Three Kinds of Trouble by Anne Malcom

Chapter Eleven

I purposefully woke early the next morning. Before Hades got back from club business. Whatever ‘club business’ meant. Whatever it was that tore him away from me just when we were finally about to have sex. Whatever had kept him out all fucking night.

Or the club business could’ve wrapped up promptly yet he‘d decided to go back to the club to get laid by someone else. Someone less complicated ... or whatever.

We weren’t married. We weren’t even dating let alone together. He just happened to be living at my house because someone connected to his club may or may not try to harm me and because my crazy ex-boyfriend may or may not come back to beat me up or worse.

He was well within his rights to get laid by a club girl or whoever if he wanted to. It was with that at the back of my mind that I got up before the sun and went to a spin class with Marilyn. She was surprised to see me there since she’d been inviting me for months, and not one single time had I taken her up on the offer. I was certain she’d made a deal with some kind of demon or supernatural entity making her able to dance until three in the morning then get up three hours later to do an hour of torture disguised as exercise.

Though I had to admit, it was a good way to take out my anger, frustration and all the excess energy coiled in my limbs. My ribs had protested ever so slightly since they weren’t completely healed yet. They definitely weren’t healed enough to go back to work. The doctor said it might be a few more weeks, and Kallum refused to even consider me coming back until I was completely healed.

I showered at the gym, something I’d never done in my adult life. I had no idea how often gym facilities were cleaned—although this place was pretty swanky, especially for a small town—and there were things like foot fungus. Then there was the fact I had a very rigorous skincare, makeup and hair care routine that took me over an hour with a whole bunch of products. Obviously, I couldn’t commence said routine in front of a poorly lit gym mirror without ample counter space or outlets, nor could I lug all of the products required for said routine in a small gym bag.

There were ample, very good reasons why I hadn’t showered at a gym, especially when my house was a ten-minute drive from the aforementioned gym. But now I had someone to avoid and punish just a little. So I made it work.

After a bare-bones skin and hair care routine, I had breakfast with Marilyn. She had some chia seed pudding thing. I had Nutella French toast. What was the point in killing yourself for an hour working out if you couldn’t eat Nutella French toast? Plus, I needed carbs and refined sugars in order to get through the day.

My phone had begun buzzing on the surprisingly spacious counter at the gym while I was drying my hair. My stomach dropped the second I saw his name on the screen. I had programmed the number in there when he’d demanded I save the numbers of all the club members. He’d never called me, and I’d never called him, so some pathetic, needy, desperate part of me itched to answer it immediately. Fortunately, that part of me was very small, so I held back. I ignored his call. And the one after that. And the three texts.

Marilyn glanced down at my buzzing phone halfway through our meal. “Someone is really insistent about getting hold of you before eight in the morning,” she commented evenly.

I swallowed my toast. “Mmm-hmm.”

She quirked an expertly manicured brow. “It doesn’t happen to be that hotter than Hades,” her eyes twinkled as she said that, “biker who has been attached to your shadow lately?”

I sighed. “It may be.”

Her face lit up. “Excellent. I would say you finally got laid, but if that were true you wouldn’t have been getting your sweat on with me this morning, nor would you have showered and cut your morning routine in half in order to avoid going home.”

I sipped my coffee. “How did you get all of that so early in the morning?”

She waved her hand. “I’m psychic. I’m good at picking up the details.” She put down her spoon and eyed me with intensity. “You haven’t had sex yet, but you’ve come close. Really fucking close. Since he’s been in your life, in your home for a decent amount of time, you’ve been wanting him, which I’m sure feels like forever. He’s a hot-blooded man, so he’s wanted you since the moment he saw you, and he’s obviously battling with some demons since he’s a big bad alpha male who is used to just taking what he wants.” She took a break to sip her tea.

