"Not sure I like the look on your face," he concluded, brows furrowing as he looked down at me for a moment before climbing onto the bed, sitting up against the headboard beside me. "What's up?" he asked.
"I, ah, I'm not a random hookup kind of girl," I told him. "I probably should have made that clear before, you know, that happened."
"Babe, clocked that about you within an hour of knowing you. What's your point?"
Was there anything in the entire world more uncomfortable than the "What are we" chat? I was pretty sure there wasn't.
"I just, I guess I..."
"Shy."
"Yeah?"
"You want to ask me something, ask me," he said, shrugging.
"Are we just hooking up, or is there something else here?"
"Honestly? I don't know," he admitted. "Figure you'd want to hear that rather than some bullshit. I don't know. It's new. But so far, I like being around you. And I really liked what we just did. I think it's worth it to see if we both keep enjoying being around each other and doing what we just did. How's that work for you?"
I'd had several men in my life promise me the world right from the beginning, only to invariably snatch it away from me, leaving me empty-handed and broken-hearted.
Maybe there was something to be said for a man who could admit he didn't know what the future held, that didn't feed you bullshit promises he wasn't going to keep.
"Yeah," I agreed, leaning my head into his arm. "That works for me."
"Good," he said, slipping his arm around my lower back to curl me into his side more.
"About this, though..."
"Uh oh," he mumbled, but sounded amused.
"No. It's just... do we keep this on the down-low, or are we—"
"The way I see it," McCoy cut me off, "for the time being, this is something, right?"
"Right," I agreed.
"And so long as it is something, I have no fucking interest in hiding it. Not from my brothers, or from your sister. This is what it is. I don't like sneaky shit. And, quite frankly, if you're mine—even in just a temporary way—I want the world to know it."
Oh, I liked that.
I liked that more than any promise of forever I'd ever been spoon-fed in my life.
I mean who wouldn't like to hear a big, strong, stupidly good looking biker say that they wanted to be seen with you, that they wanted other people to know they were with you?
My belly fluttered at the idea, actually.
It was a good belly flutter, too, let me tell you.
And I was really excited to see if our "for now" became something more than that.
Life with an arms-dealing biker wouldn't prove quite as smooth sailing as that, though.
But for that one blissful moment, the people lurking in the shadows that wanted Henchmen—and my—blood were the furthest thing from my mind.
Chapter Eleven
McCoy
The next few days all sort of blended in together. Mostly because Shy and I spent a fuck of a lot of that time in bed.
I know Shy felt guilty about it, always fretting about Belle and her low moods.
And, yeah, I got that.
Belle only seemed to come alive again when she was with one of the animals. She was in the right place for that, with Remy's zoo all around. But when she wasn't playing with kittens or petting a dog or snuggling her bunny who just barely tolerated that type of affection, she was almost always staring off out a window or at a wall, curling into her body, and lost in her own world.
She probably needed to seek some counseling. We just couldn't risk letting her leave the house until we finally figured out who was out to get all of us.
I figured that so long as Belle didn't seem to actively be getting worse, to the point where we would have to worry about her hurting herself or something unfathomable like that, it likely wouldn't do completely irreparable damage for her to have to wait another couple days. Or weeks at the most.
"Hey, princess," Eddie called, talking to Belle. "You wanna try?" he asked, waving his gun in the air that he and Donovan had been practicing with under the watchful eye of the much more experienced shooter, Alaric.
"I don't think that's a good—" I started, but got cut off as Belle immediately unfolded from her ball and rushed forward.
"Yes."
Eddie's gaze cut to me, brows raised, asking what I wanted him to do.
It was the first word I'd heard Belle speak all day. I figured if she wanted something badly enough to break her silence, then maybe it wasn't my place to say no.
"Alright," I said, shrugging, hoping Shy wasn't going to give me an earful when she got back from playing with Harmon and Sass's kids.
"Here, sweet cheeks," Eddie said, passing the gun in front of Belle toward Alaric. "Let the expert teach you," he said, moving away from her and toward me.