Atonement (Angel's Halo MC 5)

The lump dissipated instantly, and I jerked my hand out of his hold. “And I told you to go fuck yourself.” I got out of my car, bumping into him with my hip before he could stand up and nearly knocking him on his ass. I smirked as I grabbed my things out of the back seat then headed for the front door, hitting the lock on my key fob.

If I thought that would send Raider on his way, I was sorely mistaken.

He followed after me, and I had to bite back a curse as the door opened and Colt stood there, waiting on me. My best friend’s eyes widened when he saw his brother behind me.

“Something wrong?” he asked, concern darkening his face.

“Just making sure she gets home safely,” he muttered, and I saw something pass between the two of them before Colt nodded.

“Thanks, brother. I got this, though.” He grasped my arm, not roughly, but firmly enough to tell me that he meant business. He pulled me into the house, and I went willingly, glad to get as far away from the other man as quickly as possible. “Quinn and I need to talk.”

“Oh, she and I need to do a little of that ourselves.” Raider leaned against the doorframe, his eyes going over his brother’s shoulder and locking on to me. “Don’t we, Quinn?”

Oh, God. The way he said my name was almost like a physical caress. I felt it all the way down to my core. Clenching my legs together, I turned my face away from him, refusing to answer him.

Colt’s hand tightened on my arm. “About the dancing?”

“Among other things.”

I closed my eyes when my friend’s fingers contracted on my skin. I wished Raider back to wherever he had been the last four weeks.

This night just kept getting worse and worse.

“What other things?” Colt gritted out.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, little brother.” Which, of course, was the exact wrong thing to say to Colt. And, was that a smirk I heard in Raider’s voice. I didn’t dare open my eyes to look, but it sounded like he was smug as hell.

The bastard.

I pulled my arm free of Colt’s grip before he could tighten his hold any harder and bruise me.

“Are you boys playing nice?”

Relief washed through me at the sound of Kelli’s voice. Her presence might not have dissolved the sudden new tension between the youngest two Hannigan brothers, but it made them put a little distance between each other before Colt could start demanding answers to the questions I could almost feel swirling around in his head.

“You!” Colt stepped forward, and my eyes opened in time to see him get in her face. “You were supposed to watch out for her, not let her start taking her fucking clothes off for the masses.”

Kelli didn’t even blink at his harsh tone, or that he was so pissed he was practically spitting with each word that came out of his mouth. She calmly crossed her arms over her chest, one hip popping out as she stood there in her sweats. Her dark hair was pulled up into a knot on top of her head and her gym bag was slung casually over one shoulder. She looked like she had just come from a workout.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was supposed to sit on her and not allow her to leave the damn house.” She rolled her eyes and pushed past him. “Chill the fuck out, asshole. Quinn is a big girl. She can decide for herself what she wants to do. If you didn’t have daddy issues with her, you would let her actually grow the hell up.”

While I was glad she had shown up to help with the tension between the two brothers, I wasn’t a fan of what she had just said to him. Colt wasn’t just my best friend. He was best fucking friend for life.

Daddy issues?

Okay, so I would admit he treated me more like his daughter than a friend sometimes, but he didn’t have daddy issues. He was just looking out for me.

Grow up?

That stung more than a little, but even as my shoulders stiffened, I could see where she was coming from. I was twenty-five years old, yet I didn’t have a lot of life experiences. Not with the real world. Colt had tried to sheltered me from the ugliness of reality … and I had let him.

But now I was seeing the world with new eyes. In the weeks he had been gone, I realized I had grown up a lot.

“Quinn.” Raider was still watching me. “Sweetheart, come for a ride with me.”

A zing of excitement raced through me at that offer.

Not an offer, a command. Whatever, I liked it, which was why I stayed right where I was. If he had said something like that to me four weeks ago, I would have jumped on the back of his bike and said to hell with everything and everyone else.