Judge (Shady Valley Henchmen 1)

Now, I knew immediately that it was a set-up.

First, because the bag wasn’t full.

Second, because no way in hell would Nyx make a one-armed Delaney take out the trash.

“Oh, ah, yeah. Sure,” Dell said, clearly caught off-guard, but wanting to pull her own weight.

I waited just long enough for her to disappear behind the door to the back of the bar to head outside and move toward the alley where the dumpsters were.

If she was surprised when I rushed her, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her along with me, I had no idea.

All I knew was that she didn’t fight me.

Not even as I led her past The Bog and down a familiar alley. The one where I’d brought her that first night.

“Who the fuck is he?” I hissed, pulling her around to push her back against the wall.

“What?” she asked, brows furrowing.

“That bastard you’re fucking. Who is he?”

“The… what? Are you drunk?” she asked, looking more and more confused by the second. And fuck if that pouty lower lip of hers didn’t just beg me to kiss it.

“No, I’m not drunk. I’m fucking pissed off.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” she agreed, nodding. But nothing about her seemed worried about my anger. Whether that was because she trusted me, even at my angriest, or because she was just accustomed to it because her brothers tended to be hot-headed, I didn’t know.

“Who is he, Dell?”

“Who is who? What are you talking about?”

“The guy, Dell. Who is he?”

“You’re being kind of crazy right now. I don’t know who you’re talking about. Or what your problem is. What I do know is that you have no right to talk to me like this when you haven’t contacted me in, what, weeks? Who do you think you are?”

“I have to stay away from you,” I told her, finding the words grinding out from between my teeth because my jaw was so tight.

“That’s a lame excuse and you know it. You didn’t stay away from me in Vegas. Or in the diner bathroom.”

“The diner where you came in with another man,” I hissed, hand curling into a fist at even the thought of him.

And then I watched as confusion turned to shock and then… well… complete and utter amusement on her face.

Her head tipped back and a loud, unabashed laugh escaped her.

“Oh, oh my God. That hurts,” she said, pressing a hand to her ribs as she folded forward a little, still laughing.

“Don’t see a fucking thing funny about this, Dell.”

“Oh, no. Nothing at all. Except that you’re clearly jealous of my bodyguard!” she told me, shooting a massive smile in my direction.

“Your what?” I asked, sure I misunderstood her.

“Patrick. Pat. He’s my bodyguard. Or babysitter. I don’t know what to call him. He’s who my brothers threw at me because they got tired of me being a bitch to them.”

I felt like she’d knocked the fucking wind out of me.

My body, wiped clean of jealousy, but still pumping with adrenaline, felt strange and racy as I stood there trying to process what she was telling me.

“You’re not fucking him.”

“I’m not… you’re the only…” she said, gaze slipping to her feet.

“Thank fuck,” I hissed, reaching out to frame her face with my hands before sealing my lips over hers.

What I didn’t expect, though, was for her good hand to lift and slam into my shoulder, catching me off-guard, so I went back a foot.

“Absolutely not,” she said, chin jerking up defiantly.

“What?”

“No, Jass,” she said, shaking her head. “You can’t keep doing this to me, okay? Be nice, then ghost me, then come back for sex, then ghost me again. I don’t like it. I’m not going to put up with it anymore. I don’t want to be led around by the throat. It’s not fair.”

“I had to stop talking to you,” I told her, surprised with the raw emotion I saw in her eyes.

I’d never been exposed to that.

In my life, you had to be hard, you had to lock all that soft shit away behind walls with tripwires and fucking snipers on top just in case.

If someone found any weakness in you, they would exploit it, use it against you.

So seeing all the hurt and confusion and anger and sadness right there on her face, displayed for my consumption, it did something to me, formed a crack somewhere in my carefully constructed and meticulously maintained walls.

“Because you were scared of my brothers,” she said, lower lip trembling a bit. At the unfairness of that, probably.

My hand moved out, my thumb tracing that lip.

“Because I was scared of my feelings for you,” I admitted in a strange, airless voice that didn’t sound like me.

“What?” she asked, her wide eyes telling me she didn’t quite believe me yet.

“I can’t fucking stop thinking about you. You’re in my goddamn head all day long. Then in my dreams at night. It’s fucking overwhelming. And I don’t know what the hell to do with that.”