Great.

Hunter carried me into the living room and set me down on the couch gently. Skid dropped Sophie down next to me, and she struggled to sit up.

“Here’s the situation,” Hunter said. “You’re here as leverage. One of the Reapers down in Portland—Toke—made a real bad call tonight. He went to our house and started shooting, no warning, no provocation.”

Fuck, I thought, eyes going wide. Toke was definitely a Reaper, but he’d been in the wind for the past week. I felt a burning pain in my side, where the wound he’d given me the weekend before was still healing. He’d cut me with a fucking knife in the middle of a party. Allegedly it was an accident, but Dad wasn’t amused. He’d taken off after him shooting.

Now Toke had found a new way to cause damage. Asshole.

“He took a hostage when he left. One of our brothers is down and a second is probably getting tortured to death right now, so you’ll have to excuse us for being a little abrupt about this whole thing. Your daddy”—he nodded at me—“is gonna do what it takes to get our guy back for us. That happens, you go home.”

I studied Liam, torn between hurt that he’d betrayed me and unspeakable rage toward Toke. I didn’t know the details of what had gone down between him and the club. Last weekend there’d been a big meeting, but I didn’t have anything to do with that. Not like I was privy to club business—that was a boys’ game. But I wasn’t stupid, either, and I’d been born a Reaper.

Something had gone very wrong in that meeting for things to get this far out of balance.

I really did want to shoot Toke, I decided. I also wanted to shoot Liam. No, his name is Hunter, I reminded myself. His name is Hunter and you don’t know him at all.

“You’re dead, Liam,” I told him, emphasizing the fake name, making it clear I was onto his shit. He didn’t respond. “My dad is going to put you in the ground. Let us go now and I’ll try to talk him out of it. Otherwise it’ll be too late. I’m serious. He. Will. Kill. You.”

This was the simple truth.

“Sorry, babe,” he said, and his voice sounded so sincere, so much like the man I’d thought I’d known … It cut through me in a way Toke’s knife never could. “I get that you’re scared and pissed, but I’m not going to let a brother die just because some Reaper had a tantrum.”

Don’t talk about my club that way, I wanted to growl at him. Goddamned men. Why did their bullshit always have to spill over on me? I narrowed my eyes at him, willing every bit of angry hatred I felt into my words.

“Fuck you.”

Hunter (I decided not to call him Liam anymore—Liam was a nice name for a nice guy, and it didn’t fit this bastard at all) glanced at his friend, then rubbed a hand over his face. For a minute he looked tired.

Jackass.

I was going to laugh at his funeral.

“Okay, let’s go upstairs,” Hunter announced. He glanced over at poor Sophie, who had gone pale. My anger faded a little, replaced by guilt. I needed to stop worrying about my hurt feelings and start planning our escape. If we had to wait for Dad to find Toke, we might find ourselves dead in a ditch.

Not that I really thought Hunter would kill me … Despite the evidence to the contrary, I just couldn’t fathom him truly hurting me. Denial? Probably. Skid was another story. There was something evil in his eyes.

Hunter pulled out a Leatherman and knelt down at my feet. I considered kicking him in the chin but decided that wouldn’t do me much good strategically. Pity. Then he cut the rope. Skid pulled out a pistol and cocked it loudly.

“You cause trouble, I’ll shoot you,” he said, and I realized I’d succeeded in conveying my homicidal intentions clearly. Yay me! “Hunter’s nice. I’m not.”

Strangely enough his words helped me focus—I’d let myself get worked up over my hurt pride, but I couldn’t let anger take over my brain. I couldn’t afford to do something stupid. Sophie might be a sweetheart, but she wasn’t a Reaper and she had no idea what we were up against. I’d have to be the one to get us out of this.

Sobering thought.

Hunter grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. Then he tugged me up a flight of stairs off to the side of the living room. Behind us I heard Skid and Sophie following. Hunter opened a door on the right and pulled me in, kicking it shut behind us. I looked around. It was a bedroom.

With a bed.

Suddenly the situation took on a new set of implications I hadn’t considered before. Liam’s whole persona might’ve been a great, big, fat fake, but he hadn’t been faking one thing. I’d definitely felt his dick poking my ass earlier. Either he wore a hell of a prosthetic at all times, or he actually wanted to fuck me. Now he had a nice, comfy bed to do it on.

Shit.

His hands grasped mine, and I heard the click of the lock turning on the cuffs. I wasn’t free, though—he held my wrists tight as he pushed me across the room. I refused to move my feet, stalling. He leaned down, speaking softly in my ear.

“Get on the fucking bed, Em.”

Warmth bathed my ear and I could smell him all around. Because there’s something wrong with me, that turned me on.

“That sounds like a bad idea,” I said, trying not to sound nervous. I needed to get on the offense, take some control of the situation. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Talk away,” he muttered, bringing my hands around to the front of my body. He stepped forward, taking both of them in one big hand. I felt his heat behind me, his large body dwarfing and surrounding mine.

I also felt his cock again.

No fucking way I could miss that giant thing digging into my lower back. Double shit. I needed a diversion.

“I don’t think you realize what’s happening,” I said quickly. “I know you want to find Toke. I get that—if someone attacked one of our club brothers, I’d be after him, too. But Toke stabbed me last weekend—”

Hunter froze, then I was moving through the air, lifted straight up against his chest as he carried me. He pushed me down, rolled me to my back, and straddled me all in one smooth move, pinning my arms up and over my head.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

“Explain how he hurt you,” he said, his voice grim and his eyes cold. “Now.”

I closed my eyes, trying to think.

Oh, I was at this party with all my friends and family, and then this guy I’m supposed to be able to trust got pissy for some reason (that I’m not allowed to know) and he cut me with a big, giant knife. Then my dad tried to shoot him, I got a few stitches, and now we’re all pretending it never happened.

Nope, nothing weird about that.

I’d planned to tell him it was an accident if we got far enough for him to find the bandage hiding under my top. Seemed believable enough to me, seeing as most people don’t go running around with random knife wounds. Not like it was particularly bad. Sure, it hurt a bit if I pulled at it, but it wasn’t exactly deep.

I took a deep breath, trying to figure out the best way to handle this. Toke definitely wasn’t my favorite person right now, but he was still a Reaper and this was our private business. I couldn’t give Hunter anything to use against the club. On other hand, I needed to keep him on my side, what with the not-wanting-to-end-up-dead-in-a-ditch issue.

“It was an accident,” I said slowly, which was sort of true. I was pretty sure Toke had no intention of cutting me, personally, when he’d unsheathed his knife. “We were just fucking around at a party last weekend—”

“Fucking around?” he asked, eyes growing colder, which really shouldn’t have been possible, yet he still managed to pull it off. “What’s the story between you and Toke?”

“Nothing. Shit, nothing, okay? Although why the hell you would care I can’t imagine.”

“You have no idea what I care about.”

“And I could give a shit,” I muttered. “Do you want to hear the details or not?”