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“Rules keep us safe.”
“Rules are predictable.” The corner of his lips quirked.
“I thought you said rules were bad?” I frowned. “You’re confusing my tired brain.”
“You’re meant to be keeping me awake for the drive back, remember?”
“Bullshit. Weboth know that’s a lie. Anyway, you don’t sleep. Everyone at Fray knows that.”
“I sleep. But I prefer—”
“Take it somewhere else!” A British accent, albeit a slurred one, echoed around the clearing.
I twisted, my mouth open to throw a scalding comment back.Four men perched on the front of a rusty utility vehicle, their flannel shirts and jeans matched to the red beer cans in each free hand. Bright, large round light perched atop the ute, throwing a blinding glare our way despite that the sun hadn’t set yet. I swallowed hard as Killian’s thumb brushed over my stomach in an unmistakably intimate gesture.
Had we been that lost in each other? No wonder Rafe, James, and the rest of the Fray crew had left us to our own devices.
Killian’s jaw set, and he shook his head. “Don’t bother with them.” His mouth relaxed into its usual lines. “I’m driving, then?”
I nodded. “Afraid so. I snore,” I warned him.
“As long as it’s like that cute little thrumming noise you made earlier, I’ll live with that.”
My face flamed. “It’s a drumming,” I corrected him. “Not a thru—”
“Dirty bitch!”
“Fuck her and throw her!”
Darkness flickered in Killian’s liquid brown eyes, a shadow seeding there that gained purchase as he drew me closer. Roughened hands squeezed my waist, but it wasn’this touch that constricted my heart. “Get in the truck, Lux.” His voice grazed over me as rough as his hands. A similar shadow, this one tinged with the gray of his beast, roiled beneath his skin.
“Don’t do anything,” I whispered, uncaring that my blooming panic bled into my voice. “Please.”
“Unclean slut!”
I flinched at the last one, unableto prevent the reaction to memory long buried as the words of my first boyfriend’s father surfaced in the deepest, boarded-off corners of my mind.
“We will purify this crossed-breed bitch and make the community a safer place for children of clean blood.”
My expression froze, my mind recoiling at the recalled heat that seared at my skin and deeper, captured in a moment a decade old.
“I never run, Little Bird.”
“But Ido.” The whispered admission injected my system with a frisson of fear. My eyes wide, every muscle in my body readied for flight.
Killian’s hands clamped down on my hips as he refused to allow what I needed to happen.
“We need to have a talk. Good thing we have a two-hour drive to get home.” A wry smile crossed his face. He ignored the next insult as though there wasn’t a contingent of assholes throwing contempt my way.
Keeping his touch light, he trailed the back of his hand across my cheek. The heel of his hand settled at my throat, his thumb grazing along my jaw where my collar usually pressed over my quickened pulse.
A touch that offered both threat and comfort.
Safety for me, and a threat to anyone who wanted to change that.
I leaned into his hand,taking a perverse satisfaction when his dark eyes flared at his sharp inhale.
“Crossed bitch like her shouldn’t exist.”
