Page 75 of Forged in the Fire
Brinley stepped up to the cashier.
Piled her things onto the counter.
The guy working behind it scanned the items while he clocked me from the corner of his eye.
Likely thinking it, too.
I wondered if every single one of them could taste it. The violence that dribbled from my flesh, or if it was just the exterior on which they cast their verdict.
Didn’t matter either way. They had a right to be leery. They should be.
The guy rang up Brinley’s items, and she went for something in her pocket, but I was already pulling out a hundred from my wallet and leaning around her to set it onto the counter.
My chest brushed her back as I did.
She exhaled a shaky sound. Then that irritation rose again. “I can pay for my own things.”
“Not on my watch, you can’t.”
She huffed out in disbelief, though I could feel some amusement rimming it as she took her bag while the cashier counted out the change.
She glanced back at me. “Do you think buying me sweets is going to make me like you more?”
I reached around her again, accepting the change, my lips just brushing her jaw. “A man can only try, can’t he?”
Was I flirting with this girl? I edged back, trying to shake whatever insane reaction she conjured in me, and started to usher her out.
A hand at the small of her back.
That touch I convinced myself was only due to the fact that I needed to stand guard over her.
Keep close.
It had nothing to do with itching to let my hands roam over every lush curve of her body.
Her ass swayed just below my hand. A stirring of dark vibrancy with each brush.
By the time we stepped outside, her breaths had gone shallow, and she inhaled something deep like the fresh air might squash the heat.
All while I forced myself to take in our surroundings.
Glittery light embossed the late afternoon air. The sun beginning its descent toward the verdant canopy of trees.
Birds flitted from branch to branch.
But in it, there wasn’t a modicum of peace.
There might as well have been a viper curling up my leg with the way I sensed it.
The wicked disorder that rolled over me.
I was in front of Brinley in a flash, gun pulled from the holster I had hidden at my back, though I kept it low and close in hopes the few people out in the lot wouldn’t notice.
A disjointed breath shot out of Brinley, and I gritted, “Stay behind me.”
For the first time since I met her, she didn’t have a cunning retort flying off her tongue.
She just curled one of those hands into the bottom of my cut like some kind of horrified promise.
