Page 28 of Angel's Temper

Not wanting to lie to her any more than he wanted to let go of her hand, Brass settled on a truth that sat somewhere in the middle. “Chrome and the rest of my family are beyond supportive, in their own way. We are all”—he tested the words a bit in his mind before pulling them down—“very action-oriented. Stillness does not become us, if you could imagine.”

“Oh, I can imagine.” She smiled, and the sweetness in it urged him to keep going. The damn woman was humoring him, he knew, like some psychiatrist intent upon squeezing all the juicy bits out of a patient before the session ran out.

And because he couldn’t bear the thought of being the one to chase away that smile—or her hand, which she still, shockingly, hadn’t removed—he relented.

“All of us have physically demanding professions and interests, and we don’t respond well when we’re not able to produce our desired results.”

Molly nodded slowly, but her pinched brows told him she struggled to grasp his full meaning, so he tried a different tactic.

He turned to her, grabbed up her other hand, and shifted more of his weight on the bed in her direction. “When you look at me, what do you see?”

Her eyes danced around the room for a moment, touching on each of her familiar creature comforts lining the walls, before landing on their joined hands, all while one thousand percent not looking at him. “I see a heck of a lot of charisma,” she said through a half-smile, as though the confession both warmed and embarrassed her. “But I also see loyalty, focus, bravery.”

She finally lifted her head, and a long-held breath sawed out of his chest. There could have been a meteor shower raining down outside her window, and he’d simply walk over to make sure everything was locked up tight, before returning to her bedside, leaving the world to burn so she might finish her thoughts uninterrupted.

“I also see perseverance, strength,” she continued, “and an annoyingly unfair amount of sex appeal.”

He snorted at that, more to hide the rush of heat that crept over his couldn’t-keep-anything-from-anyone complexion. One couldn’t move through life the way he did without gaining some awareness of one’s pleasing physical qualities, and Brass was no different. What was different, however, was to hear her say it, and damn if he didn’t puff up his chest slightly from her words. The instant her fingers pumped against his, he knew she felt his radiating heat there as well.

He cleared the gathering of unease in his throat. “When my brothers look at me, I see pity on their faces. It’s constant and damn relentless, and even when they try to put on a show of encouragement or . . . hope,” he ground out the word, “the sentiments are always wrapped up in a vile dose of the stuff. We know each other too well to lie effectively to one another. They know it, I know it, and there’s no escape from it for any of us.”

A silence stretched on between them, thickening the room with the weight of the words he couldn’t say. When Molly’s knee pressed closer to his in support, barely brushing the denim of his jeans, his angel fire pulsed around the tightening shard of what remained of his celestial soul. Brass wasn’t verbose or sentimental enough to think of it as a hug. Chrome would pound the precious right out of him for even thinking such a thing.

But when her leg settled against his and stayed there, Brass found that he profoundly didn’t care one whit what Chrome thought.

And, yeah, okay, it turned out that . . . Brass loved hugs. Sue him. Especially one from her.

“The only thing keeping me from losing my mind altogether is staying busy, throwing myself into a task or a purpose where I’m useful. When I keep moving and stay absorbed in something else, I’m not thinking about where my path has left me.” A foreign emotion teased a smile out of him. “Then I saw your sign in the window. You needed help, and I was available to give it. Isn’t that what people call kismet?” He tried for charming, but the look on her face told him he’d nailed corny instead.

Molly shook her head in disbelief. “You make it all sound so simple. Like you just happened to be walking down the street right when you happened to be going through whatever you’re going through and my little meltdown happened to be the remedy to your particular ailment.”

He winced. She wasn’t wrong. Coincidences were rarely such, especially in his world, but when the last two millennia had been consumed by hourglass sands with an occasional churro thrown in for variety, it hardly mattered whether or not one believed in coincidences.

“You’re not wrong,” he said, his voice dropping into depths that mirrored his discomfort.

“Well, you did sort of waltz in off the street?—”

“What you said before, about your stray cat theory, it wasn’t wrong. There is something here, swirling between us.”

Molly’s lower lip fell open on a nearly imperceptible gasp, and the sweet tension that had coiled around their joined hands slackened a bit. She slid her hand out of his hold and, mother of all mages above, nestled her palm between her thighs. It was a rote move, something that was an involuntary protective measure, much like a cough or a shiver.

To him, it was a goddamn invitation and—it was important to note—the exact thing she did not ask for.

He bit back a curse, both for flaring up Molly’s need to protect herself and for the strength it took to hold back his hand so it didn’t join hers. Everything about her, from her strength to her sincerity, was just so . . .

“Captivating,” he breathed out.

“What?”

“I’ve always been captivated by you,” he elaborated, deciding to follow the course, wherever it may lead. “Ever since I pulled patrol duty at your apartment after Drea was run off the road, my head’s been on an incessant swivel drawn in your direction.”

Had he meant to say that? Damn.

Figuring there was no turning back, he summoned whatever bravery she claimed to find so admirable in him and plowed ahead, mindful of the muck he’d no doubt kick up along the way.

Desperation was truly a humbling thing.

“During that time, I told my brothers I’d do final checks of the property so I could stay outside your apartment longer. I’d wait by that hideous orange Dodge Dart parked on your bedroom’s side of the building.” He shook his head at the memory and allowed a single laugh to slip free. “I never was able to tell whether its color came from paint or rust.”

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