Orla drummed her fingers on the desk, then moved to the window that looked out over the MC part of the compound. The yard, the clubhouse, the chapel. “If it was anything real, he’d have told Folk to take Ivy home.”
I followed her gaze to where Folk and Ivy were playing on the swing set with another brother for company. “Saint’s with them.”
“Stop trying to rationalise his caveman bullshit. His dick isn’t that good.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Unless you counted swallowing the damn thing whole, and a smirk I couldn’t repress twisted my lips. “Don’t be too hard on him, okay? Whatever that was, it was real for him.”
Real for everyone if he’d convincedRanger, of all people, that he wanted to stand on a door all day, but Orla didn’t need me to point that out for her.
She went back to work, and I went back to keeping her safe. Though away from the threat of the public, there was less to do, and it was the easiest thing in the world to fluctuate my focus between the seductive curve of Orla’s neck and the door to the sales desk where Nash remained, until he emerged a few minutes later with Rubi in tow.
He glanced at us, then his gaze swept the yard like it often did, taking it all in.Checkingon fuckin’ everything. If he hadn’t been so antsy about heights, he’d have made a good firefighter. As it was, he just looked pissed off.Stressed, even with Rubi for company.
They knocked fists and hugged, moving in sync like blood brothers.
Brothers who banged that one time.
I pursed my lips. Rubi was a beautiful man, inside and out. It was hard to comprehend that Nash had fucked him and not fallen in love with him. That Rubi had fuckedNashand not claimed him for eternity.
Then I remembered that this was real life and it didn’t work like that. I had beautiful friends. Folk was a smoke show. So was Juana. But my heart didn’t skip when they walked in the room. Didn’t fuckin’explodewhen they laid a hand on me. Only two people had ever truly provoked that reaction and I’d spent the last two weeks in bed with them.
My phone ripped me from a daze. A text from Willow harassing me about Sea Rave tickets.
I was texting her back when Rubi reappeared, minus Nash. “Sit down with the big boss.” He answered my unspoken question. “Then I reckon he needs to get that hickey on his neck exorcised.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Orla growled.
Rubi raised his hands. “Don’t take it out on me. It’s not my fault he woke up in warrior mode.”
Nash had woken up with me wrapped around his back and his face smooshed against Orla’s chest, and he’d seemed pretty pleased with life at the time. Obviously, I was missing something—wewere missing something, but if Rubi knew what it was, he wasn’t wearing the face of a man about to give it away.
My phone went ballistic again.
Rubi raised a brow. “Secret lover want your attention?”
“It’s Willow. I said I’d take her to Sea Rave if I wasn’t away on the trucks. She’s bugging me to check.”
“You’re not away.”
“You have the schedule in your head?”
“Nope. I just know Cam took all your overnights until Christmas.”
“What? Why?”
“What can I say? The man loves a road trip.”
“Does he fuck.” I spoke with the confidence of a man who’d shared a lorry cab with Cam O’Brian on multiple haulage runs. Unless Alexei swung by to cheer him up, he was a bear with a sore head from start to finish. “What’s it really about?”
Rubi shrugged. “Obvious, ain’t it? You’re the only one who can guard this crazy beast without fisticuffs.”
He cocked a thumb at Orla.
She mimed cutting it off. “We’ve been over this. Locke has kids. You can’t expect him to follow me around twenty-four seven.”
I opened my mouth.
She cut me off with a hard stare. “No.”
