Page 57 of Slashed Bonds

Headband? Or…

Would it be too kinky to assume the second option?

He’s ticked off. That’s the face. But I’m busy with the rest of him, because his scent has reached me, and it’s doing the thing the captain’s did outside.

Getting through. Getting in.

Smoked vetiver, dry and dark. Black tea, strong enough to stain. A thread of clove under it, warm, medicinal, and winter pine so sharp it stings the back of my throat. Cigarette smoke over the top, clinging, but that’s not the scent. That’s the weather the scent lives in.

Three for three. Whatever’s broken in my filter, these men come straight through it.

And I read him, because I can’t not.

He came in through the concourse, but he isn’t standing where he came in. He’s stepped around, quiet, to the spot where he’s got Nik on one side and me on the other and the door to the lot behind him.

Not blocking it. Holding it. There’s a difference, and I’ve spent five years learning exactly what it is.

If I ran, I’d have to go past him. If Nik went for me, he’d have to go through him. And he’s put himself there without ever seeming to move, with his weight on the balls of his feet and his hands open, and that’s the same thing I watched him do on the ice through two walls of glass.

He takes away the space you’d need to make a bad decision, and he does it before you’ve decided to make one.

On the ice it’s angles and lanes. Here it’s exits.

Same man. Same game. Different surface.

We lock eyes. His are dark. Unreadable in a practiced way.

He huffs.

“If you’re trying to make me jealous, Malice, it’s fucking working.” Pure annoyance, pitched low. “Give Nik a break with your overpowering Omega perfuming estrogen badassery alrea…GAH!”

He doesn’t get to finish.

Because the man on his knees has a fist in that band of fabric and yanks; the tall one goes down hard onto the stone on one hand and one knee, and then Nik is up. Off his knees and on his feet in one motion, pads and all, and his arms are around me, and I’m being hugged.

I grunt at the impact.

Then he pulls back, hands on my shoulders, and his face has changed again.

Not feral. Not lust.

Panic.

Wide eyes, blinking too fast, mouth open on a breath that doesn’t turn into a word for a full second.

Then it does.

“Are you fucking insane?”

I blink.

Once, twice, because this is a new reaction and I need a moment to file it under the correct heading.

Then I smirk, like a lovestruck idiot, which is what I appear to be tonight.

“I did stay in a temporary asylum for six months,” I tell him. “So a bit, yeah. But they had mercy on me and put it in the sealed records, not the public ones.” I wink. “So. The name’s Nik, or…?”

He blinks again. Several times.