Page 61 of The Final Cut

Reva’s voice changes. My eyes open.

She stands in the doorway with rain on her lashes and clear challenge sliding across her face like sunlight over a blade. The hunted look from the morning has not vanished. Nothing that simple. But it has been shoved back by something warmer, sharper, and infinitely more dangerous to my dignity.

Deacon moves to the coffee maker, shaking his head like he is above all this.

He is not above all this. He is listening with his two ears and his whole damn body.

Reva arches one brow at me. “Shiloh couldn’t handle three minutes of me warming his cock.”

My pride, exhausted and underfed, sits straight up like an idiot.

“That is some bullshit.”

Ever coughs something into his fist.

Nash’s face remains perfectly blank. He will pay for this. Somehow. Eventually. With interest.

Reva walks toward me.

Slow.

Not seductive in the polished way a woman uses when she wants to be admired. This is worse. This is Reva with mud on her leggings, wet hair, grief in her eyes, and enough fire in her spine to make every man in this room sit up and behave if that’s what she wanted.

My body reacts before she reaches me.

Her gaze drops, and she smiles. I am in trouble.

“Yank,” I warn.

“No, no.” She stops between my knees. I do not remember sitting on the chair by the island. I must have done it sometime between wanting to kill Nash and wanting to kill Ever. “You had thoughts. Let’s hear them.”

“I had no thoughts. Nash was being an idiot.”

“Shiloh,” Nash says, mild as poison. “Don’t back down now.”

I turn my head. “I will put you through a window.”

“Shatterproof.”

“Then I’ll use your face twice.”

Reva puts one hand on my chest and turns me back to her. Her touch shuts me up.

Her fingers spread over my shirt. She feels my heartbeat. I know full well that it is giving testimony against me.

“You snapped at me this morning,” she says.

The room changes. Just a little. Just enough.

My humor recedes. Not gone. Never gone. I need it to breathe. But the sharp performance drops away because she deserves the man under it.

“I did,” I say.

Her mouth tightens. “You were mad.”

“I was scared. Mad came easier.”

She feels that. I see it in her face.