Page 30 of A Brother's Secret

13

Amalia…

I woke slowly to the sound of masculine voices and lay still for a minute, just listening, trying to decide on who was here. I heard Kyle’s voice, the low, steady cadence a comforting thing. He was still here, and comfortable with whoever he was talking to, so there was no danger… notyet.

One of the cardinal rules of living on the run was that you were never safe. You could never take the illusion of safety for granted, either. The minute you did, shit would go sideways and you would find yourself running again at a severe disadvantage and when you weren’t seven steps ahead of the hunter, that’s how you became very deadprey.

The low, gravelly tone that responded to Kyle mismatched the dude that it came out of. I mean, the big guy couldn’t have been more than forty on the outside and yet he sounded like a regular grandpa. It bespoke way too many cigarettes in too short a time. I knew a couple of other guys like that. Some people, it damaged the voice after a couple of months sucking down a pack a day or more. Made you sound two to three times your actual age. By the time this dude was seventy, if he even made it that far, he might not have any kind of voice atall.

The smell hit me like two seconds after that gravelly smoker’s voice spoke, and my stomach clenched and was like, yes! Feed me bitch! I pushed myself up and stretched and Trigger said, “Whoa, hey, sorry! Uh…”

“Would you look at that?” I mused aloud, “I make the big biker blush.” I swatted aside the mosquito netting and hopped out of bed. Kyle was struggling not to laugh. I’d never been body-shy in my life, and I didn’t particularly care for modesty on a physical front. I kind of viewed my skin the same way I viewed clothes. Just something to wear to hold your soul. You know what Imean?

Still, it was totally worth it to watch the big guy curse, twisting this way and that in the big, pretty much empty building, looking for something to duck behind to give me privacy. I was going to go straight for the bath, but the chance to get a little lighthearted revenge for my discomfort last night made me divert passing the desk full of computer equipment in the center of the large space in favor of going toit.

Kyle leaned back in his desk chair and I leaned a hip against it, draping my arm across his shoulders. He was sitting in just jeans and boots, shirtless save for his motorcycle vest over his bare chest. The look suited him, my pussy giving a bit of an aching throb at the sight that I couldn’t honestly tell if it was in excitement or protest. It’d been a while, and we’d gone at it more than a few times last night. I was sore enough that I couldn’t quite classify it as the good kind anymore, but I wanted to anyway. I also couldn’t deny the deep sense of soothing satisfaction it gave me when his hand went to my waist, around my body, his arm against my ass and the tops of my thighs.

“Grab a bath and get dressed, baby. Rest of the guys will be here soon.” He smacked me on the ass and laughed.

“Oh, you’re going to pay for that one,” I remarked and he smiled and winked atme.

“I don’t doubt it, but all thesame…”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” I waved over my shoulder and started up the water carefully. He’d drained the horse trough last night and this morning I went to my knees in it and didn’t even wait for it to fill. I used the pitcher hanging over the side from an ‘s’ shaped hook to dump over my hair and made quick work of it and the rest of me with the stolen hotel shampoos and conditioners and a sliver of a bar ofsoap.

I didn’t much care for the cheap shit; my skin felt tight and dry with a layer of soap scum on it, but it was better than sweat, the leavings of our sexcapades, and the barely-rinsed road grime of the day before. I got up, wringing out my hair, and shutting off the tap just as Reaver and Dray walked through thedoor.

“Shit, put some fuckin’ clothes on,” Dray grated and averted his eyes. I rolled mine while Reaver stared openly, grinning like a happy dog who’d just spotted his favorite tennisball.

“Eh, I give you a solid seven, but my Doll is a ten in mybook.”

“Fuck you,” I said, “I’m at least an eight.”

“Nine,” Kyle called, “be a solid ten if you had more of an ass.” He wasn’t looking at me, though. He was clicking through screens in front of him and I smiled to myself, drying off and wrapping one of the large towels around me. Just another reason I loved him. He didn’t bullshit me, and yet, even when he was saying something that might have been taken as a dis or derogatory, he still had a way of being fresh, honest, and complimentary. He knew I hated how skinny I was as a teen and that my biggest pet peeve back then had been my decided lack of a chest. That hadn’t changed too much. I went from a late blooming solid A cup to no more than an overflowing B… but he liked my tits. That gave me the warm fuzzies, right there.

I went back across the place and pulled on clean panties and some black yoga pants. The door opened up and admitted more men, these ones I didn’t know, just as I pulled a loose dark gray tank top with some pithy saying in shiny silver on its front over my head. I fished through my bag for a comb, pulled the netting against the four bed posts and secured it, before dropping onto the bed and curling my legs across each other to start working on the snarl of myhair.

I picked through endless knots in the dyed ends. Three guys had come in, one with long brown hair, one with short dark hair, and one with hair the color of dirty straw. All three were imposing in their own way. The first and third were both built like a brick shithouse, the second was wiry whipcord over bone in a way that still managed to be imposing. They eyed me just as much as I eyed them, each of us taking the other’s measure.

“Archer, Rush, and Nox, meet Amalia. Mali, this is Archer, his brother Rush and that’s Rush’s twin, Nox,” Trigger made the introductions, Kyle was lost in his mass of computer screens and networks.

“Hi,” I said and looked them over one at atime.

“Don’t look like much, does she?” Rush asked.

“Guess we’ll be fast friends, then,” I said sarcastically. “Right back at you.” Archer and Nox laughed, and I smiled. “And she is sitting right here, so don’t fuckin’ talk about me like I’m not,” I added.

“You were right, Reave,” Nox said and turned back to me, “You’re a firecracker.”

“More like a mortar, you haven’t seen the whole show, yet,” Reaver chimed in finally.

“Was that a compliment?” I asked. “Or are you being adick?”

He grinned from ear to ear and I raised my eyebrows and turned down the corners of my mouth in an attempt to look impressed as I was saying, “About time you got with the fucking program… speaking of…” I turned to Kyle and sighed, “What is the program?”

“Save it,” Dray ordered. “No sense in having to repeat yourself, we’re not allhere.”

“Fair enough,” I conceded, even though it pissed me off slightly to do it. I didn’t like being cut off like that, and I sure as fuck didn’t take orders, but it wasn’t worth putting up a racket right now. Playing nice was the rule of the day, even if it did suck monkey balls.

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