“Would you stop squirming? Do I need to tie you down?”
I snorted at Manson’s suggestion, forcing myself to sit still on the edge of his tub. My adrenaline from the fight had calmed, and I finally felt like I could get some sleep. But Manson wouldn’t stop fussing over my busted lip and swelling nose.
It really wasn’t a big deal. I doubted my nose was broken, and if it was? It wouldn’t be the first time.
But it was a big deal to Manson and this was his effort at apologizing without saying it. If he apologized out loud, I’d reject it because he had nothing to be sorry for. It wasn’t his damn responsibility to protect me.
“You better not feel guilty,” I said, my movement making him fix me with another glare before he went back to cleaning up my lip. It needed stitches, but I couldn’t be bothered with all that. Wounds healed. Maybe they’d scar and be ugly in the end, but I didn’t care. “Nothing that happened tonight was your fault, so don’t dwell on it.”
His eyes narrowed even more. “Yeah, except I had a feeling shit would go south. I should’ve —”
I grabbed his wrist, yanking his hand down from my face. “Stop. Fucking stop beating yourself up about it. Getting punched in the face is nothing new for me. In the grand scheme of things, this was a damn good evening.”
He didn’t look convinced. “How do you figure?”
“No one got shot,” I said. “No one got stabbed. I’m not in the hospital.” I shrugged. “Sure sounds like a successful night to me.”
He shook his head, yanking his wrist out of my hold. Jojo and Haribo were barking downstairs, probably needing to go outside again. Manson started dabbing something that smelled nasty on my face, and I tried my best to sit still for him.
“You’ve still got blood on your teeth,” he said.
“You like it. Looks sexy, right?”
That finally got a little grin out of him. Maybe I wasn’t ready for sleep yet. Maybe I needed to let off a little pent-up energy first, especially considering things had gotten hot and heavy with Jess before I abruptly cut her off.
“You better be careful looking at me like that,” Manson said. He had one hand on the side of my jaw to keep my head steady, and his hold grew a little tighter. “Unless one punch in the face wasn’t enough pain for you.”
It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. That was part of why he and I got along so well, part of why we meshed both at work and in the bedroom. Exploring the edges of what I was capable of enduring was something I trusted him with, but only him.
I ran my tongue over my teeth, glancing down at the obvious bulge in his sweatpants. He was shirtless, his hair damp from a shower. He looked so fucking good, I wanted to sink my teeth into his skin, bite until he bled and let him hurt me in return. I’d let him overtake me because it was the only way I could ever let go, truly let go. As terrifying as it was to do that, it was an outlet I desperately needed.
Damn, those dogs were getting loud. Too loud.
Manson and I both paused. There was a strange sound I could faintly hear over the music playing in his bedroom, a repetitive screeching. We looked at each other, his frown deepening as he said, “Is that—”
Before he could get his thought out, Vincent burst into his bedroom, tugging a shirt over his head to hide the pistol tucked into his jeans.
“Garage,” was all he needed to say before he sprinted down the hall and we both scrambled to our feet.
It was our alarm. Someone was in the garage.
We sprinted downstairs, where the dogs were crowded in front of the door, barking frantically. I grabbed the baseball bat in the corner, a weapon we kept close by in case shit like this went down. Jason was carrying a bat too, likely the one we kept near the back door. After the night we’d had, we weren’t taking any chances of being caught unarmed.
The dogs burst outside the moment Manson opened the door. A cloud of dust rolled across the yard as a truck sped away down the road, but the dogs weren’t interested in the truck. They sprinted toward the trees at the back of the property, their growls and frenzied barking making it clear they weren’t only chasing shadows.
Those assholes had left one of their own behind. Someone was running around back there, and I had every intention of making an example out of them.
We ran after the dogs, following them into the trees. We were forced to slow down as we spread out, trudging through the overgrown weeds. There was a click and a beam of light came on, the flashlight in Vincent’s hand illuminating our way.
“There’s no way out back here,” I called, raising my voice so it echoed through the trees. “You can’t run forever, motherfucker!”
