Page 24 of The Chief
“I’m not with Molly,” I replied.
She shot me a look I couldn’t decipher but didn’t bother to argue. She turned back to Molly, gripping the edge of the blanket as if she was going to pull it down.
Spinning quickly, I leveled Orin with a dark stare. “Get out.”
Anger tightened his body. “The fuck did you say?”
My spine straightened. “I said get out. Molly is naked under that blanket. I don’t want you to see her.”
A frown crept over his face.
“Orin.” Fallon called, her gaze flicking between me and her man. “I’ll be fine. Stay outside in the hallway if you want, but you need to leave the room.”
Before he could protest further, I shoved against his broad chest—the element of surprise, the only reason I could physically move him—and slammed shut the door.
Running a hand through my hair, I blew out a breath and turned toward the bed. “How can you stand his possessiveness?”
“He has his reasons,” she replied, reaching for the blanket and inching it down until it rested just above her breasts. “Like I’m sure you have your reasons for bringing Molly toyour bedroom rather than taking her to the basement for interrogation.”
“If you hadn’t noticed, your unhinged partner was occupying it.”
She pinned me with a frosty glare. “Stop antagonizing him.”
Nobody, and I meannobody,spoke to me that way. So why did Fallon suddenly have the balls to throw me that sort of attitude?
She let out a sigh. “He’s trying really hard, you know.”
“To be more of a possessive arsehole?” I asked. “He’s succeeding.”
“No,” she snapped, irritation flashing in her blue eyes. “He’s trying to give me my freedom, but he struggles.”
Ah, she was talking about Orin’s past. He was a jack-in-the-box of trauma, and each time he bobbed out of the safety of his confines, he revealed another emotional wound that explained his fucked up behavior.
“So, I would appreciate it, as myfriend, if you stopped provoking him. All it’s going to do is cause him to react even more irrationally.”
As my friend.
Fuck me, those words stung. But that was all I would ever be to her—a friend.
Not her fuck buddy. Her lover. Or anything more.
Fallon was with Orin, and as I stared at the pretty blonde tending to the raven-haired maven of destruction, I realized I would never have been able to hold something so pure without ruining it.
Although the clan’s Reaper had a protective streak that rivaled Grayson’s, and was built for pain and murder, with Fallon, he was soft. Gentle.Careful. He knew the value he held in his bloodied hands when he took her to bed.
But all I’d seen was someone soft and innocent.
A pure soul who could absolve me of my sins.
I was self-aware enough I could realize this on some deep psychological level. My whole life had been steeped in violence—not out of necessity like Orin’s—but actual stone-cold violence I dispensed on the world with Finnan and Torin by my side.
I’d thought if I had a woman like Fallon, I could sleep a little easier. That perhaps my anger wouldn’t be such a burden weighing on my shoulders.
I thought she could fix me … which was fucking ridiculous.
“Okay.”
Blue eyes peered back at me. “Okay?”
