Rock Chick Revolution (Rock Chick #8)(4)

His face changed to a face I’d never seen before, either. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t impatient.

It was infuriated.

He’d been mad before, even really angry (see aforementioned notes about us yelling at each other a lot).

And his anger had a physical presence. So much so, its weight could fill a room.

But this was different.

The room didn’t feel its usual stifling.

It felt still.

And that freaked me.

“I just told you you mean something to me and you won’t give me ten minutes to talk this shit through?” he asked with deceptive quiet.

“No, because the only outcome that’s acceptable to you is unacceptable to me, so we have nothing to talk about.”

He shook his head, still looking very, very angry.

“Unh-unh. You rewound too far. You just ended things with me like it’s all the same to you.”

“Well it is,” I clipped (lie!).

“Bullshit,” he fired back (he knew I was lying).

“How many times do I have to tell you? We’re f**k buddies, Zano.”

He shook his head again, his thumb sweeping across my cheek and his face getting so close to mine, his lips nearly brushed my own.

“No, baby, we are not. I’ve had f**k buddies, Ally. And not one of them looked like you look when I slide inside you, every f**king time I slide inside you. Like a piece of you has been lost and now it’s found.”

Oh crap.

I probably looked just like that.

Because when he slid inside me, that was precisely what it felt like.

My eyes drifted away.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

“Get off me,” I returned.

He went silent.

I let him and waited, hoping this would be a morning where Ren would give up, roll off and wait to fight another day.

It wasn’t going to be that kind of morning. I knew this when he kept talking.

“Your brothers by now are gonna know about this. And when you roll into Denver, they’re gonna lose their minds.”

“They’ll get over it.”

“If you think you’re pullin’ shit on them, Ally, you’re wrong. Lee and Hank know everything that goes down in that town, and they know you’ve been doin’ your thing and just how long. Make no mistake, they’ve been distant, but they’ve been in your business. Part of it was to keep an eye, part of it was to have your back. But you never got this deep or went this far.”

I slid my eyes back to him.

“Newsflash, Zano. I’m not Nancy Drew, solving crimes as a hobby just out of high school. I’m a big girl. I know my brothers know and I don’t care what my brothers think.”

Something flickered in his beautiful eyes. His fury was long gone, and just then his voice went back to sweet. “Baby, I’m trying to impress on you, this is different. And I was worried before at the shit you were doin’. But now I’m f**king alarmed.”

It was then, something happened.

I didn’t know what did it for me. The new tone to his voice. That look on his face. His warm, hard body pressing mine into the bed after a night of mind-boggling, soul-enriching, life-changing sex. Knowing he found out what was going on last night and drove for hours to get from Denver to the Colorado mountain town of Carnal where all the bad stuff was going down in order to get to me. Or the fact that he really sounded like he meant what he said.

Whatever it was, it did it for me and it led me to doing something I’d never done with Ren.

I agreed.

But I did it quietly.

“I get you.”

He blinked. “You get me?”

I nodded, not about to say it again.

His eyes grew sharp but his face went guarded. “Maybe I should understand what exactly you get.”

This was a weird thing for f**k buddies, and another way I had to admit we kind of broke that mold. It was also something Ren used repeatedly to press the fact that we weren’t actually f**k buddies, but together together. We just didn’t go out on dates or meet each other’s parents… yet (the “yet” part was Ren’s).

And what that weird thing was was that he knew me. I also knew him. He paid attention, when we were ha**ng s*x and when we weren’t. I did the same.

So it wasn’t surprising he asked this question.

“Those dudes were bad dudes,” I explained. “I know how bad, Ren. I’d been poking around them for months.” I put my hand to his chest to press my point home since his face went unguarded and his eyes started to warm. “But they buried Faye alive. I knew the risks. I weighed them and my friend got pulled out of that box breathing. Barely, but she made it.”

He moved one of his hands down to the side of my neck so he could stroke my throat with his thumb. This was another something new. Then again, I didn’t give him many opportunities to show affection like that and I was thinking that was a good thing seeing as it felt incredibly nice.

“There’s gonna be a path you cross,” he said gently. “A path that no matter what firepower you got taking your back, they’re gonna try to take you down. I do not want you to get to that place, baby.”

Unusually, I used a calm voice rather than an irate one when I explained, “I’m not exactly being stupid. I’ve got Brody and Darius. I’m careful.”