She nervously picks at the edge of the white thermal blanket draped over her lap, her breathing growing shallow.
“What’s running through that head of yours, little shadow?”
“I don’t know where the threat is coming from,” she admits softly, her voice dropping into a vulnerable whisper. “I really thought it was Damon at first, but this... this isn’t his style. Not a chaotic ambush like this. Damon likes to be up close and personal when he inflicts pain. He wants you to see his face. But this guy... he just stabbed me and said,‘Stay away from him. They won’t warn you again.’Could this have something to do with you, Tomcat? Maybe a scorned woman from your past who wasn’t pleased? Someone who thinks she has a claim on you? Idon’t know why any of them would think that, though. Everyone in this town knows you’re mine.”
“First off, for the record, I always properly please,” I tell her, my voice full of mock indignation to break her tension.
She lifts a single brow, her lips twitching, but she stays quiet. The faint, sleepy amusement dancing in her eyes tells me she’s just teasing me to keep her own fear at bay.
“Secondly,” I continue, my tone turning dark and entirely serious, “I can’t be certain. I’ve fucked around a lot in this life, Goldie. I did my best never to lead anyone on or make promises I couldn’t keep, but I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’ve always been a saint. There were times in my past when I said exactly what a woman wanted to hear just to get laid. So, yeah. It’s entirely possible I broke a heart or pissed someone off along the way, and now they’re lashing out because they can’t handle the fact that I’m yours.”
I reach out, using the pad of my thumb to gently soothe the tight, worried wrinkles bunching between her eyebrows. “Try to rest for the night, baby. Let me worry about the logistics of this shit, okay? Whoever the fuck this attacker is, whether they crawled out of my past or yours, we are going to hunt them down. You said you came to the Saint's Outlaws for a reason. Give us a chance to prove we can protect you.”
“I am pretty tired of being a baddie all the time,” she sighs, her long eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks again.
I bite the inside of my cheek, barely holding back the flood of affection threatening to break me open. “It’s a tough gig, I know. Even the fiercest baddies deserve a break, little shadow.”
“True.” Marigold lets out a soft, ragged sigh, her eyes opening just a fraction to lock her drowsy gaze directly onto mine. “Good thing I have my own personal badass to take over for a shift. Will you come snuggle me?”
“We both won’t fit on this narrow bed without ripping your stitches open, baby.” Her bottom lip instantly starts to pout, and I quickly place a warm finger over her lips to cut her off. “If you close those eyes and get some real sleep right now, I’ll have one of the prospects make up the bed in my private room here. I’ll carry you there later tonight. Deal?”
“Promise?”
“On my life.” I lean in, brushing a tender kiss to her forehead, then over each of her closed eyelids, before letting my lips linger softly against hers. “Sleep, Goldie. I’m standing guard. I’ll keep your bogeyman away.”
“That’d be nice,” she breathes, her small frame relaxing into the mattress as her breathing finally evens out into a deep, healing sleep.
Chapter Twenty
Ineedtoescape.
Break a window. Chew through a wall. Fling myself dramatically off the roof. Something. Anything, absolutely anything, to escape this hovering, suffocating, well-meaning captivity before it shatters my sanity for good.
A horrendous, maddening itch thrums beneath my skin, as if a thousand frantic insects are racing wild, clawing and crawling over every inch of me.
Tomcat refuses to let me go anywhere alone.Anywhere. Sure, I get it. A hulking masked psycho jumped me in an alley and stabbed my thigh. Terrifying, yes. But I'm suffocating here.
I love Tomcat. I really do.
I adore how possessive and protective he is. Usually.
But I can’t even stroll down the street for a gulp of salty ocean air. Every outing, he corrals me into an enclosed vehicle like I’m made of glass. My bike? Completely off-limits.
So. Freaking. Rude.
Because of his ridiculous lockdown, I’ve made it my life’s mission to keep him completely on his toes. Snow brought me a jumbo pack of googly eyes the other day, and she gleefully helped me stick them on literally anything I could think of. His bike mirrors. The steel toes of his boots. The back pockets of his favorite jeans. Those were my personal favorite because he walked around the house for a full hour before he noticed. Even the sleek paint on his motorcycle tank.
Tomcat’s voice drops into this rough, dangerous growl when he barks my name, and it does wicked, wonderful things to my insides. He started this whole war when he wouldn’t even let me pee without a guard, so my antics are just natural retaliation.
Honestly, I thinkBarbie Girlby Aqua really captures his inner essence as a ringtone.
I’m sprawled across the couch, mashing buttons on a video game in a desperate attempt to numb the soul-crushing boredom, when his phone rings from the other room.
“Marigold!” Tomcat bellows from down the hall, his voice dripping with pure exasperation right before he snaps the line open.
Normally, the rough, gravelly rumble of his voice would instantly soothe my frayed nerves, but not today.
He’ll change the ringtone, of course, but I’ll just find a way to switch it right back. He’s going to have to physically lock me out of his phone or let me out of this house before I stop. Am I acting entirely childish? Probably. But I don’t want toactuallyend up hurting him, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen if he can’t ease up andlet me freaking breathe.