Page 46 of Lawless Rivals

Abandoning the blanket, I get up and hurry down the hall to his bedroom, so I don’t fall asleep on the couch and give him a reason to think I’d waited for him.

The bedsheets are cool and the duvet heavy when I climb in, turn off the bedside lamp, and tuck myself into a ball.

I don’t know how long I’ve been out when my lashes flutter open and hushed voices carry through the darkness.

I stay still to listen and hear both a male and a female. Saint and another woman are down the hall, doing whatever.

My chest tightens. I scoot off the bed, cross to the door, and crack it ajar to peer through the gap.

Saint is in the kitchen, stripped down to his jeans, chest bare, a cigarette hooked between his fingers and a glass in his other hand. The light catches the line of his shoulders and the dark ink at his ribs.

He looks relaxed in a way I haven’t seen yet, weight shifted to one hip, head tipped as he listens to the woman standing in front of him.

Her back is to me, the black ponytail from earlier glossy under the overhead light.

“Jesus, stop moving,” she says. “How d’ya expect me to do this if you won’t stay still?”

“I’m not doing anything,” he fires back. “You’re the one swaying.”

She snatches the cigarette from his mouth without asking, takes a drag, then passes it back like it’s nothing to share. He accepts it just as easily.

“This will hurt,” she adds. “But ya don’t mind a little pain, right, Ciarán?”

I open the bedroom door and tiptoe into the hall, keeping close to the wall where the light doesn’t quite reach. My breathing goes shallow.

For some stupid reason, my pulse is thumping as her hands touch his inked chest, and the ease between the two of them cuts deeper than it should.

The floor is cool under my feet as I move, wearing his T-shirt, the hem brushing my thighs.

I don’t need to announce my arrival because Saint looks up the second he senses me.

His gaze drops to my bare legs, and he takes another draw of his cigarette, not saying a word.

The woman still hasn’t noticed me. From this angle I can see what she’s working on now, her head bent as she cleans a fresh wound at his side.

“The fucker got ya good this time,” she says. “You’re like a patchwork quilt.”

She presses the gauze into place and tapes it down before glancing over her shoulder. Her navy eyes skim over me and move on as she turns back to Saint and smooths another strip of tape over his skin.

When I look at Saint, his gaze dissects me, skating from my flushed cheeks to my clenched fists, the tells I can’t quite hide.

“Pick a fight with the wrong guy?” I ask, sliding an arm around my middle.

The woman washes her hands in the basin while Saint knocks back the last of the liquor in his glass.

“The guy picked a fight with a Tallon,” she says, no warmth in her voice. “He won’t do that again.”

Saint drags out a chair, sits, and pours himself another whiskey.

“He pulled a blade on me,” he says, holding my gaze. “Reminded me of someone else I know.”

She bends and slips her arms around his neck. Saint’s hand comes up, settling at her back, his expression easing in a way I haven’t seen yet.

When she straightens, she gives me one last look before grabbing her wax jacket from the hook by the door.

“I’ll check in tomorrow,” she says to him. “Make sure she doesn’t try anything while you’re asleep. I’d hate to mess up that pretty Harrington face of hers.”

“Oh, really?” I bite back. “What exactly do you think I’m going to do to him? I wouldn’t put my mouth anywhere near the guy if you paid me. I’ve got standards. I’d rather die.”