Vengeance (The Protectors 5)

I let Memphis lead me to the bed. I kicked my shoes off and crawled on top of the bed and as soon as Memphis laid down I curled against his side. A sense of rightness went through me when his arm came around me and pulled me to him until I was resting against his chest. We stayed there like that for several long minutes before he said, “What are today’s questions?”

I smiled to myself because I didn’t miss the hint of dread in his voice.

“We don’t have to do that today,” I said softly. “I didn’t exactly keep up my end of the deal.”

Memphis’s fingers trailed over my temple and through my hair and I bit back a sigh.

“Brennan,” he said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Ask me the questions.”

I barely moved or breathed as I heard the unspoken demand. Did I dare risk it? Was he really giving me permission to cross that line?

“Do you have any family?”

There was just the slightest tightening of his arm around me before he said, “Not anymore. They’re gone.”

I knew I was treading on dangerous ground so I ignored the need to ask what had happened to them and instead said, “All of them?”

“Yes.”

I was ready to accept the simple response and move on to my final question when Memphis’s chest rose and fell beneath my ear just before he said, “My father died a few years after I was born and my mom remarried when I was ten. She and my stepdad had my sister, Janie, a couple years after that.”

I waited to see if he would say anything else, but when he remained silent, I began rubbing my fingers in a circle in the middle of his chest. I was blown away that he’d shared as much as he had and while I had a million more questions, I knew better than to press my luck.

“I get one more question, right?” I said softly.

“Right.”

I sat up and turned so that I was facing him. “What’s your third favorite color? And if you say gray, I’m going to withhold sex for at least two weeks.”

The smile that drifted across his beautiful mouth caused a sensation in my chest that wasn’t at all bad.

Memphis reached up to rub his thumb along my cheek and then gently swiped it over a spot just below my right eye. “I’ve become quite fond of green in the past few weeks.”

And with that simple statement I knew.

While Tristan owned a part of my heart that I could never give away, Memphis had just stolen the rest of it. And while the realization that I was falling in love for only the second time in my entire life should have had me leaping for joy, all it did was make my insides reel with sadness. Because even if some miracle happened and Memphis decided one day that he might want to be with me, it meant I would have to let go of the small glimmer of hope that I still held onto that maybe Tristan would someday see me as more.

I leaned forward to kiss Memphis, but neither of us spoke again. He pulled me back down to his chest and held me for a while until I forced myself to say my goodbyes and go home. But what little high I was still riding from Memphis’s indirect admission disappeared the second I walked into the apartment because before I even got the door closed, I heard the muffled sobs coming from Tristan’s room.

“Tristan,” I called as terror rolled through me. I didn’t even bother knocking on his door, but the second I threw it open, I froze at the sight before me.

Tristan sitting on his bed, tears streaming down his face, a large bruise covering his left cheek. He was holding one hand with the other and I nearly threw up when I saw that the pinkie finger on his right hand was bent at an unnatural angle.

“Oh my God,” I said in disbelief and then I was moving. Tristan let out a broken sob as I carefully gathered him in my arms, but beyond him whispering my name, I couldn’t understand a thing he said after that so I just held on to him.

And waited.

Chapter Ten

Memphis

I saw the car before I heard it, because the balcony I was sitting on overlooked the narrow road that wound around the lake and led up to the house. All I could make out was a flash of red, but I didn’t need to see more than that to know who it was. A mix of anger and excitement went through me as I put down my coffee and got up and walked through the house and out to the driveway to wait for my early morning visitor’s arrival.

My obsession with Brennan Devereaux hadn’t waivered in the least in the nearly two weeks I’d been meeting him at the hotel in Seattle. The fact that I was spending hours driving up to the city for the sole purpose of getting my hands on him was evidence enough of how far I’d fallen. I’d lost count of how many times we’d had sex and it didn’t matter because I’d known there would never be a point where whatever we had between us could easily be replaced by finding a Brennan lookalike. And what was worse, I’d started to anticipate all the things that weren’t about sex just as much.