“And that’s a compliment, honey, that he’s fighting all of his instincts for you,” she continued. “Because he respects you. Thinks you’re too good for him—which you are. You’re too good for all of us. He’s a bad guy trying to do a good thing. But since he’s a bad guy to the bone, in all the worst and best ways, he’s not doing the noble thing of leaving you alone which makes your coupling inevitable and only makes him grow more attached to you every second you spend together.”

I gulped my coffee, desperately wishing it was a mimosa.

“You’re attached to him because you’re a unique woman with a huge heart, and he’s hot as balls,” she stated softly. “But that’s not why you’re attached to him. You see the bad, and you want to dig beneath it, to find the good. And the bad excites you. Because unlike your other boyfriends, you know that his kind of bad will never be used against you, only against the motherfuckers stupid enough to even think about laying a hand on you.”

And on that, she leaned back, flipped her hair over her shoulder and crossed her legs. “I’ll bet my vintage Chanel that he’ll be walking his fine ass through that door,” she pointed a long nail to the entrance, “within the next ten minutes. I’m surprised you even managed to get any breakfast, honestly.”

I blinked at her, amazed, impressed and mystified.

It was at that moment, the door to the café opened and the air pulsed with intensity thanks to the large, pissed off, sinfully hot biker currently prowling through the café.

“Are you a witch?” I whispered across the table to Marilyn.

She just grinned wickedly.

There wasn’t any time to digest everything she’d just said or to debate her magical powers because Hades was here, pulling me out of my chair.

Pulling me out of my fucking chair.

He didn’t exactly drag me out of it because my body kind of moved of its own accord, but he did most of the work. While holding my upper arm, he reached into his cut, somehow got cash out of his wallet one handed, then threw way too many bills on the table.

“Get your shit,” he demanded, nodding to the bag I’d set on the vacant chair beside me.

“You can’t just—”

“Here you go, sweetie,” Marilyn interrupted, leaning over the table to snatch my bag before holding it out to me, smiling smugly.

I glared at her. “You really are a witch.”

She only winked and wagged the bag at me, which was actually really impressive considering she was doing it one-handed and that bag was heavy as all hell.

As much as I wanted to sit my ass back down, attach myself to the chair and refuse to leave—only a little bit of that was due to the three bites of French toast that were left on my plate—I knew when I was outnumbered and fighting was futile.

Instead, I snatched the bag and stumbled ever so slightly as the weight of it transferred from Marilyn to me. Hades, quick as lightning, grabbed the bag from me without so much as flinching, then he proceeded to drag me out of the restaurant.

Okay, drag might’ve been a little dramatic since I mostly walked out of my own power, but still. It was only after we’d left the main street and were down an alley where he’d parked his bike that I thought to stop walking and snatched my arm from his grip.

Or at least tried to.

Hades only stopped walking because he literally would have had to drag me otherwise, and that was obviously crossing a line for him. But his hands tightened around my upper arm, almost to the point of pain. He was making it clear that he wasn’t going to let go of me.

The tightness of his jaw and the chill in his gaze told me he was pissed. Really pissed. Join the fucking club, buddy.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed.

“I tracked your phone.” He didn’t let go of my elbow.

I kept trying to pull it from his grip, but I barely moved. “You tracked my phone?” I repeated, my voice sharp. “That is an invasion of privacy.”

“You’ve got about a million fuckin’ apps on there already that are already invading your privacy,” he fired back. “What I’m doin’ is try to keep you safe.”

“I’m at brunch!” I screeched. “The only thing you’re keeping me safe from is from ordering a second serving of French toast that I’m ninety-nine percent sure has crack in it because there is no other way they can make it taste that good.”

I thought my voice held the right amount of outrage and strength in it, but it didn’t have its intended effect since some of the chill left Hades’s eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Don’t you smile at me when I’m planning on being pissed off at you for a great deal longer,” I demanded.

I saw the twitch again.

“Fuck you’re cute,” he muttered, yanking me forward so our bodies pressed together.

I let out an embarrassing little sigh as they did which caused his eyes to darken and his head to dip lower so our lips were almost touching.

Almost.

