Page 10 of Room One Hundred and Seven: Catch and Claim

But that’s not what is familiar about her. It’s something else.

Hendrix sucks in a sharp breath and takes a small step toward her. Just as he does, like she can feel our eyes on her, she looks our way. The moment her stormy blue-gray eyes meet mine, it feels like I’m hit with a fucking freight train.

I know those eyes.

I haven’t seen those eyes in ten fucking years.

Recognition flashes in her eyes, before they shutter. It would be impressive if I weren’t desperate to know everything she’s thinking. But there’s no reading her now. It makes me want to march over, throw her over my shoulder, and take her back to our house. Never letting her go again crosses my mind, but taking away her choice is something I can’t do to her. Not our little phoenix.

Hendrix growls, “What the fuck?”

“Yeah,” Wolfe holds out the word even as he keeps his voice low, “she found a sense of control and freedom by becoming a traveling dominatrix.”

“You’ve been keeping up with her,” there’s an accusation in Hendrix’s tone, but it doesn’t sound like a question.

“We all want her,” I growl.

“Damn fucking right,” Hendrix snarls.

Well. Shit.

Something about her called to me ten years ago when she was one of the women saved from Morozov traffickers. But she had just endured something no one should have to endure.

I’m not even surprised that Wolfe kept up with her.

“Kirby is ours,” there’s a reverence in Wolfe’s tone that would be shocking if I didn’t know how much of a teddy bear that he is.

Then the reality of his claim slams into me. And I’m not the only one affected. The woman across the room sits up taller like she was able to hear his one feral infused word and can feel the depth of its meaning.

Ours?

My vision sharpens and narrows until she’s the only thing I can see. I know my brothers are still next to me, I can feel them with a clarity that I’ve never experienced before, even with how long we’ve been working side-by-side.

Ours.

The beast in me hopes that she runs.

CHAPTER 5

HENDRIX

The last five days have been a test of my control. I knew we could have been doing other things, like our damn jobs. Or, at least, we should have been doing it. If there was some sort of emergency, we would have been there without question and it’s not like we didn’t spend the days using our resources to find out as much about Mikhail Morozov as we could.

But once the night descended? We went to Club Sin.

After Wolfe’s declaration that the woman we rescued ten years ago, the same one I was shocked as fuck to see across the main room of Club Sin sitting proud like a damn queen, is ours, we didn’t talk about it again. We all knew it was true. It’s not like we needed to discuss it further.

Since the only men I could ever share a woman with are my brothers, it made sense the moment Wolfe said it. The truth of it all hit me in the middle of my chest and I couldn’t shake it.

I also couldn’t look away from her.

She looked so different than she did from when I saw her ten years ago, which seems obvious, but really isn’t. To me, in so many ways, she stayed who she was ten years ago—scarred, traumatized, and way too fucking young for this world to havetaken so much from her.

But she didn’t stay like that which has become very fucking obvious as I’ve watched her over the last five days.

Now, her outer strength matches her inner strength and the fire I saw in her eyes ten years ago. She carries herself with a bearing that screams not to fuck with her. But there’s something else about her too, something I’ve seen in the women I used to serve with. She’s dangerous and there’s nothing fake about the way she holds herself. It’s not a mask, she can back it up with skill.

It’s sexy as fuck.

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