Raw: The Ultimate Mc Collection by Honey Palomino Page B

 I thought he was going to argue with me.  Ask me to stay.  Offer to give me a ride.
    Instead, his lips possessed mine again, only this time, the sweetness from earlier was gone, the gentleness had turned to raw passion, and his lips moved against me urgently, hungrily, devouring me.  I moaned against him, the sheer force of his kiss bringing all that emotion that I had worked so hard to stuff down right back to the surface of my heart.
    He tore his lips away from me, and I stared up at him.  The moonlight reflected in his eyes, giving me a chance to see what I couldn’t earlier.  Desire and yearning flashed in them like a bright light, before he lowered his head once more, engulfing my mouth, his kiss even deeper this time, searchingly assaulting me with his tender passion until, once again, I melted into the comfort of his arms.  
    “Sam,” he whispered as he broke away again, “you belong with me.  Let me keep you safe.  Unless we figure out that you belong with someone else, but until then, I want to keep you close.”
    I nodded, his kiss and his words having stunned me into silence.  Is it possible he could care about me like this?  He didn’t even know anything about me.  If there was even anything to know.
    “Come back to the clubhouse.  Don’t worry about Cherry.  I’ve already taken care of her, and she won’t be bothering you again. Let’s keep plugging away at our plan. Something will give, I’m sure of it.”
    I nodded again, at a complete loss for words.  
    He put his arm around me, and turned me around.  Arm in arm, we strolled back to the club, the moonlight lighting our path.  When we heard a soft whistling hoo-hoo-hoooo in the distance, Ryder shook his head and chuckled.
    “That damned owl,” he whispered.
    “He a friend of yours?” I asked.
    “I guess you could say that,” he murmured.

    CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Ryder

    I missed the whole scene with Cherry and Sam, but I heard about it from five different people about thirty seconds after it happened.  After bitching out Cherry, and reminding her that she had no claim on me, and never had, and never would, I set off to find Sam.
    I knew she wouldn’t have gotten far on foot, and I was right.
    What I didn’t expect was that I would round the corner and find her crouched down and petting that damned owl.  What was with that guy? I wondered for a moment why he was always alone. 
    He needs a girlfriend , I thought.   
    I knew I should tell her the truth.  I knew in the back of her mind, she was probably thinking that asshole was going to come back for her.  Or, that he was looking for her.  But she hadn’t asked me directly, and like a fucking coward, I hadn’t told her that he was dead.  Because I knew she would hate me if she knew.
    That was the thing about being one of the Gods.  People looked at you like they knew what you had done, whether you had done anything or not.  Sure, I had broken laws.  A whole fucking lot of them.  But it was rare that anything turned violent, and when it did, I wasn’t immune to the violence. I wasn’t a fucking monster.
    That didn’t stop everyone from thinking that I was.
    But not Sam.  She looked at me like I was human. Like I was almost normal.  I didn’t want to be normal, no fucking way.  It was the last thing I ever thought about before she came along.  But now that she was here, and I saw the way she looked at me, without that familiar fear in her eyes, without crossing her arms over her chest defensively, - hell, just the fact that she looked me directly in the eye was more than I was used to - now I wanted it. 
    She trusted me.  
    Trust.  That was a foreign concept to me.  
    And for the life of me, no matter how much I tried to not give a shit, I didn’t want to lose that.  
    At least not before I had to.  And if I didn’t have to confirm to her right away that I was a cold-blooded killer, then so be it.  I knew it wouldn’t matter that I was defending her, she