“Why?”
I looked at the bottle. Looked at her. Realized too late I had no good answer.
“I don’t know. Club girls like it.”
Silence.
Dead, immediate, lethal silence.
Edge made a choking sound from outside the driver’s window. Tank turned his whole body away like he was removing himself from the blast radius. River started laughing before Sienna even spoke.
She slowly turned her head toward me.
“You call me your future wife,” she said, each word precise enough to cut skin, “then buy me club girl vodka?”
The parking lot erupted.
Men bent over laughing. A prospect slapped the hood of the truck. Edge wheezed, “He’s dead. He is actually dead.”
I shut my eyes for half a second. “That came out wrong.”
“Oh, did it?”
“I meant it’s sweet.”
“I know what vanilla vodka is, Mason. I’ve lived among humans.”
River was still laughing. “Man’s married ten minutes in his head and already sleeping outside.”
“We’re not married yet,” Sienna snapped.
“Keep talking like that, brother,” Tank called, “and you won’t be.”
I pointed at all of them. “Everybody shut the hell up.”
Nobody shut the hell up.
Sienna reached for the bottle, but her hand shook so badly her fingers clipped mine instead of the glass. She froze. I froze with her.
There it was again.
The fear.
Not attitude. Not anger. Not the mouth she used like armor.
Fear.
I wrapped my hand around hers before she could pull away and kept my voice low. “Let me.”
“I can drink by myself.”
“I know you can.”
“Then give it to me.”
I didn’t.
Her eyes snapped to mine.
