Chapter 1: ZAK

This damn female is gonna make me crazy, but then again, what's new there? She's the only one of her kind to have ever gotten under my skin, and shit didn't look like it had changed much in the two years or so since I'd last seen her. I slammed out of the house and left before she made me lose my fucking mind again. She'd only been here a short while, and already she had me ready to turn her over my damn knee.

Now wasn't a good time either, since my brothers and I were dealing with some bullshit in the small town that we now called home. Shit had just taken a more serious turn, and we needed all our concentration on that. Not on annoying ass females who didn't know to quit while they were ahead. I was so pissed at her, I forgot all about my brother Logan's call. The fact that the others were standing around out there meant it was something big too. Oh well, too late; I was already halfway to the cottage where the three assholes we'd caught earlier were awaiting judgment. The little scuffle I'd had down by the water had barely whetted my appetite; I needed to knock some heads together.

Part of me knew I was running from what had just happened in my bed, and part of me still had some shit to work off. It's been a while since I'd been that fucking scared, and last time had been because of her too. She was my weak spot, no doubt about it, and it didn't seem to matter that we'd been apart for so long; seeing her again had brought it all back.

All those old feelings that I swore to myself over and over again were gone. I knew as soon as I saw her again that I was full of shit, that I'd just been fooling myself. I'd buried my head in the sand, so to speak, kept moving one day at a time, putting one foot in front of the other, but I see now I was really just going through the motions.

In life, there was one man made for one woman and vice versa. The first time I met her, I believed that wholeheartedly, and even after our separation, I still believed that shit. There was no getting away from it, she was mine, and I was hers no two ways about it. It was as if the past two years had not happened; all the bad feelings in between had disappeared between her thighs. We had awakened something long dead in my bed just now. Something that I had thought long buried.

The memory of what we'd just shared, her over me, with her long beautiful mane trailing over my chest, as she took my cock, was imprinted on my brain, erasing the last memory I had of her walking away. That shit still cut deep whenever I allowed myself to think of it, but for whatever reason, she was back in my sights again, and I wasn't about to let that scene play out again. I assured myself of that fact for the one-hundredth time.

There was no force on earth that could take her away from me again. The last time had almost finished me off. I'd let her go for her own good because if she'd stayed with things the way they were, I would've ended up destroying her or myself. At least that's one of the things I've told myself over time, but there was a whole lot of other shit involved in that mess that wasn't that easy to explain.

I'd run the gamut of emotions where Red was concerned over the years. From wanting to go find her and drag her back by her hair to never wanting to lay eyes on her again. I'm not the kind of man you can say certain things to, and she'd crossed the fucking line back then. It's a given that things had gone down the way they had because we were in the thick of battle when she started her shit, and my hands were tied. Now she was on my turf.

She's a brave fucking soul though I'll give her that. Funny thing is, I'd talked myself out of going after her for the last time not too long ago. Something I never shared with my brothers since I never discussed her, never mentioned her name after the day we split.

In a million years, I never expected to be inside her again. When we'd parted on such volatile terms last time, I thought for sure that was it. I'm not big on second chances, I'm a hard fuck, but I've had to be. I've seen too much, been through too much to play certain games. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life, letting her go. But at the time, I was too fucking pissed to think about the consequences. I'd let my anger get the best of me and said some fucked up things that I couldn't take back after she'd come at me with her bullshit.

My life is about discipline and order. One of the first disciplines I'd learned was to let my word be my bond. Vanessa is the only person to ever fuck with that in more ways than one. The only person to ever make me want to go back on what I'd said. I guess love would do that to you, make you fuck stupid. And what we'd had back then was the real deal.

Too bad no one ever told me that that shit could make you strong as an ox one minute and weak as fuck the next. I wasn't too big on love and its rollercoaster bullshit, but it didn't seem like I had much choice in the matter until she left and damn near turned my shit upside down. It was only after she'd left that I'd realized what it was that I held in my hands.

That my pride didn't matter when held up to the love I felt for her. But by then, it had been too late. Now she's back, and I have a feeling deep down in my gut that this time she's not getting away.