I trailed off, the mistruth sharp in my throat.
“We don’t…?”
“Lincoln and I…we’re just friends,” I explained.
Riggs lifted his coffee and took a sip, eyeing me over the rim. “That sounds like there’s a but.”
“We’ve slept together. But it was just so I could try it. It wasn’t because we were attracted to each other.”
“And this is your brother’s boyfriend?” Riggs asked.
“He wasn’t dating Hunter when it happened,” I said quickly, realizing how bad it sounded. “But Lincoln, he…we…he’s very affectionate. Even now that we’re only friends.”
Riggs sucked in a breath like he was bracing for the answer to the question he was about to ask. “Is that code for something?”
“No.” I set the coffee on the nightstand and grabbed his hands, warm palms against his cool fingers. “We snuggle. He’s very tactile, and he makes out with his other friends, but not with me. We kiss, like, on the mouth but no tongue.”
I clenched my molars together to stop myself from saying anything else. Every word out of my mouth made my relationship with Lincoln sound worse than it was.
“And you’re just friends with him?”
“Just friends.”
Riggs shifted his coffee from one hand to the other and rubbed at the back of his neck. His hair was still loose and it looked so soft in the dim light of his bedroom.
“I hope I can meet him soon,” he said. “Since you’ve already met Damon.”
“You can meet him whenever you want,” I blurted. “Just not Friday.”
He arched a brow, and I covered the hickey with my hand.
“I have dinner with my brothers on Friday. Every Friday. It’s tradition.”
“Just not Friday,” he repeated. “Duly noted.”
A nervous silence settled between us, and I grabbed my coffee, needing something to do with my hands. Riggs didn’t seem bothered at all by the quiet, perfectly content to study me with dark and watchful eyes.
“If you’re agreeable to it, I’d like to finish this coffee and get you into a shower so I can re-up the arnica on your bruises,” he finally said. “And I can’t have lunch with you today, but I don’t want you to leave without making plans to see you again.”
“Saturday,” I blurted.
“I work until ten.”
“After.”
His mouth quirked up in the corner. “Did you have any special requests? Anything in mind?”
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my voice cracked when I asked, “How long until my tattoo is healed?”
Riggs held his hand out and I dropped mine into it, shivering as he rotated my arm to inspect the tattoo.
“Next week probably,” he said, “but it’ll be sensitive still, so maybe next weekend.”
I cracked my knuckles, remembering how skillfully he’d made knots around my fingers our first night together. Even then, I’d known he was capable of so much more than he’d showed me.
“I’ll have requests then,” I said, cheeks burning at the admission. “Maybe just a late dinner. A movie.”
“Very normal.”
