Page 42 of Wicked Minds
“He’s still sending you food deliveries?”
“Every few days, despite me telling him not to. I’m pretty sure he has no concept of how much regular people eat.”
“Well, he is an athlete, so he probably eats three times what you do. And with me and Gray in the house, we consume more food per week than the average household.”
Chuckling, I say, “I bet that’s true.”
“Logan’s been attempting to work his way back into your good graces?” There’s a hint of a smile in his voice that has me looking his way as I grab the bag of ice from the freezer.
“How do you know about that?”
With a scoff, he says, “You think I don’t hear all aboutthe best lunches of his lifeevery night when he gets home?”
“He does not!” I gape.
“Oh, he does. In excruciating detail and with far too many emotions involved. He’s worse than a girl. If he had his way, he’d probably have us painting on our nails and devouring gallons of ice cream while we brainstorm ways to make it up to you.”
I can’t help the laugh that slips from me as I grin, imagining exactly that.
“I’m glad you find my suffering amusing.”
“It could be worse,” I say with a wry smirk. “You could have Barbie pink nails and braided beads in your beard.”
He bursts out laughing. “Logan would be buried ten feet under if he even approached me with a nail polish brush.”
Since he’s brought it up, I dare to ask, “How, uh, are things between the three of you?” as I go about wrapping the ice in a clean dish towel.
The humor slides from his face, and his exhausting sigh tells me everything. “Strained. Awkward as fuck. Mainly between Grayson and me, and Logan and Grayson. I wanna throttle him and tell him to wise the fuck up.”
Once the towel is secured around the ice, I walk over to where Royce is perched at the kitchen island. Resting my hip against the counter, I press the ice against his raw knuckles. “I’m sorry. I know I’m to blame for the two of you being at odds.”
“Riley,” he says with a sigh, leaning closer. Even seated, I don’t have any height advantage. All it does is bring us face-to-face. “You need to stop apologizing for shit that’s not your fault. As humans, we make enough mistakes that we have to apologize for, never mind taking on issues we have no control over.”
“Don’t I, though—have at least some control over it? I could have talked to him… Or?—”
“Or nothing. You did try to talk to him. You tried to tell all of us, and we wouldn’t listen. That’s on us—on him. Not you.”
“Yeah, but I just left your house and told you to keep them away...” I scrunch my nose.
“Yeah, after we kidnapped you and tried to make you our sex slave for the holidays.” Royce’s lips flatten. “I never did apologize for my role in all of that.”
Glancing down at his hand on the worktop, I lift off the dish towel to inspect his knuckles before applying pressure again. “No, you didn’t.” I can’t seem to raise my head to look at him. Honestly, an apology is the last thing I expected from Royce. He’s not the kind of guy who apologizes. He’s the type who proudly wears his mistakes. Boldly stands in the face of them. Yeah, he’ll admit that he’s wrong, but he won’t apologize for being so.
Calloused fingers gently wrap around my chin, slowly pulling my face to his. “Then let me tell you now how sorry I am for not believing you. For thinking the worst of you. For forcing you to put up walls between us and for not having your back when you needed it the most.” His thumb rubs back and forth across the angle of my jaw, making it almost impossible to concentrate on his words. “However, I can’t say I’m sorry for bringing you into my house. If I hadn’t, I never would have gotten to glimpse the real you. I’d have been left with this horrifically incorrect assumption of who you are, and what a travesty that would have been.”
My throat is dry, and I have to run my tongue along my lips to moisten them. “What about the blow job and lap dances?”
His smirk turns devilish as he tilts his head, bringing his lips to my ear and dousing my senses in the rich smell of leather and something heady.When the hell did we get so close?“Can’t say I’m sorry for those, either. Especially since I know you enjoyed them as much as I did.”
His free hand rests on my hip before slowly caressing up my waist and over my ribs before sliding around to my back. All the while, he runs his nose up the column of my neck and presses the ghost of kisses along my jaw as my breathing grows more erratic.
“Riley, if you don’t want anything to happen, then I need you to step away because I’m about to lose whatever self-control I have, and all I can think about right now is kissing you.”
The rough rasp of his voice gives away how affected he is.
I don’t move. Not even sure that I can.
He pulls back just enough to meet my gaze, and somehow, I find the coherence to speak. “This doesn’t mean I forgive you.”
