“Do we need to dispose of anything?” I mused curiously.Anyone,not anything.
I grabbed four glasses settled next to a bottle of whiskey on the counter, then poured and slid one across the counter for each of them while awaiting their answer. I wasn’t opposed to having to go out tonight—we would just have to make sure we got her back into her house without waking her up. She would have way too many questions if she saw them now.
It was possible that they even had the body out in the car. Not the smartest idea, but also not impossible to handle. I mean, if we were being honest, with the information we had on everyone, they couldn’t do shit about us killing Gregevenifthey knew it was us.
My lips pressed up, loving how goddamn terrified the people in this town were of us.
“Unfortunately not.” My twin sighed, looking slightly disappointed. That made me happy. I wondered briefly who’d pulled King back, in that case. Maybe Dermot? Interesting.
“I broke his nose,” Yates announced, shrugging easily. “I thought it was a pretty generous punishment for being a creep all these years.”
That was accurate.
“King?” I asked.
The look he offered me was somewhat blank of emotion while he used a paper towel to wipe some blood from his face. See, this was the side of Kingston that worried me a bit. His normal emotions were predictable—hell, even his temper didn’t worry me. This though? This complete shutdown of emotions was concerning.
I mean, it was a bit hypocritical of me, but there was a bit of a difference between us. I wouldn’t be upset about being covered in blood—I would be relishing in it. That made sense to me. King just appeared to feel… nothing. I might even believe that he didn’t have the capacity to do so if he didn’t keep looking at the doorway towards the family room, a bit of caution in his gaze.
There was one thing he was worried about, and that was Dahlia realizing the extent of his darkness. I didn’t have as much of an issue with that notion.I knew she wouldn’t mind it nearly as much as he assumed.In fact, I was almost positive our beautiful girl had gotten turned on while trapped in my arms as King threatened Greg.
If that was true… well, we were fucked. If Dahlia found our darkness attractive, not just dealt with it but was turned on by it? She was goddamn stuck for life. As if she had a choice before. My lips pressed into a curious smile, wondering how she felt about other shades of that same darkness.
Where was the line with her? I wanted to explore that.
Wanted to explore how she felt about pain with her pleasure.
“He won’t be using his right arm any time soon, and probably has some level of internal bleeding, but that’s undetermined,” he explained quietly. “We did drop him off at a hospital, so he most likely won’t die. Unfortunately. How is she?”
It didn’t surprise me that he’d redirected the conversation right back to her. I knew he cared far more about that than anything having to do with Greg. I mean, fuck—I’d just watched an hour worth of some home improvement re-run because Dahlia had found it relaxing. I would probably sit and watch anything if it meant holding her like that.
Taking a sip of my drink, I thought about the best way to explain what had happened tonight. I did worry King would assume I’d further fucked up the plan, but then again, I wasn’t alone in this… I could totally bust my brother for doing the same. Yeah, this was going to be funny as fuck. Plus, honestly, I wasn’t very concerned, because while she would be confused, the woman was far better at ‘rolling with the punches’ than King gave her credit for. I was going to keep touching her, and if I knew my brother, nothing King said would stop him either.
“I may have lost my cool a bit with the Greg thing earlier,” I admitted, then took another sip. “I kissed her on the way home.”
My words hung in the air before my brother broke the silence with a loud chuckle, my lips pulling into a smile as I shrugged at King and Yates, both looking shocked.
It had happened, and there wasn’t shit I could do about it. Nor would I want to.
Yates scoffed, shaking his head as King blinked before his expression turned surprised. “You fucking kissed her?”
I really didn’t think the concept was all that confusing.
“Yeah.” I nodded, putting my hand in my pocket. “She kept asking me what was wrong, and I wasn’t able to explain without essentially expressing my murderous rage, so I hauled her little ass over onto my lap and kissed the hell out of her.”
“Christ.” King drew his hand down his face, chuckling slightly. I looked at my brother, who offered me a smug grin as I realized the fucker wasn’t planning to say anything.
“King? Sterling?” I stilled as Dahlia’s voice sounded through the house. “Yates? Why are all of you in here… oh my god, why the heck are you two covered in blood?!”
* * *
Dahlia Aldridge
Trying to clear the sleep from my eyes, I blinked and ran a hand over my face, frowning as I tried to focus on the scene in front of me with more clarity. Although, the more I looked, the more confused I became.
Lincoln’s suspiciously innocent expression turned heated as my gaze dropped to his lips, where he brought a dark glass to his mouth. I looked towards his brother, trying to ignore the heat that surged through me as he watched me with an amused smirk. His head tilted curiously while examining my expression, probably wondering how I was going to react to all of this.
To be fair, I wasn’t even positive on how I wanted to react yet… maybe I was still sleeping? I suppose that was always a possibility in these situations, right?