Chapter 13
Lynn
Iwas warm and comfortable and I didn’t want to move.
My body was heavy, lethargic as it clung to sleep, my brain too mushy to form thoughts yet.
I didn’t fight it, curling into the delicious warmth beside me, the scent of leather and rum and safe, lazy mornings working its way into my senses, lulling me drowsily back to sleep.
When I woke again, minutes or hours later, I knew exactly where I was and whose scent invaded my nose and coated every part of my lungs. I knew whose warmth I’d apparently slept snuggled up to—what the fuck?—and whose arm had locked around my waist, a dead weight I contemplated how to remove.
What the hell was he thinking? No, what had I been thinking, asking him to bark me unconscious? Worse, if I couldn’t sleep tonight I knew I’d be back to ask for more.
I’d slept so deeply that I actually felt rested, and the bark had meant the nightmares couldn’t rise.
I felt awake for the first time in months.
No blazing headache, no foul mood, no heaviness pressing on my bones until it felt like they’d permanently bend.
I felt like a real human again, and god it was nice.
I tried to sneak out, sliding from under Cobra’s arm, but his hand shot out as fast as lightning, curving around my hip and dragging me back against him.
“Fuck are you doing?” I demanded, ignoring the way my back tingled as it pressed to his chest, a flush moving through my body. It felt good, and that was a problem.
“Sleeping. Apparently you’re a tranquilizer. Knocked me straight out.”
“Good for you. Let me go.”
“Nah.” His other arm came under me, and I stared at the wall across from me in shock. Cobra was cuddling me. Cobra, who threatened to skin Tybalt alive when he touched his shoulder, who nearly broke Dreamer’s nose when the man knocked his shoulder into Cobra’s.
“Are you high?” I asked, seriously interested.
Cobra made a throaty sound, his arms flexing around my waist. I felt the touch on my hips, my stomach, and sank my teeth into my bottom lip to fight back the wave of whatever the fuck I was feeling. I hoped it was plain old arousal and not something stupid, like feelings.
“Why am I in your bed?” I pressed when he said nothing.
“You asked me to knock you out in the middle of the hallway, genius,” he muttered, his breath stirring the hair at the back of my neck.
So he knew who I was. And still thought it was a good idea to have his arms around me.
“Should I have left you there?” he asked, sounding surly. Grumpy. The realisation made me smile. He was both a cuddler and not a morning person. “Let you break your nose on the floor, then left you unconscious in the hallway where anyone could see you vulnerable?”
The thought made me recoil.
“Exactly,” he muttered, feeling the flinch move through my body. Because I was pressed all up against him. Jesus, I needed to move. I had to get out of this bed and run as far away as possible. “I’m a good, selfless friend, and you ask if I’m high,” he grumbled.
“In my defence, you’re holding me.”
“In my defence, you’re a fucking furnace and I was cold.”
I snorted. “If that’s what you need to tell yourself.”
He went still. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
I smirked at the wall, realised I was in his room and then began to snoop, trailing my stare over the desk, the wardrobe, the walls painted a dark green that made the room cosier instead of foreboding. Or maybe I just found comfort in the foreboding now.
He pinched me right over my ribs.
“Clearly, you have a cuddle fetish,” I said.
“You can fuck right off.” He opened his arms and shoved me unceremoniously towards the edge of the bed. “Go on. Piss off.”
I snorted, unable to keep the smile off my face even if it felt weird there.
I hadn’t felt this awake, this good, for as long as I could remember.
“Kicking me out of bed doesn’t erase what happened when I was in it,” I taunted, sliding off the mattress and hissing at the cold laminate floor on my feet. I had no slippers on, no socks either.
I slid a glance at Cobra, and froze at the sight of him stretched out lazily in bed, something about it making me hot all over. A wicked throb went through me, reminding me I was healed enough for sex, if I ever wanted it. Right now, I could imagine wanting it.
“You know what’s weird,” I mused, finding my slippers discarded on the floor. “I could have sworn I was wearing these last night.”
“Hm.”
“Any idea what could have happened…?”
He stretched, resting his arms behind his head.
He was fully dressed, but there was something about his body language, his languid stare, and the smile on his face that had me remembering the times I’d seen him without a shirt, with all that ink all over him.
I wondered if there were more tattoos beneath his pants.
“They fell off when you passed out,” he said.
I swallowed and ripped my stare away, my heartbeat fast, a little panicked. “I bet. What happened to my socks?”
“The same fate, I’m afraid.”
I rolled my eyes and headed for the door, needing space to figure out what I was feeling and what I planned to do about those feelings. “Thanks. For the bark and the…” I flapped a hand at him, to encompass him taking care of me. “I appreciate it.”
“You can repay me by bringing me breakfast in bed,” he suggested, grinning when I whipped around to give him my darkest glare.
“Go,” I said, “and I cannot stress this enough—”
“Fuck myself with a rusty rake?” he guessed, venom-green eyes glittering.
I folded my arms across my chest. “I was going to suggest a cactus.”
“That’s a new one.”
“I’ve been working on expanding my repertoire.”
He snorted. “Nice.”
“Thanks, I worked hard on it.” I opened the door, my hand hovering on the cool handle. “Cobra.”
“I know,” he said before I could figure out how to string my thoughts into a sentence. “We’re friends; this is the shit friends do for each other.”
We were friends, and hearing it spoken made me feel all warm and fuzzy where I normally felt hollow.
But god, having someone meant having someone to lose.
I’d only ever had myself since Mum and Niall passed, and I wasn’t sure I liked this.
But I liked the game sessions, and the insults we traded, and the banter.
I liked waking up warm, rested, and safe too, but that was dangerous. Addictive.
I needed to deflect, to break this emotion apart before it strangled me. “Aw cute,” I said, giving him a faux-soft look. “You do this for all your friends? I can just imagine you and Devil snuggled up together at night.”
Cobra gave me his middle finger, and I grinned. “Get the fuck out. Pest.”
“Who’s the big spoon? Is it Devil?”
His expression flattened, and a familiar giddiness went through me at getting a rise out of him. “Out.”
I saluted him with two fingers and let myself into the hall.
And then I hunted down ChaCha. Loathed as I was to admit any of this shit out loud, I needed to talk about what just happened.
Mostly, I needed a new coping mechanism because this couldn’t happen again.
This morning made it very clear that if I woke up in his arms again, feelings were inevitable, and Cobra didn’t do feelings.
He didn’t do commitment or relationships, only sex.
And that was the biggest problem. Because I wanted the sex, too.
I barged into ChaCha’s room without announcing myself, and smirked when she startled awake with a filthy string of insults. Impressive, really.
“What the actual fuck, Lynn?” she demanded when she saw it was me.
I kicked the door shut behind myself. “I want to fuck Cobra.”
Her eyes widened, her stare fixed on me for long, long seconds, and then she hissed, “Holy fucking shit.” She flew out of bed, inflicting the sight of her bare ass on me. I turned away, pinching the bridge of my nose as she threw on clothes. “We’re gonna need Jessia. This is an emergency.”