Judge (Shady Valley Henchmen 1)

Tucking her hair behind her ear.

Jesus Christ.

That was some romance movie shit.

And there I was, doing it.

“So what now?” she asked, her gaze dipping to inspect her shoes.

My hand moved out, snagging her chin, and dragging her head back up.

“What do you want to happen now?”

“I don’t want to spend the next week wondering if all you wanted from me was easy sex,” she told me, eyes showing me hurt, and I never felt quite as much like a dick as I did right then.

“There’s nothing easy about this for me,” I told her, shaking my head. “But I don’t want to go a week without at least talking to you either,” I admitted.

“So you’ll call?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll come see me?”

“We’ll have to figure that out,” I told her. “But, yeah,” I agreed.

“Okay,” she said, instantly brightening.

“Okay,” I agreed.

“I have to get back to work,” she told me, waving toward the building.

“I’ll see you in there,” I agreed, giving her one last quick, hard kiss, then watching her walk away.

I had no idea that when I walked out of the bar that night, it was going to be the last time I saw her before she went missing.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Delaney

“Sooo…” Nyx said when we found a quiet minute later that night.

“So what?”

“Oh, come on. Like that bag of garbage needed to go out,” she said, rolling her eyes at me.

“When did you become such a matchmaker?” I asked, giving her a smile.

“Gotta live vicariously through you,” she said, shrugging, but I was pretty sure there was almost a dark look in her eye before she pushed it away. “You came back flushed and smiling. That has to be good, right?”

“Better than good. And I don’t just mean the sex,” I added in a whisper.”

“Oh, do tell,” she demanded, following me into the back to get some more lemons to cut up.

“Well, he thought that I was dating Patrick,” I said, letting out an airy laugh at that, finally understanding his anger from the diner bathroom, the possessive way he held me, the way he said I was, essentially, made for him.

He was jealous of my guard.

I probably shouldn’t have found that as endearing as I did, but it had clearly been eating him up. And a petty little part of me was happy he hadn’t been happy, because his distance had made me miserable, no matter how much I tried to pretend it didn’t.

“Really? That’s weird.”

“I know, right? But I guess it could have looked like that since he is always with me these days. But he was jealous of him.”

“Explains the bathroom fuck,” she said, nodding.

“Totally. But you would be proud of me. He tried to go in for a kiss like he had any right to that—“

“Men,” Nyx said, shaking her head.

“Right? Well, I pushed him back and said no. That I wasn’t happy with how he’d been treating me. And then he told me that he can’t stop thinking about me and he doesn’t understand his feelings and that he isn’t going to keep his distance anymore.”

“Perfect. I love it.”

“The only problem is…” I started, trailing off when the office door opened and Rian walked out.

“That was creepy good timing,” Nyx declared.

“What was?” Rian asked, looking up from his phone.

“We were just talking about you,” she said. “Well, not you, the singular. You, the plural.”

“What did men do today to piss you off?” he asked, smirking at her.

“I mean sometimes all of you just breathing sets me off,” Nyx said, smiling. “But no, I meant you. As in the Murphy brothers.”

“Oh, yeah? What about us?”

“How overprotective and controlling you are. My words, not hers,” she said, waving a dismissive hand at me.

“Well, maybe if Dell had been a more pleasant patient, we wouldn’t have had to pawn off her guard duty on someone else,” Rian said, giving me a look because he knew he was right.

“Why does she need a guard at all?” Nyx pressed.

“We want her safe.”

“You want her safe, or you want her to be a nun?”

“Nyx, babe, you know I don’t give a fuck what Dell does with her personal life. It’s not me you have to bitch at.”

With that, he was gone.

“He’s not wrong,” Nyx agreed. “And, honestly, I feel like it isn’t even purely Cillian. If Conor was less heated about it all, I think you could get Cill on board.”

She wasn’t wrong about that.

“Your brothers have a pack mentality. Which makes sense. But it always makes small things seem bigger than they are. And I think you spoiled them by not rebelling as a teen. So now that you’re trying to be an adult, they are resisting it. But they will give in eventually.”

“I’m worried because they already made it clear to Jass that he is supposed to stay away from me. And then if they find out he hasn’t been…”