I twirled the bat in my hand, energy vibrating through me. This was it. This was fucking it. I hadn’t even seen inside the garage yet, but they’d gone too far the second they stepped foot on our property. This was years of harassment coming to a head. It was time for someone to take the fall, a lesson had to be learned here.
They’d be lucky to get their friend back in one piece.
To my left, a few yards away, Manson was flipping his knife in his hands. It caught the moonlight when it flipped open, flashed, then quickly disappeared.
“There’s nowhere else to run,” Vincent called. His words were punctuated by maniacal laughter as he said, “Come out, buddy! It’s just a little beating.”
There were some strange noises ahead — grunting and puffing, then a shriek. God, I hoped it was Alex. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on that little shit. The coward probably thought he could find a way out back here, but the fence was topped with barbed wire and there was nowhere else to run.
Jojo and Haribo were standing at the base of one of our biggest trees, the hair on their backs standing up in a rigid line as they barked at the branches above. Haribo kept making attempts to leap up, but those squat legs couldn’t lift him more than a foot off the ground. I rested my bat against my shoulders, narrowing my eyes. I could barely see a figure clinging to the tree, wedged between the branches.
I frowned. The intruder looked smaller than I’d anticipated.
“You’re going to be swallowing your own teeth, dumbass,” Jason said, his voice low enough that I doubt the intruder even heard him. It was a promise more to himself than anyone else.
But something wasn’t right here. There was something familiar about the intruder’s desperate panting breaths and the little whimpers of fear that came out with them.
Vincent noticed it too and shone his light up into the branches. “What the hell?”
Wide green eyes stared back at us. Jessica had her arms clung tightly around the branch she was wedged beside, precariously balanced in the narrow V between two tree limbs. Her blonde hair was disheveled and her cheeks were red, her face frozen in an expression that was partially terrified and partially relieved.
“Jessica?” Manson’s voice was breathless, heavy with disbelief. “Hey, Jojo! Bo! Heel!” He snapped his fingers and the dogs immediately stood down. Jess’s eyes flickered over us, dodging between our shocked expressions and the bats in our hands.
“Why do you have those?” she finally said, and I think something in my brain snapped.
“These?” I said, my voice heightening the closer I got to laughter. I held up the bat, stalking toward the base of the tree to stand alongside Manson. “Why do you think? What the hell do you think these could be for?”
She clenched her jaw, prideful little brat that she was. Her fear was dwindling, replaced with something far more foolish.
“You wouldn’t,” she said softly. My teeth were clenched so tightly I could imagine them shattering. I glanced over at Manson, but his expression was dark, shuttered as he stared up at her and flipped the knife closed, tucking it back into his pocket.
“Come down from there,” he said. His voice was far calmer than I was capable of right then, but there was an edge to it that couldn’t be missed. “Now.”
Jess quickly shook her head. “Nope, I think I’m safer up here.”
“You’re perfectly safe,” Jason said, tapping his bat repeatedly against the ground. “Come down.”
“You guys go back inside,” she said. “Take the dogs too. Then I’ll leave.”
“Leave?” Vincent said. “No, no, no, Jess, you’re not leaving. We need to have a little chat.”
“No, thanks. I don’t think that — Ah, shit!” She’d tried to readjust her position, but her shoe got stuck between the limbs and she slipped, tumbling out of the branches face-first. Lucky for her, Manson was there to catch her. He managed to grab her before she hit the ground, stumbling a bit but keeping his feet. She immediately started wiggling, but Manson was having none of it. He hauled her up over his shoulder, pinning her legs under one arm.
“Let me go!” she shrieked, kicking and bucking, thrashing about like a fish out of water. But he kept walking, marching back toward the garage with the rest of us following. The dogs stayed right at his heels as they tried to get a sniff of Jessica’s face. “Let me down! Goddamn it!” She swatted at his ass in a last-ditch effort to escape, but Manson only laughed.
As much as Jessica made me feel like I was losing my damn mind, I also understood her a lot better than she thought I did. She was too much like me, in the worst of ways. Impulsive. Proud. So goddamn stubborn. But because I understood those parts of her, I also understood what she needed.
Attention. Good, focused, four-on-one attention. And she was going to get it now.
