Page 34 of Pain

I liked to have people close to me. I didn’t like that it put me in a position to lose them.

I’d spent my whole adult life keeping myself out of that situation, for the most part—with a few very important exceptions—and I wasn’t sure how Saraya had managed to bypass all the walls I’d put in place and burrowed her way right into my heart. Hell, I could count on one hand how many people I’d let actually get close to me.

How had Saraya leapfrogged past most of them in the space of three days?

I rummaged through the pantry in search of something quick and easy and found several packages of pre-made rice. It wouldn’t exactly give me protein, but it would fill the hole in my belly, and right now, that was all that mattered.

It would also force my mind to follow the written directions rather than think about Saraya, and right now, that was equally important.

I went through the steps quickly, intent on getting finished before anyone else decided to come in for something to eat, and between sautéing butter and the seasoning, then adding the rice and getting the water into the pan before anything burned, I managed to keep my thoughts away from the girl currently in my shower.

Of course, as soon as I congratulated myself on not having thought about her, I started thinking about her, and my mind went right back to where it had left off in my bedroom. Saraya, soaking wet and covered in soap suds, her small, perfect body slippery and wet to the touch, her mouth open in a small O when I slid my fingers between her legs.

My hands on her hips as I turned her and pushed her up against the wall.

Her groan of protest—or was it assent?—as I pulled that luscious ass back toward me, my hard cock nudging her opening and twitching with the all-consuming need to be buried inside her warmth.

My hands coming around to cup her breasts as I—

The smell of hot, burning butter brought me screaming back into the real world, and I looked down, horrified to see the rice I’d worked so hard not to burn earlier now scorching in the pan as the water cooked off.

“Shit!” I snapped, grabbing at the pan and taking it off the burner, then slapping at the burner to try to turn it off. I was fumbling with everything, the pan’s handle hotter than I had anticipated, when a pair of hands grabbed the pan from me and disappeared, leaving me to deal with the burner itself. I got the burner turned off and swung around to see...

Saraya, expertly sliding the rice from the pan onto two plates like she’d done this five million times before and knew exactly how to handle partially burnt rice and a sticky, old-fashioned pan.

She finished dishing the rice out and sent a quick, mocking glance my way. “So you can handle a gun, no problem, but cooking rice is beyond you? You’re supposed to take it off the heat after ten minutes, you know.” She somehow found the silverware drawer on her first try, grabbed two forks, gave me one, then handed me one of the plates. “Though honestly, you looked like you were a million miles away. What were you thinking about?”

I opened my mouth and then shut it again without answering.

Hey, I wasn’t exactly going to tell her I’d been thinking about getting back into that room and fucking her in the shower. It just didn’t seem...

The girl had just come out of a really, really bad situation. Getting into the shower with me and doing anything besides getting clean and falling into bed was probably the last thing on her mind.

And the last thing I wanted to do was scare her.

“Just going over what happened today,” I said instead, grabbing at the first alternate story I could find. At least it was a good one.

She nodded, all understanding. “I get that. It’s never easy to see one of your friends get hurt. Even harder when it was partially your doing.”

I gave her some serious side eye at that one. “Ouch.”

A shrug from her. “Hey, it’s the truth. Not that it’s anything to be ashamed of. You’re president here. That means that everything that happens is at least partially your responsibility. Even when your hand has been forced.”

I slid into a chair and put a bite of rice in my mouth just to give myself some time to think about that. It was... truer than she maybe realized. Or perhaps she knew exactly what she was talking about. One statement and she’d neatly wrapped up everything it meant to be president. Everything here was my responsibility, even if I hadn’t specifically planned it.

She’d also, I noted, given me an out, though, but shoving herself into the equation as something that had forced my hand.

I’d always heard that she was smart and could have been running an entire MC all by herself if she was born a man, but I’d had my doubts about it. Hey, I’d never really met her before, and sometimes rumors were just rumors, you know? Sometimes people exaggerated. Everyone I knew was impressed that Saraya was stubborn enough to have stuck with Devil for so long and it was easy to see how that could be translated into thinking she was smart and capable of running her own operation.

But in that one statement, she’d essentially proven to me that she was just as intelligent as everyone said.

And all I could think was how lucky Devil had been to have a partner like that. A girl who could listen and understand and give him ideas, perhaps, about how to handle things. A girl who could help to run things when he wasn’t there or give him answers when he didn’t see a way forward himself.

A girl who could share the load.

Stupid asshole. He’d had that in the palm of his hand—and in a package that made my dick ache—and he’d thrown it all away. For what?

Idiot.