Page 53 of At Her Pleasure
Time to get his head out of the clouds and be a man. “Seriously, I’m fine.” He met her gaze and squeezed her wrist to reinforce his resolve. “I’ll be fine after I eat. Okay?”
Cyn looked at Lawrence, who was doing a gentle but still painful probe. He glanced at her, then at Mick, and back again. “If he knows his body well enough, he’s probably right. Gut punches just hurt like hell and make you feel like throwing up.”
“I need you to leave it at that,” Mick told her when she set her jaw. “But if I’m making everyone uncomfortable, I can take mine to go.” He looked at Tiger. “Smells too good to leave it behind.”
Tiger stood behind Lawrence with Neil, both men studying him with hard eyes. Eyes that knew things weren’t what they seemed. However, it was Tiger who reached down and offered him a hand up. “Already put out the place setting. Might as well stay.”
“Appreciate it,” Mick murmured, as he had to steady himself against the man’s shoulder. “Though I expect that’s not whose permission I need.”
Tiger’s expression said he had that part right, and his eyes remained watchful. An additional gut punch reminder of why Mick knew he could only be here a few days.
Ros and the other women were only a few steps behind Cyn, and her boss had a similar look in her ball-busting gaze. None of them were fools.
He needed to smooth this over, and not with bullshit. Mick squared off with them, though his attention remained on Cyn. Her expression told him nothing except she was pissed, but there was more to her silence. Which he hoped he could address, and then share a good meal with them. Even if he really did end up having to take most of his to go, because he couldn’t hold down anything heavy right now.
“There are reasons I move around,” he told her. All of them. “I’ll only be here a few days.”
When she said nothing, and her expression didn’t alter, he nodded. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
“No, you won’t,” Cyn said abruptly. “You’ll sit down and eat something. You’ll take some aspirin, and put a heating pad and ice on your stomach.” She stepped closer, laying her hand on his arm. “I feel like punching you myself.”
“Anywhere but the gut would be considered a courtesy,” he told her. “I had a handful of aspirin. I’m good on that.”
The others had backed off, giving them a bubble of privacy. “Sorry,” he added again.
“I’m not a fan of apologies. Especially when you’re feeding me shit.”
He gave her a level look. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Just because I can’t fill in details, doesn’t make it a lie. Yesterday, when I saw you, the first thing I thought was ‘Here’s someone I don’t have to pretend around. Someone who knows who I am, even if she doesn’t know a damn thing about me.’”
He thought she understood what he was saying, because it won him a marginal amount of grace.
“Okay.” She pivoted and moved toward the house. Skye had already headed that way, probably to get him the ice pack and heating pad. Which discomfited him, but short of being a rude ass and bailing, he was going to have to take the attention.
Tiger had gone that way too, but was coming back out of the kitchen with the kebobs. He stopped next to Mick and met his gaze, man-to-man. A different but no less uncomfortable attention.
“Will the trouble that gave you that beating follow you here?”
“If it would, I wouldn’t have come,” Mick promised. “Even if you cook the best steak I’ve ever eaten.” His gaze slid to Cyn, tracking her determined stride and set shoulders. “Or the company is everything I want to be around.”
* * *
Sitting around a table and passing the food—while holding an ice pack Cyn had slapped against his belly—Mick mostly listened. Conversation included work, happenings in New Orleans, funny stories about marketing clients, Tiger’s garage and being SEALs. Some anecdotes about scenes the Mistresses and subs had experienced were shared, plus thoughts about BDSM practices they’d seen, and the fellow lifestylers who did them.
It was the most normal meal Mick had enjoyed in a while. While it made the thought of leaving in a few days feel worse, he’d learned not to let stuff like that drag him down. He’d made the decisions he’d made for the right reasons, so he was at peace with that. It gave him room to focus on good moments, like this.
Cyn had chosen to sit next to him, which ridiculously made him feel like the boy chosen by the prettiest girl to dance. The table was an eight-seater, but they’d adjusted for his ninth chair. It required closer quarters, so her body brushed his. When she wasn’t eating, her hand rested on his thigh, and she leaned against him, just a little.
Despite the earlier awkwardness, he’d been included in the conversation without reference to it. He suspected there was a subtle agreement that if anyone had the right to grill him for further details, it was Cyn.
He couldn’t accommodate her on that, and hoped she’d let it go before it got ugly, but that was another reason he’d enjoy this while he could.
“We told him we’d be back for him,” Neil was saying. “Just because he was standing on a sand bar in the middle of the ocean was no reason to panic.”
Lawrence scoffed, his green eyes glinting with humor. “I’m sure it had nothing to do with you yelling, ‘Hey, Tom? ‘No man left behind’ is a Marine thing, not a SEAL one.’”
Abby gave Neil a look of mock horror. Cyn was laughing with the others, and Mick was fascinated by the shape of her mouth, the light in her gaze, her grip on his thigh.
“So how long was he on the sand bar?” Ros asked.