Chapter 4 ThinWalls
Delilah
The shirt smells like cedar and something darker.
I've been lying in Bishop Morgan's spare bed for two hours, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about the fact that I'm wearing it. That it falls to my mid-thigh. That the collar is wide enough to slip off one shoulder if I move wrong.
I'm moving wrong on purpose.
Outside, fireworks are still going. The town celebrating while I hide. Every boom makes me flinch a little less than the one before, which I decide to count as progress.
The wedding dress is folded on the chair in the corner. I couldn't look at it anymore, so I turned it to face the wall. Yes, I know that's unhinged. I'm having a very unhinged night.
I roll onto my side and stare at the door.
It's not fully closed. I left it open two inches because the room felt like a box. Bishop didn't comment when he walked past earlier. Just glanced at the gap and kept moving. Like he'd expected it.
Like he already knows things about me I haven't said out loud.
That shouldn't feel as good as it does.
I hear him on the other side of the wall. The creak of a floorboard near the window. The soft drag of a chair. He's not sleeping either.
"You're still awake." His voice comes through the gap, low and even.
Not a question.
"Fireworks," I say.
"They'll stop by midnight."
"Okay."
Silence settles between us. Not uncomfortable. Just heavy.
"Bishop."
"Yeah."
"You never answered me." I stare at the sliver of hallway light bleeding through the door. "Why you let me stay. You just stood there."
A pause. Longer than I expect.
"Because I didn't have a good answer."
"Try."
The floorboard creaks again. Closer now. Like he's moved toward the wall.
"You needed someone who wouldn't panic," he says. "That's all."
A long pause. Then, quieter: "You were always going to end up somewhere safe. I just needed to make sure it was." He stops. "Go to sleep, Delilah."
It's not all. We both know it. But I let it sit.
"I almost called Cole," I admit. "My thumb was on his name. Then I thought he'd try to fix it. He'd call my parents. He'd make me feel guilty for running." I pull the blanket to my chin. "You don't make me feel guilty."
"You've got nothing to feel guilty for."
"I left a man at the altar."
"You left a man who wasn't right for you." A beat. "There's a difference."
I close my eyes. The certainty in his voice does something to me. Not comfort. More like recognition. Like being told a secret you already knew was true.
"Go to sleep, Delilah."
"I'm trying."
"Try harder."
I almost laugh.
I don't sleep.
I lie there while the fireworks fade and the marina goes quiet. I think about the way Bishop looked at me when he pulled glass from my foot. Focused. Careful. Like I was worth not breaking.
Graham never looked at me like that. Graham looked at me like a finished product he'd already paid for.
I think about Bishop's hands. How steady they were. The tattoos disappearing under his sleeves dark lines curving toward his wrist. I only caught a glimpse. I wonder how far they go.
That thought does not help me sleep.
I press my face into the pillow and breathe out slow.
He's Cole's brother. He's older. He has a past that puts black SUVs in his driveway. He looked at Cole's name on his phone like it physically hurt him.
He is not a safe thing to want.
I want him anyway.
It moves through me slow and certain. The kind of wanting I've never let myself have. There was always a rule. An expectation. Someone else's plan for what I was supposed to feel and when I was supposed to feel it.
Bishop Morgan is not on anyone's plan for me.
My fingers slip beneath the hem of his shirt, past my waistband. The fabric is already damp against my skin, my body reacting to the memory before my mind fully consents.
Those hands. Scarred at the knuckles. Hands that have been in fights. Hands that look like they know how to take control.
I imagine them on my skin not the polite, tentative touch I'm used to. Something demanding. Something rough.
I think about his voice. That deep baritone that vibrates in my chest. The way it commands attention without ever needing to rise above a conversational volume. And the way he said my name.
Not a question. Not a problem. A fact.
Delilah.
The sound of it in my head makes my hips roll upward, seeking friction against nothing. I let out a shaky breath through my nose, my body tightening with a need I can't talk myself out of. The guilt is there, a sharp thorn. But his voice drowns it out. Nothing to feel guilty for.
I let myself have it. Just this once. In the dark, where nothing counts and the only witness is the shadowed ceiling.
My hand slides further down, past the elastic, my fingers moving through trimmed hair to the slick heat beneath. I'm soaking wet, throbbing with a dull, insistent ache. I circle my clit with my middle finger and the sensation is immediate and electric. My back arches off the mattress, toes curling into the sheets.
I find a rhythm. Slow and deliberate. My fingers slip lower, gathering wetness, then return to the sensitive bundle of nerves. I imagine it's his hand. The rough callus of his palm dragging against my inner thigh. The weight of him pressing me into the mattress, trapping me, making me take it.
