I winced, and so did he.
“Damn, sorry,” he murmured. “Really is sore, huh?”
“I’ve had worse. It’s alri—”
Weight shifted down beside me, and I gracelessly swayed toward it. Declan braced my hip and tugged me in a bit closer.
“What’d it take, princess?” Tommy asked, hooking an arm around my shoulder. The scent of beer wafted toward me, and my stomach bubbled. I tried to tug away, but his grip was an iron hold. “Little boy got you home with him that night, huh? How’d he—”
“I’m going to say this one more time, Tommy,” Declan said. “Take your hand off of her, and walk away.”
“How’s she taste, kid?” he asked. “Little sluts are always—”
Before he could say another word, before I even realized what was happening, only getting a glimpse of a Declan’s shirt as he bolted to his feet and around my knees, Declan towered over Tommy.
Tommy’s hand fell from my shoulder.
Declan’s was around his throat, slamming him into the back of the sofa. “Say it again.”
Teleporting across the room may not have been a bad idea, but Declan said to stick close. And, in all honesty, there was something incredibly arousing about seeing a man defend my honor with brute force.
I scooted backward into the corner of the sofa instead.
Tommy flung Declan’s hand from his throat, bringing himself to his feet. “Little. Sl—”
Declan raised his fist and slammed it to his jaw. The ache spread to my own, trailing from my knuckles all the way to my elbow. As Tommy lifted his hand to his bleeding lip, Declan said, “You wanna say something about my girl again?”
That… I wasn’t sure if I should cringe or tear off my jeans.
Themy girlpart made me uneasy, but defending me…
No, I didn’t like being referred to as property. But that didn’t sound like ownership. It sounded like safety. Like Declan would kill before he let anyone in this room hurt me.
“The girl who’s looking for her little whore fr—”
Declan’s fist lifted, and then, it was all too fast for me to make anything out.
Fights are always difficult to process, but these two moved like a TV on fast forward. I could vaguely tell who was who from the color of their pants—Declan’s jeans and Tommy’s khakis—but one second, Declan was on top, and the next, I felt the ache of Tommy’s punch in Declan’s cheek.
Another slammed through his chest, and I felt it in my own. Like the wind had been knocked out of me.
But he kept punching, and thrashing, and kicking, and I felt all of that pain too. The pain up his leg, the pressure in his shoulder, the throb in his knuckles.
Glass shattered as they landed atop the end table.
Screams sounded, telling them to knock it off, then two figures I hardly recognized rushing past the coffee table. It wasn’t until Eric—the bald, gray bearded man we’d played spades with last week—yanked Tommy from Declan’s grasp while another hauled him backward across the room.
Tommy’s eye was already swollen shut. A cut in his cheek beaded red into his beard, more drizzling from cuts in his back where pieces of a broken vase still protruded.
The blood dripping from his smirking lip was all I saw on Declan.
“The hell’s the matter with you?!” Eric yelled, yanking on Tommy’s shoulder. “Abe’s gonna fucking kill you—”
“Guardians ain’t welcome here unless we’re drinking ‘em or fucking ‘em—”
Declan laughed, ripping from the grasp of the man behind him. “You really think she’d ever fuck your old, drunk—”
“Well, she fucked the—”