The Fae Book 3: Butcher and Raine

Chapter 14 (Butcher): A Threat

***TW for domestic violence and violent acts***

How shitty did you have to treat someone before they stopped coming around? Because nothing I was doing was keeping Raine completely away.

Telling her I didn't want her or the baby, that I'd sign my rights away, should have kept her far from me. But somehow, we kept crossing paths.

She just needed to stop. Stop coming around me. Talking to me. Calling me on the phone. Smarting off to me. Just fucking looking at me with those eyes of hers that reflected whatever the hell she was feeling. Every time she was anywhere near me, I was having these urges that I didn't know what the fuck to do with. She made me feel like I was underwater and needed to follow the bubbles to figure out which fucking way was up.

These urges were nothing I'd ever experienced before and nothing I'd ever wanted to experience. I'd lived all my life without urges like this, and I'd be fucking happy to never have felt them. The desires I was used to were the ones to maim and kill my enemies. Those were what I knew and understood. But the urges I was feeling with Raine? Completely different.   

When she called me on the phone, I wanted to keep the conversation going. I wanted to motherfucking ask her how she was, what she was up to, how she was feeling. That wasn't me. So I ended the calls like I always did. Abruptly. Trying to piss her off so she'd never call me again.

The day Trap had texted to tell me she was on her way to the club house, I'd wanted to go running out to meet her. Running out to meet her. Where the fuck had that come from and what had I been thinking? If I ever ran out to meet any woman, I'd have my men throw me in one of our guest rooms and starve me to death. Or torture me. Probably both, and I'd deserve it. More, I'd welcome it.

I tortured and killed my enemies because their evil actions warranted it but also for the sheer enjoyment of it, and now I was about to go skipping out to see Raine when she pulled up -- uninvited -- to my club house? Not happening. I'd killed men for less. So I'd shut myself in my office and waited for her to come to me. Except she was taking too long, and when I opened my door to see why she wasn't here yet...there she was, right outside my door, blinking up at me as she prepared to knock.

Then, in what was almost the worst moment of my life, I'd almost smiled at her because she was so fucking cute. No way was I going to smile at Raine, so I'd been a complete dick to her and run her off as soon as possible before I  did something like pull her onto my lap. 

I didn't understand these urges.

What I really needed was to torture someone, to reset my brain, but unfortunately, no one was currently on our radar. I was half tempted to bring Steve back for round two or maybe hunt down the asshole from the yoga studio who'd touched Raine's belly. Most likely, I'd ask a couple of my brothers to round up some drug dealers and let myself loose on them. Those kind of urges I understood. They made sense. They'd been a guiding force all my life.

It was the motherfucking fairy king's fault. Ever since he'd ripped open my chest with a lightning bolt and the red-winged fairies had come pouring out of me, I'd been having these new urges for the first time in my life. It was slowly dawning on me that it was more than just the enjoyment of fucking the hell out of Raine. That had been unusual enough, but wanting to be near her with or without sex was incomprehensible. Something I couldn't make sense of.

In my head was this vivid image that wouldn't go away of holding Raine on my lap, and I was beginning to think that maybe if I pulled her into my arms one time, I'd get her out of my system. Wipe that image from my mind. Get rid of this hold she seemed to have over me. Anything would be better than waking up thinking about her, eating my meals while thinking about her, conducting club business while thinking about her and going to sleep thinking about her.

As I'd watched Raine walk away after basically telling her to leave my club house, I literally had to bite my tongue to keep from calling her back and telling her I'd do whatever she wanted. I wasn't about to become her little bitch. She'd never run me, no matter how much disappointment filled those pretty eyes of hers. Those eyes of hers that gave me those fucking urges...

She'd never control me, of that I was certain, but I couldn't explain why I'd almost called Burr to tell him I'd help him drive the bad fairies underground. It was only at the last second that I stopped myself from making that call. No way was I getting involved with fairy business. I had enough MC business to deal with and didn't need anything else on my plate. 

Raine definitely didn't belong on my plate, but that didn't stop me from wanting to eat her up. Lift her onto my desk, spread those legs of hers and feast on that delicious pussy while she gasped and sighed, my name on her lips. Then I'd slam into her, bare, nothing between us, with my hand wrapped around her neck, leaving bruises on her hip from holding her in place so hard, feeling her nails dig into my back, leaving marks I'd have for weeks. Crushing my mouth to hers as we both came so hard we felt like our hearts were about to beat out of our chests.

Fucking hell, my dick was hard as a rock, something that had never happened before Raine without a naked woman right in front of me, and even those two times, it'd taken effort. Now, I thought of Raine, I thought of her carrying my baby inside of her and I was hard in an instant.

If it weren't for the baby, I might have considered a casual arrangement with her, but the baby complicated our lives in a way I wasn't prepared for. Didn't want. What the hell could I teach a child?

Hey, son, use this knife to peel the skin off your enemy. 

This knife is better for sliding between the ribs.

And maybe have him take an advanced, college-level anatomy class like all the brothers in the MC were required to take. It helped when we had guests in our rooms. A thorough and complete understanding of the human body allowed all of us to know where to strike without causing a lethal wound so the cat could play with the mouse longer.

Yeah, father material I was not.

My real father had died when I was young, and then my mother had married a low-level Body thug, Salvatore, who took his frustrations out on my mother until I stepped up and told him to stop. Even though I was young, I was strong and I was big. And then he'd laughed and told me I could stand in for my mother, and if I didn't, he'd continue using her as his punching bag. It was up to me. Sal believed in choices.

So it'd gone on for years until a girl I knew figured it out and ratted out Sal to her father, who was above my step-father in the Body. The beatings had stopped after that, and three years later, I left home. My mother wouldn't go with me, so I took Sal with me, instead. And, since he'd been kind enough to give me a choice years earlier, I gave him the choice of deciding which hand he was going to lose to my hacksaw first. Sal was the first man I killed, and the bodies had been piling up since.

Once I got my dick under control, I went for a ride on my bike and ended up outside Raine's yoga studio like I did almost every night, where Shadow was watching her from street-side tonight.

"All quiet," he told me when I pulled up and got off my bike.

"Take off," I said. "I've got it from here."

He nodded and minutes later he was gone from sight.

I paced on the sidewalk, watching Raine's window that faced Main Street, my body on high alert. My scepter tattoo on my forearm was tingling, and that became a steady itch. Every instinct I had was warning me of something, even though I couldn't see a threat.

But something was out there, something was about to happen.

Then Raine's window flashed red. A red I'd seen pouring out of me, and before it even fully registered, I was on the run, lightning flashing, bellowing her name.

"RAINE!!"