Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Then he swiveled, doing the same to Kai and making the toddler squeal, then he planted one at Elena’s temple.
Never setting those bags down when he did.
This was no time for my heart to go pitter-patter.
Without saying anything else, Silas maneuvered around to open the screen door, kicking it wide so he could stride in.
Elena gave me a purely anticipatory look, her shoulders hiking to her ears and her teeth clamping down on her bottom lip to contain her thrill.
I really shouldn’t feel any of it, but apparently, it was catching.
“Welcome to our home, Brinley,” Meems encouraged in a soft, raspy voice. “I hope you feel safe and supported here. Loved.”
“We got wove.” Kai drawled it in his little baby babble.
A surprised, gooey breath left me.
I hadn’t had love inside my house in a long, long time.
My spirit moaned. Missing it, only a faint inkling of recollection of what that’d been like.
“You need something, you come to me.” Meems gave me a pointed look. “Woman to woman. These hoodlums running around here don’t know their hands from their asses.”
It was all a tease, and I choked over her words.
“Thank you,” I managed around the rocks in my throat.
“If you all could stop badgering Brinley so I can show her to her room, that’d be great.” Exasperation colored Silas’s voice as he hollered from inside.
“Badgering? Hardly.” Elena scoffed as she pulled back open the screen door.
It appeared maybe he wasn’t king around here.
Then she turned to me with a grin. “After you.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled again, then I ducked through the door.
Yep.
Just as expected.
This place screamed Grandmacore.
Floral furniture and lace doilies and some truly uncomfortably-posed pictures on the walls.
And there it was—yarn and knitting sticks sitting on the arm of the couch.
“This way,” Silas grunted as he marched up the stairs.
I hurried up behind him.
He hit the landing, gestured with his chin to the only door on the left. “Meems’s room.”
He turned right down the long hall that seemed to run the full length of the house on the upper floor.
He ticked his head toward the first door on the right. “Brody’s room, my younger brother who is trying to patch in. For lack of better words, he’s a goddamned nuisance, so just ignore him.”
I gulped.
“Noted.”
“Opposite him is an extra bathroom.”
He kept moving. “At the very end of the hall is Elena’s room.”
He stopped at the two doors that sat between Brody’s at the front of the hall and Elena’s at the end.
“Kai’s room is here on the left. Mine is this one on the right.” He pushed open that door and strode in with my bags.
Blood careened through my veins.
I dashed to catch up to him, stalling out in the doorway because I was knocked senseless by the overpowering scent of him.
His presence multiplied.
I worried if I stepped through his door, I would be the one who was bathing in whiskey and cherries.
A giant bed sat against the right wall.
Drenched in black.
Shocker.
A dresser was opposite it, and there was a couch directly across from the door, tucked under a picturesque window that overlooked the front of the house.
He dumped my suitcases on the floor and jutted his chin at the door to the left side of his bed. “Bathroom and closet are through there. Use what you need.”
“Oh, I don’t want to take your room from you, Silas. I can sleep on the couch.”
Look at me, being charitable.
He unwound the duffel’s strap from his shoulder and let it drop to the massive bed.
Then he was stealing his way back to me.
Stalking, really.
That energy flashed, that tumbly thing in my stomach that I absolutely couldn’t feel hurtling me straight over a cliff.
He stopped an inch away, and I inhaled a frantic breath as he leaned close to my ear.
Only that breath was gone when he muttered, “Oh, you’re not taking my room, Brinley. I’ll be right here beside you. Not about to let you out of my sight.”
SEVENTEEN
BRINLEY
“So, then Trevan literally picks Pyke up and tosses him out the club’s door. He must have slid fifty feet with his face in the dirt.”
“Those prospects are nothing but trouble.” I could hear Meems tsk it as Elena jabbered to her.
Her voice carrying out into the living room from the kitchen as I crept down the stairs.
A delicious scent wafted out with it, making my mouth water.
Silas had said he needed to take care of some club business, and he’d be right back. To make myself at home, as if I didn’t feel the most out of place as I ever had.
So much for him refusing to let me out of his sight. I figured the sleeping situation was just him trying to torment me, thinking I was going to stay in the same room as him.
That man had another thing coming.
I inched forward, my ear inclined.