Embry kissed me, then pulled away, pulledout, and fuck, was that an experience I hadn’t anticipated.
My fuckingjawtrembled and I tried to push myself upright.
Embry eased me back down. “Not yet.”
He got up and disappeared. At least it felt that way for the lonely seconds he was gone.
Then he was back with water and a hot cloth. All the shit I usually did for him without thinking too hard aboutwhy, beyond that I wanted to take care of him.
He cleaned us up. Coaxed me to roll over and use him as a pillow, the blankets we’d slept with tucked around us.
I floated away for a while, drifting to the sensation of his fingers stroking through my hair, his quiet breaths. But there was one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about and I wondered if he knew—about the reputation I’d had no idea about until yesterday. If he’d even care.
In my head, I propped myself up on one elbow and asked him. The reality was different. BecauseIdidn’t care. These quiet moments with him were too good to give up, and if I died right here on my living room floor, I’d die a happy man.
The Juana thing still bothered at me, though. Enough that Embry heard the cogs spinning in my brain and shifted me around to face him.
“What’s wrong?”
I told him. All of it. Even the rumours about him and his magic dick.
Embry pursed his lips, wry amusement warming his gaze. “That’s why you wanted me to fuck you? To see if it was true?”
“No.”
Embry cocked a brow.
“No.” I leaned in and nipped his collarbone. “The two things aren’t connected. Besides, Iknow you, chaparrito. I had no doubt it was fucking true.”
Embry snorted, but his humour faded as he considered the rest. “I hadn’t thought about how lonely Juana must be. It’s so crazy around the club it’s too easy to forget she’s alone.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do?
“Me?”
“Yeah.” Embry ghosted a hand up my ribcage, fingertips grazing my chest. “Whether you mean to be or not, you’re the obstacle. You ever seen a brother go up to Juana in the bar? Talk to her like she’s a regular girl?”
I bristled, despite the optimistic reaction my body had to Embry’s light touch. “She’s not a regular girl. Neither is Orla. Or Willow.”
“Orla’s fixed for life. And Willow has no clue who most of us really are. Juana can’t get a flat tyre without you knowing about it two minutes later. It’s no wonder she can’t fucking breathe.”
Guilt threatened the afterglow keeping my limbs slack and my brain sluggish enough tolisten. “I’m going to find her a new bodyguard. Someone who can be around her when she’s not with the kids and not tell me a single fucking thing about it.”
“Someone you have no relationship with then?”
“I guess.”
“That’s gonna be hard for you.”
“You said that about what we just did.”
“No, I said it would hurt.”
And he wasn’t fucking wrong, about that or this. But sometimes things had to hurt and be hard to be right, and however I felt about Juana, I had to let her go. “Nash is going to help me find someone.”
“Then what? Who do they go to if something happens?”