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The calls grew louder, closer. I wasn’t far behind her, catching her waist and lifting her from the ground to push her through the driver’s door and into the passenger seat of my utility.
Turning around and beating the shit out of the kids who verbally abused her would achieve nothing but breaking whatever trust we’d developed.
Her flight impulse appeared to be seeded from something fardeeper, and I was intent on working out what the hell had happened to her, how men she hadn’t recognized knew so much about her when I didn’t.
I gunned the engine, but reversed away from the situation, letting my own aggression seethe out in a slow releaseI controlled inch by brutal fucking inch.
Lux didn’t speak until we hit the blacktop a few minutes later while I managed to get my violence back into its cage. Rafe had better be free for another few rounds in the next day. That created its own little train of thought, leaving me in my own headspace.
Silence held in the cab when Lux gripped my hands in icy fingers, sliding them between my callouses.
“What?” I turned my attention away from the road, propping my knee against the steering wheel to keep itsteady. “I’m sorry. I was … thinking.”
Her smirk told me everything I needed to knowabout what she thought about that. My gaze dropped to her swollen lips, and I forgot whatever snide comment brewed in the back of my mind.
“I said thank you.” She droppedher gaze and drew in a long, slow breath. “For … making me face it. And also for letting me run.” Her eyes flashed up, filled with her old brand of mischief.
I might have believed the white lie had I not been on the other end of those cold, trembling fingers.
“Strategic retreat.I didn’t want to get blood on your dress,” I added. Keeping it casual, I turned my gaze back to the road, though my attention didn’t wander so far.
Biting to her comment wasn’t my style, but if it took her mind off what might have happened, if I’d left her with James…
My knuckles turned white where I strangled the steering wheel.
Not that I didn’t trust the swan shifter. His physical form matched Rafe or mine for endurance, and from the few times I’d sparred with him, I’d discovered an adept martial artist beneath the pomp and grandstanding the switch offered for show in the bar.
Fighting with grace looked pretty, but when it came to the crunch, bodies had to drop. For that, I trusted Rafe and myself, and maybe a few heads on the security team. The rest were bulked up, the gym-based sort who’d as likely wet themselves in a real fight as they would be helpful.
Speaking of… I cleared my throat before she could think of another snazzy bit of banter of her own. “Does Rafe know?”
“That you’re running and hitting on your staff?”
“Ouch. That might have stung. Wait. Didn’t you get hit by—” I gestured at her leg, unwilling to try to rearrange her skirt to get a look at any injury lest she deck me in her current mood.
“Yes. It’s fine. Small nick.” She held up a crumpled tissue. A small red spot decorated its uneven folds.
“Fuck.” I strangled the steering wheel again.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fucking fine. They hurt you.”
“By accident.”
I barked a short laugh. “Are you shitting me? Don’t you dare defend assholes like that, Little Bird. I should have locked you in the truck and banged some skulls together.”
If I’d let my control slip, it would be a hell of a lot more bloody than that, but I didn't want to scare her with the violent detailsthat played out inside my head.
“Might have been a decent option.” She murmured the words so quietly that at first I wasn’t convinced of what I’d heard.
My head whipped sideways when she squeezed my fingers and slid her other hand along my wrist beneath my shirtsleeve. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” Her touch hesitated, and she refused to look at me.
“Lux—”
“It’s nothing.”
