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“Maybe she’s got some skills that would be useful to the clan?” Keir suggested, trying to diffuse the situation. “Grayson mentioned she was studying.”
“Nursing,” I croaked. “She’s studying to be a nurse.”
Finnan’s grin grew like he’d just won a game I hadn’t known we were playing. “Nursing? Now, that could prove useful.”
I didn’t know why but knowing that Finnan already had a plan for Fallon made me want to put a bullet in his skull and walk away from the clan forever. I didn’t want her to be used as a whore, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted her to be used for her skills. What I wanted her for, I …
Stopped myself.
What I wanted with Fallon wasn’t ever going to happen. Besides the age difference, which I knew would be a big fucking hurdle, there was my particular taste in fucking. I couldn’t imagine a woman like that wanting to submit to someone like me—someone who enjoyed bringing another pain. Someone who enjoyed humiliating his partner.
Fingers snapped in front of my face, and I blinked Finnan, Keir, and the office back into focus.
“What?” I snarled.
Finnan’s mouth twitched. “Fallon can stay. If she proves useless as a nurse, she becomes Velvet’s new whore.”
My blood pressure ticked up. “And what if whoring isn’t how she pictured her life?”
My boss shrugged. “We could always drop her off to Mannix King.”
As much as it sounded like a bastard of a thing to say, seeing Fallon as a whore was far better than seeing her as a corpse. My jaw felt wired shut as I asked, “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” He clapped me on the shoulder, and my whole body shuddered from the contact. “You can go tell her the good news.”
Taking in a deep breath through my nose, I stared at Finnan briefly before turning and yanking open the door. The force of my pull sent it slamming into the wall, and I smirked as I thought about leaving a dent behind. I hoped I fucking did because right now, I wanted to tear Finnan’s tongue from his mouth and fucking feed it to him.
My anger rippled from me. Midway down the hall, some fucking Sentinel I didn’t know took one look at me and scurried off. Good thing, too, because I was looking for a fucking fight.
“Orin,” someone called behind me.
“What?” I didn’t bother to turn. All I could keep my eyes on was Fallon’s door … which also happened to be my door.
Keir’s large hand landed on my shoulder. “Stop. Please.”
It took everything in me to do as he asked, but I did. Finnan was the kind of leader who pushed me to my limit. Keir was the kind to ease me into changes, making sure I was really okay with them. The pair couldn’t be any different, and that was what made the clan work.
“What?” I repeated, less angrily this time.
We’d stopped no less than ten feet from my room. His black eyes slanted in the direction of the door and his brows rose. The bar through his right eyebrow winked in the light. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“What the fuck, man? She’s Grayson’s sister. You think I’d go there with her?”
He shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know what you’d do. You’ve always been a mystery to me.”
A small part of me was glad he didn’t know me. I didn’t want anyone to really know me … to find out my secrets … to pity me. I was not the kind of man others should pity, but there was something about himwantingto know. The wanting meant he cared on some level, and that was something I’d been chasing all my fucking life. The army had given me a taste of what a family could be, but instead of a mother nurturing me, it was a sergeant handing me a long-range rifle and teaching me how to snipe.
The clan had provided me with a little more stability, but I knew something was missing.
“She’s safe with me,” I rumbled, then opened the door and stepped inside.
I found Fallon on my bed, her unbound hair spilling all over my pillow.Myfucking pillow. Something like hope flared to life in my chest at the sight of it. Did she know she was sleeping on my side of the bed? Did she realize that where she was resting her head would probably smell like me? That flicker of hope began to grow into a fully-fledged flame.
Unwilling to wake her, I went into the bathroom and shut the door quietly behind me. Hitting the switch on the wall, light flooded the space, and I quickly shut it off again. There were warm, muted LED lights under the cabinets and around the dropped ceiling that provided me with more than enough light to get showered and brush my teeth.
Stripping out of my clothes, I peeled off the bandage around my ribs before turning on the cold water and stepping inside the stall. The temperature always stole the breath from my lungs, but I gritted my teeth and stayed under the spray. The bar of soap I always used was sitting on the soap dish as usual, and as I grabbed it and started to lather it up, I thought about Fallon using the same stuff. I didn’t want her to. The soap I used was fucking harsh—the kind of stuff that was used for disinfecting the skin.
Fallon was perfect in every way and didn’t need this shit touching her body.
