Free BUTCHER: Wolves MC (Riding With Wolves Book 3) by Faith Winslow

night, or would I always need to be accompanied and/or carry protection?
    Could I really willingly date a gang member?
    I stared at my phone. It had been forty-eight minutes—FORTY-EIGHT MINUTES—since I received Butcher’s text, and I still hadn’t replied yet.
    I knew the answers to the questions that flooded my head, and my better instincts told me how I should respond to Butcher’s message. But despite those better instincts, I couldn’t type what I needed to say.
    I kept thinking about how sexy Butcher was, how skillfully he played guitar, and how mind-bogglingly wonderful it felt to have his tongue and his cock inside me. I was insanely attracted to him, and the chemistry between us was undeniable and incredibly strong. He’d awoken something in me, remember? Could I really put whatever it was back to sleep and ignore my intense feelings?
    Didn’t I owe it to myself to see how this played out? And didn’t I owe it to Butcher to at least give him a chance to explain himself?
    My thumbs twiddled above my cell phone. I pressed “Reply” and reconsidered my options one last time. I’d made up my mind and was ready to type my message.
    But no sooner than my right thumb headed for the “I” key, my virtual keypad disappeared, and I got a notification for an incoming call—from Butcher.
    “Hey,” I said. I’d let it ring three times before answering.
    “Hey,” Butcher replied. His voice sounded quiet and a little muffled. “Did you get my text?”
    “Yeah. I was just about to text you back,” I answered.
    “What were you gonna say?” Butcher asked.
    “I was gonna say,” I responded, “that I’ll meet you for dinner tomorrow after work.”
    “Excellent,” Butcher said. Even though his voice was still quiet and muffled, he sounded happy, and I could almost hear him smiling through the phone.
    “But,” I added, speaking briskly, “I’m only meeting you so that we can talk. It isn’t an official date or anything. I need to know more about you and this ‘gang’ thing before we can take things between us any further.”
    Butcher didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he cleared his throat and answered. “Okay,” he said. “That’s completely understandable. We’ll meet tomorrow for dinner, just to talk.”
    Butcher and I went on to set an exact time and location for our dinner “meeting” the next day. We decided to meet around six at a Mediterranean restaurant called Olive. It was located just a few miles away from where I worked, and I’d actually been meaning to try it.
    After we ironed out all the details, it was Butcher who ended the phone call. He said he had to get going because he had something he had to take care of, and I told him that I did, too. I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not, but I knew, for sure, that I wasn’t.
    As soon as I hung up the phone with Butcher, I felt overwhelmed by a sense of longing and anticipating. I’d agreed to meet him for dinner, but that dinner wasn’t going to happen for more than twenty-four hours, and I wondered how in the hell I would bide the time.
    They say that idle hands are the Devil’s playthings, so I decided to busy my hands in hopes of busying my mind also. I’d neglected my laundry for a while and hadn’t done any loads in several days, so my first task was to tend to that.
    But even as I did that , I thought of Butcher. As I sorted through my dirty clothes, I came across the outfit I’d worn the when I met him at The Boneyard, and I made sure my load consisted of clothes I might wanna wear out with him the next night.
    Laundry didn’t distract me, but I figured that maybe some other chores would.
    But when I did the dishes, I saw the dirty, tattered sponge I’d thrown on the counter after using it to clean up the Merlot—and when I tossed the sponge in the garbage, I saw the chards of broken glass and the stained copy of the Crier .
    Butcher. Butcher. Butcher. Everything I did, everywhere I looked, I