Page 3 of June 7

During the short walk, she'd grown heavier.

Inside the bedroom, he stopped when his legs hit the mattress. Leaning over, he grabbed her hips and pushed down, trying to dislodge her from his body. She refused to let go, pulling him down. Caught in her arms, he was done.

Drunk or not, she needed to sleep it off, and he wanted to get back to what he was doing—nothing, for once.

He extracted himself from her arms and stepped back.

She bolted to a sitting position on the bed and screamed.

Not a scream of excitement or a scream of surprise. It was a scream of fear as if her whole world shattered when he'd left her.

He returned to the queen-size bed, moved her to the other side, and laid beside her. She willingly came into his arms.

His heart raced long after she stopped screaming and settled against his chest. Though he hadn't got a clear look at the woman, he could feel the plushness of her breasts against him and the width of her hips underneath his hand.

She wouldn't have had to ask him twice to sleep with her if she hadn't been two sheets to the wind when he arrived. He was a lot of things, but he was never one who enjoyed sex with a drunk woman when there were so many willing women ready to fuck him and not just lay there deep in their drinks.

Now, if they had partied together and he had known where he stood before they started drinking, the night would've ended differently.

Something or someone had hurt his neighbor. For how much it felt good to lay on the bed holding her plush body against him. He wasn't looking for that kind of trouble.

He blamed how damn comfortable the bed was after moving boxes all damn day. She had a good mattress. Plush and warm.

He stared up at the ceiling. Sleeping in someone else's bed fully clothed was a hell of a way to spend his first night in Seaglass Cove.

***

THE SUNSHINE COMING through the window woke Bane. Then, he heard a door open in the other room. In a blink, he remembered where he'd slept.

Looking at the woman in his arms, he slid out from underneath her and covered her with the blanket. It was just his luck her ol' man was coming home from shift work and wouldn't be happy to find him sleeping with his wife.

He grabbed his pistol off the floor where he'd placed it last night. It was damn uncomfortable trying to sleep with the imprint of a 9mm on his lower back.

Going to the door, he peeked into the short hallway and found a woman picking a throw pillow off the floor and placing it on the couch. He walked out of the room and put his finger to his lips when the woman gasped, jumping away from him in surprise.

"If you're looking for your friend, she's sleeping." He slipped his pistol under his belt and showed his hands.

The woman patted her pocket and dived in, pulling out her phone. "I'm calling the police."

He grabbed the cell out of her hands before she could call the cops. "She's not hurt. She was drunk. She's sleeping."

The short woman only came to his chest. Despite her size, she was ready to take him down. "Who are you?"

"Her neighbor." He set the phone on the table near the door.

"What's your name?"

"No business of yours." He stepped toward the sliding door. "If your friend has a problem with me putting her to bed after she's drunk too much, she knows where to find me."

"Oh, God. What's the date?" The woman tapped her phone and mumbled, "June 8th."

She sagged in what he took as relief. He wasn't going to get involved in someone else's life. He was only being neighborly—which was more than he usually did for others.

He slipped out the patio door and walked over to his side of the duplex. No doubt, by the time the woman woke up, she'd regret her night and stay out of his hair.

That's the way he wanted it.

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