Page 40 of Savage Stalkers
Silas pushes up and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His face is pale, his jaw clenched tight. “I need a minute,” he mutters, and Kain hastily pulls out before Silas hurries from the room, shutting the door behind him.
Skye shifts on my lap and lowers her gaze.
“Hey,” I say, catching her chin so she has to look at me. “Don’t do that. It’s not you. Silas has OCD. Bodily fluids mess with him. He handles it better now, but sometimes it still hits him hard.”
“I didn’t know?—”
“Don’t feel bad,” Kain says, coming to stand in front of her, and she looks at him. “He would’ve said no if he didn’t want to do it.”
I nod in agreement. “Yeah. He always has a choice. Consent’s a given,” I tell her. “No matter what we’re doing.”
I squeeze her hip. “Now stop overthinking, because we will definitely be doing that again.”
Now that we officially have her as ours, we need to convince her that she needs to stick around.
Chapter Sixteen
Skye
I wake up to the smell of coffee and the sound of Zay singing off-key in the kitchen. My body is still sore from last night; Kain was possessive after some jackass at the grocery store tried to hit on me. I stretch out in the massive bed we all now share.
It has only been six months since my world turned upside down. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime, and sometimes it feels like only yesterday.
The space beside me is empty. Silas is always the first one up, unable to sleep past first light no matter how late we stay up. I glance around and find him where I always do, sitting at his desk in the corner of our bedroom, his multiple monitors glowing as he works on his current security project.
“Morning, beautiful,” he says without turning around.
I wonder again how he always knows I’ve woken up when he seems so focused on what he is doing.
“Morning,” I murmur, shuffling over to him in nothing but his T-shirt from last night. His eyes track my movement in the reflection of his screen, and I catch the small smile that pulls at his lips.
“Sleep well?” he asks, finally turning to face me. His dark hair is messy from sleep, and there’s a slight purple bruise on his collarbone from where I bit him.
“I did.” I settle on his lap, and his arms come around me. “What are you working on?”
“New client. Some tech start-up thinks its ex-employee is stealing data.” His fingers trace patterns on my bare thigh. “Want to watch me teach them what real surveillance looks like?”
I laugh and swat his shoulder. “Not everyone can be a criminal mastermind like you.”
“Criminal mastermind?” Zay’s voice comes from the doorway, followed by the man himself carrying a tray with three coffee mugs.
He is shirtless, his pajama pants hanging low on his hips. The sight of him first thing in the morning makes me squeeze my legs tighter.
“Where’s Kain?” I ask, trying to ignore the throbbing.
“Conference call with a client,” Zay says, sitting on the bed. “It sounded super boring.”
It’s strange sometimes how normal this has become—all four of us together. I never would have thought how easy it could be.
“Speaking of boring,” I say, pulling out my phone to check my calendar, “I have coffee with my mom today.”
Both men groan, and I can’t help but smile. My relationship with my mother has been complicated since I moved in with my boyfriends. It took her three months to stop sending the police for wellness checks, and another month before she agreed to meet me in public without bringing a bodyguard.
“How is she handling the fact that her perfect daughter is living in sin with three criminals?” Zay asks, waggling his eyebrows.
“Former criminals,” I correct. “And she’s adjusting—slowly. Therapy is helping.”
It was my idea, though Mom resisted at first. But when faced with the choice between therapy and losing me completely, she chose therapy.
