Cade shrugs. “I’ll deal with them.”
He’s looking at me even as he speaks to Nell.
So I mouth to him,Thank you.
5
I’mupset and shaky when it’s closing time and Nell shoos the remaining customers out.
I don’t really feel like fucking anyone tonight, but I’m going to fuck Cade anyway.
He’s not going to leave unsatisfied—not even a single night.
I give him a little smile as I lead him by the hand into my bedroom. I can’t get a good sense of his mood. After the altercation, he returned to take his normal seat in the corner and he stayed there, unspeaking and unsmiling, until I told him I was ready.
He sits down on the bed to pull off his shoes and socks like normal. I unzip my boots and leave them on the floor by the window.
I start to unzip my dress, but he shakes his head soberly and pats the bed beside him.
It’s obviously a summons to sit, so I do. “You don’t have to be worried,” I tell him, trying to guess what’s going through his mind because I can’t read it on his face. “I’m fine to fuck tonight.”
His eyes are more silver than green in the dim light of my room. “Maybe I’m not.”
“Aren’t you? I didn’t mean to act like you had to come up with me. I just assumed… It’s totally fine if you’d rather just go home.”
“I don’t wanna go home.”
“Okay.” I was already on edge from earlier, but now I’m confused and rattled. I shift my hips slightly, peering up at his face. “We can just relax if you want. I could maybe give you a hand job or?—”
“No. I don’t want that.”
“Okay.” After a minute, I add, “Do you want to just lie down?”
Finally I’ve landed on a suggestion he doesn’t object to. With a weird twist of his mouth, he adjusts his big body to pull his legs up to the bed. I stand up to get out of the way, and then I climb over him so I can stretch out in the small space between him and the wall.
Hesitantly I rub his shoulder gently. When he doesn’t pull away, I continue, stroking up and down the length of his arm.
“Do you… regret”—I’m weirdly self-conscious and stumble on the words—“anything?”
His head jerks to the side toward me. “You mean dealing with that animal? No. I don’t regret a thing.”
“Oh. Good. I didn’t want you to act on impulse to help us and then wish you hadn’t.”
“No. It wasn’t on impulse.” He shakes his head and stares at the ceiling. “Things are different now than they used to be. Can’t rely on anyone else to make it safe for us. If someone’s a threat, they gotta be stopped before they hurt anyone else. Maybe one day we’ll get second chances and mercy and justice that isn’t so… ruthless, but that day isn’t today. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know you didn’t. He hurt Poppy because he wanted to hurt me and couldn’t. He would have done it again and again until hewas stopped. But I’m worried the militia might know you’re the one who did it when they find the body and?—”
“They’re never finding that body. And they got rules against rape that he broke. Their control here is too shaky for them to strike back at something regular people are all gonna think was totally fair. They’re gonna let it go and pretend the whole thing never happened.”
I believe him. I’m still nervous about the whole situation, but I believe him.
I’m also faintly surprised by his verbal intelligence. This is the most I’ve ever heard him speak, other than his hot mumbles during sex. I always knew he was smart in certain ways, but I never realized he was this good with words.
I wonder why he uses them so rarely.
“Okay. Well, thank you again. It means a lot. That you… took care of it.”
“What else would I do?”