My breathing goes ragged. Little gasps escape my sealed lips. I can hear him next door, the floorboards creaking under his weight. Every sound he makes feeds the fire in my blood. I wonder if he's awake. I wonder if he knows what I'm doing in here.
The thought makes me clench around nothing. A desperate, empty feeling that makes my legs shake.
I press harder. Move faster. Chase the release that keeps pulling just out of reach. I picture his face. The sharp line of his jaw. The way his eyes darken when he looks at me. I picture him walking through that door right now, seeing me like this, and not stopping. I picture him pulling my shorts down and burying his face between my legs, his tongue replacing my fingers, licking and sucking until I can't stay quiet anymore.
The fantasy is too much. The pressure in my belly snaps tight, my muscles locking up. I bite down on my lip to stifle a cry as the orgasm hits me, wave after wave of blinding pleasure. My hips buck hard, riding my own hand as it peaks and slowly recedes.
I'm breathless. Trembling. Wrecked in the dark.
After, I go very still.
The ceiling offers no wisdom. The marina is quiet. The shirt has slipped off my shoulder and I don't fix it.
On the other side of the wall, I hear Bishop exhale. Long and slow. Like a man putting himself back together one careful breath at a time.
My face goes hot.
The walls in this house are very thin.
I close my eyes and do not move and do not think about what that means.
Morning comes gray and soft, lake mist pressing against the window.
I smell coffee before I'm fully awake. For one perfect second I don't remember anything. Not the chapel. Not the dress facing the wall. Not the thin walls.
Then I do.
I pull my hair up with the elastic from my wrist the one I never take off, a nervous habit and open the door.
Bishop is at the kitchen counter with his back to me. Two mugs already out. He's in a plain white t-shirt and low-slung track pants and the tattoos are everywhere his sleeves usually aren't. Climbing his forearms. Curling toward his shoulders. Disappearing under the cotton at his collar.
I don't stare.
I stare.
He turns before I can pretend otherwise. His face gives nothing away. Same controlled, careful expression he wore through the crowd last night. Like he put it back on before he even got out of bed.
"Coffee." He slides a mug across the counter.
"Thanks."
We drink in silence. It would almost be comfortable if not for the charge sitting between us. The thing neither of us is naming before 8 a.m.
"I should figure out clothes," I start.
"There's a bag outside your door," he says at the same time. "Grabbed some things from the lost and found at the office. Yoga pants, sweatshirt. Nothing fancy."
He thought of it before I woke up.
The thing in my chest does something I don't examine.
"Bishop"
"Don't." His jaw tightens. Not angry. Just. Something else. "Coffee first."
I let it go.
We drink. He stares out at the lake. I stare at the side of his face and he lets me, which probably means he's more tired than he's showing.
We don't talk about last night. We don't talk about walls or what travels through them. Bishop pulls his protector face back on like a coat and I let him, because I'm still figuring out what mine looks like.
I take my mug to the small table by the window.
There's an old laptop sitting open at one end. Left open, screen dimmed but not dark, like he'd been reading something and walked away mid-page.
I'm not trying to look.
I look anyway.
A gossip article. Tabloid style, big photo, bigger headline. The kind designed to do maximum damage in minimum words.
I lean closer.
Club Eidolon's Golden Boy Falls from Grace: Morgan Scandal Rocks City's Most Powerful Crime Circle. And there, center of the photo younger, sharper, surrounded by flashbulbs outside some downtown venue. Bishop.
I don't move.
The photo is grainy but unmistakable. His jaw. The line of his shoulders. The way he holds himself like he's always expecting someone to try something.
I scan fast. Words jump out. Made man. Inner circle. Public incident. Removed from position. An anonymous quote: "Morgan thought the rules didn't apply to him. He found out they do."
A bar fight, the article says. Except the details don't read like a bar fight. They read like a story someone decided to tell so a different story wouldn't have to be.
I read it twice.
Then I sit back and think about the black SUV last night. About the way Bishop's whole body changed when it pulled through the gate. Not scared. Braced. Like a man who knew exactly what was coming and had already decided how to stand in front of it.
I hear him behind me. Quiet footsteps. The particular stillness of someone who moves like they don't want to take up space.
"Delilah."
His voice is flat.
I turn around.
He's looking at the laptop. Then at me. His expression doesn't shift but his eyes do something pulling tight behind them.
He reaches past me and closes the screen.
Neither of us speaks.
Outside, the lake is silver and still. A radio drifts faint across the water from somewhere down the shore. Normal morning. Normal world.
Except I'm sitting in Bishop Morgan's kitchen in his shirt, and I just read that he used to run with a crime organization, and the men in the black SUV are probably still somewhere in this town.
The strangest part?
I'm not scared of him.
I'm scared for him.
He pulls out the chair across from me and sits. Wraps both hands around his mug. Looks at the table.
"Ask," he says.
So, I do.