traffic had a laugh bursting from my tight chest. She was unlike anything I’ve ever known.
One of the guys knocked on my door. By the hard, sharp raps of it, I was going to go with Tagan. That man was uptight enough to make coils jealous. “Come in,” I called as I toed off my sopping shoes.
“She needs to go, Thane. She’s screwing everything up,” he said before he’d even gotten the door open all the way.
I snorted as I ditched my shorts and underwear. Peeling drenched compression fabric off my ass was a workout I hadn’t been prepared for. I got it over the curve of my ass and sat on the chair just inside the closet door. “I’m not kicking her out, Tag. She’s got nowhere to go.” I remembered her expression as she looked at her reflection. “Fuck, she didn’t even know what a mirror was.”
I peered around the doorjamb and looked at our middle brother. The quiet one. The one who needed order and control. It’s what had made him so good in the Marines. But his transition back to civilian life was playing havoc with his inner demons.
He clenched his fists.
Just once, I wanted him to lose it. To go wild with whatever emotion battered at him from the inside. To let it out instead of bottling it all up.
He breathed deeply in through his nose, his eyelids pinched closed. As he breathed out, his lips moved slightly as if he were counting to himself. When he opened his eyes again, all emotion had been locked away.
With one last thump, I got the cursed compression shorts off the end of my foot. They flopped against the far wall with a squishy, wet flap. I grabbed an extra towel and wrapped it around my hips.
“What do you think she’s screwing up?” I asked as I came back around the corner.
His jaw muscles popped and snapped as he ground his teeth. “Our order. Our schedule. Our bodies. Did you not remember passing out? Or having to drag Tove across the floor? That was because of her.” He stabbed his finger towards the shut bathroom door.
I snorted. “Our schedule hasn’t even been mussed, let alone screwed up. As to the order of the place? Except for her bloody shirt out on the floor, you wouldn’t even know that she was here if you hadn’t met her.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Forgetting something else?”
I shook my head, my lips tipping down into a confused frown. “Nope.”
“Ainsley.” He shot me a victorious smile, his gray eyes lighting up. “Think she’ll have a problem with your new friend?”
The bottom dropped out of my belly. “Shit.”
“Shit, indeed, brother. And Ainsley’s not exactly the most stable of females.”
I snorted. No, she fucking wasn’t. “Well, it’s not like I’ve slept with Hollyn. All I’ve done is brought her home to clean her up and help her out.” If only I could get my conscience to agree.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I wanted Hollyn a million times more than I’d ever wanted Ainsley. And I barely knew the former.
I shuddered. But I knew all about the latter. Ainsley Christiansen was not a person you wanted to tangle with. The only daughter of one of the big six media conglomerates, she pretty much ruled with an iron fist. That her brothers and her father allowed that kind of shitty behavior was beyond me.
I didn’t answer to her in a professional setting, so I was usually spared the sharper edge of her talented tongue. But when we show up at the same charity events, galas, and auctions, it was hard not to run into each other. After a few years, I’d brought her home for the night. We’d been together ever since.
“I need to break it off with her. I’ve been meaning to, but there was never a good time. Or good enough reason.” I rubbed a hand over my forehead.
Tag laughed, the sound harsh and grating. “You think she’s going to listen when you say you want to break up? You’ll need to take out an ad while you also start recruiting former Navy SEALs to be your personal protection team.”
I flipped him off. “Thanks for the support, asshole.”
He blew me a kiss. “Hollyn is bad news, brother. I can feel it.” He laid a hand on his abs for a moment.
I shook my head. “And everything inside me tells me she’s what I’ve been waiting for. The spark to the fuse.”
He snorted. “Yeah, of a bomb.”
I