I threw my pen at him. “Fuck you. I’m stronger than I look.”
I might not be huge like Max, and let’s face it, not many people were, but I could more than hold my own when it mattered. Besides, strength wasn’t everything. I was fast and agile and good with weapons.
“Hey,” Max said, no longer smiling. “I was only joking. You know that, right?”
Fuck. I scrubbed my hands over my face, hoping to wipe away whatever expression had caused Max to ask that. Tombs and his crew used to take the piss constantly about my lack of bulk. I guess it still rankled.
“Yeah, I know.” I forced myself to relax and let go of the tension in my shoulders. Max was nothing like them. When I smiled at him, it came a lot easier than I was expecting. “I’m just hungry.”
“Hangry, more like,” he muttered, ducking the Sellotape I threw next. “Let’s get you fed before you find something that might actually hurt me.”
* * *
“Anyway,”Max said between mouthfuls of sandwich, feet up on his desk. “We can’t go to Midnight today because they’re closed Mondays and Tuesdays.”
“Oh, that’s true.” I’d forgotten that. I took another bite of my pasta. “So we’ll go there tomorrow.”
“Yeah. It’ll only be Zane and the cleaning crew in the day, but he might know something. I know he spends some nights at the club.” Max went back to his food, and I stared at him.
Zane was the owner of Midnight.
And also a witch.
That was about as much as I knew about him. Max appeared to be better informed.
“You seem to know a lot about him.” I tried for casual, but Max snorted and set his sandwich down on his desk.
“He goes to the same gym as me. That’s all.”
I eyed his broad shoulders and biceps that strained his long-sleeved top. “I thought shifters were genetically built like that.” I gestured to his whole self. “No need for pesky things like working out.”
Max narrowed his eyes, as though trying to suss out if I was serious or not. “Who told you that? Rys?” He smirked. “Because if you think he got a body like that from sitting around on his arse all day, then you’re sorely mistaken. He might not put in as much work as I do.” He grinned and gave his biceps a quick flex. “But he does enough for those tight abs.”
I grimaced, trying valiantly not to imagine Rys shirtless. “Don’t talk about your cousin like that.”
“Still a sore topic?”
Yes.
Tender like the worst bruise.
Had been since the day he’d left.
“No,” I lied, hoping Max didn’t know me well enough to pick up on it. “But you’re related.”
He rolled his eyes. “Just because I said he looks after himself doesn’t mean I want to fuck him.”
I shuddered this time and tried so hard not to picture the last time we’d been together like that.
Rys, a hot, sweaty mess underneath me, those deep, soulful brown eyes of his looking back at me, all heat and desire andtrust.
Trust that I’d betrayed.
When I glanced up again, Max had abandoned his food and was watching me, forehead slightly scrunched like he was trying to work out a puzzle.
“What?” I wiped a hand over my face, wondering if I’d got something stuck there.
“It was serious between you and Rys,” he said quietly. More a statement than a question.
