Page 38 of Come Inside

“You’re not dying from some incurable disease are you?” Izzy joked.

“Funny, look remember Harry wasn’t shit. Let me know if you need me to ‘take care of him.’”

“Who’s got jokes now? Well Maddox is here to take me home. Got to go, talk soon.” Izzy ended the call, and I let the phone drop to the ground.

“When are you going to tell her?”

I jumped about twenty feet into the air. “Kazi,” I hissed out. I hadn’t seen him sneak into my room, but here he was, laying across the mattress.

Mateo right next to him.

“Both of you? Really?” I cocked an arm on my hip in frustration. Here they were again, pushing my boundaries.

“We missed you. What can we say?” Mateo stretched out across the mattress knocking into Kazi aggressively.

“You’re both liars,” I bit the words out. Sure I was staying with them now, but I wasn’t an idiot. They both had been acting up.

Kazi and Mateo weren’t cousins. My house didn’t have bed bugs. The scars that Mateo carried told a story I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear. The blood that he had on him when I showed up here was suspicious as fuck.

His job as a bodyguard? I could smell the bullshit.

I had buried my head in the sand for the last several weeks because in simple terms: I wanted to. But now? Here with them both, I wanted answers.

If I couldn’t get to the bottom of James, I planned on at least getting answers from them.

“Mateo, what do you do for a living?” I asked.

“I told you he’s—”

I cut Kazi off. “I’m asking Mateo.”

Mateo stood up, cracking his neck. He took menacing steps towards me. His face darkening, his mahogany eyes swirling in promise.

“Oh, is that how it’s going to be?”

He was so close to me now I had to crane my neck upwards to meet his eyes, his woodsy scent enveloping me. He reached a hand up grabbing my chin, pinching it tightly between two strong rough fingers. “I’m your worst nightmare.”

Whatever he expected it wasn’t for me to rip away from him and die from a laughing fit. Hands on my knees I gasped out, “Does that usually work?”

He apparently didn’t like my reaction because next I knew I was being thrown onto the bed; I landed next to Kazi. “I finally dug into your database. Found your forms. Discovered what you wanted, your safeword. The man.” Mateo was snarling as he stepped to the bed.

“Mateo,” Kazi chastised in warning.

“She wants this. She wants the danger. She wants the rush of being out of control.” Mateo’s words caused licks of unexpected desire to roll across my skin.

What the fuck is happening?

“I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Literally. The whiplash was real.

“I’m finishing what I started with you. It’s been almost an entire month. I let you get comfortable in my presence, but now it’s time for me to collect. I know your safeword, but Yara, I think you’ll be brave enough to not use it.”

Mateo began to strip his clothes, first his shirt leaving an impressive spread of skin that rolled across a strong chest and rippled abs.

Even more prevalent–the scars. They lined every inch of his skin, and I did my best not to react to the sight of them. I had seen them once before in the hotel room but taking them in from a distance was different.

They told a story.

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