“Perfect. That gives me time to clean up. I’ll leave the door open.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Lincoln disconnected the call and I changed direction, driving toward Hunter’s apartment instead of mine. I used the miles to think about how awful dinner on Friday was going to be. Last week, all of my brothers knew something was off about me, but Hunter was the only one who knew about my tattoo. God, they were going to all find out about my tattoo. Luckily, none of them knew about Riggs, but I was sure once I mentioned it to Lincoln, Hunter would find out, and then it would only be a matter of time. I could probably ask him to keep it in confidence, but I didn’t want him to lie to my brother if it came up either.
Whatever.
I’d deal with all of that later.
I parked in one of the guest spots at Hunter’s building and rode the elevator up to his floor. At the end of the hallway, I found his door unlocked and Lincoln in the kitchen, pouring over a stack of delivery menus. He didn’t even look up when I walked in, only reaching out for me and hauling my chest against his back as soon as I was close enough to touch.
Without thinking much of it, I slid my arms around Lincoln’s waist and rested my chin on his shoulder. He was one of the most tactile people I had ever met, and that wasn’t even counting the platonic kissing. Lincoln lifted up a menu for Greek food and I nodded. He made a happy sound and then turned in my arms, grinning up at me. His hair was wet from a shower, his skin glowing.
Happiness looked so good on him.
“Give me a kiss and tell me what’s wrong.”
Obediently, I dropped a peck against the corner of his mouth before grabbing the menu and taking it to my brother’s couch. Lincoln followed behind me, using an app to order our meals and waiting patiently for me to find the words. He sat next to me, body burrowed into the crook of my arm, both of us facing the black TV instead of each other. It would be easier to talk without his stare on me, and he must have known it.
“I met someone,” I admitted. “But…I don’t know if it’s a thing or justa thing.”
He chuckled, looping one of his arms over my stomach. “Can you define both of those options for me.”
“A thing like we hooked up Saturday night and that was that, ora thinglike we hooked up Saturday night and that’s not that.”
Lincoln bumped his head into the underside of my chin. “What do you want it to be?”
“That’s part of the problem.”
“This is the perfect time for you to elaborate,” he said. “Would it help if I closed my eyes?”
“I can’t even see you,” I muttered.
“Would it help if I closedyoureyes?”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know.”
Lincoln scrambled onto my lap so we were facing each other, his head a little higher than mine. He rested one hand on the center of my chest, the other covering the top part of my face. I could see through the blinds of his fingers, so I closed my eyes, finding the darkness did, in fact, help.
“I met him at Rapture,” I said.
“We can talk about what you were doing at Rapture later, go on.”
“Well, I met him before Rapture,” I clarified, bumping my tattooed forearm into his hip. “I saw him at Rapture and…God, this is…”
Lincoln took his hand away from my face and I blinked my eyes open to find him staring down at me, amusement coloring his features.
“There’s nothing you can say that would shock me,” he promised. “Nothing that will change how I think of you.”
“I was watching a scene in the loft and I was touching myself. I knew other people were there, but I didn’t know he was there, but he saw me and then he followed me to the bathroom and we talked a little bit. Then he took me into a stall and jerked me off, and after asked if I wanted to come home with him, and I definitely went home with him, and he spanked me, and he caned me, and he made me come some more, like a lot more, and then he let me spend the night, and I woke up in the middle of the night and he was on his couch, not in bed, so I climbed onto the couch with him and he snuggled me the rest of the night and didn’t say anything about it bad or not, and then when I woke up on Sunday I accidentally met his best friend, and I think hisfriend knew something was up, but then Riggs told me to call him if I wanted to see him again but to wait until after I wasn’t glowy about it anymore, and I’m not glowy about it anymore, but I’m scared to call him.”
I stopped and sucked in a much-needed breath of air.
While I talked, Lincoln’s brows had crept toward his hair line, and after I went quiet, his mouth fell open, but no sound came out.
“Okay,” he said, sucking his tongue across the front of his teeth in a move that was so decidedly Marshall, I worried for a second I was talking to the wrong person. “Let’s start with…the spanking and the caning, I think. I didn’t know you were into those things? You are into those things, right?”
“I didn’t know I was into them either, but yes,” I said. “I find it grounding.”
