“Good morning,” she said, on the tail end of a yawn as she rolled onto her back. She arched from the mattress, her arms reaching above her while her legs kicked out, her ankles rotating slowly. Collapsing back against the sheets, she looked up at me and smiled. “How are you feeling?”
Shit. Half turning my face to watch her, my eyes trailed up and down her body as it stretched out in front of me. My jaw set tight as I struggled to keep it together, the musclestwitching in double time before I lifted up the bottle of pills and let my gaze fall back on her face. “Great,” I answered sharply.
She rolled her eyes, almost as though she had expected my mood, and curled back up in a ball, her hands tucked between her thighs as her eyes flickered to the clock on the nightstand. “Oh, shit.”
My attention fell back to the bottle of heaven in my hands as I flicked the cap off. “What?”
“Work. I’m late.” She kicked out her legs and lifted her ass from the bed, digging in her pockets for what I assumed was her phone. “I can’t afford to miss another shift.”
Pouring a handful of pills into my palm, I let some filter back into the bottle before throwing a few down the hole—probably more than I should have, but at that stage, I didn’t give a fuck as long as her shrieking stopped and my head calmed down.
“What?” I snapped again, my face scrunching tight as I looked over at her and tried to swallow them without water.
“Work.Late,” she enunciated, twisting her phone in her grip and tucking strands of her hair behind her ear.
“Right. Work.”
Growling at the cell in her hands, she sat up and bounced to the edge of the bed, looking down at her jeans and barely-there tank top in frustration. She was on her feet and shoving her phone back in her pocket before I could blink. Her quick movements were not helping the state of my head. “Damn. Phone’s dead. I need to find one that works.”
My eyes closed as my brows rose high and I cringed. “Could you go find one a little more quietly?”
She shot me an amused look before pulling her shoeson and surreptitiously sniffing her shirt. My pain seemed to amuse her. “Absolutely, then I’ll put some coffee on.”
“You don’t have time.” I turned away as swiftly as I could without making my head feel like it was doing an exorcist spin. “You should probably just go. Deeks will take you wherever you need to be.” I tossed the pill bottle back down on the side and let out a long, tired, irritated sigh.
“I’m already late as it is,” she whispered. “I still have to go home and change. I can’t drag Deeks around. I’ll just take my car.”
“Yeah, just take your car. Don’t forget to keep looking over your shoulder for that bullet that could be flying through the air towards your head at any moment.” I shook my head slowly, growling as I looked down at the floor, then back up at her. “Just go with fucking Deeks, Ayda. I got spare clothes in my closet.”
She was already moving back towards the bed with her hands pulling her hair back to include the escaped pieces. For a moment, she wobbled before dropping her ass to the mattress and bouncing there. “Don’t be flippant about that, Drew, and you know I can’t wear your clothes.”
“Because that would be too easy, right?”
“No, because that would be some crazy possessive claim over you to those women out there.” She dropped her hands to her legs and looked up at me as though daring me to contradict her.
I stared at her in complete confusion. “A claim? Over me?”
“Drew, it didn’t take me a week to see the politics around here. These girls, they strut around after the fact wearing yours, and…” she flung her arms up, “any of the pack’s clothes like a trophy. They’re saying to the other girls, ‘Look who I just fucked. Stay away until I’m through with him,’ and to the men, it’s a challenge to be next in line. There’s an order to it.”
My body turned fully and my hands fell to my waist as I ran my teeth over my bottom lip repeatedly. When I looked up at her, I saw the flash of nerves flicker across her face, even if she did try to hide it.
“You listen to me and listen good. I don’t get claimed by anyone or anything. Take the goddamn clothes or leave them, I really don’t care. All that high school crap that you think you see out there is all in your head. This place is about one thing: raw, brutal honesty. We want something? We go get it. The girls want to fuck? They don’t hide it. They don’t even wait. It’s basic animal instincts out there. No one cares about what hoodie is on your back, Ayda. We’ve got bigger problems to deal with.”
I knew that I was being that asshole she had me pegged as, but with everything in my head feeling like it was being stomped on, I couldn’t find it in me to care about anything other than getting away from her.
My eyes dropped down to her mouth then back up again. “I don’t get claimed,” I repeated in a rough whisper.
She nodded in understanding and looked back down at her hands in defeat. “Understood.”
“And stop being so fucking reasonable all the time. It’s really starting to piss me off!” I didn’t give her a chance to reply before I turned and started to walk away, shouting over my shoulder as I went. “Get your things and go. I’m paying you for last night and you’re riding with Deeks today.”
“Wait! What? Excuse me?” she shouted, pushing up to herfeet. “The fuck you are paying me. I’m not a fucking whore, Drew. Jesus Christ!”
I paused by the door and looked over my shoulder, glaring at her through narrowed eyes. “Maybe if you were, I wouldn’t be so eager to have you gone.”
“Go fuck yourself, and shove your protection up your ass. I’ll take the fucking threat over this bullshit. This fight has nothing to do with me. I’m going back to my life. Find someone else to pick up after you. I’m not some dog you can kick around.” With that, she stormed out of the bedroom door, slamming it as hard as she could behind her.
I took a step forward to chase after her, but when reality hit that seeing her again was the last thing I could face, I stayed exactly where I was and collected myself. I didn’t know what the hell had just happened. I didn’t know much of anything through all the fog in my brain. The only thing I knew with absolute certainty was this:
