Didn’t pity Priest, though. And I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to think about him ever again, a feat made easier by the sight of Nash asleep in the bed I’d rolled out of an hour ago.
I loitered in the bedroom doorway, using the broad expanse of his back as a healthy distraction from the first time I’d been alone with my thoughts in a while. It was the first time I’d been alone with him in even longer, and staring at him while he slept seemed a good way to spend it, noting how still and quiet he was, and had been for days now.
Since Priest. The correlation was impossible to ignore, along with the reality that Orla hadn’t just killed him for me or herself, she’d done it forNash. To give him peaceful dreams, and fuck if he didn’t deserve them.
Leave him alone.
Easier said than done. I showered and took up residence on the couch, checking in with Kara about Willow’s grand plans and getting a motherfuckin’ earful for my trouble.
Kara:She’s just like you.
Nice. And untrue. Willow was nothing like me... was she?
Considering it hurt my brain, making my ear buzz, the only injury I couldn’t seem to shift, especially when I was annoyed, stressed, or I’d come so hard I’d melted my synapses.
That hadn’t happened in a few days. Orla’s period had coincided with Nash being gone a lot, and despite her hints about back-door sex and DP, we’d agreed that wasn’t happening without Nash. If we were playing that game, we were playing it together.
Didn’t stop me thinking about it, though. And I was still thinking about it when I heard Nash get up and roll into the bathroom.
I moved to the stove to make him breakfast, laughing at the double take he gave me when he stumbled into the kitchen a while later, hair damp and slicked back, eyes heavy with sleep. He wasn’t a morning person. Not even a little bit, and he was cute as hell with his dazed confusion.
“Why are you here?”
“Day off.”
“But that big timber delivery is coming in... that was today, wasn’t it?”
“Day off forme.” I passed him coffee. “Queen’s orders.”
Nash’s lips turned up in a smirk. “The last order she gave us was not to come home from Sea Rave until we’d fucked each other’s brains out.”
“Mission accomplished.” I tossed bacon into a pan.
Nash came up behind me, his muscled arms sliding around my waist as he pressed against me, every facet of him moulded to my back.
He had sweats on.
Hiding nothing.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out how we’d be spending our day.
Still, I wanted him fed first. Rested. Orla’s murder spree hadn’t changed the fact that Nash worked like a dog seven days a week, the garage, the haulage firm, the building sites. Riding all night to keep everyone else safe. Goddamn, I admired and wanted to throttle him in equal fuckin’ measure.
“I didn’t know you could cook.”
“I can’t.” I dumped the bacon onto buttered bread. “Unless it’s breakfast or one hundred and one ways with sausages.”
“Works for me.”
Nash took the plate I held out and fell into a seat at the table. He ate his breakfast. Drank his coffee. Wandered off again to brush his teeth or whatever.
I stayed where I was, iron will keeping me in my seat until I retreated to the couch again. It was raining outside, the sky dark and mean. I turned the lamps on and poked at the remote, scanning the messages that popped up from Kara and Willow, not replying cos I needed a fuckin’ minute from those two.
Nash came back, sweats still hanging low on his hips, shirt still on the bedroom floor.
I raised my gaze from my phone, letting it track up his abs and chest.
His throat.