Page 12 of Room Nine: Masters of Control

Cars are honking their horns, so I’m guessing the light has turned green.

“It’ll be faster if you just accept this is going to happen, Cupcake,” O’Dell says, letting her know we’re listening.

She growls. “You guys are pains in the ass—you know that?”

“Yeah,” we say simultaneously.

Kerr chuckles as he rolls up his window, the street noise dying down to nothing. “Oh man, she’s pissed.”

“If we decide to make a play for her after this is over, we agree now, no one touches her until we all do.”

Kerr sighs. “Fine.”

“Agreed.” O’Dell nods.

Now all we have to do is find Bobby Lash, get rid of him, and then we can make a play for what I hope is our future.

5

KERR

Ifollow Kyra the couple extra blocks to her apartment, not hiding my intent. She already busted me, so, fuck it. I exit my vehicle before her, walking over and opening her door only after I perform a quick glance around at the cars parked near her complex. No trucks. No Cadillacs. No Bobby Lash—from what I can tell.

She lives in a shit hole, the neighborhood overrun with drugs, so I’m not thrilled with the people hanging out nearby. It’s near midnight, so it’s hard to think that anyone out on a street corner this late is up to something good.

I offer her my hand which she takes, wincing as she stands up.

“Are you in pain?”

“Just sore. You did smack me around a little.”

“I never once laid an open palm or clenched fist on you.”

“What about pulling my hair?” She raises her brow, her lips quirked.

“Foreplay?” I grin back at her.

She smiles and shakes her head, motioning to the propped open door leading into the apartment building. “I suppose you’re going to want to come inside?”

“Yes, please.”

Kyra rolls her eyes and grabs her bag, leading the way, and I swear she puts an extra swish into her hips just to tease me. Dem often calls me a pig, and I suppose he’s right in some ways. I’m not the caring, nurturing one of our team. I lead with my dick, because if my mind gets involved, things get fucked up. I overthink everything—watching and psychoanalyzing a person’s every action to the point I imagine things that aren’t there. Eventually, every comment becomes a slight I have to respond to. Every action designed to manipulate and con me out of something that I’d probably freely offer if I wasn’t so fucked up in the head.

My overthinking works great against bad guys, but sucks in relationships with women.

I can’t even discuss my heart, which died a long time ago.

Connecting on an emotional level is Dem’s strength, intellectually is O’Dell’s specialty, and mine is the pure physical. I’m a born flirt, and usually the one to introduce a woman I’ve been chatting up and feeling out for the last five minutes to my partners, who with one look and twenty minutes of conversation can convince her to act out something she’s only ever fantasized about.

We figured out quickly—after completing PsySpecOps training and deploying on our first mission—that our sexual appetites were similar and the idea of dominating one woman together was a lifestyle we wanted to fully embrace. It took a few years before we realized we weren’t special, and that sharing one woman is popular amongst the other PsySpecOps teams. Something in our psych profiles says we’re perfectly partnered together both on and off the combat field, each one of us accentuating each other’s strengths and eliminating our weaknesses.

You’d think that men who share women lack the possessiveness and jealousy of a monogamous vanilla man, but if anything, I’d say we’re worse. O’Dell, Dem, and I haven’t met that one woman yet—although, maybe we have—but I know that when we do, we’ll be just as territorial over her as Reese, Caiden, and Soren are over Leti.

Or Lee, Case, and Porter are with Epi.

Once we meet our woman, we’ll be just as possessive.

She lives on the third floor, in the second-to-last unit in the hallway. She unlocks two deadbolts and the lock in the handle and then hits a button on a key fob, an audible beep coming from her apartment.

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