The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Zara

“Locke’s not muscle,” Jade says quietly, her hand brushing mine as though she already knows exactly where my thoughts have gone, and she totally gets it. “Not like Mayhem or

Brick.”

My gaze drifts back to him automatically. There are men everywhere in the clubhouse tonight – loud men, dangerous men, men built like violence wrapped in denim and leather – but somehow the room still arranges itself around Locke. It’s as though he’s a black hole and the rest of them are simply trying not to get pulled into it.

“What does he handle, then?” I ask, keeping my voice even despite the strange heat still lingering beneath my skin from the way he looked at me earlier.

Jade takes a slow sip of her drink before answering. “The things that actually matter.”

Something about the way she says it makes my attention sharpen instantly.

“What things?” I say.

She lifts one slim shoulder lightly. “Money. Movement. Deals that don’t get written down anywhere people can find them. The stuff that keeps everything running while everyone else gets distracted by noise and ego.”

I think about that, and then look back at him again. Suddenly I understand the difference between men like Cobra Callahan and men like Locke Tanner.

My Dad is visible power, loud power. The kind that walks into a room and announces itself immediately. But Locke… Locke feels like the thing beneath it all.

The hand behind the knife. The reason the knife exists in the first place.

“He travels constantly,” Jade continues. “Most people only see him maybe once a month.”

That lands somewhere deeper than it should. The idea of him existing everywhere and nowhere at once, the idea that a man like this can walk into a room, alter the atmosphere of it completely, and disappear again before anyone recovers enough to stop him, is breathtaking.

“He’s dangerous,” she says softly.

Jade isn’t being dramatic, and she’s not warning me. She’s just stating cold, hard facts, and somehow that makes my pulse kick harder – because dangerous men are easy to avoid

Chapter 19

Claim

when they announce themselves properly. It’s the quiet ones that women ruin themselves over. The controlled ones. The men who never need to raise their voice because they already know exactly how much power they hold.

My eyes stay fixed on him while he talks quietly with Cobra, broad shoulders relaxed beneath the MC cut stretched across muscle. There’s something almost unfair about the way he moves through the world so calmly, as though he has never once doubted his ability to destroy things.

“He doesn’t usually come around unless something important’s happening,” Jade says, watching him now too. “Most people here are scared of him.”

“Are you?”

A soft laugh leaves her. “Smart enough to be.”

I should probably feel the same. Instead, all I feel is curious, curious in the worst possible way, because there’s a darkness to him that doesn’t repel me. It pulls. Slow and steady, like a current moving beneath water calm enough to drown in.

I’m about to ask Jade something else when Locke looks up suddenly, straight at me… and the connection slams back into place so hard it almost steals the breath from my lungs. This time it’s worse because now I’m prepared for it, and preparation does absolutely nothing to lessen the impact of those gray eyes pinning me exactly where I stand.

The intensity of his gaze settles over my skin like heat, deliberate and unhurried, and I have the sudden, dizzying awareness that this man could undress someone psychologically long before he ever laid a hand on them.

There’s nothing casual in the way he’s looking at me now, nothing distracted. He sees me too directly for that. Not as Cobra’s daughter, and not as another woman standing around a clubhouse pretending she doesn’t understand the danger built into places like this.

Just me.

The fantasies arrive hot and fast, vivid enough to make my stomach tighten painfully. And worse… I don’t stop them.

All I can think about now is how those tattooed hands would feel sliding slowly up my quivering thighs. Whether he kisses the way he looks at people – calm at first, controlled, until suddenly there’s nowhere left to breathe. Whether he’d still look this controlled with my legs wrapped tight around his waist. Whether he’d grip my hips hard enough to bruise, while I lost every coherent thought under that beautiful, cruel mouth ravishing my p***y.

These thoughts unsettle me deeply enough to feel almost emotional, because this isn’t how I

Oler

reat to men i don’t lose myself in strangers I don’t stand in crowded clubhouses imagining what someone’s hands would feel like tangled in my hair while he fucks me senseless and whispers fathy things against my throat

But with Locke, it happens instinctively Naturally Like my body made the decision before my mind even had the chance to object And God, the worst part is the certainty creeping slowly through me now, cold and undeniable

The man would ruin me beautifully. Not quickly Not carelessly

Slowly enough that I’d feel every second of it happening.

Patiently enough that I’d walk willingly toward my own destruction, and thank him afterwards for making it hurt so good

My breath catches softly in my throat, because the utterly terrifying part is that none of the fantasies feel impossible They feel inevitable, as though this thing between us already existe, and it’s just waiting patiently for the moment we finally stop pretending not to feel it

Locke finally moves then, lifting his beer slowly toward his mouth, his eyes never leaving mine as he takes a drink

And when he lowers it again, the corner of his mouth shifts almost imperceptibly, not quite a emile, not quite restraint Something darker, something that feels like he knows exactly what I’ve been thinking

W’e a warning, maybe or an invitation

Then his gaze drops briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes, and in that single devastating second, my entire body tightens with the sudden, unbearable certainty that this whatever this is was never going to be harmless

And the knowledge emerges from deep down in my gute, from the absolute darkest and hungriest part of myself

Locke Tanner isnt just passing through my life

He’s and to edit it cleanly in two

THE DRAW