Of the five of us in OtherWorld, I’d always thought of Devlin as the level headed one of us all. He was the one with the teenaged kid, the one that had to make the hard decisions when it came to parenting and work. Normally he was the one who looked at things from all sides, got all points of view before he started running his mouth. Yet when it came to Natalie he wasn’t level headed at all. He was easy to piss off, ready to rage and destroy anything that happened to be in the path of what he wanted.

“I slept here,” Rhett confirmed when Natalie didn’t look like she was going to open her mouth. I doubted she’d even heard anything that Dev had just said the way her eyes were locked on his bare chest at the moment. He met Devlin’s eyes with a boldness that was either really stupid or really gutsy. The next words out of his mouth proved to me that he was the former more than the latter. “Marissa asked me to.”

Some of the tension in Devlin’s body eased, but it only transferred to me. Times a billion. “You’re fucking kidding me. Right?” I was talking louder than I normally would have done, making me sound more like a bear than human, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I was about to scream the place down if what that little prick was saying was the truth. My eyes went straight to Marissa who was sitting calmly beside the rocker as if she wasn’t tearing me apart inside. She had to know that it would kill me. “Did he sleep with you last night, Rissa?”

When she shrugged, she might as well have cut my heart out of my chest. It might have hurt less if she had. “He slept in my bed last night…” She bit her lip as if debating continuing before she shrugged again. “But sleeping was all that happened if you really must know.”

“Oh, I really must know,” I bellowed and before I could even realize what I was doing I was standing in front of both of them. Someone pulled Natalie up off the couch, out of danger, and Rhett was smart enough to shrink back against the couch as I leaned down and put my face in Marissa’s. “You want someone to share your bed, you climb into mine. If I find out this happens again I will kill him, Mari. Do you hear me? I. Will. Kill. Him.”

“Wroth—” she began but I cut her off.

I pressed my lips hard against hers for a quick, rough kiss. “Don’t,” I growled when I pulled back. “Don’t push me. I’ve killed men before, I have no problem doing it again.” And this time I would enjoy it.

She didn’t flinch back in fear, but her blue eyes did darken with understanding, compassion. “I know, Wroth.” Her voice was gentle, as if she were talking to a wounded animal. Maybe I was. It felt like I was bleeding on the inside. Damn her and damn my love for this woman. The pain was overwhelming, making my breathing come in sharp pants.

She raised a hand and cupped the side of my face. “But that wasn’t your fault. You had to kill those men or be killed yourself. If anything, I’m glad you did that. You came home, Wroth, and I don’t care what you had to do to make that happen.” She pushed me back and I went without giving it a second thought. I might be ready to kill the man sitting beside her but I would never physically hurt Marissa.

She stood and then her arms were wrapping around my waist. “You don’t have to kill Rhett. He didn’t do anything wrong. We’re just friends, I swear.”

Having her arms around me calmed me like nothing else ever would. Fuck, I’d missed this. Her assurance that she didn’t blame me for having to kill men, that doing the things I’d done wasn’t my fault, was almost like a healing salve to my soul and I buried my face in her neck. Her long, glorious hair hid my face and I let my guard down for a moment as I let her acceptance wash over me like a baptism of forgiveness. It was what I’d always needed, her forgiveness—hers and no one else’s—for the abysmal things I’d had to do to survive. For things that I’d felt contaminated me and would eventually infect her with the dirtiness of them. Last year I’d started to forgive myself, but now it was complete and I was able to breathe just a little easier as she rubbed soothing circles on my back.

We stood there like that for a long while. I didn’t want to release her, not when she was in my arms and each inhale I took was filled with her special scent. But with her that close, my body began to respond in a way it didn’t respond to other chicks any more. My dick hardened and twitched against her soft stomach. Marissa gasped in surprise and I tightened my arms around her in fear that she was going to pull away.

Someone cleared their throat behind me and I reluctantly raised my head to find Linc standing there with Natalie beside him. “Before you really do go all rage monster and start killing people, maybe I should clarify something.” I raised a brow at him and he opened his mouth to speak, but Natalie jumped in, cutting him off.

“Rhett and I are friends with benefits. You don’t have to worry about him and Marissa, Wroth. Rhett and I are exclusive.”

Linc turned to glare at her and shook his head just as Devlin punched the wall and walked back toward the roosts, turning the air blue with the curses coming out of his mouth. While what Natalie had said was a relief, I was pretty sure that she had just lied by the look on Linc’s face.

“Are you trying to get him killed?” Linc snapped when the sliding door to the roosts slammed shut so hard that the bus actually rocked. From the front of the bus the driver slowed down.

“I can take care of myself, Linc,” Rhett assured him.

“You really don’t know what you’re getting yourself into with Dev, man,” Zander commented from the kitchenette. “I still have trouble breathing at times from the last fight we got into.”

Liam made an agreeing sound but didn’t speak as he watched everyone around him as if we were stars in some soap opera he was interested in. Knowing him and his twisted sense of humor at times, we probably were.

Linc turned the glare on the man still sitting on the couch. Rhett didn’t look particularly worried about how pissed Devlin now was. It only strengthened my conviction that the rocker was stupid. I truly was like a rage monster when I got pissed, but that meant that I was quick to take action and when it was over I was fine—for the most part. Devlin? He was like a hurricane. He started out by letting his anger simmer, until it gained steam, powering him forward and he was soon out of control. He would destroy everything in his path when he reached the peak of his wrath and there would be no stopping him.