Page 27 of Slashed Bonds

He never comments on it.

I’ve wondered whether he notices. Whether he’s clocked how I sit facing doors, how I put my back to walls, how I go rigid when a hand moves somewhere I can’t track.

He’s never once said a word about it.

He also never comes at me from behind, and never gets between me and an exit, and I have never told him not to.

Make of that what you will.

He sets a wrapped package down on the bed in front of me.

“Here you go.”

I arch an eyebrow.

“No gifts. It’s in the policy.”

“True,” he agrees.

And then says nothing else, because he’s a menace.

All right. Have it your way.

I pout at him — an expression I’d deny using — and pick the thing up, and because I refuse to be caught opening it later like a woman who cares, I open it right there in front of him.

Two items.

The first is a bag of dog toys. Rope pulls, a rubber thing shaped like a puck, and a stack of the hard bone treats that cost more than my groceries.

The second is a pair of cards.

One has a boxing club’s logo across the front. The other has a woman on a pole rendered in gold foil, tasteful in the way expensive things are tasteful.

I stare at them.

“When I asked what you like doing,” he says, “you told me you walk your dog. And that you’d been looking into pole.”

I blink at the cards.

I did say that.

Eleven months ago. Two sentences, dropped into a conversation neither of us was treating as a conversation, and I’d bet my truck I said it while half-asleep.

Slowly, I look up at him.

“Yes.”

“Then go have fun.”

He shrugs like he’s told me the time, and reaches for his cigarettes.

He smokes. I don’t care that he smokes.

I’d do it myself if my lungs hadn’t been rearranged by two floors of gravity and a concrete loading bay — there’s a whole specialist’s letter about it, and a brand I’m allowed and can never find.

Fun.

“The boxing is unlimited,” he says around the first drag. “They’ve got an Omega-only section. Separate entrance, separate sign-in, no Alphas past the door. They’ll honor the card. If anybody gives you trouble, tell them to ring me.”