Page 42 of Ryder
“Why’s he here?” I asked, jerking a thumb at him, and seeing the hurt in his eyes at my question.
“If you don’t want me here, I can leave.”
“He stays,” Reacher barked, glancing at Ice who was fiddling with something. The phone! He had the phone. I looked around for my jeans, but they were in the bathroom where I’d stripped off.
“How the fuck did you get that?” I snapped, marching over to him to snatch it back.
He leaned out of reach, and Has-Been sighed.
“Brother, get dressed. We’re not going anywhere, but you need to calm the fuck down.”
I glared at him, but clearly nobody was willing to go any further until I either dressed, or calmed down, and he was right; either one would probably lead to the other. I strode back to my dresser, and rummaged, digging out underwear, clean jeans, and a t-shirt, and then I decided to punish them all for hanging in my room, by dropping the towel, and bending over to grab my underwear from the bed.
“Jesus!”
“Asshole!”
Yeah, that’d teach them to invade my personal space like this, and oddly I felt a grin creep across my face. Maybe things weren’t as bad as I had thought. She was still around, which meant I still had a chance of catching her, and my cock wasn’t completely dormant, just seemed to be most interested in her. Maybe fucking her again would be the way to get control back of my own body.
“You just gonna stand there, or you gonna get fucking dressed? We’re not here for a free show,” I heard Stitch muttering behind me, and I took the prompt for what it was, and finished getting dressed.
“Okay, I’m dressed. So who thefuckcame into my bathroom when I was in the shower?”
Several fingers pointed at Torch, who shrugged.
“Better me seeing you butt naked than these guys.”
“Yeah, well that ship has just fucking sailed,” Reacher muttered, rubbing a hand over his face.
I shrugged. “You told me to get dressed. That was me getting dressed. What, am I gonna hide behind a towel like a girl?”
Ice snorted, tossing the phone on the table, and to say I snatched it as fast as lightning, would be an understatement. It went firmly into my pocket.
“You got a crush on that phone?” Reacher asked, his eyebrows raised.
“I’m just keeping it close, in case she calls again. That’s how I’ll find out where she is.”
He pointed at the seat they’d left for me, because he and Stitch had the sofa, and Ice had my other chair. Torch and Has-Been were standing behind him, watching his screen as he did whatever the fuck he was doing.
I sat down, waiting for someone to start quizzing me. Reacher was watching me, his eyebrows raised, like he was waiting for me to speak first, but I just shrugged at him.
“For fuck’s sake. Did you fuck her?” He snarled, and I grimaced as all eyes landed on me.
“How? You know if I’d had her within reach, I’d have taken her, and brought her here. She just called me. She had someone leave that phone on my bike.”
“Where?” He gritted out, and I stared him straight in the eye.
“Back at that fucking love-nest of hers.”
“You went back there. Alone.” His voice was flat. “We trusted you to use a little more fucking common sense than that.”
“I don’t know why, Pres. He’s proving time and time again that he’s a complete dipshit.” That was Ice, so I flipped him off.
“I just ended up there. It wasn’t exactly planned.”
“That’s even fucking worse. You didn’t even think about what you were doing. What if she’d been there?”
I shifted forward on my chair, fixing him with a glare.
