“No need,” Lynn said, jumping to the floor, fury coiled in every line of her body. I’d seen Lynn pissed off, but this was more. I sighed, and thumped my head against the door frame behind me. So I hadn’t just made her angry, I'd wounded her pride and probably hurt her feelings. “I’m leaving.”
I caught her waist as she tried to shove past me. “Not staying to put on pants?”
“No,” she snapped. “This is my look now.”
“Hot, but you might give my brothers a heart attack.”
“Good.”
She made a passing attempt at freeing herself, but she could have broken my nose or rammed her elbow into my kidney if she really wanted to get free. Which meant she’d probably missed me as badly as I missed her this week.
“Look,” I said, my voice pitched low. “I know I’m not an alpha, but I’ve still got that protective gene in me. I don’t like that I retraumatised you, but you were right. You fought those demons and won, and—that’s fucking insane, Lynn. You’re strong as hell, and I didn’t mean to diminish your victory.”
Her mouth thinned, arms crossed over her chest, but the brown crystal of her eyes shone a little brighter. “Yeah, you were a dick.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“If I couldn’t handle it, I would have told you to stop,” she replied at the same volume, the words only for me.
“Maybe I’m the one who can’t handle it.”
She stared at me, clear brown eyes piercing flesh and bone right down to the heart of me. “You could have saidprincessat any time.”
I made a throaty noise. “You were fucking heaven, Lynn. As if I would stop.”
Her throat bobbed, a shadow chasing through her eyes as she glanced away. “I can protect myself. Don’t forget that.”
“I know.” I made a slow pass over her hip with my thumb. “What if I want to protect you, too? What if it’s second nature to keep you away from that dark shit?”
“We’re making a scene,” she muttered, her cheeks pink.
“Shade’s a vault of secrets; he won’t tell anyone. Answer my question. What if I want to protect you, too?”
Lynn groaned, scowling at me.“Fine.If you want to, I can’t stop you. But don’t make decisions for me.” She grabbed mythroat, so quickly I didn’t see it coming. “If I tell you not to hold back, you stop fucking holding back.”
“Fine,”I echoed in the same tone, admiring the feeling of her hand around my throat. I checked Shade was still out of earshot and said, “I usually like my partners to fight me, so I can overpower them. It—it’s the reverse of what happened to me.”
“I get it,” she said with zero judgement, which was exactly why I liked her.
Doubt struck, making my stomach twist. “It’s wrong.”
“Shut up. What if we need the same thing?”
A low laugh ruptured my chest. “Doubt it.”
“Putting me back in that place,” she said slowly, “allowed me to beat the shit out of that memory, and make it feelgoodinstead of painful and dark. It made me feel powerful, Cobra. Ilikedit. The memories themselves make me want to throw up, but kicking the door shut on them and finding my way back to what’s happening in the present… I felt strong in that moment.”
“You are strong,” I murmured.
“I want to feel it again.” She held eye contact. “I want you harder, rougher. I want you to bark and push me to my limits, because I can face those memories andbeat them.And I think what you need is what I need, too. We’re both—victims,” she spat, hating that word as much as I did. I smiled. “And maybe we deal with it in different ways, but I don’t see why those ways can’t complement each other.”
“I put myself in the other person’s shoes; you put yourself back in that place but with a different outcome.”
“Yeah.”
“But with strict boundaries,” I said, my voice hardening. “Non-fucking-negotiable, asshole.”
She smiled. Tightened her hand around my neck. “Yeah, fine.”
