Page 22 of Avenging Devil: Part 1

“You sure you’re up to it?”

She shakes her head. “No, but I have to be.”

“Want me to come back later?” I’m prepared to catch her when she falls. After a day of pretending all’s well in her world, Saffie’s going to need someone to hold her. I don’t need a crystal ball to know that.

She doesn’t say yes, she doesn’t say no. Instead, she warns me, “I work the late shift.”

She hasn’t eaten, and I doubt she had a restful sleep. I’m concerned she’ll overdo it. “You sure you’re up to going in?”

With a shrug, she tells me the facts of life. “I’m not ill, Niran. Whichever way I go, whatever my decision, I’ll need to have money.”

It’s far too soon to offer to help her out. And why the fuck should I have to bite back the suggestion? She’s nothing to me, just a woman I have the strangest desire to help.

“What time does your shift end?”

“I work four to midnight.”

Late nights are no hardship for me. “I’ll be here.”

“Why should you?” she asks, her eyes widening. “Niran, I can’t lead you on. I’ve nothing to offer a man.”

“Fuck woman, I know that.” There’s nothing sexual between us. I don’t even know if there would be if the circumstances were different. But she needs someone, and she’s got no one else. “I don’t want anything from you, but I can be here as a friend.” While she’s got all this shit going on, she doesn’t need to be worrying about someone busting into her apartment, or a doped-up druggie trying to get into the wrong home.

She takes a moment, then says shyly, “I think I’d like that.”

Which is why midnight sees me waiting anxiously for her car to turn into the apartment block, breathing a sigh of relief when I eventually see it. Only then do I step out of the club’s SUV and go to greet her.

When I see the expression on her face, when I can tell that the effort of holding herself together has all but broken her, I hold out my arms. She comes into them and takes the comfort only another human being can offer.

It starts the pattern for the next few days. Saffie draws no closer to making a decision, and I don’t hurry her. If she wants to talk, I listen, if she doesn’t, I don’t push. I bring food and am pleased as fuck when she eats some of it. I do what I can to help her relax—watching a movie before she goes to bed, or simply sitting in silence holding her.

While the question burns inside me, I don’t question her about the baby’s father because she still hasn’t brought it up, and I don’t want to cause her distress. Some men, I know, would be possessive about the baby she’s carrying, and might want to influence her. I subscribe to the notion that even if I were the father, it’s she who’s carried the workload for the past months and it’s her who’ll be affected physically by what the future holds. If he were someone who’d support her in whatever decision she made, then yes, I’d want her to contact him, but she doesn’t need more pressure. That she doesn’t mention him is telling. Whatever relationship they had has ended now.

Perhaps he didn’t want the baby and left her, or maybe it was a one-night stand. If she never told him, I respect the decision she’s made, suspecting she had good reason.

While I don’t ask for details, I spend our times of silence wondering about it. Little things come into my mind. Though she’s got acclimated to me now, when I first met her, I remember how scared she’d seemed to be of me. Was it a general mistrust of my race, or that I’m male? Whatever it was, she seems to have gotten past it. But that it was there makes me wonder whether a man used his strength against her. Though I hate to think it, there’s a strong possibility she could have been raped.

Knowing wouldn’t help. I wouldn’t be able to disguise my anger and my reaction would certainly scare her.

While she doesn’t open up, I don’t either. We share nothing personal. The most I glean from her is what food she likes, and what she doesn’t, and which television programs can best distract her. Why should I burden her with my life? She’s got enough on her plate. She doesn’t even ask me how I lost my leg. It seems we’re friends from this point forward, our pasts we keep to ourselves.

No sharing of history, no understanding of what drives us means for the past three nights, other than the companionable friendship that’s growing between us, we remain little more than strangers. It seems to be what she wants.

But in that time, I start to value our bizarre relationship. I haven’t asked to share her bed even innocently, and she hasn’t offered it. For my second night, I came prepared with a sleeping bag and a soft mat and now sleep stretched out on her floor.

During the day, I work, then I stay at the clubhouse until it’s time to set out for her apartment. A routine that doesn’t go unnoticed by my brothers.

“You staying with that woman again tonight?” Kink asks, as I slowly sip a beer and wait for the time to leave to arrive. At my slight nod, he snorts. “Fuck, Brother, you’ve got it bad.”

“I got nothing,” I tell him, rounding on him furiously. “I’m there as a friend, helping her out.”

Un-riled, he nudges me with his shoulder. “Us Doms, eh? Never can resist a sub in trouble.”

“I’m no fuckin’ Dom. I’m just watching out for her.”

He shakes his head. “Dominant to a fuckin’ fault.”

Grabbing my keys, I slam the empty bottle down. “I’m out of here.”

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