Farrow tears open the packaging to a piercing needle.
Sulli wavers between approaching Maximoff or coming over to Akara and me.
Akara motions her here.
She hesitates.
We exchange a glance. Yeah, Akara still needs to be dug out of a ditch. I reach over and grab a new beer from a case, my dog tags clinking against my chest.
“She looks confused,” Akara says under his breath. He’s two seconds from shouting her name.
I pop the tab of a new beer can, licking foam off my thumb. Her eyes rest on me for a second, and I try to appear nonthreatening. But I’m six-seven and often wear a good amount of severity. Not as much as Thatcher Alessio Moretti, but I’ve seen my reflection. And I can look like a scowly motherfucker.
I watch Sulli keep glancing between me, Akara, and then towards Maximoff. When she sees her cousin in a back-and-forth with Farrow, she decides to head towards us, the only men still looking at her.
“Hey.” Her voice is tight, squared jaw set even tighter.
“Want a beer?” I ask. “Water?”
“I can get it myself.” She wedges between our builds and our heads turn, watching as she bends down and digs a water bottle from a case on the floor.
Akara has a hand on his radio. “You’re still pissed?”
“Yeah…sort of, I guess. I don’t know. It’s hard not to fucking be…” Her face scrunches and when she stands back up, she avoids our gazes and has trouble twisting off the water bottle cap with her bandaged hand.
Akara reaches out. “Let me, Sul—”
“I’ve got it,” she snaps.
A smile pulls at my mouth, and I almost laugh. Alright, I actually laugh. Fuck it.
She looks more confused at me.
“You’ve gotta stop giving Akara a hard time, mermaid. That’s my job.”
Akara fits on a baseball cap backwards. “He’s not wrong.” His voice is light, but his concern is still on Sulli.
She nears and stands right between us. “Hilarious.” She jokingly slugs his arm, then my arm, and it ends on an awkward beat.
Akara isn’t her “bro” as much as he’s in denial and thinks he is, and I definitely don’t see her as one of the fucking guys.
Her face reddens and she mutters, “I shouldn’t be here. What the fuck am I doing?”
Akara cuts in, “Hey, we’re just talking, Sulli. It’s good. Talking, working things out. It’s what friends do.”
“Friends?” she questions like she’s still not sure he deserves that title after keeping a secret about her boyfriend.
I tell her, “We like you here.” I put a hand on the back of her head, just for a short second, and a breathy noise ejects between her lips.
Her chest falls and rises, and her green eyes flit from me to Akara. Like she just realizes she’s standing between our towering builds.
I glance down her body. Fuck me. My muscles flex, and I look to Akara out of the corner of my eye. He sees what I see.
Her nipples are hard.
Unmistakable, they push against her tank top. My blood cranks up even more. If we were in public, we’d block Sulli from public view and camera lenses.
Akara glances at her nipples, then nails a death-glare into me.
Like I turned her on.
Mother of Christ, I didn’t arouse her on purpose.
Akara fits his earpiece in as temp guards talk over comms. “Want me to get you a jacket?”
I think she’s going to say something like, I want you to stop looking at my tits.
Instead, she shakes her head and her eyes noticeably plant on our crotches. Trying to see if we have boners.
Her brows scrunch, confused again.
If we were somewhere else and if she didn’t have a boyfriend, I’d take her hand and let her feel.
Sulli uses her bicep and body to open the water bottle, managing to twist off the cap herself. A tense silence lingers until she asks, “What are you doing with that?”
She notices the shoelace in Akara’s hand.
Akara and I share another look like you wanna tell her?
I lift a shoulder in a why not? He’s usually a “buddy-guard” with her and always walks a professional tightrope.
Akara says, “We were talking about restraint knots.”
“For…?” Her eyes tighten in more confusion.
“Sex,” he says.
I add, “Headboards.” I put down my beer and stick a toothpick between my lips, a growing pang pounding the back of my head.
Fuck this thunder-fucking migraine.
“Right, I figured it’d be, you know, P-in-the-V action.” She pauses and frowns. “That’s actually not entirely fucking true. I did think that maybe it’d be security related. Like cuffing someone and…” Her eyes ping between us and she avoids our gazes again, her neck flushed. “Um…I’m going to…” She jabs a thumb behind her shoulder. Towards a wall.
“Disappear into the wall?” I tease.
She glances back there. “Fuck…um, no. I meant…you know, I don’t know what I meant, but…” Her eyes widen like she’s a hot second from running away.
“We come in peace,” Akara says with a smile.
“Do you?” She shrugs like she doesn’t know him anymore.
His smile vanishes. “Sul.”
“Don’t Sul me, Kits. I’m allowed to be mad.”
“You are,” he agrees. “Just don’t hate me forever.”
She winces. “I don’t hate you…I couldn’t…” She glances at me, like she’s remembering what I whispered against her ear at the bar.
I told Sulli, “Akara would never hurt you. He just did what he thought was right. And you can try to shove me back all night, all day. But I’m seven-inches taller and can throw you over my shoulder.”
Ever since I said that last part, she’s been looking at me like she wants to competitively test that.
“Are we good?” Akara asks right here, right now, his concern still tight on her.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Sulli struggles to screw the cap back on her water before even taking a sip, and she doesn’t let us help.
“Does that hurt?” Akara asks about her bandaged hand, and just as he says it, a splitting pain nails my head.
Christ fuck Almighty.
I close one eye and try to rub my temple without drawing attention.
“Not that
