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“Are you hurting?”
“Yeah.” Her fingers flex against my stomach, but she doesn’t pull her hand away.
I grip her wrist with my right hand, preventing her from moving it as I reach to the bedside table for medication and the bottle of water. I can’t hold her forever, and it becomes clear when I shift to hand her the items, and she has to sit halfway up to swallow.
“You’re not scared of me anymore?” I ask when she hands over the bottle of water and settles her cheek on my chest.
She doesn’t answer, and I assume she’s asleep again when my eyes start to close. It’s the middle of the damn night and way too late to get on my bike for the hour drive back to the clubhouse.
“I’m more afraid of you being nice to me than the pain I know you’re capable of.” She swallows loud enough for me to hear. “But I'm tired, so maybe wait until the morning to hurt me.”
Her slender leg slides between mine, and my fingers tease the soft skin of her outer thigh. This girl drives me absolutely insane, and I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now.
“It’s only because I’m so tired,” I mumble as I let myself drift to sleep with perfection in my arms.Chapter 17Kaci
“You’re making this a habit,” I grumble, not bothering to look up from my phone when TJ lets himself into my apartment.
His only response is a quick grin as he shrugs off his jacket and leather vest.
He’s empty-handed, which makes me frown. He’s been bringing food because I haven’t left my place in over a week. The last time I walked out of my front door I had to be carried back in after my run-in with the asshole at TJ’s clubhouse.
“You have nothing better to do than drive an hour just to sit in my apartment?”
“I enjoy the scenery.” His eyes roam from my socked feet to the top of my messy head, and I know he isn’t talking about the curving roads and fields on his way over. “And I haven’t been here every day. I didn’t come yesterday.”
I don’t admit to him that I waited with my eyes on the door almost the entire day hoping he’d show up as I flip my cover over to hide my legs. He’d sent a pizza to my door instead. It wasn’t much of a consolation prize after the all the consecutive days of spending time with him. I’ll also never confess that I tossed and turned last night because his warmth wasn’t heating my side as I fell asleep. The luxury of that comfort shouldn’t be wasted on me.
He’s always gone by morning, but I’ve grown accustomed to resting my head on his chest and dozing off to the rhythm of his heartbeat and the cadence of his breathing against my cheek.
“Did you miss me?”
My brow creases when I look up at him. “What?”
“Did you miss me when I didn’t show up.”
“No,” I answer too quickly, and it’s reflected in the blue of his eyes. “It was nice to watch what I want on TV for a change.”
“I missed you.”
His simple words do more to me than I want to admit, so I opt to change the topic instead.
“How did it go?”
Before he’d fallen asleep in my bed Wednesday, he’d talked about the way his sister was treating him differently since his meeting, as he calls it, with her lover Briar.
“Lynch set the club straight, but I can tell it’s going to take a lot more than our blessing to make her trust us again.”
“Trust is hard to build once it’s broken,” I whisper, and immediately clamp my mouth closed. Talking out of turn and saying more than I should, has become a problem recently. He’s invaded my life like he has a right to be here, and I’ve just let it happen. I’ve clung to his affection and presence like a lifeline, and I think I’m losing my sanity because of it.
“Kaci?” I pull my eyes from my phone and look up at him. “Are you going to answer me?”
He frowns and crosses the room in my direction when I don’t answer. How can I? I’m so stuck in my own damn head, I didn’t hear him talking.
“I said I’m hungry.”
I swallow thickly when his lids fall and only the tiniest slit of his irises can be seen. He has to be talking about food, right? He hasn’t made any other move on me in the last week. Sure his hand grazed my thigh more than once when we were lying in bed watching TV, but he didn’t let his fingers linger.
“Umm.” I swallow again, but it does nothing to rid the ball of lust forming in my throat. “There’s leftover pizza in the fridge.”
