Still, I couldn’t quite keep the ticked-off tremble out of my, “Place keeper?”
“Baby, guys are dicks. They don’t mean to be. It comes naturally. Though, when they find the one for them, that’s all done.”
With all that had just gone on, I only had it in me to repeat an even more trembling, “Place keeper?”
“I’d apologize for the brotherhood if I didn’t know for a fact that there are women out there who need validation or can’t be alone or just want some guy around to take her car to have the oil changed, and she knows he has no staying power. Because she wants one who’s better looking or has a healthier bank account, and even though she’s got one, she’s still looking for what’s next. It goes both ways, Hattie.”
Sadly, I couldn’t argue that.
“You think Axl’s like that?”
“I don’t think a man who’s like that has it in him to kiss a woman like he was kissing you.”
My breath left me.
Whoosh.
Gone.
So when I spoke again, I had to force it out on a wheeze.
“Really?”
His face got soft, he came to me, and then he tucked me in a brotherly headlock to his side.
“Really,” he said quietly. “And as such, I’ll be checking the veracity of your earlier statement. Now, it sucks huge, but I gotta bring us back to why I felt the need to interrupt that kiss.” He shook the photos again. “Hattie, this is next level. And I got resources, but I can’t lift then run DNA on a postage stamp. Not unless I find a new resource that’s reliable and add it to my arsenal. Which will take time. Too much of it. I need to give this to Hawk.”
I had to admit, there was very little doubt my caller had sent those pictures.
So he knew where I lived.
And very likely where I worked.
And in the porn industry, it seemed they catered to their clientele thinking that a woman needed to look in pain even when she was having a non-BDSM orgasm.
Not that I watched porn (okay, full confession, I had one subscription, but they did really quality stuff, and I was a girl on my own with what seemed to be a somewhat limited imagination, so I didn’t watch porn a lot, but I watched it—though, still in full confession, it was usually gay porn because (A) hot and (B) the women in the hetero stuff always seemed fake when they were having orgasms, and one could just say, a man couldn’t fake it).
But what was in those pictures was absolutely next level.
Whoever this guy was, he meant to scare me.
And if Brett didn’t have me in a headlock right then, I’d probably be more scared.
Fortunately, I had good friends.
Which reminded me …
“But to answer your question,” Brett said, taking me out of my thoughts.
I focused on him.
“When he said ‘You’re up,’ that means, after that kiss, and you dissin’ him on Protecting Hattie duties, something I’m seeing clear now I should have strongly advised you against, then again, I’d never seen him kiss you like that, but back to the point. The next move is on you.”
Okay, now I was scared.
“Oh boy,” I whispered.
Brett gave me a squeeze and encouraged, “You can do it.”
I chewed on my lips a bit before I whispered, “That kiss was really amazing, Brett.”
“That wasn’t lost on me, baby. Sorry I had to fuck it up.”
“I get it. Those pictures are next level. And obviously, Axl would have wanted to know about them. Just maybe not be blindsided by them.”
He studied me closely as he asked, “Are you okay about the pictures?”
A cold feeling stole through me.
“Are you—?”
He shook his head once in a firm way that was more like a jerk.
“You got me or one of my boys until you got other cover or until this is over.”
I relaxed. “Then I’m okay.”
“Evie was right,” he muttered, gazing down at me.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“She told me when I found a woman, I shouldn’t make her work for it.”
“Work for what?”
“Me. Put up with my shit in order to have me. Seein’ now it’s the other way around, if it’s worth it. You don’t make them work for it. You do the work so they don’t have to.”
“Axl’s been doing the work,” I told him something he knew.
He gave me another squeeze with his arm, and he sounded almost apologetic when he said, “Your turn, sweetheart.”
It was.
I didn’t know what was happening with Axl’s girlfriend (or him not actually having one), but Brett was also right.
A man did not kiss like that.
Unless he means it.
It was time to boss up.
Because whatever was happening was happening.
And Axl deserved it.
So it was my turn.
I chewed my lips some more.
I stopped doing that to pip a quiet, “Eek.”
Brett grinned at me.
Then he turned me toward the door to the kitchen, saying, “Bacon and eggs.”