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)
Best friend?
I didn’t think I’d ever been promoted so fast.
“Best friend?” Silas repeated exactly what I was thinking.
Elena lifted her arms out to the sides, palms up, a razzing accusation twisting across her face as she gestured around the room. “Do you see any other friends around here?”
“Wow, and here I thought I was special.” It came out playful.
She looked back at me with a grin. “Oh, believe me, Brinley, you are special. Even if every one of those girls who hang out at the club decided they actually liked me, you’d still be my number one.”
I gave her a teasing scowl. “I’d better be.”
“You can count on it.”
Then she reached out, the sudden playfulness we’d been tossing around caught up in something intense.
That grief and hope shining bright in her eyes.
I wavered for a beat before I took her offered hand. She swung it around. “Sometimes our hearts just know.”
Emotion raced my throat. Thick and sticky.
Then she gave my hand a little tug. “Why don’t you come stay in my room so you don’t have to be by this bossy brute?”
Silas pushed from the wall. “Not going to happen.”
Elena pouted. “Why not?”
He strolled in like a snarly viper. “Go to bed, Elena. We already talked about this.”
“Ugh, fine.” She turned back and wrapped her arms around me again.
Hard.
Her mouth at my ear.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime and always,” I whispered.
Big, big promises I shouldn’t make.
She nodded again before she pulled away, pranced over to her brother, and lifted up on her tippy toes to peck a kiss to his cheek.
Then she was out the door with it clicking shut behind her.
“Huh. I guess she wasn’t so mad, was she?” I mused quietly.
Silas didn’t answer. Instead, he stalked over, and he dropped the bag he was carrying to the floor on his way. A wraith slipping through the dancing shadows of his room.
Severity fired from him in a way I hadn’t seen it do before.
He leaned in close, and he planted both hands on the bed on either side of me.
I might as well have been taking a big gulp of whiskey-soaked cherries.
I needed to be careful, or I’d get drunk on that scent.
“What was going on in here?” he demanded in that growly, surly voice.
I blinked. Stunned for a moment by his proximity before I found my footing.
“Other than you being overbearing and bossy, as usual?” I sent him as much sass as I could muster.
Irritation rolled out of him. “With Elena.”
“We were just talking.”
“About what?”
Cripes, was this man nosey.
“That was bestie talk.” I lifted my chin like I was going to prove some kind of point.
Show him that Elena deserved at least a modicum of privacy.
Some grace and belief.
“I’m not playing, Brinley. You think I didn’t notice she was crying?”
I got his worry, but I didn’t think he comprehended that he was sheltering her in a way that left no room for growth.
“News for you, King,” I snarked, hoping he’d get the clue. “You don’t need to know every little move your sister makes.”
Some emotion I couldn’t quite pinpoint crashed out of him. Banged at the walls and battered against my chest.
“You don’t get it, do you? How dangerous these people are?”
The intensity that flash-fired from him blasted me back. My head hit the pillow, and a gush of air ripped from my lungs as Silas crawled over the top of me.
He pinned me without any part of us even touching.
“How could I when I have no idea who you’re talking about?” The words creaked.
It was a wonder I could even release them.
The normal green in his eyes glowed red. I should have been terrified by the sheer hatred they contained.
But I guess I was wholly distracted by the way it seemed muddled by fear.
By fierce loyalty.
A secreted part of him that I couldn’t discern.
Silas seemed to war.
Hesitating as he hovered high, his body pitching back and forth with the ruthless energy he radiated.
“There are monsters who roam this world, Brinley. People who are so wicked, who have no good in them, that I can’t consider them human. And it’s my job to protect the vulnerable from them.”
No doubt, he was talking about Elena.
The rest of his family.
His club.
Maybe even me.
But I was sure there was something about the statement that went so much deeper than that. Sure that he was leaving out something extraordinarily significant.
A pivotal piece of him that throbbed and begged from the shadows.
My heart jackhammered at my ribs.
So fast and quick it seemed to gather up the oxygen in the air and swirl it into a vortex.
A vortex that threatened to suck us both down into an endless pit.
Because I thought I could see it.
Silas’s own confusion. Both of us in disbelief at whatever this feeling was that whipped through the room.
Or maybe it was a normal encounter for the Crimson Crows’s president.