The surprisingly warm look in his eyes suggested he might not mind it, either.
"Come on," he said a while later. After I'd cooked, eaten, and left my mess for Daemon on Ace's orders because 'he could use something to do other than eating pussy every minute of the day.'
"Back to banishment," I declared, feeling a little happier with a stomach full of pasta and two cups of coffee.
"No one has checked on Red in hours," he reminded me, making me feel guilty. True, she seemed as stable as she was going to get, but she still needed to be cared for.
"I think she is going to need someone," I said as I followed Ace up the stairs. "For, you know, whatever is going on inside her. I don't understand why she is still so out of it," I admitted as Ace opened the door, leading me inside.
"Don't think it will come to that," he told me, moving to his usual chair, picking up the poetry book off the nightstand.
"Do you really think Red likes poetry?" I asked, checking her for a fever, then looking over her wounds. She was healing, slowly but surely. In another week or so, I would likely be able to take out most of the stitches.
I wasn't sure what was going to happen to me after that, though. It was a thought that made sleep difficult some nights. If I stopped being useful, what would they want with me? I mean, I knew their names. I knew their faces. But I also had no idea where we even were. If they just drove me to another state or something and dropped me off, I wouldn't have nearly enough information to provide to the police to get them involved.
"Probably not," Ace said, snorting. "She would be sitting here rolling her eyes at me."
"Then why would you read it to her?" I asked.
"Because I can't read the shit she reads."
"What does she read?" I asked, watching as he gestured to the nightstand.
Curious, I reached inside, shuffling some papers around, several of which with the same name written on them.
Marceaus.
"Mar-see-us," I read, sounding it out. "Who is that?"
"Mar-kay-us," Ace corrected. "He's someone important to Red."
"Does he know what happened to her? Why isn't he here?" I asked, offended for her. It was us women against the shitty men who didn't appreciate us. I might not have known Red, but I was going to go ahead and be angry for her.
"She hasn't seen him in a long time," Ace told me, shrugging.
She was still clearly hung up on him, though.
My heart ached for her as I went into the second drawer, finding the book Ace was making me look for.
"Denver," I said, reading the title. The cover didn't give much away. "What is it about?"
"A woman who has an affair with a man she calls Denver because she doesn't know his real name."
"It's a romance," I said.
"It's a sex book," he scoffed.
"How do you know that if you haven't read it?" I shot back, rolling my eyes.
My mother had been a hardcore romance reader. We used to spend a lot of weekends at the library since it was one of the few places you could go and not have to spend any money. I would head to the kid section and grab books about fairies and wizards and trolls. My mom would go to the adult section and clear half a shelf of romances every week. She used to tell me that they were more than love books, that it got a bad rep, that I should never, ever judge someone by what kinds of books they liked to read because I didn't know what they were going through in life, and what kinds of stories helped them escape from it for a while.
I'd been a hardcore romance book defender in her honor, even if I hadn't ever had the kind of free time that allowed me to read much. If I did, I was pretty sure I would pick up her favorite genre as a tribute to her.
"You want me to give it a chance?" he asked, brow raised.
"Yes. Is that too much to ask?"
To that, he shrugged, holding out his hand so I could press the book into it.
"Fine," he agreed, flipping open to the bookmarked page of the well-loved book as I turned to make my way back toward the couch.
His voice filled the room, stopping me dead in my tracks with his words.
This time, not because they were calm and soothing.
Oh, no.
"With my ass fully plugged, Denver bent me over the desk in the office, admiring his handiwork, the bright red handprints that had to have been marring the pale white skin of my cheeks. I tried to turn my head to look at him, to see his black eyes, the way his jaw got tight when he was imagining fucking me, like I had seen so many times before. But his hand slammed down on the back of my neck, holding me in place. A long, tense moment passed of him just staring at me before, suddenly, his finger flicked the hot pink plug buried deep in my ass, sending an unexpected surge of desire through my system, making my pussy even wetter than it already was, something I didn't even think was possible.