The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Zara

CLA

By the time the night settles properly into itself, the Grinning Skulls clubhouse has become the kind of living thing that it always does after midnight, and when another MC is here partying as in-house guests.

The massive room is hot and loud and heaving around me, the music is vibrating through old floorboards while whiskey and smoke fumes cling thickly to the air, and bodies are packed close enough that strangers brush together without apology.

Usually, a room like this leaves me tired. Tonight, somehow, it doesn’t, maybe because for the first time in years, I’m standing in one without feeling owned by it.

I’m not Knox’s wife smiling politely beside him while men measure my worth by the patch on his back or the ring on my finger. Tonight I’m just here, leaning against the bar beside Jade with my fourth drink in my hand, laughing softly at something she says while a strange, unfamiliar lightness settles beneath my ribs.

“Careful,” Jade murmurs beside me, her green eyes bright. “You look suspiciously happy.”

“I am happy.”

“I think you’d be happier if you went over and threw yourself at drop-dead sexy Locke Tanner.”

“Later.”

“Floozy.”

I laugh again, and the sound surprises me because it feels real. Easy. Like something that I haven’t heard from myself in a long time.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Jade says. “Be right back.”

I nod, and glance idly around the bar again, see that one of the visiting MC guys is hitting on Brick’s girlfriend. That’s when the room changes.

It happens slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, the way storms shift the air before they break properly, voices tightening somewhere behind me, movement sharpening subtly at the edges until instinct notices danger before thought does.

Someone shouts, and a chair scrapes hard across the floor. Then suddenly bodies surge sideways all at once, and the impact comes from nowhere.

A man stumbles violently into me, hard enough that pain explodes sharply along my ribs, the force throwing me sideways before I can catch myself. My drink slips from my hand, and glass shatters somewhere by my feet.

For one dizzying second, there’s nothing holding me up… then suddenly there is. Massive arms close around me hard and fast, one locking around my waist while the other braces across my back, pulling me against a solid chest.

“I got you, baby.”

Chapter 21

Cla

The words land low against my ear, and everything inside me goes completely still… because I know him instantly. Not from the sound of his voice, though. From the feel of him.

The powerful grooves of muscle beneath my hands, as I clutch his shirt. The strength in the arms banded around my body. The steady expansion of his chest against me as he breathes, calm and controlled despite the violence exploding around us. I feel small against him in a way that I never do with anyone else, soft where he’s hard, delicate where he feels carved out of something brutal and immovable, and the realization of where I’m standing sends heat rushing low through my body so fast it almost hurts.

Dear sweet God.

My n*****s tighten instantly beneath my sweater, my body reacting before my mind catches up, every nerve ending suddenly alive with the awareness of how close he is, how completely he’s holding me, how easily he could overpower me if he wanted to.

And somehow none of it feels frightening, because instead of parfic, excitement unfurls slowly through me, dark and liquid and devastatingly feminine. It settles between my thighs while his hand spreads wider against my waist, as though instinct alone refuses to let me go.

Like my body already belongs there. Like he already knows exactly how to hold me.

The fight erupts fully around us a second later, glass shattering somewhere nearby while bodies crash into tables and shouted threats cut through the music, but he barely reacts. He just tightens his hold on me and shifts his body fully between mine and the chaos unfolding around us.

“Don’t let go of me,” he murmurs, his voice calm enough to make the violence around us feel strangely distant. “Stay right here.”

Another body crashes into us from the side before I can answer, someone getting shoved backward through the crowd hard enough that their elbow slams painfully into my stomach. It hits me right on the fragile place where cancer grew quietly inside me first, where twisted metal tore me open afterward, and where a surgeon’s scalpel carved the final scar.

Pain slices through me sharply enough that a strangled scream escapes my throat.

And Locke goes completely still.

The shift in him is immediate and terrifying, not louder or more chaotic like the men around us, but colder somehow. It’s the kind of silence that violence settles into right before it becomes lethal.

His arm tightens around my waist instantly, hauling me harder against him instead of letting me go, his body curving protectively around mine with such instinctive certainty that for one dizzying second, it feels less like being protected and more like being claimed.

Then he moves. Fast. Controlled. Effortless in a way that makes it infinitely more frightening.

One arm never leaves me. He keeps me locked tightly against the hard line of his body, while his free hand shoots out and catches the man who hit me with terrifying precision, slamming him violently against the nearest wall hard enough to rattle bottles behind the bar.

The entire thing happens in one brutal, fluid movement. The man barely even has time to react before Locke’s tattooed hand tightens slowly around his throat, calm enough to suggest he’s deciding exactly how much damage he’s willing to do in front of witnesses.

2/3

Chapter

And God help me, standing there in the middle of broken glass and shouting men, held tightly against the chest of someone dangerous enough to terrify smarter women than me, I realize something with sudden, devastating clarity.

Locke Tanner never once thought about letting me fall.

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