Page 72 of Hell to Pay

Because of Lilah.

It wasn’t that we wouldn’t have cared without her, but her determination had gotten under our skin. Lilah was desperate to find them, to find out who’d taken them, especially Rain Adakai, and that made us desperate too, because whatever Lilah wanted, Lilah got, even if we had to move heaven and earth to make it happen.

“I will,” he said, glaring at me. “Stop infantilizing me.”

I stood, annoyed. “Telling you to take your meds so we don’t have to haul your ass into the emergency room isn’t infantilizing you. We’re a team, remember?”

I walked out because he was annoying the shit out of me and it was so rare for Nolan to annoy the shit out of me that I didn’t really know what to do with the feeling.

“We’ll leave for the beach in an hour,” I said without looking back.

I stalked through the garage, past the cars and bikes, and ascended the stairs to the house. It was quiet, and I went upstairs to look for Rafe and Lilah to tell them about Gage.

Except they weren’t up there. They weren’t in the living room or kitchen either, and I realized they must be in the gym, although it was hard to imagine Lilah and Rafe working out side by side without wanting to bash each other’s heads in with twenty-pound dumbbells.

Well, Lilah anyway.

I headed downstairs. The lights in the sauna at the end of the hall were off, so Rafe and Lilah were definitely in the gym, although I guessed it was possible Rafe was in the equipment room or outside.

I’d try Lilah first. She’d definitely be in the gym.

I saw that the lights were on even before I reached the room, but when I finally got there, it was pretty fucking obvious she wasn’t working out, not the way I’d expected: she was ass-naked and facing the wall of mirrors, her tits pressed up against the glass, head turned sideways.

And she wasn’t alone. Rafe was behind her, his ass on full display as he pressed himself against Lilah’s body.

Lilah caught my gaze in the mirror and made a little squeak, then turned around in Rafe’s arms.

He stood there, his arms braced on either side of her body as he looked over his shoulder at me. “Do you mind?”

“Thank fucking god,” I said, because now that they’d finally fucked maybe they could stop figuratively pacing around each other like caged animals. “Get your dick out of Lilah. Gage has something for us about the hard drive.”

46

LILAH

I washappy to sit in the back next to Nolan on the way to the beach. I wasn’t humiliated that Jude had found me naked, post-fucking with Rafe. Not exactly. But I would have preferred to tell him — and Nolan — in a more elegant way.

And it was obvious he had told Nolan, because when I came up from the gym wearing my workout clothes, Nolan had grinned and said, “Good workout, sweetheart?”

Damn it.

The back seat gave me some space to process what had happened with Rafe, and I definitely needed a minute.

He’d said he was sorry. Finally. They were the two words I’d been determined to hear, and after the fog had cleared from my sex-addled brain (who was I kidding, there was no brain involved in what had happened between Rafe and me in the gym), all I could think was… now what?

I’d thought I’d feel differently about everything that had happened if only Rafe — the lone holdout among the Bastards — would admit that what he’d done was wrong, that it had hurt me.

If only he’d say he was sorry.

Except now that had happened and nothing had changed. I mean,somethinghad changed. I’d been fucked to within an inch of my life, for one. Been fucked in a way I’d never been fucked before. It wasn’t necessarily better than sex with Nolan and Jude, it was just… different.

Nolan was a gentle lover. Jude was earthy and sensual.

But Rafe? Rafe had been an animal.

Even more surprising, I’d been an animal too. My cheeks heated and I had to press my thighs together as I remembered the way he’d shoved his hand inside me, the way I’d loved it. I’d been in a place without thought, without reason, a place where there was only the primitive demands of my body and its determination to see them met.

But there had been no magic wiping of the slate like I’d imagined.

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