Page 8 of PortCity Killers

I stayed silent moving to the edge, looking at the duffle that sat in the middle of his sheets. Bryce stepped forward, his face down as he scrolled. He took a step forward, closing the door behind me and leaning against it.

I felt caged being truly alone with Bryce for the first time in months. The proximity to him in the car did nothing to prepare me for this, and the fact that he was lazily typing out on the screen meant nothing. Bryce saw everything, always.

Seeing him lounging against the door like he had nowhere else to be but here in front of me made me want to step away from the bed, to put it between me and temptation, but there wasn’t much place to escape to in his room.

Bryce’s apartment was way bigger than mine but apartments in PortCity were shoeboxes at their worst, small at their best.

As he slipped his phone into his pocket Bryce took a step towards me, his thumb running over his bottom lip. When his eyes met mine, my knees nearly buckled. I managed to take a step back.

The back of my knees hit the mattress, but he didn’t stop coming towards me until I was sprawled across the mattress with my elbows supporting me. His hands came to either side of my body, leaning down until he was a hair's breadth away from me.

“I need to leave,” he said, his lips barely brushing against the skin of my neck and up my throat. “You can have the bed, and I can sleep on the couch if that’s what you really want, but I’m hoping that by the time I get back you’ll be right here just like this: waiting for me. Preferably naked.”

The feel of his lips on my skin had my mind whirling, an inferno blazing underneath every part of me he could touch.

I whimpered as his teeth scraped down my ear lobe, his tongue darting out behind my ear. It was hot, wet, and everything I didn’t know I needed.

It was as if months hadn’t passed by, grueling and torturously slow. When his hand slid onto my lap squeezing my thigh, I gasped, wriggling underneath his hand, shimmying as if I could wiggle just enough to move his hand a little higher—a little further in.

“Is that a yes?” he asked, “Or should I be a gentleman and sleep on the couch?”

I let out a breathy laugh, unsure Bryce was capable of being a gentleman. “I can take the couch.”

He let his other hand grip my chin, “Don’t be a brat.”

“But I am a brat, remember?” I gave him a wry smile.

Lord knows where I got the audacity to tease him, but his hand was so fucking close as it kneaded my thigh, inching higher and higher.

His eyes were dark, the blue bleeding into something like fire instead of ice as he fixed his gaze on me, steps from eating me whole. Heat blazed through his fingertips with every swipe closer to where I needed him.

I was suddenly eternally grateful for the thin material of the shorts I wore, wanting as little as possible between his skin and mine. It had beenmonths, far too long for any of my decency to have remained intact.

All I wanted was for his fingers to slip under the stretchy, soft material and find their way to the nub between my legs.

His hand slapped down on top of my thigh, shocking my senses, “Brats also get sent to bed without getting what they want.”

“And what is it you think I want, Bryce?” I grit out, soaking in the sting where his hand landed.

He stilled, looking up at me from under his dark lashes, strands of dirty blonde hair falling around his face. He’d never looked more like a fucking angel than right then and there.

My own personal Lucifer, perfection fallen from Heaven. The look in his eyes told me he knew exactly what I wanted and just how much I wanted it. Which is likely why he pulled back, straightening and tucking his hair behind his ears.

“You’ll have to let me know when I get back, won’t you?”

My elbows gave out from under me, a groan escaping from my lips as Bryce full belly laughed. He gave my thigh another slap centimeters from where I really wanted him to slip his hand before, making my body curl in on itself slightly as he was bounding out the door.

“We have a lot to talk about, and I’m pissed as all hell that you’re in the situation you’re in,” he paused, shooting me a look, “but I’m glad you came to me about it.”

I didn’t move, arms spread wide, tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. He didn’t seem to need an answer because he closed the door a second later.

I didn’t say the words out loud, didn’t let them manifest and spill from my lips even after he left, but I was glad I’d come to him too.

So fucking glad I didn’t have to deal with the situation by myself because if I had...I’d have had no clue where to start.

It seemed natural as breathing to come to Bryce; he was the only man who had ever been there for me. Sure, he didn’t say I love you or bring me roses, but he always had a stash of Reese's cups in the fridge. And yeah, maybe we didn't go out or tell our friends about one another.

Hell, we didn’t even acknowledge one another in public most days. Still, Bryce had been there when I’d come to him with blood on my hands, tears streaming down my face, and another man’s brain matter stuck in my hair. He had been the one to clean up the mess.

Every time I broke down at work because some fuck-wad had got too handsy in the beginning, he’d sent someone down to show me a new way to defend myself until I hadn’t needed the check-ins.

He had been there in all the ways I had wanted, and he never pretended to be anything other than what he was. That was more than a girl could ask for really, wasn’t it?

I finally let the tears I was holding back fall. I couldn’t let them before, but here in Bryce’s apartment, I could. Here I could fall apart even when I couldn’t in my own home, not with Jaymes around, because Bryce had never asked me to be anyone but myself either.

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