His hands came out and his fingers went into my waistband. Wordlessly, he pulled me to him and then did up the button on my pants that I’d forgotten about. After that, he cinched the belt.
This was so sweet, so gentle, I had to swallow down tears again.
I put my hand on his chest and leaned into him. “Lee, you tell Luke, he’s gonna go gonzo.”
Lee nodded. “He’s gonna go gonzo.”
“Please, he just, put his hand… and then put his other hand…” I stopped. “And then he took care of himself just using me to rub against.”
God, this was embarrassing.
As I was talking I’d been avoiding his eyes. When I was done, I looked at Lee.
Oops.
I was thinking that Lee didn’t think that was any better than being raped. I was thinking that because the fury waves were pounding again and his face, which had been gentle until now, had turned hard as stone.
“You’re not gonna go gonzo, are you?” I whispered.
“I’m keepin’ a very f**kin’ loose hold on going gonzo, Ava.”
I swallowed again, this time at the anger vibrating in his tone. “I don’t want you boys to get into any trouble for me,” I told him.
“Only person’s got trouble right now is Noah Dexter or whatever that f**kin’ guy’s name is.”
“Lee.”
His hand came up and his fingers wrapped around my head and the third hot guy in a day (or a little more than one, I didn’t know what time it was, I just knew it was dark outside) leaned forward and put his forehead against mine.
Lee’s forehead lean was a lot different than Luke’s or Ren’s.
Lee’s was scary.
“You ask him to touch you like that?”
I shook my head, mainly because I couldn’t find my voice.
“So he did it against your will.”
I nodded my head.
“A man doesn’t put his hands on a woman like that against her will. A man doesn’t put his hands on a woman at all against her will, but especially not like that. A man does that, that man earns retribution. Automatic. A man does that to a woman I know, the woman of a friend of mine, a friend I trust and respect, that retribution turns ugly.”
Yikes multiplied by about two thousand.
“What are you gonna do?” I whispered.
“I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to protect Luke while he does whatever the f**k he wants to do.”
“What if I don’t want him to do it?”
His face lost some of its scary-stony quality and went slightly gentle. “Sorry, honey. You’re gonna have to let us work this out. It’s a guy thing.”
After he finished speaking, to my shock he kissed my forehead, let me go and then flipped open his phone, hit a couple of buttons and put it to his ear.
“Get cleaned up,” he murmured softly to me. Then his head came up but his eyes didn’t leave mine when he said, “Luke. I found her.”
Chapter Twenty-Two