“I don’t care,” he answered as he walked past me and joined the others. “What’s the problem now?” he asked Quinn as he pulled her closer to him. Not into him like he was smothering her, just enough that he was touching her.
“Mia can’t cook,” Quinn explained to him, and I flinched when he looked at me with that hard, unyielding stare.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” he said as he dismissed me and turned to his cousin. “So, she’s here after all?”
“Why does no one care that the brute can’t cook?” I demanded. Okay, even if I could cook, I wouldn’t be cooking for him, but why was I getting the grief when he couldn’t cook either?
“Brute?” Ash asked me with surprise. “Why am I suddenly brute?”
“Why am I Red?”
“You have red hair,” he explained as if speaking to a child.
“Yeah, well, you have brute strength.”Lame. So very lame.
“Itwouldbe better if we were all here,” Jett murmured to Gray as he effectively cut me out of the conversation.
“Why can’t you two bunk,” I suggested to the brothers, “and Ava and I sleep in one room?” Everyone stared at me. “What? You’re twins, you were sleeping together for years.”
“It just sounds so wrong,” Quinn snickered, and Ava grinned.
“Ava sleeps with me,” Jett told me bluntly.
“Quinn stays with me,” Gray added.
“Fine.” I almost stamped my foot and looked at Ash. “Your call. They seem to be adamant, and I’m fed up arguing. It’s either here with a shower that you fit in and can have someone cook for you, or my apartment where the bed doesn’t fit, the shower doesn’t fit, the TV’s too small, the couch is more like an armchair for you, and I can only ever make toast.” I saw Ava’s grimace and sighed. “Well, okay, I set fire to the toaster, but whatever.”
Ash looked me over and then at his room, but his eyes lingered on his cousin and Quinn, who had now moved closer to the ice block that was Gray, and her hand was trailing over his biceps as they waited.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised when we were walking back to my apartment in silence. Ash was in a world of his own, but my own head was jumbled with the information in it.
“It’s a terrible situation really,” I started, but he wasn’t listening. However, I was used to not being heard. “Quinn must have been so scared, and to go through it all alone.” I looked up at him, and he was fully focused on the street ahead. “And now for them to be bothering her, why is no one going to the police?”
That snapped his attention to mine, and he frowned down at me. “It’s complicated.”
“Is it?” I questioned as we reached my apartment, and I looked at him in consternation. “Why did you pick here?” I asked softly.
Ash shrugged as he climbed the stairs. “I like an adventure.”
I kept my thoughts about him speaking rubbish to myself. “We need ground rules,” I told him as he waited for me to open the door.
“Sure.”
He waited at the kitchen counter, and I hesitated. Completely alone with him and resigned to the fact that this was what it was, I was now acutely aware of the fact that this afternoon, I’d been having sex with him.
“You thinking about riding me?”
My face flushed red as I looked away in embarrassment. “No.”
Ash smirked but said nothing, his arms crossed over his broad chest, and I remembered the security I felt being in his arms. “Sure.”
“So, you can have my bed,” I said as I crossed to the couch and sat down. “I’m not moving my clothes out though; Jett is sure this isn’t for long.”
“Okay.” Ash nodded and made a motion with his hand to carry on.
“I shower first.”
“Why?” His head tilted as he considered me.
