Prologue

Hurt

Rosalie

He spit on me.

I felt it land on the side of my chin and slide down.

I didn’t move to wipe it away.

I couldn’t.

Lying on my side, curled into a ball, the pain screamed through me. All of it—and there was a lot of it—demanding attention, I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think, couldn’t move in case it got worse. I couldn’t do anything but lie there and pray that it was over.

It wasn’t.

He bent over me, grabbed my hair, yanked it back, and I felt his hot breath hit my face.

“See if he wants you now, you stupid bitch,” he hissed.

He let my hair go and I felt him retreat, but he still wasn’t done.

He kicked me so hard with his foot in its heavy motorcycle boot, my body slid across the cement.

I was too far gone even to grunt.

I felt something bounce off my hip, clatter to the floor, and then his voice came back, this time from further away.

“There you go, baby,” he drawled. “Your line to Chaos. We’re done with you. I’m done with you. Now they can have you.”

I heard boots on cement, more than just his, his Bounty brothers in the club. I sustained a couple more kicks as they passed. One of them grabbed the underside of my jaw and shoved my head back into the cement, also spitting, his hitting my neck.

And then they were gone.

I lay there, my focus on breathing and continuing to do it even though each breath was not only an effort but an agony. The fear I’d felt early when he took me, how he’d taken me, the way he’d handled me and I knew he’d figured it out, had dissipated as pain took its place. Now, the fear was returning that they’d come back and dish out more.

He’d come back.

Throttle.

No, to me he was Beck. My boyfriend. Gerard Beck. He hated the first name Gerard so everyone called him Beck. All his life. Or since he could demand that happen and not allow anything but that. Even his mother called him Beck.

Until he got his club name, Throttle. All his brothers called him that. When I was with him when he was with his brothers, I also called him that.

But when we were alone, at home, he was Beck.

My Beck.

My man. My lover. My protector. My future.

The man who’d just spit on me and kicked me.

But he’d done more before that.

He’d grabbed me from work and delivered me right to them, right to where I was right then. Even starting it, choking me until I thought I’d blank out, then clocking me in the temple, then on the jaw, then on my cheekbone.

Throttle.

That name was given to him for a reason but not the reason he’d now become Throttle to me.

I shut my eyes tight, opened them, reached to the phone he’d tossed at me and endured the immense pain that scoured through me, leaving me feeling even more raw, which if my brain had room to process anything further, I would have thought unimaginable.

My fingers closed around the phone and I huffed out little breaths, which were hard to take since each one sent fire through my midsection. So I tried deep breaths, and those were worse because the fire lasted even longer.