Page 89 of Venomous as a Snake

I readjust myself in my chair as my cock stirs.

“Really?” Walker growls at me.

“Can’t help it,” I mutter. “She’s sexy when she’s mad.”

“You have a fucking problem, Drew,” my brother grumbles.

And maybe I do.

The first time I fell for her—stopped thinking of her as a friend and saw her as my future mate—she was fighting a jock in the parking lot of our high school.

Doesn’t matter that said jock is the eldest Lawless brother.

She’d had a bad day, and he was being a dick to us. Tucker shoved Walker. Kody smiled. And then she exploded. The principal had to call her dad and my mom to break up the fight.

Kody was just fourteen then. Walker was fifteen, and I was sixteen. While we knew about our bond, we also agreed we were too young to focus on it.

But Jesus. She was a fucking spitfire then, too.

“I called Fangs while driving here,” she tells Clay conversationally. “I reminded him of what I said the day I left. We both knew you wouldn’t listen to his warning, but I had hoped for your own sake you wouldn’t come after us.”

He scoffs. “Being a snake doesn’t make you any more lethal than me.”

“No. It doesn’t,” she agrees. “Being backed into a corner after tasting freedom does.”

“He’ll kill you if you touch me,” Clay warns.

She nods slowly. “Do you know what he said to me before we hung up?”

“Uphold your end of the contract,” he guesses.

The smile that creeps over her face is the darkest expression I’ve ever seen her wear.

“I am,” she whispers. “He told me to kill you.”

I let my words sink in to Clay’s dense fucking skull. And while I wait, I turn to grab my backpack.

“What are you doing?” Clay roars.

“Untying him.”

“You can’t—”

“Yes, I can. Who’s going to stop me? You?” I roll my eyes. “He’s not going to help me kill you. Chill out.”

He scoffs. “Kill me? Really, Kody. You want me to believe my father asked you to—”

“Hold this, please, and stay here,” I say to Forrest, ignoring the delusional swan. “I’ll need you in a few minutes.”

I spin on my heel and face Clay.

“Let me backtrack to explain the agreement between me and Fangs in a way you can understand. Your father is giving me my freedom from gang life in exchange for your life. He doesn’t want your mom to know he had you killed. Something about a messy home life if she found out?”

Clay glares at me, working his jaw as he grinds his teeth. His eyes are as calculating as mine, scanning the room from his peripheral without looking away from me. I know I’ve called him stupid, but he’s not. That’s just the easiest way to rile him up.

His hand inches closer to the anti-shift collar on the table, and I tsk at him, like his father does.

Instead of grabbing the collar, he lunges for me, knocking us both to the floor. I keep my chin tucked up so I don’t get a concussion from the tackle, and end up head butting him in the mouth. Then I crush my knee into his balls, shoving him to the right.