“Fine.” Her lips press tightly together as she avoids my eyes.
“Sinclair?” I press. “Yesterday. I?—”
“You what?” She finally looks at me, but it’s only to glare like she thinks I’m the biggest jerk in history.
“I read the situation wrong. Role-play was a bad idea.”
She scoffs, shaking her head. “You think I can’t handle it. But I told you I can.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is?”
The defiance burning in her gaze has me scrubbing a hand around my jaw.
“I think it went a little far for the first time, that’s all.”
She stares at me like she’s trying to figure out what I’m not telling her. Because there is a great big fat piece of information missing from my statement. And that’s that I’m the one who couldn’t handle it.
I couldn’t handle the sound of her crying. That’s what did it to me. Made me turn her in my arms so fast to check on her that my brain shook in my goddamn skull. I’ve heard her cry so many times. I’ve heard it enough to last a lifetime.
I thought I’d hurt her or scared her. For real.
“Stop treating me like I’m fragile. I’m used to it from Dad and Sullivan, even Uncle Mal. But with you?—”
“I’m sorry.”
The genuine regret in my voice must be evident because her eyes soften a little as she looks at me.
“It’s fine.” Her shoulders sag.
It falls silent between us again as Monty makes a show of licking the plate clean and then looking up between both of us, licking his lips.
“I’ll head to the store in town, get some supplies. I didn’t know anyone would be coming here,” I say, looking at the bare cupboards.
“Youcan head there?” Sinclair sneaks a look at me. “Are me and Monty staying here?”
I press my lips together. The security system would alert me to her trying to leave. But it’s not like she could go anywhere if I had my car. There’s nothing for miles.
She cocks a brow at me and the memory of backing her up against that wall after I caught her sneaking around with Julian, the lawyer, pushes to the front of my thoughts. I wouldn’t putanything past her. She’d be out of here in a flash and back to New York if she thought there was a way.
“Fifteen minutes, then we leave,” I clip, pushing away from the counter. I’m dirty and sweaty from chopping firewood and need to take a shower.
“Twenty,” she counters to my retreating back.
“Fifteen,” I repeat.
Something about her muttered curse of asshole sounds good. It lacks venom, like she doesn’t really mean it. Like we’re back on track again. Like she doesn’t hate me for what went down yesterday.
I was right. Roleplay makes her fight better. She was putting everything into it, bucking beneath me, trying to headbutt me, bite me. Grinding her ass back against me like she was going to strike my groin, given the chance.
I’ve never been so grateful for all the years I spent serving. For the discipline it gave me. For the control it’s given me over my mind and body. Because if Sinclair had any idea of the basic urges my body wanted to express in reaction to having her beneath me like that, there’d be hell to pay.
With her father, her brother, but most of all with her.
The worst thing that could have happened was if I’d gotten hard when I was training with her. If I’d lost control and let her affect me. If I’d let her down by making it about anything other than teaching her how to defend herself.
I’d be as bad as the creeps I’m trying to protect her from.
