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My brothers have known me long enough to understand when to leave something the fuck alone. Echo has known me for all of two minutes, yet somehow, she’s already found the one place I don’t want anyone looking too closely. Her eyes keep drifting back to my throat, catching the tension in my jaw, following every useless fucking reflex I haven’t learned how to control yet, and each time she does it, another thread of irritation winds tighter through my chest.

I glare at her, giving her every opportunity to take the hint.

She holds my stare, barely even blinking, like the warning written all over my face means fuck all to her.

And that shit only winds me tighter.

Because now I’m noticing the stubborn set of her mouth. The slight lift of her chin. The way she stands there with Coil’s hand around her arm and a yard full of supernatural assholes watching her, yet somehow, I’m the one she refuses to look away from.

I want her to.

Fuck, I need her to.

Because every second those eyes stay on me feels like she’s peeling another layer off something I’m still trying to shove back into place myself.

The irritation in my chest keeps building, fed by every second she refuses to give me the easy out and look somewhere else. It digs deeper the longer she stares, turning into something hotter, meaner, until there’s no fucking mistaking what it’s become.

I hate her for it.

Hate that she took one look at me and saw straight through the anger I’ve been using to cover the gaping fucking hole Malgrave left behind. I hate that I can’t throw some smart-ass comment at her and force that stare somewhere else. I hate that glaring is about the only weapon I’ve got left without shifting into something with claws, and she’s standing there taking everything I give her without so much as blinking.

What’s worse? Is some fucked-up part of me knows she understands exactly what I’m trying to do.

She just refuses to let me hide behind it.

So, I glare harder.

Her eyebrow lifts.

Fucking great.

Heat rolls low through my gut. This time, it isn’t hellfire. My eyes drop before I can stop them, catching on her mouth again, tracing the stubborn line of her jaw before sliding lower. My body reacts with a hard pull of want that catches me completely off guard, sharp enough that I shift my weight and immediately get pissed at myself for doing it.

Because apparently hating her isn’t enough.

I fucking want her too!

And that makes even less sense.

She’s standing in the middle of our compound, surrounded by creatures who could tear her apart before she reached the gates, and still she hasn’t made herself smaller. Her shoulders stay squared, her chin stays up, and every time another brother moves around her, those eyes follow, alert and ready without ever dropping to the ground.

Then, they come back to me.

Every-fucking-time, they come back to me.

My hellhound starts pacing beneath my skin, restless, pushing closer whenever her attention catches mine. I can feel him trying to make sense of her right along with me, but for once the beast isn’t giving me shit worth using.

All I know is I want her eyes off me because she sees too-fucking-much.

But I want them to stay exactly where they are.

That might piss me off most of all.

Every filthy line I’d normally throw at a woman like her stacks up uselessly behind my teeth. I could pin her against the nearest wall with a look and mean every second of it, and I still couldn’t tell her a single thing I’m thinking.

That’s the part that’s killing me.

Not the silence itself.