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Smiling, I curl up. “In the morning, then.”
He grabs a throw blanket off the footboard and trails back to the couch. “It is, also, already morning.”
Stretching, I roll myself under the blankets and hug one of his pillows to my chest. “I’ll try again in a few hours?”
“Make it eight to ten.”
“Very well. I will try again in eight to ten hours.”
“Briar?”
My ears perk, and I smile. “Yes?”
He presses a couch pillow to his face, his bare feet sticking up over the armrest. The scrap of the throw blanket he grabbed barely covers his midsection. “Turn out the light.”
Pretending I didn’t want a good night, I switch off the lamp and plunge us into darkness.
Chapter 5
~~~~~~~~~~~~
He thought she was fragile like a flower.
Rowan
One day. One single day. That’s all it took to make me lose my mind.
Maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much if only the meager few I keep on staff to handle the cooking and upkeep were around right now. But it’s not just them. It’s also Corbin and Aster, my consigliere and underboss respectively. The two of them are night and day. Corbin with his pale skin, sandy hair, and lean physique against Aster’s dark hair, deeply tan skin, and bulking frame.
Despite their glaring differences in appearance, they’re both sitting at my long black dining room table and chatting with Briar as though she didn’t actively kidnap me last night. As though she’s not currently only wearing my shirt.
It’s a wonder how I managed to get some sleep yet wake up feeling twice as exhausted.
Taking a bite of my toast, I keep my gaze firmly on Aster, who appears to be staring directly at the edge of the tattooed petal peeking out from beneath Briar’s collar. He’s not noticed my glare. Not while he’s so busy noticing her.
How can anyone raised in our environment be as unguarded as she is?
I’m a man, yet I’ve seen some of the guys in Veleno do things that make me nervous to be alone in a room with them. As though she’s never witnessed an unkind thing in her life, she’s having breakfast with three random men, who have current access to the kinds of drugs that would send her into next week, and she’s entirely unconcerned.
I’ve been around gunfights that give me less anxiety.
Corbin, seated on my right, nudges my arm. “When you told me you made it back safe last night and I could call off the rescue team, I didn’t think you meant you seduced your way out.”
Aster spares me a glance, a languid smile pulling at the pale scar that cuts down his tan cheek, across his lips, and to his chin. He rolls a lump of scrambled egg over on his plate. “I wouldn’t believe it if she weren’t sitting across from me. How very out of character.”
Without breaking eye contact, I stab a sausage patty, and Aster clears his throat, tugging on the collar of his dress shirt.
On my left, Briar muffles one of her infuriating giggles behind a mouthful of scrambled egg on toast.
In my head, I see her standing near me in the hall of her manor, eyes downcast, voice and smile muted.
Please, Rowan. I need to find my parents. Please. I can’t do it alone.
The whiplash of her character is going to give me gray hair. I have no idea what to expect from her, who she really is, if she has any ulterior motives.
She’s the personification of a hurricane.
But there’s no peace to be had in the quiet eye of her storm.
