Page 51 of Brandon’s Mate

Oh, no. She was nipping this shit in the bid. “What?” she said. “Just because I have a vagina, I’m automatically the one who’s supposed to provide food? No.”

Colt grimaced. “Do you have to say ‘vagina’?”

“You like vaginas just fine. You should be able to handle the word.”

“It’s gross. Who picked that word, anyway?”

“Romans,” Remy said. He dug around in his duffel bag, finally pulling out a battered laptop. “It’s Latin, meaning sheath.” He then proceeded to ruin this scholarly pronouncement by waggling his eyebrows and adding, “For my giant two-handed sword.”

Kitty gave him the steely glare. “Don’t make me stab you.”

Brandon got up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’ll go to the grocery store. I can use some peace and quiet.” He disappeared into the bedroom and came back wearing boots and pulling a t-shirt over his head. “If I don’t come back, you can have the rest of the beer. I’ll be in Bali.”

Remy asked conversationally, “Why not Tahiti? That’s where Flynn always says he’s going.”

“Exactly,” Brandon said as he headed for the front door. “If I go there, I’ll have fucking Flynn to deal with.”

Kitty called after him, “Get snack cakes!” After last night’s binge, she was getting low.

“Not getting snack cakes!” came floating back.

Sheeyit. She ran into the bedroom, grabbed her boots and jacket, and stuffed Brandon’s roll of money down her cleavage. “Wait up!” she yelled. “I’m coming with you!”

Chapter 20

The mood Brandon was in, Kitty half-expected him to drive off without her, but when she ran outside he was sitting in his truck, motor idling.

She slid into the passenger seat and shut the door as he put the car in gear.

Kitty set her boots on the dashboard, then shrugged into her jacket and shook out her hair.

“Do you mind?” Brandon said, glancing at the boots. “They’ve got mud on the bottom.”

Kitty just rolled down the window and twisted in the seat, leaning her back on Brandon’s shoulder.

“What the fuck are you doing now?”

Kitty stuck one foot out the window and brushed the dirt and dead leaves off the bottom of it before pulling her boot on. “Damn, Brandy-balls,” she said. “Is this the first time a girl ever put her boots on in the front seat of your truck?”

That got the ghost of a lopsided grin. “No, but usually I’m all worn out from getting ridden hard, so I don’t care about getting mud on my dashboard.”

Okay, dirty sex talk. This was familiar ground.

“That’s disgusting,” she said lightly. “Colt and Remy have been here less than an hour, and they’ve already started to be a bad influence on you.”

“It’s one of their superpowers.”

She finished putting on her other boot and straightened in the seat, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

She didn’t know what to say or how to approach him. She’d gone to sleep with him wrapped around her, safe in his arms after the most incredible night of her life.

And before they even had time to talk about it or figure out what it meant, he’d sneaked off to get in a bloody brawl.

Make that two bloody brawls. And now those emotional walls were at full strength again. It was like everything he’d said last night, and everything they did, meant absolutely nothing.

It was fifteen-minute drive out to the supermarket by the highway. The silence got bigger and bigger the longer they drove, but Kitty wasn’t going to be the one to start the where-is-this-relationship-going conversation.

Instead, she said, “So where did you go to get all bloodied up, last night?”