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His thumb plays suggestively across the back of my hand.
With serious self-control, I shake my head. “I simply want to know where you’ve been. I’ve missed you so fucking much. Vito has too. We went crazy for the first few weeks. We didn’t let up searching for you for months. I’m certain that Dad paid for Vito’s culinary school just to get him sent away. I never gave up hope.”
“It’s a long story. Actually, a short story but a shit one. Let’s get comfy.” Lincoln drags me to sit down on the floor in his lap. “When have I passed up a chance to have you sit close like this? I’ve been dreaming about this every night. You smell fucking edible.”
He winds his arms around me.
Hell, this feels amazing cuddling on Lincoln’s powerful legs. I rest my head on his chest.
I’m never letting him out of my sight again.
But what if I don’t have a choice? He’s not part of my pack.
Is he bonded to someone else?
I sneakily peer up at his neck.
No bond bite.
I let out a relieved sigh.
I don’t have control of him and I understand that his family could have forced him into a bond.
I’d have understood. But inside, it would have killed me.
Yet there’s no bond mark or scar, just as there isn’t on my neck.
We’re both still free, right?
“You got your ear pierced. It looks fucking badass, but won’t your Dad go crazy?”
“Badass, huh?” When Lincoln grins, my heart pangs because I realize how much I’ve missed that look.
He turns his ear, so that I can inspect the intricate snake earring, which is coiling beautifully up his ear more easily.
“This isn’t a mark of my family owning you or something, right?” I ask, tentatively.
My family have done worse.
Certain mafia families make every pack member who work for them get tattoos that show their loyalty.
Lincoln wrinkles his nose in disgust. “I’d rather cut off my own ear. Actually, pretend I didn’t say that. I’d rather cut off the hand of whoever tried to get near me to mark me.”
Vito once described Lincoln as a golden retriever who’d been bitten by a werewolf.
I get it now.
Lincoln’s my best friend. He brings the sun into my shadowy world.
Yet for anyone outside his found family, which so far is Vito and me (and strangely, at high school also included Thomas, despite Thomas appearing unaware of Lincoln’s devotion), he’s as likely to savage them as smile at them.
Dad has a different word for him: unhinged.
That’s not the reason that I suspect Lincoln was made to vanish.
I am.
“Plus, Dad won’t go crazy about my piercings because I’m never going to see him again, after what he did to me.” Lincoln waggles his eyebrows, before adding in a lowered voice, “Did you notice that I said piercings, as in plural? As in, more than one? Want to guess where they are?”
