Page 133 of Bound By Fire
Ridge’s jaw tightens. He rubs a hand over his face and sighs.
“I’m sorry.” I shift my position and touch his arm. “I’m prying. You don’t have to tell me anything. It’s just that I can see how wound up you are. It can’t be easy, since he’s your friend.”
He doesn’t move his arm from under my hand.
“Ididknow that he was being investigated,” he says.
“Oh…shit. That sucks.”
“Yep.” His eyes lift to mine. “It’s part of the reason I was assigned to the hospital. Reed wanted me out of Security Central and away from Magma. I didn’t think they’d find anything on him. I really didn’t.”
“You told him you believed in his innocence.”
“I do, despite everything.” His hand fists the sheet between us. “That’s the thing. I didn’t think they’d find anything, so I didn’t think it was necessary to tell him he was under investigation. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t have. I was gagged by the Council. I’d be in jail right now if I had said a word.”
I stare at him.
“That had to be hard.”
He licks his lips and bites down on the bottom one for a beat.
“You have no idea.” There’s a roughness underneath.
“You feel bad.”
“I feel fucking terrible. Like I let him down.”
“Do you think he’s being framed?”
“Yes,” he says. “I do.”
I push up onto my elbow.
“What are you going to do about it? Surely you have a plan to prove him innocent?”
“I can’t do anything.” His mouth is a flat line.
I frown. “It isn’t like you to sit on your hands.”
He laughs but it has no humor in it at all.
“That’s just it; you don’t know me, Robyn.”
Shit! He’s right.
He gets this sheepish look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”
“It’s fine. You’re right. I don’t know you at all. I’m sure you don’t want to talk about something like this to me.”
“You’re right. I don’t. Not when we can be doing other things.”
Then he sits up and takes the water bottle out of my hand. He puts it on the nightstand and turns back to me, and the look in his eyes has changed.
They’re heated again.
“We’re not supposed to be talking,” he tells me.
Ridge shifts on the bed and rolls me onto my back, his thigh pushing between mine. My legs fall open for him. He sinks down between them, the weight of him pressing me into the mattress, and then he is lining himself up and pushing into me, slow and steady and deep.
“We’re fucking, remember?”
I make a sound that I hope he interprets as an affirmation.
My breath catches as he bottoms out with a low sound. He dips his head into the crook of my neck.
“Ridge,” I choke out.
He starts to move.
And my mind goes blank as my nails dig into his back.
