Page 23 of The Biker and the Loner
“That’s mine now, Ley. Mine,” he calls after me. “And I donotintend to share.”
Chapter 5
Ley
"Why didn't youtell me any of this?" Kendra berates me from the screen of my iPad.
Her face is make-up free, her hair pulled up in a mess on top of her head. I can see most of the high-polished bedhead behind her, and the oval, gold-framed mirror above it.
After three days, I could no longer avoid her calls to evade talking about Scratch. So there. Now she knows. Everything from the night I was deflowered right up to him stalking and bossing me up a few nights ago.
With my iPad propped in my lap and my back against the headboard, I lift my shoulders then let them fall. "I don't know. You guys believed what Grunt and I’d wanted you to believe at the time—that we were hooking up. I was sort of afraid you wouldn’t want to be friends with me if you thought I hooked up with both of your brothers.”
"Probably," she admits. "But Grunt already confirmed you two didn't hook up."
"I didn't know that. It always felt like you didn't believe me."
"I didn't. But I trust Grunt’s word, and he vouched for your character. Why do you think I started letting you in?"
"Because I make amazing breakfast omelets?"
She rolls her eyes. "That's a bonus. AndohmigodI miss your cooking so much!"
I snicker. “In a few weeks."
"So," she starts, "are you gonna date him?"
"Seriously? I know he's your brother from another mother and all that, but he kind of has areputation."
"Mhhmnh, and yet you waited for him."
"I did not!"
"You know Isaac and I started talking behind your back?” she confesses. “We narrowed it down to you being either a closet dyke or having an affair with a married man."
"What? Why would you think that of me?"
"Because it made no sense why you were single. Why you were never, ever,everinterested in anyone. We couldn't figure it out." A small grin splits her face. "It all makes so much sense now."
"I wasn't waiting for him," I refute.
"Yeah," she says, unconvinced. "Keep telling yourself that."
Picking imaginary lint off my pajama bottoms, I mumble, "He's convinced I'm his."
"So am I."
"Kenny!"
"What?" she says through a belly-laugh. "Why save yourself for someone for five years and then deny yourself?"
"He's not that kind of man—the relationship kind," I remind her. "You know that."
"Maybe he's changed." Her eyes drift above her device, and judging from the way she licks her lips and her cheeks tinges with red, Alec has entered the room.
I say, "War doesn't kill a man’s sexual propensities—aka, manwhoring ways.”
"No, but it might remind him of what's important." This doesn't come from Kendra, but Alec. Though he’s not in view, I can hear him quite well. "I have never met a soldier who didn't leave one way and come back another," he goes on. "We can't even begin to imagine what those guys go through in war. To survive all that just to come back and live an empty, meaningless life...? Trust me, he's changed."
