Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
When Silas came to escort me to the vehicle, I leaned more heavily on him than I’d hoped.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “I’ll be okay in a bit.”
Silas grunted his disagreement and settled me into the passenger seat before moving around to the driver’s side. Sheridan approached and said something to him. They talked too softly for me to make out, and then we were on our way home.
Silas helped me into the house and urged me to sit so he could help me off with my boots. I tried pulling off my shirt, but my shoulder complained too much. My head spun, and I wondered if it would be acceptable for me to simply throw my sorry, filthy ass into the bed as I was. Silas grumbled under his breath as he finished removing my clothes, revealing red bruises and a few scrapes from the rocky ground. With every visible injury, he winced, blew out a frustrated breath, or cursed.
When he yanked off his own clothes, I blinked at him. Was he getting into bed with me? “I… don’t think I’m up for…”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m washing you off, cowboy. Come on. I promise not to get fresh with you in the shower.”
Well, that was a first. While my libido was disappointed in the news, my stamina was vastly relieved. Silas led me to the shower and held on to me while gently soaping the dust and sweat off me. He handled me with such tenderness I couldn’t help but fall for him just a little bit more than before. More than I should have.
No one had ever taken care of me like that. Even my mother had never been the soft-hearted or coddling type. She’d been practical and traditional, raising her boys to “man up” and “get on with it” whenever we’d fallen or been hurt.
“Where’d you learn how to mother people?” I mumbled, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with the stew of emotions I was experiencing.
“It’s called basic human decency,” Silas said, but he didn’t meet my eyes with the words, and I wondered if he even believed them. Basic human decency would have been helping me into bed. Or helping me to the bathroom and then leaving me to my own devices.
This was something altogether different. As I watched his strong hands move along my skin, I couldn’t stop wondering what he was thinking.
Did he feel more responsibility for me because I was technically his husband? Was that triggering something in him, like a protective instinct or sense of obligation? Or would he have behaved this way with any other friend?
Had it been Dev who’d fallen out in the pasture…
I shook my head to clear it of images of Silas and Dev together in the shower. The very idea of the two of them together annoyed the fuck out of me.
“Did you and anyone in your group of friends ever…?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Silas’s eyebrows furrowed. “Ever…?”
“You know…”
When he still didn’t seem to understand, I made a noise of dismissal. “Never mind. I think the pain meds are kicking in. Ignore me.”
His eyebrows finally lifted in understanding, and his lips quirked up. “Did any of us ever hook up? Is that what you’re asking?”
“No. Never mind. Forget I asked.”
“The answer is yes.”
I blinked at him as my stomach dropped. “Oh.”
“Yeah. And it’s still going on. But no one else knows, so don’t tell Dev.”
“Oh. Yeah, no. Sure.”
I moved away from him and did a final rinse, suddenly feeling even more exhausted and battered than before. When I turned to look for a towel, my foot caught the sill, and I started to trip forward out of the shower enclosure.
Silas’s strong arms banded around me to keep me from damaging myself further. I felt incredibly stupid, klutzy, and needlessly jealous. It was humiliating, all of it.
“Easy,” he murmured behind my ear. “Let me grab a towel. Stay right here.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my lips together to keep from telling him to fuck off and stop being so kind, that I didn’t need his help.
As he moved the dry towel over me, heart-achingly gently, he began speaking casually as if he were giving me sandwich options.
“Bash and I suspect Kenji and Landry have something going on. Other than that, I don’t know of any hookups among us. I certainly haven’t done it. Haven’t even been tempted. Maybe we know each other too well, but we mostly see each other as brothers.”
I kept my eyes closed and nodded, trying like hell to appear as if I didn’t care more about what he said than I would about the sandwich options. In reality, my relief made me even dizzier than the fall had made me.
He dropped soft kisses on my shoulder, my side, my hip… I eventually realized he was laying featherlight kisses on all the places I hurt.