Rule shook his head slowly before running his fingers through his hair in a gesture of irritation. “I needed a drink.”
Had he? Lawe watched him closely, still sensing that closed door to his brother’s thoughts.
“I can’t even sense when you’re lying to me anymore,” Lawe stated, pausing as the waiter brought their drinks.
Rule went for the whiskey first, tossing it back with a grimace and clench of his teeth as the fiery burn seared his insides.
Lawe’s gaze narrowed, following his hand as he placed the shot glass next to the four others sitting in front of the four bottles of beer he’d already consumed.
“What the hell makes you think I’m lying?” Rule snorted as though the statement were nowhere close to the truth.
“Gut instinct?” Lawe suggested. “I know you, Rule. You shut me out of your mind the minute you realized I’d found my mate. I appreciate the time it gave me to build boundaries around Diane, but I’d done that within weeks. You still won’t let me in, though. Why have you shut yourself off from me, Rule?” He finally asked the question Rule had to have known was coming.
Picking up the beer, Rule took several long, hard drinks before letting the bottle thump heavily back to the table.
Lawe’s gaze moved from the bottle, then back to Rule as he eased forward slowly, his tall, broad body moving in until his position was the same as Lawe’s. Arms folded on the table, leaning forward intently.
“Do you know why I closed that bond, Lawe?” Rule growled, the sound so animalistic, so filled with some unnamed emotion that Lawe nearly flinched.
“I’ve asked,” Lawe reminded him. “You’ve refused to tell me.”
“Would you enjoy knowing I sense your lust and hunger for your mate? Or that I sense your pleasure in her when you take her?”
Lawe straightened, barely holding back the shock and instinctive snarl of rejection that rose to his lips.
The chuckle that came from Rule was deep, dark, a mocking reminder that sometimes Lawe had suspected the link they’d established could possibly go deeper than he had thought where Rule was concerned.
“Don’t worry, brother,” Rule leaned back, a mocking curl to his lips that Lawe had never known his brother to turn on him. “That prick-assed Lion inside me made sure we didn’t spy on you. Besides, he was too busy pestering me with excuses to make trips out here to check up on my own mate.”
Lawe blinked back at Rule as he picked up his beer and finished it in one long drink.
Rule hadn’t been with him on that mission to track down the sister of Jonas’s mate. Lawe had gone in with Mercury, Dog and several other Bureau Enforcers to find Diane.
The second he’d caught the scent of the lone prisoner shackled in a dark, damp cell, he had known she was his mate. He’d known she was hurt, he had scented her tears. A second before his instincts, enraged by the affront of his mate’s tears, her pain, had been overcome with rage, he remembered that link snapping in place.
They rarely fought separately. He and Rule had always known that fighting together made them stronger. Lawe hadn’t known their link could reach across such distance until that moment, though. His brother’s strength had been his in that second. His control, his ability to restrain all emotion, to push back any weakness, had infused Lawe.
He’d felt Rule’s animal then as well. It had centered his own, holding it back with steely purpose as Lawe managed to lead his team in to rescue the woman whose scent wrapped around his soul and opened his heart.
The second, the very moment he’d had Diane in the heli-jet and the danger to her significantly decreased, the bond he hadn’t known was in effect the entirety of their lives was suddenly gone.
He’d known it was there when they faced danger, when their instincts reached out and combined, creating the fearsome warriors they had become. But until that moment, he hadn’t realized that he and Rule had never been completely separate entities.
Until the moment he had felt a total and complete isolation.
A breath later, that isolation had been infused with the knowledge and the scent of his mate, though. He’d been so amazed by it, so taken aback by the warrior his woman was and his inability to control the animal’s need to protect her, that he’d forgotten the only breath of time that he’d felt the total darkness, the total aloneness within his memories, his torments.
That aloneness his brother had known since that moment.
The curse that sizzled from him had Rule staring back at him with a distance Lawe no longer resented.
How could he even apologize? To say he was sorry would be more a lie than any he had ever spoken, because it would mean telling his mate he was sorry for the understandings, the love, the complete togetherness they had found together.
“There’s nothing to feel sorry for,” Rule stated absently as he gestured to the bartender again.
Lawe stared at the five shot glasses, five beer bottles that stood empty on the table at Rule’s elbow again and realized he hadn’t spoken those words aloud.
Strengthening the shields around his thoughts, he wondered just how strong that link with his brother really was. And suddenly, he wasn’t so surprised that Rule had learned so well to maneuver others so easily.