’ shit show. And no, baby, interrogating Tawny definitely doesn’t mean she ever touched me in any sexual way. I can guarantee she never wants to see me again. I find her the most repulsive woman on the face of the earth.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face, trying to wipe out the memory of the greedy, grasping woman as she tried to crawl on her hands and knees and wrap herself around his legs, her fingers on his zipper. There was no arousal, only disgust.
“Seychelle, please look at me. I know I hurt you when I left. I didn’t know what I was walking into, so I couldn’t tell you. But it’s important to me that you believe me that I didn’t allow this woman or any other to touch me, nor did I touch them in a sexual way.”