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I closed my hands into fists and said, “We need to look at your injuries. Make sure that you didn’t mess anything up even more.”
His eyes held mine, and I could tell that he wanted to discuss this more.
‘This’ being my brother, and what and where he was.
But I’d let O’Ryan go years ago.
He was nothing to me anymore.
He was just a messed-up scene, in a past life, that I never wanted to revisit again.
I’d moved on, and by moving on, I’d denounced him.
Just like I’d denounced my mother.
There was nothing left for me to dwell over.
And Easton read that on my face as he said, “Sure. We can do that in the shower.”
Then the little geek that I was beginning to feel everything for winked at me.
No, we wouldn’t only be checking for his injuries, that was for sure.
Life was good.
CHAPTER 15
Me: never again.
Also me: *agains*
-Text from Banger to Salem
BANGER
It’d been a week and a day since the police ball.
It’d been a week and a day since Easton and I had started doing ‘couple’ things.
And where it’d begun at a function where I pretended to be his, it was real life, where we didn’t pretend anything.
The first day after the police ball, we’d both let it all hang out.
I’d told him that I wanted to ‘date’ him over morning coffee, and he’d grinned at me and told me I was crazy for dating the man that stalked me.
In the end, I’d told him, it didn’t matter.
Because he was the one I wanted.
All geeky, stalkerish, gives-good-back-rubs inch of him.
“What’s on your agenda today?” I asked.
He’d been working from home since he’d been hurt, but today, he’d told me he was going back into the office.
I just didn’t know what ‘going back into the office’ meant for him.
It could mean sitting at his desk all day.
It could also mean he was planning on running ten miles while chasing after a lead.
With Easton McKennick, one just didn’t know.
He wasn’t your typical computer tech nerd, that was for sure.
“I’m going to be in a couple of meetings today,” he answered as he took a sip of his coffee. “Trying to play catch up.”
I walked toward him with my own empty coffee cup in hand and stood in front of him until he got the point.
Grinning, he reached behind him blindly and pulled out the carafe holding the coffee, then poured me a mug.
“You know,” I teased. “Most people have those single-serve coffee makers.”
Most people that were fuckin’ rich… like him.
He hadn’t expressly told me how much he made, but I knew he was more than comfortable.
Well, more than comfortable seeing as I’d noticed a few things about him over the last week.
Such as when he got gas in his bike, or diesel in his truck, he didn’t look for the lowest price at all the surrounding places when he pulled in. Nor did he watch the gauge with disgust, and sometimes horror, as it ticked up further and further.
Me, on the other hand? I had an app called ‘Gas Buddy’ that I used to find the cheapest gas around, then watched the pump to make sure that it wasn’t going to go over a thousand dollars—my max when filling up my truck at times—because that would overdraw me until I was paid by my people.
What other things did he do that made me think he was well off?
The fact that he would grocery shop at the mom-and-pop stores.
His favorite place to go was Skinners, a locally owned grocery store.
However, when I’d been in there with him buying this exact coffee, I’d noticed the prices on things. And though they were just a bit over the price that they would be at Walmart or Target, they were sometimes a dollar or more. And by the time that he checked out, that dollar or more added up to thirty dollars or more.
And in the end? Well, that thirty dollars or so would be enough to buy me groceries for one week.
“Most people probably don’t go through a pot and a half of coffee,” he teased.
I went to back away, but before I could go farther than a single step backward, he had the pot on the counter, likely burning the shit out of it, and his other arm with the coffee pressed against my bare back.
I froze, feeling the heat from the cup on my skin, and narrowed my eyes at him.
“If you move, it spills,” he razzed.
I licked my lips and looked up at him expectantly.
“You’re a closet sadist, aren’t you?” I asked.
I had meant it as a joke, but the way he looked at me…
“The thought of causing you pain…” He hesitated as he told me truthfully what he thought. Something that made my heart start pounding harder. “At least when it comes to anything non-sexual, seems abhorrent to me. But the thought of pulling your hair and making you cry out? The thought of turning you around, shoving you over the countertop, and holding your face down while I fuck you silly? Likely making that pretty pussy of yours all puffy and stretched a bit too wide? Well, that turns me the hell on.”
