“You don’t want to know.”
Embry leaned forward, killing me in ways he’d never understand. “I always want to know. Tell me, please?”
I wanted him to beg me for other things. Sordid things.Filthythings. But it was never gonna happen, so I gave him the truth. “Last time he pissed me off, I googled Alexei to calm myself down.”
Embry’s inky brows shot up. “What did you learn?”
“That I can’t read Russian any better than English, and not to google Alexei.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I never promised you one.”
A playful glower took over his face.Nosy bastard. But in this, he’d have to kill me for real before I told him. Alexei’s story wasn’t mine to share, and he knew it. “Damn you and your morals.”
“I have no morals.”
“Liar.”
Mentiroso.
I shivered.
Embry reached out and gently tweaked my chin. He had smaller hands than mine, but they were every bit as roughed up and calloused. “Relax,” he whispered.
Then he let his hand drop and it landed on my thigh, and he just... left it there.
Relax. Was he taking the fucking piss?
Also, he was vibrating with tension, so if nothing else, he was a gigantic hypocrite.
Though I could live with that. Feeling calm around Embry was a hard-fought battle, but I won it every day now I knew the stakes—that I’d lose our blurry, undefined friendship if I didn’t keep a lid on my shit.
And hey, it was a big box of shit. Anoldbox of shit. Who cared if it got heavier by the day?
“I’m sorry.”
Another whisper. I cleared my mind like jacked-up riot police had ridden through my brain and focused on him. On the tremor in his hand as he raised it from my thigh and let it hover so close to my face that I felt the heat of it. Theintimacythat was as new to us as it was to me at all. We both fucked other people—me more than him—but I’d never been this caught up in a girl without throwing her down and banging her. A means to an end, but with him, it was everything.
I took a chance and wrapped my fingers around his wrist, gentle, not gripping him tight the way I wanted to. “What are you sorry for?”
“For messing with your head.” Embry let his hand complete the journey, his palm cupping my jaw. “I know I should let you go. Push you away, even.”
“You think you could move me?”
“Not at first, but you’d have to move on eventually. This... this fucking mess. Where does it end? Fuck, I don’t even know where it starts.”
I did. It was three years ago—
Cam roared into the compound, another bike at his back, but for once, it wasn’t Saint. And it wasn’t a Harley.
The Triumph Tiger was noisy and fast. The rider was half a foot shorter than Cam and built like a gymnast.
He pulled his helmet off.
Black hair fell into his face.
He pushed it back and glanced around. Eyes the colour of storm clouds met mine. The world shifted on its axis, and in that moment, every fucking part of me knew it’d never shift back.
