Page 14 of Room Nine: Masters of Control

Kyra giggles. “Are you playing hard to get? I thought everything earlier was foreplay?”

“Oh, I really hope it was, but I can’t do this with you tonight.” I adjust my hardening cock. “No matter how badly I want to.”

Her eyes drop to my crotch, blatantly checking me out. “Do you think Dem would want to cover me?”

If she’s trying to make me jealous, that’s the wrong guy to do it with. “I know he would.”

“So that’s it? You won’t because he wants to, and you won’t risk losing his friendship.”

“No, that’s not it.” I wave my hands and take another step back. “It’s complicated. We’re not like normal men.”

Kyra stares at me for a full minute, reading into every word, searching for an answer. “The three of you share women—don’t you?”

Fuck me. If I could convince her to come home with my right now, we could kill two birds with one stone. The best way to protect her is to have me inside her. Can’t get much closer than that. “If you really want the answer to that, it’s a discussion for the four of us.”

She rolls her eyes and stands up. “Fine. You’re welcome to sleep on the couch, if you feel the need to sleep here.”

“I think you’re safe enough here, but take our numbers and call in sick to work tomorrow. Give us until the afternoon to formulate a plan. Then we’ll talk about what the next few days look like. Okay?”

“Let me grab my phone.” She walks into her bedroom and pulls her cell out of her bag. Dem already put a tracker on her car, so if she moves, we’ll know it, but I also want to track her phone. Luckily, I don’t need a chip for that.

She hands me the phone. “Do you want to punch in your numbers?”

“I can do that.” I text myself, Dem, and O’Dell, and then program in our names. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I click on one of Soren’s homegrown tracking apps, immediately transferring all of her settings to include her MAC address and IMEI number.

“Here you go.” I hand it back to her. “Lock up tight behind me and wait for our call tomorrow.”

She drags a deep breath in through her nose and slowly lets it out. “I blew up a house today. That’s pretty wild, huh?”

I nod, realizing the full force of what happened today is finally hitting her. Then I remember she’s a civilian, and maybe she was maintaining a tough demeanor all day because of us, but now she’s winding down. “It was.”

“I’m lucky no one was hurt.”

“Yeah, well, it’s over now. Don’t beat yourself up about it. As you said, the place was a shit hole used for horrible things, so it needed to go up in flames. Take solace in that and don’t worry about the rest. We’ll take care of it.”

And you, I think, but do not say out loud.

6

O’DELL

I’m surprised when Kerr stumbles through the house into the kitchen for morning coffee. “I didn’t hear you come in last night.”

Dem looks up from his phone. “How’d it go?”

Kerr nods. “She’s something else. Smart and crafty, she rigged up a homemade security system in her apartment—which is in a shit location, by the way—and has everything locked down. Outside of tapping into her system, which we can’t do because it is closed-loop, we couldn’t do much better. She’s strapped with what she needs should someone try to break in. It’s when she leaves the apartment that she’s vulnerable.”

“Okay… and?” I hand him a mug of hot coffee, black, two sugars. In a lot of ways, the three of us are like an old married couple. We’ve known each other for so long that we know what each other likes, dislikes, and can anticipate what the other is thinking—most times. Something is bothering him, outside of the obvious.

“I sent you all texts and sync’d her phone to the tracker app.”

Dem nods. “Yeah, I’ve configured her number to send us alerts when she’s on the move.”

Kerr takes a deep drink and then sets it down. “I asked her to call in sick tonight and give us the day to come up with a plan, but she never actually said she would.”

“What did she say?” I ask.

“Aren’t we going to be late?” Kerr checks his watch and slugs back the rest of his coffee.

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