Page 50 of Bleed the Shadows

He held my gaze. “I always protect what’s mine, killer. Family and otherwise.”

My heart skipped a beat and for a long moment we just stood there, staring into each other’s eyes while I talked myself out of climbing him like a tree in full view of his family home, cursing Remy’s bad boy/family man combo, another chink in my dissolving armor against the Butchers.

32

MAEVE

I putthe pork loin in the oven and set a timer, then started in on the dishes. Reva would be mad when she found out I was cleaning up, but she was busy in the bathroom, and by the time she returned to the kitchen it would be too late to stop me.

I’d spent the day food prepping, starting with a Thai chicken curry and ending with the pork loin, which we’d have for dinner tonight before I packaged the rest in ready-to-eat containers for the rest of the week.

I’d never admit it, but I liked these days best: days when I didn’t have to work at Lushberry and I could putter around the Butchers’ kitchen, cooking and baking, making use of their beautiful kitchen and high-end appliances.

It reminded me why I’d gone to culinary school. I liked making nice food, liked feeding people, and the meditative quality of hours in the kitchen was definitely a bonus.

No nudity required.

If you stop obsessing about Ethan Todd, you can cook for a living, M.

I ignored June. I didn’t want to stop obsessing about Ethan Todd. Not until I got justice for June.

I’ll still be with you if you stop, you know.

I wanted to plug my ears and say, “La-la-la, I can’t hear you,” like June had done when I wouldn’t stop bugging her when we were kids.

I was almost relieved to hear footsteps behind me.

I turned off the water and turned around, my back to the sink, and found Bram standing a few feet away with an empty plate in his hand.

His muscular thighs were poured into jeans, his black T-shirt barely up to the job of containing his sculpted chest. He’d removed the bandage from his arm, and the wound on his bicep only made him look more dangerous.

It was suddenly a little harder to breath.

“Does that need to go in the dishwasher?” These were the only words I said to Bram now: necessary ones.

We were civil, but that was all.

“I can do it,” he said.

I moved over. “I’ll do it. Put it in the sink.”

“It’s fine. I can do it.”

I sighed. “My hands are wet. Just put it in the sink.”

Was this what they meant when they talked about an unstoppable force meeting an immoveable object? And was it Bram’s stubbornness that was the immovable object or was it mine?

I had to force myself not to shrink away when he stalked toward me, not because I was afraid of him but because I was afraid of myself.

Afraid of what he did to me.

He stopped an inch away and leaned down to put his plate in the sink.

Everything else seemed to recede until there was only him: the scent of leather and sweat and the electric charge of his body.

He didn’t move even after he’d set the plate down. Instead he shifted until he was right in front of me, so close I could almost feel the fabric of his T-shirt, the hair on his arms, even though we weren’t touching at all.

He bent his head until his cheek was next to mine and I felt the brush of his facial scruff against my skin, his nose near my ear. His breath was a hot whisper, a promise, and I was immediately wet remembering what it had felt like to wrap my legs around his hips and pull him deep inside me.