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He huffed a dark chuckle. “Believe me, I don’t have to work very hard to keep people away. They seem to avoid me all on their own.”
“And that makes you happy?”
“Nothing makes me happy anymore,” he replied, but a look in his eyes said maybe there wassomethingthat brought him joy.
Only a few minutes had passed before our waitress was back with a pitcher of water and two glasses. She deposited them on the table, then darted away just as quickly. Orin leaned forward in his seat, and I watched as the muscles and tendons in his arms shifted under his tattooed skin. There were veins in the meatier parts of his forearm, and the overwhelming desire to reach forward and lick them gripped me.
Shaking myself, I inched back further in my chair to stop myself from doing just that. Orin watched my face as he poured water into both glasses, then nudged one my way. Keeping my eyes locked on him, I took a swallow of water, then set it back on the table.
“Where will we go tomorrow?”
“We’ll continue north. There are a few towns I’ve been told to ask around in.”
“And if we can’t find him?”
“Then we return to the compound, where you can be safe, and I can do my job without worrying about you getting hurt.”
I nibbled on my bottom lip, until Orin’s croaked “Stop” gave me pause. His dark eyes were locked on my mouth. I made a slow show of licking where my teeth had just been, and he shifted under the table. It gave me such a rush to know that I was affecting him this way—me, who had zero confidence when it came to the opposite sex and had no interest in eliciting that reaction from another man.
But Orin wasn’t just another man.
“Do you think the Bèar Clan have given up on trying to find us?”
“If I were them, I wouldn’t have. I would simply be biding my time until there was an opportunity.”
My heart lurched a little in my chest. “Do you think I’m in danger?”
“You’re with me, Filly. Of course you’re in danger.”
At the use of my nickname, I frowned. “Did Grayson tell you about my nickname?”
“No.”
“Why do you call me Filly, then?”
Instead of answering, he stared at me like he always did, and I fought the urge to squirm. He was silent for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all, until he said, “You have a birthmark on your left shoulder. It looks like a horse’s head to me.”
“I know, but why Filly specifically?”
“You’re a young woman. A young horse is called a filly. Is that not the reason you were called it by Grayson?”
I shook my head. “My ma had started calling me Filly when I was five because I was horse mad. I wanted to have one so badly, but she’d said that horses were expensive, and they didn’t have the kind of money that was needed to own and really look after a horse.”
“Do you ride?”
“I did up until ma died. Then I stopped because I couldn’t handle the thought of knowing she wasn’t there to watch me anymore.”
“I can stop calling you that if you like?” He said the words carefully—seriously—like the thought of offending me or making me sad were abhorrent to him. “If it causes you too much pain.”
“No. I like it when you call me that. It doesn’t ... hurt anymore.”
“I’m glad.”
We were still looking at each other when the waitress arrived with our meals. She placed mine down first, then Orin’s before rushing away from the table. I watched her go.
“You certainly have a way with the ladies.”
“I have a reputation with the ladies, although how they’ve found out about it, especially up this far north, I have no idea.”
