Page 135 of Deadwood
I took the shot, the crack of the balls filling the saloon, but it missed the hole. I didn’t give a shit, though. Not after what that man had just said to Bowen.
I straightened, slapping the cue on the table. Bowen’s jaw ground together as he waited for my next move.
Whatever Nemin was doing at the infirmary, it wasn’t because of my attempts to fight him off.
“Keep the vials, Brick,” I muttered, abandoning the table and beelining for the door.
I made it outside right as Bowen’s hand wrapped around my wrist. “Auria.”
I spun, shaking him off me. “Why was he in the infirmary, Bowen?”
His eyes flashed, something lethal passing through them, but not toward me. “Why do you think?”
“What did you do?” But rather than irate or full of rage, my voice was soft, just above a whisper. He hadn’t just helped clean my muddied skin, made sure I wasn’t majorly injured, he’d…
“I cut his hand off and suffocated Crass. He’s dead. Nemin got lucky.”
Nausea rolled through me, but I held it back with a hand to my stomach. “Why?”
His forehead knotted. “Why did I make them pay for what they did to you?”
Dropping my hand to my side, I shook my head. “You said you didn’t need me, so why protect me? Why not let them try to kill me again? It’d only take the problem off your hands.”
He wrapped a callused hand around my wrist, his grip firm but feather soft all at the same time, and pulled me around the side of the building. He didn’t let go of me as he spun around, or when he pressed my back against the wood siding, or as he pressed the bulge in his pants to my lower stomach, leaning into me. “Feel that, Auria?”
I refused to respond. The pressure alone sent sparks careening through me.
“Tell me that feels like you’re a problem to me. That I don’t need you. That I don’t crave you every moment since the day I met you. Every night since you arrived in Deadwood, I’ve laid in bed, thinking of you, imagining ways I could make you stay for my own selfish reasons.” He heaved a breath, and I forced myself to do the same. His words made me dizzy in the best way possible, an even sweeter buzz than alcohol could even dream of eliciting swirling through my mind. “Is that what you want me to tell you to make you believe you are needed?”
I could only blink at him, words lost from my tongue as all it wanted to do was taste his, to know what it felt like to part those lips and lose myself in the current of him.
Finally, I managed a nod.
“Then I’ll say it every day you remain in Deadwood, if that’s what you desire. All you have to do is say the words, and I’ll remind you every damn day how needed you are on this planet.” He braced his hands on the wall, caging me in with tattooed arms as he lowered his head. “You are needed.”
I was quickly coming to realize that Bowen had enveloped every thought in my mind in just a matter of days.
But it wasn’t days. No, it’d been over a month now since the night of the ball. While he’d royally pissed me off the night my father had announced my engagement, his irritable comments had stuck like honey, his voice replaying in my head. And then he’d shown up the night of Exitium Lunae and killed three men without even blinking. He’d done that for me, and yet, I’d questioned him. Wondered if he wished the worst for me.
And in this moment, those thoughts were only damning me. With my eyes on his lips, and his on mine, there was only one thing that mattered in this alley. If I leaned a few inches forward, angled my head a bit to the right…
But Bowen was a criminal. Someone my father hated. He was a leader, but not a king, and worst of all, I barely knew anything about the world.
But I knew more about him than anyone else. Didn’t that count for something?
No. I was being a fool.
I pulled back, my head nearly hitting the wall. “I’d like to go home.”
He blinked, likely studying the way the words had spilled from my mouth, how they were rushed, unsure, and clearly a lie. What I really wanted to say was,Kiss me and make me forget this is temporary, but instead, I was a coward too afraid to take that leap.
His throat bobbed with a swallow, and he stepped back, dropping his hands from the wall. Instantly, my body mourned. The place he’d pressed his cock to my body, only thin fabric separating us, went cold. I should take back what I said, tell him how I truly felt?—
“I’ll walk you home,” he said, his deflation clear.
And it was set in stone.
Maybe this was best. I’d be leaving soon anyway.
