Page 28 of Tank
Tank exhales sharply, frustrated now, and I bite back a smile at the way he doesn’t want to let this go, the way he hates interruptions that don’t involve us tangled together, reckless and lost in each other.
“Fucking hell,” he mutters, forehead resting against mine, still trying to cling to the now-fading heat between us. I can feel his hands on me, possessive and lingering, feel the pulse pounding loud in my throat. And I know — we’re both debating whether to keep going, and fuck the consequences, forget the world outside and everything that comes with it.
Then I hear it; a voice that makes my blood turn to ice, a voice that turns want to terror in the space of a single heartbeat. “I won’t be kept waiting.”
Victor. My brother. The world crashes back, brutal and unrelenting.
My stomach lurches. Every inch of me goes cold and rigid, a sharp, instinctual panic overtaking the heat in my veins. The old fear, the familiar fear, seizes me with merciless hands, squeezing hard. I shove Tank back, hard, breaking the kiss abruptly and without finesse.
His hands tighten on my waist, surprised at the sudden shift from lust to panic, from heat to ice. I don’t look at him. I can’t. He can’t see the fear in my eyes, fear that, even now, is suffusing my body and making it hard to breathe. I slide off the counter with all the grace of a stone, landing on my feet but feeling anything but steady.
Silent, panicked, mind racing, I try to wrap my brain around what's happening and what Victor wants and how to deal with it.
Tank’s voice is low, gruff. “What the hell?”
I barely hear him.
I turn toward the back room, toward the hallway leading deeper into the bakery.
Footsteps sound at the front of the shop.
Tank stiffens beside me.
That’s when I see it—the shift in him; it’s instantaneous; one moment, he’s just Tank—gruff, cocky, the insufferable baker brute with flour on his hands and an apron tied around his waist.
Then, his entire body language changes.
He casts a look to the front of the bakery, through the semi-open doorway that gives just a glimpse of the front, sees something, and then Tank goes utterly still.
Predatory.
Controlled, but coiled so tightly I swear the air around him shifts.
It’s the posture of a man about to go to war.
My heart pounds against my ribs.
I shouldn’t be here.
I need to get out of sight.
I barely think before I slip into the back hallway, pressing myself against the doorframe.
Just out of sight.
Just in time.
From my hidden spot, I can hear Tank’s footsteps as he moves toward the front of the bakery. Deliberate. Measured. Like a soldier walking into a battlefield.
My pulse slams in my ears, every beat a warning — of fear, of violence, of the evil that swirls around my brother like a plague.
"It’s about time.” Victor’s voice is casual, easy. “Been hearing good things about this place. Figured we’d stop in.”
Tank doesn’t answer right away. For a second, nothing happens. Then I hear his voice—calm, but razor-edged. “That so?”
My stomach twists. I know that tone.
It’s the same controlled menace I’ve heard from men like my brother. From dangerous men who don’t speak unless they’re about to do something lethal.
