As Rowan’s voice started to get louder, the man with the high and tight buzz cut stalked over.
“Keep your voice down. Or do you want to wake her up and scare the shit out of her?”
Ro looked down, chastened. “I’m sorry. He just ... pisses me off. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Tell me you didn’t walk over here yourself,” Graham said in a low, quiet, and quite frankly, scary as hell tone.
Ro figured he meant that rhetorically, and didn’t bother answering.
“I swear—” Graham started, but Beau interrupted.
“This isn’t the place to be having this discussion.”
“I just wanted to see—” Rowan began to speak, but shut her mouth when Graham threw her over his shoulder, caveman-style.
“Now you’ve seen. And we’re leaving.”
Turning her face away from his black shirt, Ro could see the amused smirks on the faces of Beau and the other men. Assholes. Every last one of them.
Rowan struggled against Graham’s hold as soon as they were outside, which added fuel to the fire that was Graham’s temper. He’d always thought of himself as relatively even-tempered, but this girl somehow knew exactly how to rile him up.
“I oughta beat your ass for that stunt, woman. What the fuck were you thinking? How the hell did you get from my cabin to the clinic? Fly? Wait—don’t answer. I don’t want to know, because then I will beat your ass so red you won’t be able to sit for a week.”
She stopped struggling. Smart girl. Graham strode through the dark, up to the door of his cabin, and wrenched it open. “Now let’s try this again.” He stalked through the front room, into the bedroom, and dropped her, not as carefully as before, onto the bed. “You … stay put. Sleep. Get me?”
Graham didn’t know what pissed him off more—that she’d disobeyed a direct order, which didn’t happen often to him, that she’d probably injured herself more by hobbling over to the clinic on her own, or that Ro’s face had been as white as the sheet covering the injured woman when she’d caught sight of her bruised and battered face. Graham had never wanted to wrap someone up and protect her from all of the bad shit in the world before, but he was becoming acquainted with the feeling. Rowan didn’t need to see that. If the little bit he’d learned of her character already was any indication, she was going to beat herself up for not mounting a rescue effort herself.
Graham leaned over Rowan on the bed, where she was now propped up on the pillows. His bed. His pillows. Graham braced himself with an arm on either side of her body and spoke quietly.
“I know what you think you were doing, but you shouldn’t have. You hurting yourself worse won’t help her any. You need to worry about Rowan.” When he finished speaking, his face was only inches away from hers. He could feel her breathing, which had quickened. In the yellow flicker of the oil lamp, her pupils were dilated and Graham’s gaze was drawn to her tongue as it darted out to swipe across her bottom lip. He groaned and started to pull away. His movements were halted when Rowan’s hands tangled in his hair and dragged his head down to her mouth.
Rowan didn’t know what kind of craziness had possessed her, but in that moment, she had to kiss him. She had to have his lips on hers, if only to block out reality for a minute. As wrong as it seemed, his caveman-like actions, his protectiveness, and his quiet words, had her body softening and readying itself for him.
And although Ro might have started out in control of the kiss, he didn’t let her keep it. One of the hands that he’d used to brace himself had moved to cradle her face, angling her so he could cover her mouth more fully with his. He slanted his lips as his tongue sought entry. He slid his knee between her legs, and his hard thigh rubbed against her center, sending flares of pleasure though her, making her gasp. When she opened, he conquered. Tongues tangling and body clenching, Ro dug her nails into his scalp. Graham growled, pulling her up and into him. Then a throat cleared, Graham jerked away, and she was grasping at air.
“You don’t usually start without me, G,” Zach said, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.
Ro froze. The breath in her lungs caught, and she was choking on his words.
“I didn’t tell you that you could start without me,” the seductive voice drawled from across the room.
“Not again.” Ro didn’t realize that she’d whispered the words out loud until the gazes of both men fix on her.
Zach moved toward her first, reaching his hand out, but Ro scuttled back to the headboard, out of his reach.
“Don’t touch me.” Her voice quavered. She needed to pull herself together. They weren’t Charles and Evelyn. Trying for a more even tone, she said, “Just back off for a minute, okay?”