“A myriad of counteractive agents. Would you like a chaser to make it go down easier?” Cerri said.
“I think I left my tequila here,” Vi called out from the corner. “You can have the rest of the bottle if you want.”
Ryder groaned. “Tempting…as…that is…”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. Ryder’s heart pumped harder and harder. He tightened his arm around my waist. Across the room, Addie sighed audibly, too.
“Fucking hell,” Addie said with obvious strain in her voice. “I really thought we weren’t going to make that.”
When I tried to remove myself from Ryder’s lap, he put another arm around me. He clutched me like I was a plushie, which wouldn’t have been all that bad had I not been butt naked and in a room with my best friends.
I cleared my throat. “I, ah, need to put some clothes on.”
Ryder’s attention made every hair on my body stand on end. I was aware of my naked breasts and my ass on his lap. This hadn’t been sexual in the beginning, but the tension around us was quickly growing hot.
“All right,” Vi said. “I’m heading home for the night. I feel the need to start a bonfire and stare into it while I drink my loneliness away. Do you want to keep me company, Addie?”
“I don’t like girls,” Addie said, matter-of-factly.
“That’s alright. I just want someone to keep me from losing my shit again.”
The two shared a look of understanding that made me wonder what they were going through. I’d been drowning in the conflict within my pack. It’d kept me from seeing how my friends had problems of their own.
Vi and Addie made their exit. Cerri collapsed on a chair across from Ryder and me. She dragged her hands over her face before letting her head fall back. The urgency in the room had evaporated and left behind nothing but exhaustion.
Honestly, I was afraid of leaving again. If we walked, we might run into another ambush. Ryder wasn’t in any shape to endure another fight like that, even if the antidote worked. I couldn’t carry him, either. Not in any form.
I peered up at him. Though I was tempted to ask him if he could shift and fly us to the edge of the neighborhood, he couldn’t fly all the way back to his rental. That left me with one option.
“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked Cerri. “You have the pack number database on it, right? I need to give Connor a call.”