He nodded as if in understanding. A silence lingered between them, both of them studying the other, unsure what to do.
“What about you?” she asked, blurting out the question despite herself. She didn’t want to know the answer. She didn’t want to get to know him better. This jerk had forced her to marry him against her will. That was all she needed to know about him.
Cillian scratched his chin. She tried not to notice the way his muscles rippled with the casual gesture. She briefly wondered what it would feel like to run her hands along them, whether the rest of his body was covered in tattoos like his arm, and whether the rest of him was as carefully sculpted as his biceps.
She shoved the thoughts down, gritting her teeth. She wasn’t going to let her mind run wild like that. She wasn’t goingto start down that road, no matter how badly part of her wanted to.
Mercifully, he spoke before her imagination got too out of control. She dragged herself back to reality.
Shouldn’t even be thinking about that in the first place, she scolded herself.Not after everything he’s done to you.
“Not much of a reader,” he admitted. “I like hiking, and I enjoy being outdoors. Truth be told, I’ve never been much for being stationary. Don’t have the patience for it.”
Somehow, that didn’t surprise her in the least. She nodded, her lip twitching upward.
“What do you have the patience for?” she asked.
Cillian considered her for a long moment, then a wicked smirk spread across his face, his eyes sparkling. Heat flushed through her, and it took more effort than she cared to admit to keep his gaze.
“Plenty of things,” he said. “Usually the type of thing that’s better with another person.”
It didn’t take a genius to know exactly what he meant, and a brief jolt of electricity shot through her. She tried to keep her expression neutral as her mind pictured being beneath him amongst tangled bedsheets, his lips trailing across her skin.
She pulled herself out of those thoughts. She wasn’t going to let herself entertain those sorts of ideas. He had forced her to marry him. That was the end of the story. She wasn’t about to forgive him just because she found him attractive, or because he’d made her laugh on a couple of occasions.
“I’ve, um, got to go,” she said, jabbing her thumb toward the stairs, unable to look at him any further. “Things I need to take care of.”
Before he could do anything other than nod, she darted up the stairs, not quite breaking into an all-out sprint, but close enough.
Amber had insisted on a separate room when he had forced her to move in. After a little reluctance, he’d agreed. When she entered, she closed the door and leaned against the wall, staring into the room.
Get a grip, she ordered herself. No matter what, she wasn’t going to let Cillian in, not after everything he’d done.
She tried not to wonder why that promise felt so hollow.
Chapter 7 - Cillian
It took a couple of days for Cillian to finally tell Camden, Franco, and Jasper what had happened, despite all of them asking pointed questions about why he had married Amber so quickly. Cillian had wanted to get his thoughts straight, but he couldn’t keep them in the dark any longer.
They all listened to the story. When he finished recounting Amber and their sudden marriage, he wasn’t sure what to expect. All of his friends looked back at him with stony faces.
“You managed to keep all of that from us?” Franco said.
When Cillian nodded, Franco rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure if I should be impressed that you didn’t say anything, or pissed off that you kept us in the dark when we could have helped you.”
“I’m a bit of both,” Jasper said. “Are you really that stupid?”
Cillian let the insults roll off him. “I did what I thought was best.”
“No,” Camden growled. “You acted impulsively. I know you’ve had issues with being rash in the past, but this is on another level of stupidity.”
“It’s not as though I had a lot of options,” Cillian said defensively. “I had to act quickly.”
“You could have told us,” Camden said. “Youshouldhave told us. Before you went out on a dangerous mission on your own like an idiotic new recruit. You have better sense than that. Maybe then we could have extracted Amber without you having to buy her. Why didn’t you rope us in?”
Cillian shrugged. “It’s not the type of thing I like to talk about,” he grunted. “On top of that, it’s not your battle. You guys didn’t know me back then. It wasn’t your mission that fucked up.”
“We’re still a team, even if we’ve retired,” Franco said, folding his arms. “We would have helped. Honestly, if you had asked us for help, we probably could have neutralized Eric and gotten Amber out of the way, instead of making you have to choose between the two.”
