Binding Ties

Chapter Ten

Clarke tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in agitation.

He hadn't wanted to come back, hadn't wanted to see her – to face her. But fuck, he knew that was a lie, he was desperate to see her, he just hadn't found an excuse good enough to force himself to face the fact.

He clenched his hand around the wheel, swinging his Escalade into the side of one of the picture perfect avenues that he'd been aimlessly driving through, and shutting off the engine. Fisting her tiny gold locket in his coarse hand, he fought to calm his ragged breathing, still uneasy about the fact that four days had passed since they'd got Sophie out of Tourniquet – by now they would know that Frenchie was dead – and yet not a whisper had passed the grapevine.

No news was definitely not good news.

No news was more like an army of Bratva Russians had found a quiet corner to convene and were plotting the disposal of various body parts.

He swore quietly to himself, looking through the trees at Casey's bungalow, what the fuck was he doing? Hell, he didn't even recognise himself since all this shit had started! He had no claim to her, no reason for this burning, relentless need to pull her into his arms and never let her go. But some primitive, instinctual part of him couldn't bear the distance between them, even when distance was exactly what they needed – what he needed. Hell, he had no business with someone like her, hadn't he already proved that? Shit, she'd deserved someone so much better for her first time – a male that would show her tenderness, and love, not a dirty fuck in a hovel of shit memories. It should have been gentle, with candles and soft words, and someone she'd shared more than a getaway and a bar of Cadburys with.

And yet, even as he said it, every possessive instinct he had left him curling his fists and banging them against his furrowed brow in frustration, trying to knock the images out of his head of those other hands marring her soft flesh at Tourniquet.

Fuck, this was not the time or the place to be batting down a hard-on for a Russian gangster princess.

He should just pull a K turn and get the fuck out of dodge.

His head was braced against the rest, eyes squeezed shut out of pure fucking frustration, so he didn't see the dark, broad figure at his window, but the quick rap of knuckles on the glass had him so startled he reached for his strap out of pure instinct.

"Woah," Nate had his arms up in the air in mock surrender, "Roll down the window! I only want to know why you're scoping out my digs like something out of a fucking Hitchcock movie?"

The smug bastard was shirtless, shoeless, and smiling. Man's sense of fucking common decency had completely died since he'd been back with his woman – he was pretty much naked but for his trackies – that was the only get-up Clarke ever saw him in, like he'd just finished having sex every minute of the fucking day.

"Do you ever get fucking dressed?" he growled, shifting out of the Escalade, catching some movement in one of the windows out of his peripheral. His heart started racing as he caught sight of her, yeah, he should just have stayed at home. Cock in hand, with a porno on replay.

"She's not good, man," Nate was suddenly serious, closer to his back than Clarke was entirely comfortable with. The fact that Casey caught him unawares was testament to how much of his fucking edge he lost when she was all up in his head.

He wouldn't ask. He wouldn't ask about her. She wasn't his problem.

"Why?" Oh, hell ...

"Tried everything," Nate ran a weary looking hand over his buzz cut, shrugging helplessly, "Even the girls can't get to her, she just stays locked up in her room. It's like she's still there, man."