“I’m not trying to be cute,” I whispered. “I’m trying to be otherworldly and threatening.”

His mouth twitched again, and it was even more attractive up this close. “You are definitely not from any world I know,” he murmured as his eyes raked over my face. “And you most definitely are a huge fucking threat.”

Something in his words told me that was a compliment. A big one. A scary one.

“Get in your car, Freya, and get your ass home,” he ordered softly.

In about two seconds, my ass was in my car and on my way home.

* * *

He did not fuck me when I got home, like I’d expected he would. Like his eyes had promised he would. As if he’d timed it, his phone rang the second we both walked in the door. To be fair, he did look like he was ready to kill whatever guy or gal dared call him. To be fair, I was also ready to kill whoever had dared to call Hades when it seemed like this was going to finally fucking happen between us.

Then I’d been ready to kill him for glancing down at the phone, seeing who was calling and then fucking answering it. I knew it was ridiculously unreasonable for me to get as pissed off as I did, but I was a woman frustrated. Severely sexually frustrated. So I did get pissed off.

Pissed off enough to stomp off to my room, shutting my door very loudly after I entered it. Not quite a slam—only teenagers slammed doors. Adult women shut them with passion. I ripped off all my clothes with the same passion. Not the kind of passion that I’d been expecting them to be ripped off with, but what could you do?

A small, romantic, foolish, sexually frustrated part of me expected Hades to storm into the bathroom as I showered, get in fully clothed, free himself from his jeans and fuck me senseless.

Although I’d showered at the gym, I took another one. I needed another one. A cold one. One to wash off the thin layer of perspiration covering my entire body. I even treated myself to a top-level shower. One including the exfoliating, the shaving, the hair mask, the pumice stone, all of it. The kind of shower that was usually reserved for Sunday nights so I could follow it up by slathering myself in expensive body cream, putting on my hundred-dollar face mask, then covering my hands in Vaseline while indulging in a Real Housewives marathon.

Once the shower finished without any kind of orgasm or intrusion by Hades, I did put on expensive body cream, but I didn’t follow that with any of the other steps. Because I’d glanced at my phone, read the text from Macy and made a decision. A decision that had me blow drying my hair, something I preferred to pay someone to do because I had a lot of hair, and I could never get it looking as good as the hairstylist did.

But I was pissed off, determined and turned on. Apparently, that was the recipe—at least my recipe—for the perfect blow-dry. Then I spent thirty minutes applying the ‘no makeup’ makeup look. The kind that made my skin look dewy and flawless, my lips look impossibly pink and full, and my lashes look long and lush.

Next, I put on a sundress. It was technically getting too cold for a sundress, but I had a plan. It was white, simple and not exactly my style. I’d bought it because I knew I’d need it sometime, whether I had some kind of picnic to go to or if I had to torture an alpha male. A short skirt, visible midriff and ample cleavage were all well and good for making a man want you, but it was the impossibly fitted, perfectly tailored sundress that made men go wild.

Especially when paired with a pair of wedges that wrapped up my calves.

I dabbed perfume on my wrists, then behind my ears, staring at myself in the mirror. The bruises were a slight shadow underneath the light makeup, just barely visible. My cut was still red and angry but muted by the concealer I’d dabbed on. Yes, I looked good. Fucking great. My eyes then flickered to the door, the one that was still closed.

I had taken my sweet ass time in here, and there was no way a phone call lasted that long. He wasn’t coming in. Sure, I could’ve strutted down to the living room and made the first move. I’d done it before. I liked the power of it. It was a confidence booster, that was for sure. I abhorred most of the conventional rituals surrounding dating. Rituals that gave men all of the power, that made women submissive, that left them sitting by the phone or led them to spend two hours in their bathroom.

But I wasn’t going to do that with Hades. This wasn’t about power. We were both powerless in this. I knew that he had been battling it, the attraction, this thing between us. I knew that it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced with a man, and it scared the shit out of me. Nothing about this was conventional.

