Free CURSED - CHOSEN FEW MC ROMANCE: BOOK ONE by Nessa Connor

was the definition of what he thought he wanted, yet now he felt ensnared by a growing web of thoughts and doubts. That his feelings for her made his head spin things out this way wasn’t good. He had a job to do. He was working and you worked best when you focused on the here and now, when you identified the enemy and put all of your attention on what was happening. Thinking of the past and wondering about the future were distractions.
    The worst distraction was the woman herself. She’d asked if he’d ever killed anyone and he’d dodged the question. Telling her the truth would mark him as an undesirable in her eyes. Lying to her, something he never liked doing to anyone, had become unthinkable.
    She had put her trust in him, paying money for his protection without knowing that he was exactly the kind of man she needed protecting from. He vacillated between thinking that he wanted to see her safely to Canada, away from the clutches of this husband, and just wanting to strip her naked and fuck her.
    Bart’s idea that he could do both seemed increasingly like it wasn’t going to work.
    He didn’t want to care for this girl. He had enough problems of his own—more than enough. And now the biggest one was that he had started liking her and wanted to help her. He wanted to make her safe, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to do that. He sure as hell didn’t think sneaking her across the border was going to do that.
    He should have seen it coming. Once again he’d let himself be blinded by pussy and he just hadn’t considered.
    That was a lie. He had considered it and he’d seduced her anyway. And she’d liked it. She was starting to like him. That was a nonstarter. Why couldn’t she see that he was cursed? Whether she was a nice girl who’d been through shit or a rich bitch, there was no future for her with him. And now he was sure she was nice and that was the worst outcome. He could screw a rich bitch, some weird privileged girl running away from an unhappy marriage, just have a good time fucking her all the way to Canada. He could even convince himself that a girl like that would get off on having a fling with a bad-assed biker, cuckolding her husband with the very guy who was whizzing her out of his reach.
    That’s what he’d intended. That’s how it was supposed to play out. A good time had by all and no regrets.
    But he’d been stupid enough to ask her about her story, to tell him why she was running. And he’d learned she’d had as rough a time as anyone. Being married to a rich guy had turned into hell for her and she had spunk. A nice girl with spunk was even more of a turn on than a willing rich bitch. Even when he knew that she was really nice, he’d pretended she was just hot, just a piece of ass. Now it was biting him because he did have scruples of a sort. Unless it was life or death, Cutter didn’t kick nice people when they were down and he didn’t use the fact that he was helping someone as a lever, especially when they were paying him to do it. That was abusive. He’d abused the situation and he hated himself for letting it happen. That she wanted it didn’t matter.
    Now his desire for her, which was still there and not diminished by what had happened, was mixed with a need to wash away her unhappiness—an urge to protect her. That wasn’t healthy. The two didn’t mesh well. One required caring about her and the other required not giving a shit at all.
    Beyond getting her to Canada he was not the right man to become the solution to her problems. He wasn’t the solution to anyone’s problems. In a club of villains of varying degrees, he was the one who did the dirty work and he’d spent years turning off his feelings. Feelings got in the way of his work, even if sometimes, like now, he wished he understood more about feelings and emotions than he did.
    But he didn’t. Pushing her away was all that made sense. If he kept her at a distance, then he’d be able to think. Then maybe he