“Okay,” I agreed, nodding, moving numbly down the hall to my usual room, going in, but pausing, waiting inside the door, listening.
“Quin… we have a problem,” was what he said first, pausing, listening. “Yeah, no. It’s Gemma. Yeah, that Gemma. She’s okay. Safe. But shit isn’t good. Yeah, I know. No. No, she’s had an idea of it for a while, but was worried she was paranoid. She’s been crashing with me. But… yeah, she went back home and then some fuck was waiting for her. Chased her. Not bad… just what seems like a broken eye socket. She stabbed one of them with that keychain Gunner got her. Yeah. No. We’re at the office now. Yeah, it could wait. Alright, see you then.”
With that, I moved into the bathroom, scrubbing my hand pink for fear of missing a spot of the blood before finally getting to cleaning up my face. A ring was slowly forming around my eye, a deep blue-black that, at the moment, could be confused with sleepiness, but I figured it would just keep darkening as the night went on.
Taking a deep breath, I moved back out into the main area, finding Lincoln putting water in a mug for me.
“Quin said that since we’re safe here, we are going to meet in the morning after everyone gets some sleep. Aven has the flu, so he’s playing nursemaid. Hope you don’t mind waiting.”
“Not at all,” I assured him, shaking my head. “It will be nice to get my head together before Quin starts picking it apart.” I’d seen him do it enough times to know there was no way around it, not even if we had a personal connection. “Is he telling everyone tonight?” I asked, belly falling at the idea of my sister showing up, reaming me out.
“No. He doesn’t want to get Jules freaked out. The morning is early enough. Unless you want me to wake someone and get them over here to work as bodyguard,” he added as he carried his coffee and my tea over to the couch, putting them down on the coffee table to cool.
“No.” The word rushed out of me as I moved to sit down beside him. “I mean… I have bullet-resistant walls and glass, security systems… and you.”
“Wish you never went back to your place, Gem. Maybe we could have avoided this,” he said, brushing my hair off of my temple, tucking it behind my ear, letting him get a look at the cleaning job I had done.
“But if I hadn’t gone back when I did, maybe we wouldn’t have known there was an actual threat until it was too late,” I reasoned as his fingers followed the path down my hair to my shoulder until he dropped it suddenly.
“I guess there is some truth in that,” he admitted, though the words seemed a bit sour on his tongue. “Things have been… different without you around,” he admitted, eyes refusing to hold mine even as I tried to search them for some sort of meaning.
“Lots of takeout, huh?” I asked, not sure what he meant exactly, and knowing my pride wouldn’t be able to take it if I responded sentimentally when he didn’t mean it that way.
“It hasn’t felt as warm,” he told me, eyes closing for a second with the confession. “Felt a little homier with you around.”
“Lincoln…” To my own ears, my voice sounded soft, a little unsure. His head lifted, gaze finding mine, holding. A hundred things passed between us in one silent moment, questions and answers, recognition of the fact that there had never been a misunderstanding, a real rejection. He hadn’t wanted me to go back to my room any more than I had wanted to.
I’m not sure where the confidence came from. If you told me the day before that I was going to make another move on Lincoln, I would have laughed, would have sworn that I wouldn’t risk myself like that again, open myself up to more hurt.
But somewhere in that moment, I found myself folding up onto the couch, turning, moving over to straddle his waist, hands pressing into his shoulders.
My gaze moved to his as I released my held breath.
“I don’t think I can take your rejection again,” I admitted in a small voice.
There was none to be found, though.
His eyes flashed; his hands lifted, curling around me, crushing my body to his, and his lips sealed over mine.
There was no hesitation, just heat, just need, just a spark bursting into flame, threatening to consume us both, just a warmth so new, so comforting that we both seemed perfectly happy to bask in it forever.
Lincoln’s hands slid down my back, fingers sinking into my ass, dragging me closer, making my cleft grind up against his hardness, tearing a ragged moan from between my lips.