Page 47 of The Fire We Crave

Too late, I realize Smoke has ambled over to join us. He puts his arm around Taco’s shoulder. “You’re fair game?” His eyes hold mine as he asks me the question.

“No woman is ever ‘fair game.’ I believe with my whole chest that a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and to say no is sacrosanct.”

He grins and turns to Taco. “You hear that? She’s not fair game.”

Taco shrugs Smoke’s arm off his shoulder. “Fuck off, Smoke. I was just talking to her while you were over there planning the thousand ways you’re gonna fuck Isla right here in the yard once all the old ladies and kids have left.”

Smoke shoves Taco away, but in his drunken state, he stumbles too. “Who I fuck is of no concern to you.”

Taco huffs, straightens his cut, and reaches for my wrist, slipping his fingers around it. “And who I fuck is no concern of yours.”

I snatch my wrist out of his grip, and ignore how it didn’t feel like how Smoke did it when we argued. “I want no part in the pissing contest. And I am not just some object either of you gets to fuck.”

Butcher steps in the middle of the two of them. “Go inside and find Ember, Quinn.”

But my feet are frozen to the ground as he shoves a hand on both Taco’s and Smoke’s chests to push them apart.

“I was just chatting with Quinn,” Taco says. “Smoke’s the one being a dick.”

Smoke huffs a laugh, then grips his crotch. “Least I got a fucking big one. Guess you were at the back of the line when God was handing ‘em out, yeah?”

I roll my eyes, but as I do, Taco lunges for Smoke, even as Butcher tries to push them apart.

Smoke’s laughter barks through the yard, before a visceral yell when he takes a blow to his burns.

“Jesus,” I say, leaping in front of Smoke just as Butcher throws his hand out again to push them apart.

It connects forcefully with my cheekbone, enough to send my head sideways and me stumbling to the floor. My hip hits the ground first, and I throw out my hand to stop my skull from cracking on the concrete.

Words collide around me. Shouts. Yells to stop. Someone reaches for me, but I shake them off for a second while I get my bearings.

When I look up, I see Smoke, features ferocious, mouth curved in a snarl, wild eyes…all focused on Butcher, while Atom holds him around his ribs. Smoke must be in absolute agony with that much pressure on his burns. Or so drunk he can’t feel a thing.

Butcher has his hands raised. “It was an accident, Smoke. Stand the fuck down.”

Wraith offers me his hands. “Let’s get you up off the ground.”

I take them both, and he helps me to my feet, but my attention is on Smoke.

I don’t know how I feel it, but I can sense the roiling turmoil inside him. The confusion and regret and shame and everything else that pours out in his actions. Somehow, I’m caught up in the push and pull. What he believes he doesn’t deserve. What he wants.

“You okay?” Butcher asks when I pass him.

“I’m fine,” I say over my shoulder. My eyes are on Smoke as he shrugs out of Atom’s hold.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his hand touching my cheek gently. Where Butcher’s touch was nice, Smoke’s makes my body come alive. Every nerve ending stands to attention, aching for a moment of his heat.

I place my palm on his dressing, so gently that I can barely feel the fabric of his T-shirt brush against his skin. “I think you’ve had enough to drink.”

He shrugs. “Maybe.” His hand slides from my cheek to my throat; he cups it beneath my chin, his thumb running up and down my skin. “It’s killing me.”

There are so many ways to interpret that sentence.

But in any interpretation, I can’t leave him alone to face it, whatever it is.

“Where’s his room?” I ask Atom.

“You should probably leave him to his brothers,” Butcher says.

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