I know that pull now. It’s what just walked through the door.
Something in the back of my neck prickles, and I take a slow breath. I turn on my stool with the casualness ofsomeone who has been surprised by bad news often enough to know how to look like they weren’t.
Three of them.
Not Jack alone. Two other men, and Jack behind them. My jaw sets before I finish the turn.
The one in front is tall and broad with dark eyes and the body language of someone who has decided they have a problem with me and are about to explain this at length. Behind him, slightly to the right, Jack.
My no-strings-attached-fuck-buddy is looking at me like he has been preparing for this and has discovered that preparation does not actually help. His eyes find the mark on my neck immediately. I’ve got my collar up but not far enough, apparently, because he sees it and smiles just a little. I am not going to have feelings about that.
He opens his mouth.
“Don’t,” I warn.
He closes it.
The one in front—dark eyes, has-a-problem energy—stops a few feet from the counter and looks at me like I’m something that requires an explanation. “You’re new,” he says.
“Good morning to you too,” I say brightly.
His jaw tightens. “I’m not being rude. I’m asking a question.”
“You’re really not doing one, and you really are doing the other.”
Behind him, the blond one makes a sound that isdefinitively a suppressed laugh, which he converts unconvincingly into a cough. Jack says nothing. I can feel him saying nothing, which is worse than if he said something.
The dark-eyed one—and he is, objectively, unfairly attractive—steps slightly closer. It’s not aggressive exactly. It’s territorial in a way that makes my skin prickle, and not unpleasantly, which is annoying.
“This is a small town,” he says. “People notice strangers.”
“Then people should work on their social skills,” I reply pleasantly. “Noticing someone and immediately questioning their right to exist in a café are different activities.”
“I’m not questioning your right to—”
“You walked in here, looked at me like I’d stolen something, and your opening line was ‘you’re new.’ What would you call it?”
His eyes narrow. “I’d call it an observation.”
“And I’d call it a territorial display, which—again—could use some polish.”
The silence that follows this has a particular feel. The blond one is no longer pretending not to laugh. Tristan, behind the counter, is keeping his face very professionally neutral but his eyes are bright. And Jack, behind all of them, has the panicked look of watching something he caused and cannot stop.
Good.
“Archer,” the blond one says, in the tone of someonepouring water on a small fire. He steps around his companion—Archer, apparently—and leans against the counter two stools down from me with the ease of someone who has done this ten thousand times.
Jack looks at me directly. I meet his gaze. The partial bond hums. It’s not loud. Not the crashing wave of this morning when I woke up with the mark on my neck and the horrible understanding of what had happened. It’s just recognition. A frequency I’ve been carrying since midnight locating its source across twelve feet of café counter, and the source is him, handsome and laughing and looking at me with an expression that has gone very carefully still underneath the easy surface.
He knows I know.
I know he knows I know.
The café continues around us for approximately two seconds while we have this entire silent exchange.
“You,” I say. Flat. The tone I’ve been saving since one a.m.
An expression moves across his face. Not the deflection I’d expect from someone caught, but something real, something that costs him. I hope it’s guilt. “Yes,” he says quietly. “Me.”