I pulled the door open with the same passion that I’d recently closed it. My gaze flickered out the window, facing the driveway. His bike was still here. Of course it was. I hadn’t heard it roar off, and I’d been listening for that. But Hades wouldn’t roar off, not while my life was still in danger. Although I didn’t think it really was. I had not seen or heard from Derek since that night. No heavy breathing phone calls, no threatening notes on the windshield of my car.

I wasn’t sure if he’d scared himself off or if he thought he’d killed me. Or maybe he had been following me and realized that I was constantly in the presence of some kind of armed, alpha male wearing a patch that declared them an ultimate badass. Derek would definitely be threatened by that. He was not an alpha male. He got manicures weekly. Not that a man couldn’t be an alpha male and get manicures, but Derek was not.

It was terrible of me, but I’d pretty much forgotten about Derek. Sure, he was front and center when I jerked awake from nightmares where he’d done a lot more than beat the shit out of me, but other than that, I barely thought of him.

My mind was preoccupied, fixated on the guy who was meant to be protecting me from Derek. My mind was also focused on teaching the aforementioned guy a lesson. The lesson being me leaving the house while he was still, presumably, on the phone.

Earlier, I’d put my purse on the sideboard in my entryway, my keys in the jade bowl in the middle of it. I couldn’t hear Hades murmuring on the phone from the direction of the living room, so I figured he was taking Sirius to ‘walk the perimeter’ as he did sometimes. Or he was chain smoking on the patio as he did often.

“Where are you going?” a cold voice demanded.

I jumped, my keys clattering to the floor. Hades was leaning against the door jam, staring at me. There was challenge in his eyes, like he’d caught me doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. Like he was going to punish me for something.

Fuck did I want him to punish me for something.

I bent down to retrieve my keys, Hades’s gaze following me the entire time. That did nothing to tamp down the fire burning inside of me.

“I’m going shopping,” I answered, my throat dry.

“Shopping,” he repeated, in his predictably flat tone. There was no inflection at the end of the word, but it was a question, nonetheless.

“Yes, I’m going shopping, Hades,” I snapped, forcing my tone to be snippy because I didn’t want it to be all breathy and turned on. “Because Macy and Hansen are having a party.”

I had never met Macy, but I’d seen photos of her after while I was stalking her and all the Old Ladies on social media. I had no idea how Macy had gotten my number or knew anything about me, but I knew that I was going to her party.

“Because Macy has a boho-chic thing going that is absolutely fucking amazing,” I continued, showing off just how deep my digital stalking had gone. “Because Scarlett dresses like a sex goddess. Because Macy told me Gwen and Amy are coming, and I stalked their social media, and I think they may be the most glamorous creatures to walk planet Earth,” I rambled on. “I know you’re going to say that you’ve seen my closet and I have plenty of clothes, that I couldn’t possibly need another outfit for a party, but don’t you say that. Don’t you dare.” It was around now that I began pointing at him.

I didn’t know how a conversation about shopping led to me babbling in a semi-shrill voice while pointing aggressively at a dangerous man in a Sons of Templar cut. Then again, I had no idea how I got tangled up with the Sons of Templar in general, let alone had one living in my house.

I was breathing heavily by the end of my tirade, my face contorted into a frown I feared was not at all cute. Hades, for his part, looked calm and placid.

There wasn’t even a slight rise of his dark brow to communicate that he was starting to think I was fucking crazy.

He just stared.

I started to sweat, and my hands fisted at my sides.

The silence rang between us. It was a thick silence. A really fucking thick silence, full of tension, and extremely sexual. I couldn’t breathe beneath the weight of his stare, and my panties became drenched from the promise in his eyes. He was going to cross the distance between us. Grab me. Plaster his mouth to mine. He was going to taste like sex and man. Then he was going to tear off my clothes and fuck me hard, brutally.

I would’ve bet my life on it.

But instead, he opened his mouth and said something I never thought I’d hear him say.

“Let’s go shopping then.”