Page 105 of Burden of Proof

“You bring it out in me.”

My eyes burned, and I rolled onto my back again, digging my fingers against the corners of my eyelids.

“Is there anything I can do for you in the meantime?” Hunter asked.

Only about a thousand things.

“Tell me you love me.”

He exhaled a breath into the phone, straight into my ear. “Oh, sweetheart. I love you so much.”

“I love you,” I said back.

“I have a meeting, Lincoln. I’ve got to go. Do you remember everything I asked?”

“Wank, edit, shower, plug,” I repeated.

“Perfect. I’ll see you at nine.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. It was a command.

The call disconnected, and it took all my strength to not throw my phone against the wall. I was so fucking hard and so fucking head over heels for this man. There was no saving me. My defenses? Gone. There wasn’t a single wall I’d ever built that this man couldn’t knock down with a word or a look. He knew all the ways to unman me, to weaken me, to hold me. To be so seen was fucking disconcerting, and I imagined this must have been how Silas felt in those early days with Marshall. Maybe it was a genetic trait possessed by all the Covington men.

“What are we going to do, Feeny?” I asked my fish, who swam around his tank oblivious to the mental struggle going on inside my skull.

Blindly, I fired off a text to Silas.

Were you ever worried you were in over your head with Marshall?

He answered me quickly.

Not in any ways that were real.

I understood the truth of that statement down to the marrow of my bones. This fear and this doubt that incessantly tried to tell me I wasn’t good enough for Hunter or that things between us wouldn’t last wasn’t a real doubt. It wasn’t a true fear. It was a defense and a response, and it had no place in my relationship with Hunter.

“Patron saint of being in too fucking deep and liking it,” I muttered under my breath. Then I set up my phone, slicked my hand with lube, and did exactly what Hunter had told me to do.

CHAPTER 32

HUNTER

Lincoln’s face when he stopped masturbating, the agonized pull of his mouth and the wide flare of his nostrils paired with a desperate little whimper…it was enough to make me combust. Thankfully—or not—I was saved from a miserable fate by the towering frame of my youngest brother outside of my car, rapping his knuckles against the passenger window. I fumbled my phone, trying to turn off the screen and shove it into my pocket before climbing out of the car and giving him what I hoped was a very innocent smile.

Smith eyed me warily, chewing at the inside of his lip. “You good?”

“Yeah,” I said, “Yep.”

He traced his tongue across the front of his teeth, a decidedly Marshall move before saying, “I know he does sex work. I’ve had sex with him.”

“I know you have.”

“It’s not like…it’s not like I haven’t seen it before. Is all I meant.”

It was a fair enough statement, though biting in its implication that there were no private moments between me andLincoln, that just because he posted videos online, there was nothing special just for us.

“That one was not for sale,” I said, surprised at how protective I felt in that moment, not just of Lincoln’s work but of our relationship itself.

I didn’t want to fight with my brother. He was young, and the comment landed as I’d intended. Smith winced, dropping his head back and staring up at the sky for a breath before he looked back at me, earnest as ever. “You’re right. That was…I’m sorry.”