The fucking blonde, long haired hick of a man who’d walk into the fucking bar looking like he’d rolled around in shit all day long. God, Remy fucking hated him. For many reasons aside from him banging the one woman he had vowed to make his. Reasons that were… justified. He didn’t have to name them, for fuck’s sake. Just… reasons. Good fucking ones, okay?

He knew all about Jaxon. Knew he was a little shit thief back in Gosnells, probably still a fucking thief. No thief deserves a woman like Sara. No fucking way. Knew he was also a little man-whore, probably still a little man-whore too. Great, so now she had a fucking thief, man-whore of a boyfriend.

He gritted his teeth and gulped back his beer as he sent the oblivious man death glares from across the bar. Then he continued watching the sexy waitress in her tiny little white shorts make her way around to the hick, and seeing right through him.

He didn’t expect to be recognized. It’d been six years since that night he’d found her at the swings. He’d been keeping an eye on her since her loser “father” walked out on them. Threw her mom a few hundred bills a week, told every Jackal owned store if Sara came around looking for a job to take her on without a moment’s thought.

He hadn’t actually been following her personally. He’d sent a few guys over to scope her routine out, see if she was doing well. Turned out she’d been spending an unnatural amount of time down the road in another townhouse.

One night, when he was in the neighbourhood, he decided to see what she looked like. He’d remembered cradling her baby form as a kid. Gave her attention when the adults were busy up until she was three and a half. He remembered her vividly, thought of her as his little sister until the day it stopped abruptly. When dumbass Joanne decided to be with a loser instead, forsaking the club, her father, all for a fucking nobody that everyone saw straight through. Except her.

Dumbass Joanne.

He’d only been cruising down the street, looking for the townhouse she frequented when he saw her walk right out the door. She was in non-existent pyjamas with weird, yellow fucking duckies on them or some shit; the top was so short and the shorts so low, he could see all of her creamy tan hips.

His first thought was, Fuck she’s grown up.

His second thought was, What the fuck is she doing out in Jack the Ripper-ville on her fucking own this late at night? Probably to do with that thief of a kid…

He followed her to the park where she sat on the swings, digging her bare feet into the sand. Her head was down and her hair was splayed out all around her. She looked lost in her own little world, so deep in thought she didn’t hear him walk to her. He wasn’t even trying to be quiet. He stopped a few feet behind her and just watched her. Her little hands wrapped so tightly around each chain of the swing she was in. She looked so fucking small, yet judging by the growth in her body, she must have been a teenager.

Sixteen, he figured. She was probably sixteen or close to it, and fuck she was beautiful. No, beautiful wasn’t the right word. She put beautiful to shame. She was perfection wrapped in an angelic form that made you want to knock the teeth out of any man looking her way.

Sixteen, he thought. Not yet legal. He could wait two years. What was seven hundred and thirty days to a patient man? Remy had this. Easy peasy. Especially if it meant waiting for a girl that left him thunderstruck. Absolutely floored. Nothing would go wrong….

Except it did.

Girl happened to be fourteen. Hell to the no. But what was waiting another two years on top of the other two years? Just fourteen hundred and sixty days… Epic fuck.

But not even that fucking happened. Remy was too caught up in his own shit. The club was warring hard at the time. He couldn’t abandon post to chase what his dick wanted. And when shit finally cooled, she’d left fucking town. Left him with a shit load of time to chase her up, and what a bitch that was. Cue more fucking warring with the club against the uprising of the fucking Scorpion gang. Shit was always red hot. Never cool. Never easy. But, again, Remy was a patient man.

And now, finally, eleven years after the night at the swings, he had her in his room with nowhere to go. Not even Prez knew he had her…yet. She wasn’t at the clubhouse. She was in the bunker --his escape destination if shit hit the fan at the clubhouse. No one was going to find her.

“Are you going to let me go?” she’d asked him. Those fucking auburn eyes, red and puffy, seared his heart.

“Not yet,” he’d answered.

“Why not?”

Because you’re mine. “Because I said so.” He was tempted to expand. Make up some bullshit that she wasn’t safe. But what a fucking lame ass excuse that would be. Honestly, what did she have to fear? Jaxon was second in command after Finley the douche. And Jaxon wanted her until his last breath. He’d have offered the same kind of protection Remy was offering her.

Still. The Scorpions were nasty when it came to women. There was no possession in their little shitty honour code they abided by. Every chick was a free for all. The idea that Sara would have been put in the middle of that kind of fuelled testosterone made him want to clench his fists and beat every Scorpion to the ground until there was nothing but blood.

Not that the Jackals were the marital, faithful type either, but they certainly never touched a brother’s goods. No fucking way. And although Remy had never taken a woman on for long periods of time, he never entertained the notion of infidelity. It wasn’t what he wanted, not after years of watching his mother get treated like shit by a father that rooted around like his dick was possessed.

This woman, right here and right now, she was it for him. He just knew it. Always knew it. Even when he bedded his short flings, he knew it. He was just waiting for time to pass. Always waiting. Story of his fucking life.

She was worth the wait.

He spoke his words, bleeding honesty with her. Fuck, he never spoke this gently to a soul in his life. Not even Rita, that annoying little brat that had him wrapped around her little finger. He was well aware he was giving it all he had to get this girl. To get her to believe he was as genuine as he sounded.

It broke him how scared she was. She knew damn well what happened to Brett. He’d seen the fear in her eyes the second he brought it up at the bar. She knew. For a moment, he didn’t give a fuck if she killed him herself. Brett was a piece of shit that couldn’t be put on the straight and narrow. Remy tried, but time after time he was proven wrong. He’d loved Brett, always had. Always remembered the days growing up with his big brother. It was hard looking at a monster and not seeing what he’d once been: an innocent boy who loved to ride bikes, swing on the monkey bars, collect baseball cards and laugh it up with his little brother when it was just the two of them.