Page 53 of Lose Me In The Shadows

Micah popped his mouth off Luke’s cock. “You said you’re scared she’ll leave us if we free her, right? But she had a chance to run, and she didn’t.”

“Because she has no choice. We’re the only ones who can keep her safe,” Conor argued.

“Maybe. Or maybe she wants to stay.”

Fuck.

That was all it took. He came deep in Luke’s tight ass, and then Luke’s hips stuttered as he groaned around Conor’s fingers, ass cheeks tight as he came down Micah’s throat. Distantly, Conor heard Micah swallowing. He shut his eyes, imagining Kara was there, playing with herself as she watched.

But when he opened his eyes, she wasn’t there. He gently removed his fingers from Luke’s mouth and his still-hard cock from Luke’s ass. Luke slumped back against him, breathing heavily.

Micah spoke. “Did that work? Did it shut the voice up in your head telling you that Luke and I are right?”

“No.” Conor was shocked to hear the word pop out of his mouth.

Micah stood up so he was staring Conor in the eye over Luke’s shoulder. There was come—his own—on his chest and spilling over his hand.

“Then we’re finally getting somewhere.”

14

You’re still there, stuck on that wall, terrified of failing and too paralyzed to take the leap.

Kara lay in the unfamiliar bed, Luke’s words playing on a loop in her head. She missed their bed in the Idaho cabin. She’d never expected to feel that way, but here she was all the same.

Something had happened to her, between shooting Luke and ending up here at Marcus’s compound. It was like by shooting Luke, she’d also shot a hole in her anger, and over the past two weeks it had been leaking out all over the place, until it almost ran out. The problem was, without her anger, Kara didn’t know who she was or how to navigate the world. She was stuck, alright: between past anger at having been kidnapped by Conor, Luke, and Micah, and longing to let it go and just be with them. But what if she jumped, and just freefell forever, with no one to catch her?

Love, to Kara, meant pain. So she’d run from even the possibility of it, and never stopped running—not until a month or so ago, when she’d been caught by the very men she’d run from.

And even as she’d fought against them, even as she’d been desperate to get free from the cabin and get home, her motivation had been all over the place—hadn’t it been? She’d admitted it to herself in that letter she’d written. It wasn’t that her life was anything special, anything she really loved. It was the mirage of some future perfect life to distract her from what she really wanted…

…and how scared she was to want it.

She heard the door to the room next door slam open and then shut. Heard fucking and then arguing. Marcus had clearly cheapened out on the walls between the rooms because she could hear everything. Especially Conor fucking Luke and ordering Micah to swallow around him.

“We are not giving her up,” Conor said through the wall, and then groaned his release.

And wasn’t there something incredibly fucked up about her for finding his words equally aggravating and reassuring? For both wanting to be free—and wanting to be kept? How had that happened? Had they successfully Stockholmed her, fake as the syndrome was?

Or had she changed?

They certainly had. Conor was kinder, softer, happier—at least when she didn’t push him. More like the man he’d been when they’d first met. Luke was, ironically, more honest than he’d ever been—with her, yeah, but also with himself. And Micah? Well, maybe Micah hadn’t changed much. Maybe he was less of a chaotic cypher than he’d been.

Her men had changed her…but she’d changed them, too.

The thought froze her.Her men.

Hers.

They were hers.

She could fight it, fight the thought…or she could own it, accept it. Stop running. But then she’d already stopped, hadn’t she? She’d had multiple chances to run from them, and she hadn’t even bothered. Sure, it probably wasn’t safe—but danger had never stopped her from running before.

As if she’d summoned them, there was a knock—a knock! How civilized!—on the door.

She sat up. “Come in.”

Her menentered the room.

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