WAYLON (Ruthless MC 1)

“So you watch everything on that phone of yours?”

“It’s got a big screen,” I answer with a shrug. “I’m also trying to save up for a nicer place than this one-room apartment.”

He glances over my shoulder. “That explains the huge painting on your wall. That your dream house?”

I follow his eyes to the portrait of a yellow house that I couldn’t resist buying at last year’s Brandywine Festival of the Arts—even though it was gigantic and Sierra complained about it taking up so much room in her little hatchback. What’s crazy is I’m not even strong enough to hang it up properly, so it just kind of leans against the wall.

“Yeah, that’s my dream house. And I spent way too much money on that painting,” I admit with a wince. “But it’s a beautiful house. And I love the color yellow he used.”

“Yellow’s your favorite color.” It’s a statement, not a question. “That’s the only color I’ve seen you wear when you change out of your scrubs.”

I smile sheepishly. “Yeah, it is—I kind of have a problem. Maybe you should start calling me buttercup instead of angel.”

“Nah, I like angel just fine,” he answers with a half-smirk.

But then, he frowns. “Why can’t you have the apartment, the TV, and whatever hell else you want? You’re the Reyes’ street doctor, but Ant’s not taking care of you? He didn’t pay off those loans of yours?”

“I don’t get paid for helping the Reyes, and I don’t need or want my little brother to take care of me.”

He regards me over the stew for a long, hard second. Then he says, “If you were mine, you wouldn’t have a choice about that. I’d take care of you. I’d take care of you whether you wanted it or not.”

His words punch me in the heart. No one’s ever threatened to take care of me before. It has always been depressingly the opposite—especially growing up.

For a few too many moments, my heart melts at the thought—but then I remember.

I’m not a foster kid anymore, and the man chained to my bed isn’t someone I should actually want in my life.

I clear my throat, then remind him and myself, “Well, I’m not yours. I’m only doing this until you get better.”

Silence. He just continues to stare at me. Not eating his stew.

And though neither of us is talking, it still feels like we’re having a conversation.

“You know what, I’ve got an old Kindle somewhere you can use,” I say—partly to be helpful but mostly to get out of the silent argument.

After a rummage around the apartment, I find the second-generation Kindle device I used before I started reading all of my books on phone apps. The old Kindle’s perfect. It fires right up when I turn it on, and it doesn’t connect to the internet like the older ones, so I can let the biker use it without worry.

I bring it back to the bed. “Just let me know what kind of books you like, and I’ll download a few for y—”

The MC snatches the device with his unchained hand before I can finish making my offer. “Let’s see what all you’ve got on here.”

My face burns with embarrassment. “Wait, I was going to wipe the device first, then give it to you.”

I reach out for it, hoping to get it before he can see my books. But I guess he’s more recovered than I thought. He easily holds me back with his cuffed hand while swiping through my library.

“T.S. Joyce? I’m thinking whoever that is ain’t any relation to that one Irish guy.”

Wait, he knows James Joyce?

He continues on before I can ask him about his unexpected literary knowledge. “Theodora Taylor, hmm. She’s the one that wrote those books that inspired that Viking Shifters game, right?”

“Right,” I mumble.

He waggles his eyebrows. “So you like wolves.”

I’m frying alive in embarrassment. “Can you just give me back the Kindle and let me download something for you?”

I hold out my hand, and he looks at it like he’s considering doing as I ask.

But then he says, “Nah, I want to read what you read about when nobody else is looking.”

I don’t think he’s serious. But that’s exactly what he does over the next twenty-four hours. He reads the novels on my Kindle.

With commentary.

When I got home the next day, the bullet is close enough to the surface for me to squeeze it out with just a bit of pressure. After dinner, I extract it, and while I’m stitching him up with a thread and needle, I guess he’s looking for something to distract him from what I’m doing.

“Been reading these shifter books of yours all day,” he tells me with wry amusement tinging his voice. “Shifters—that’s what you’re supposed to call them—not werewolves. I read that in the one where the guy was the president of a motorcycle gang wolf pack. You got a lot of those MC shifter ones in here. You’d think you’d be more inclined toward those medical romances—something with a doctor like your boyfriend.”