Page 38 of Nikolai (Kansas City Reapers)

“Where’s Carrick when you need him?” Deacon chuckled, strumming a tune that didn’t seem to have a purpose.

“No kidding. Our resident rogue is nowhere to be found when we need him most,” Jax chuckled.

“Leave it to the residentnerdto make a Dungeons and Dragons reference.”

“Anywhere and everywhere I can, baby.” Jax winked at Sully, making kissy faces towards him.

“Does that make me the barbarian?” Sully teased, adopting a rough tone, even deeper than his normal bassy voice.

“Of course it does. Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Jax scoffed with a smirk.

“Every chance I get, sugar.” Sully flexed his biceps, kissing one of them theatrically.

“If you two clowns are done, we really need to take this seriously,” I chided them, shooting each of them a scolding look.

“Sorry, boss man,” Sully muttered quietly. I nodded and started to speak again, only to have him cut me off once more, leaning over to Jax.

“What crawled up the Paladin’s ass?” he muttered in a stage whisper. Jax just shrugged.

“Jesus tits, I can’t get a word in edge-wise with the two of you. We need to take this seriously. Apparently, while Quinn was searching for information on Alexei, he found some more information about Maddy’s case.”

“What did he find?” Deacon asked.

“One of his informants heard Maddy’s name being thrown around in some not-so-good circles downtown. This guy has figured out who she is.”

“That puts her at far more risk than before,” Sully muttered, his tone finally serious and on board with the conversation.

“Quinn is working an angle on the case to try and pin him with something, but it’s slow going so far,” I relayed the information Quinn had given me this morning.

“So she’s gonna be here for the long haul?” Deacon asked, his eyes not lifting from his guitar. Still, I noticed the way his jaw clenched. Deacon was a loner if I’d ever met one. I didn’t blame him. After what he’d been forced to do in his military days… Well, let’s just say a man doesn’t come back the same from that shit. Sharing our newly established haven wasn’t easy on any of us, but on Deacon, it was worse.

“Yeah, it looks that way,” I sighed, feeling the energy in the room lower as the reality of the situation settled over us.

One way or another, we’d get through this.

But, Christ, I hoped that I could survive the walking temptation that was Maddy along the way.

I settledin for the night, relaxing on my bed with a book. I had borrowed it from Sully. Most of my books were non-fiction and research materials, but I needed to escape for a while. Enter Sullivan — our resident book nerd,surprisingly. He had a love for this odd genre of novels I had never heard of. Not Sci-Fi, but not Fantasy either. I can’t remember what he had called it. LitRPG, maybe? He said it was something nerdy, like Dungeons and Dragons, but in book form. When I had perused his shelves, he had likened this one to The Lord of the Rings, and that was enough for me. Anything to get my mind off of the drama unfolding with the case, and more importantly, the memory of Maddy beneath my hands, succumbing to my touch.

Leaning back against my headboard, I opened the book to the first page and began reading — only to be interrupted not three minutes later.

“Fuck, I’m not even to the second page,” I grumbled under my breath. “Come in!”

“So, we need to talk.” Maddy burst through the door, just waltzing in like she owned the place. At least she’d had the decency to knock.

“Maddy, it’s nice to see you,” I answered, ignoring her blunt statement. “You’ve been in your room a lot. I was worried you weren’t going to speak to any of us for the remainder of your stay.” I did my best to keep my tone calm and polite, but in reality, it was taking everything I had not to walk over to her, take her into my arms, and kiss her until we both forgot our names.

What the fuck was wrong with me? Missing this chit of a girl after only one night of fucking? That was not like me. And the very reason I wanted to escape into a book. I needed a break. What other reason could there be for me acting like a complete stranger to myself?

“I want to talk to you about the conversation we hadthe other day,” she continued, pacing back and forth across my bedroom as she spoke.

“I am pretty sure I made myself clear during that conversation,” I began, already feeling my hackles raise at her intrusion. I may have been a disciplined man, but she was putting that discipline to the test. I wasn’t sure I would be able to deny her again. The temptation was overwhelming and near suffocating.

“Crystal clear. But you had your say. Now, it’s my turn.” Her words left no room for argument, not that she gave me any room to speak, anyway. “I heard what you had to say the other day. And now I have a few things to say in return.”

I thought about arguing with her, putting my foot down, and not listening to her. But in the end, that would just make things more difficult. She would fight me, and I would fight back, and we’d end up in bed just as we had the other night. With a wave of my hand, I motioned for her to continue.

“I want to talk to you about the issues you presented about continuing this little thing between us. While I understand that mixing business with pleasure can be a disaster, that’s not really something we have to worry about,” she began.

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