Page 37
“You want to keep this?” Declan growls, eyes solid gold.
“Yes! Yes, I’d like to keep it. I use it a lot…”
“Then you keep your fucking nose out of my wife’s neck.”
“Dec.” Aidan’s got a hand on Declan’s shoulder. “The guards are looking. Let go of the idiot.”
Declan lets go. Finn shakes out his hand, not looking even a little bit sorry.
“Worth it,” he tells me and winks.
I giggle. Then when I sit back down, squeeze my thighs together, because watching my husband nearly break a man’s wrist for sniffing me does things to me.
* * *
They catch up for a while. Business first, in a way I can’t really follow. Hushed and cryptic.
I’ve seen Declan chained to a table. I’ve seen him behind glass, naked in my arms, and purring with his head in my lap. I’ve never seen him like this. He doesn’t raise his voice. He barely talks. He asks a question, and three dangerous men answer. He says, “No. Do it the other way,” Rian just nods, and that’s the end of it.
He’s been in here four years, and he’s still the center of gravity.
That’s my man, I think, and it hits me low in my belly. Mine.
Then the conversation goes quiet, and all four brothers are looking at me.
Ah, here it comes.
“So, Zahra,” Aidan says gently. He’s the one who starts. Good cop, I assume. “Tell us about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What you’re doing here,” Rian says.
Declan’s hand tightens on my thigh. “Rian.”
“No.” I cover his hand with mine. “It’s fine. That’s a fair question. One I’d ask.”
And it is. If some woman showed up out of nowhere and married my brother in a month, I’d have her whole life in a binder. And I’m sure Rian does. So I sit up straight, fold my hands on the table, and find my courtroom voice.
“I’m here because I walked into a room five weeks ago and my whole life rearranged itself,” I say. “I didn’t plan it, didn’t want it. I’d never even been on a date with a shifter. I fought it for about forty-eight hours.” I shrug. “Then I stopped, because I’m not stupid, and I know the truth when it’s standing in front of me.”
Finn snorts. Aidan’s eyes crinkle.
“What do you want from him?” Rian again.
“Nothing he hasn’t already given me.”
“Money?”
“My mother’s chief of cardiology at St. Catherine’s. My father designs bridges. I bill four hundred and fifty dollars an hour, and I own my apartment.” I hold his eyes. “I don’t need your money, Rian. And honestly, I’d prefer not to know where most of it comes from.”
Something flickers across his face.
“Protection, then?”
I scoff. “I didn’t need protecting until I met your brother.”
“Fair,” Finn mutters.
