A Pound of Flesh (A Pound of Flesh #1)(199)

His brain kicked into overdrive. Shit, they’d been together only a short time. Yet they’d been through so much. Maybe it was a bad move to lay that on her. He didn’t want her to feel pressured, and maybe she wouldn’t want to live with him yet. He was anal about cleanliness and he was a grumpy motherf*cker in the morning, not that she didn’t already know that—

“… because I’m meeting Beth for coffee, if that’s okay with you?”

He slowly blinked back into the room to see Kat looking at him expectantly.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, dazed.

Kat laughed and cupped his cheek. “Are you okay? Where were you?”

“Nowhere.” He put his food down and fisted his hands in his lap.

Kat noticed and her face turned serious. “You wanna talk about it?”

[page]Did he want to talk about it? He gazed at her. “Um … I was just thinking.”


Kat squirmed at his side. He noticed, in her nervousness, she’d pulled the sheets up to cover her nakedness. Carter clenched his jaw and little by little pulled it back down. She’d never been shy about her body. He wasn’t about to let her start. He bent to her bare chest and kissed her lovingly between her breasts.

“It’s nothing bad,” he promised her, then laughed with uncertainty. “Well, I sure as shit hope not.”

Kat’s hands clasped his. “Whatever it is,” she soothed, “you can tell me.”

He rubbed his hands across his hair. Well, shit, this was a first. After a moment, he said, “So, I was thinking that, maybe—you know, if you want to. Because I do,” he waffled. “I don’t want you to feel obligated. But I think it’d be— What I mean is, I wondered if you’d—”

His cell phone vibrated on the side table, and he cursed. Max.

Shit.

“Hold that thought,” he fumed before he picked up his phone. “Dude, what’s up?”

“Carter, I need a favor.”

Carter’s eyes darted to Kat. “Little busy now, man. Can it wait?”

“No, it can’t,” Max snapped. “Fuck’s sake, man, you can’t blow me off for your woman again!”

Carter’s hackles went up. Something smelled off. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain when you get here,” Max answered. “I need you at the shop in twenty, okay?”

Carter rubbed his forehead. This wasn’t good. “Sure,” he replied and hung up. He stood to retrieve his boxer briefs and jeans from the floor.

Kat’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “You’re going out?”

“Yeah.” He began to fasten his belt. “I shouldn’t be long, though. Max needs me for something.”

Apprehension crossed Kat’s face. “Something,” she repeated quietly. “Something … illegal?”

“No,” he said, going over to her. “I’ll be right back.”

She wrapped her hand around his wrist. “Please … He’s not— What’re you … You know what? It doesn’t matter.” Kat tried to smile. “You’ll be careful, though, right?”

Since Carter had finally admitted to Kat about his doing time at Kill for his best friend, and Max’s ever-worsening drug addiction, she was always anxious when Max’s name was mentioned or when he called. She would never admit it, but he knew she worried that Max would land his ass back in jail. Truthfully, he worried about the same thing.