Page 50 of Power

“Do you have more than one now? Oh wait, I think you just might!” she teased.Ugh, she saw us.

“I don’t have any boyfriends.” Shyam and I were a lot closer lately, but I still wouldn’t label him as myboyfriend, especially since he had made his feelings clear about it in the past.

“I’m guessing your ‘revenge lingerie’ didn’t work?” She took another huge bite of her bun.

“He liked it, and that’s all I’m sharing with you about that.” I really didn’t want to share the details of how I had tied him up and fucked his brains out. Although, thinking about it right now made my inner-most muscles clench.

“Then he won’t mind that you’re hanging out with Blake tonight? You know…since he’s not your boyfriend.”

Shyam was possessive over me. He had nearly beat the shit out of his brother when he’d caught us alone on my first day at Sethi Tech. I was sure he wouldn’t be too thrilled with me hanging out alone with Blake.

But I wasn’t alone. We were in a group, and it was purely platonic—at least on my part. I wasn’t going to tell him about my awkward moment with Blake on the ice, especially since we weren’t exclusive. I didn’t owe him an explanation. It would just be too much drama about nothing.

“No, not at all,” I lied.

“Good to know,” she said, cocking an eyebrow as a sly smile spread across her lips.

Chapter XXVII

Shyam

“How many possible combinations of bits have we cycled through to decrypt the coordinates?”

“Nearly half a million. And no matches yet.” Jai leaned back into the couch in my office.

I leaned against the fireplace mantle, with a migraine spreading over my skull.

“Fuck.” I rubbed my eyes in frustration. We had had no luck decrypting the coordinates from the picture of Salena yet.

“This could very well take weeks longer to decrypt. Or it could fail altogether,” Jai said.

“There has to be a match. We’ll just have to keep trying.” We needed to get to Tarun to save our business and free Salena. She didn’t deserve to be caught up in any of this because the men in her life had decided to live the way they did. She was innocent in all of this.

I scrolled through my phone to check my messages for any updates from my men back in India. I saw a missed message from a number I didn’t recognize.

Hey, just wanted to invite you to a party for our fave girl! Amelia’s birthday is next Saturday, so let’s meet up at Giovanni’s at 8 p.m. And remember, it’s a surprise, so don’t say anything to her! XoXo

“Who the fuck is this?” I said aloud. Obviously, it was one of Amelia’s friends, but I didn’t know much about her personal life, so I couldn’t name any of them. I had seen some of them when I’d interviewed everyone at IP Innovations, and in passing at Nirvana.

“What?” Jai asked, looking up from his own phone.

“Amelia’s birthday is next week and one of her friends texted me an invite. I have no clue who it is.”

“Ohhh, yeah, I got that text too. It’s one of her IP Innovations friends, Natalie. The one with the orange hair.”

I recalled the girl he was talking about. She had also been at the club with Amelia when I had first had her to myself. How did Jai know who she was? He had interacted with her even less than I had.

“How did you get an invite?” I asked.

“I guess I’m one of Amelia’sfriends, too.”He smirked.

I wanted to be with her on her birthday, but the idea of a party with tons of jabbering girls made my migraine worse. I preferred to get her alone and do filthy things to her twenty-four-year-old body.

I’d thought I couldn’t get enough of her before, but after being apart from her for a week while she was in Seattle, my hunger had increased. I had missed her presence. I had been in a bad mood all week waiting for her to come back to me.

I knew she could have found her way home from the airport, but I couldn’t have waited another minute to see her. My thoughts strayed to her often throughout my day, but when she went back to Seattle, I couldn’t get her out of my head. I kept wondering what she was doing and if she was safe. I longed for her sweet smell in my bed and her delicate touch on my skin.

She was the best lay I’d had. She made me feel like a fucking king every time she came around my dick and screamed my name. The other night when she called mebabe,shemade me come harder than I had ever come in my life. I thought my chest was going to explode from how fast my heart raced during my release.

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