Page 114 of The Piece You Stole

“What makes you think this is what she needs?” I ask as I fight to control my body’s response. “I’d say it’s up to her to decide. And her hands are—”

“You can give her what she needs without her using her hands.”

Silence.

I should argue more, fight against this insane idea Kade has suddenly got in his head because sex isn’t what Saige needs right now. What she needs is rest, comfort, and time to heal. “And Dariel? What do you intend to do when Dariel hears, and it triggers his wolf to attack?”

“It won’t.”

My brow furrows in a frown. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” He stands. “And I’ll keep watch.”

“For Dariel to attack, or what I’m doing to Saige?”

He’s not the only one excited by the thought. The bulge in his pants is evidence of that. Kade has always liked to watch, to see a woman lose herself in pleasure before he takes her. It’s not what excites me. Or it didn’t. Until now.

“Both.”

“If she doesn't want this?”

He snorts. “I’m not suggesting you force yourself on her, Aden. She needs something good. Something—” Snapping his mouth shut, he bites back whatever thing he was about to say that he thinks would make someone view him as weak.

Kade likes to saythat we all have our shadows and the things we do to hide them.

Keeping his mouth shut has always been one of his biggest defenses.

He and Dariel lifted me out of the shadows and into this new life with them. One with a roof over my head, clothes that weren’t rags on my back, and for the first time in my life, enough food to fill my belly. Everything else; the books, the fancy haircuts, expensive clothes, and even a future, were just added extras.

Family. Food. A roof. Those are the things that matter. In that order. Everything else I can do without.

Kade’s shadows are darker than mine. Once, he was a regular human, and as a human, he spent most of his life fighting and losing, over and over. But as a shifter, that changed. He still fought, but now he could win. Dariel’s shadows have always been the most visible, but Leandro’s sudden appearance has made me realize Dariel’s shadows are darker than I ever believed.

“Something good to replace the bad?” That’s how Kade views pleasure—sex. Like a drug. Like a pill to ease the sting—and the hurt of some past pain. A band-aid. “You know as well as I do, it doesn’t work. At least not for long.”

Kade rises from his chair and turns away, passing his unmade bed on the way to the closed white door in the far-right corner of his room. His bathroom. He halts just outside, as Dariel did a few days before. I know he wants to say something, but his demons are holding him back. “She needs something good, Aden. Otherwise, what else is there to fight for? What other reason is there to get up in the morning if all you have to look forward to is another kick in the gut?”

“She’s not you,” I remind him. “Sex would be nothing more than a temporary fix. That’s not to say it won’t make her feel good, but how will that help her in the long term?”

Peering over his shoulder, his lips twitch in a mockery of a smile. “If you think it would be just sex, you’re not as observant—or as smart as I thought you were.”

After stepping into the bathroom, he nudges the door closed, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Of what Kade meant, of Saige, and of how he can be so certain of what she needs.

* * *

Something wakes me. Not sure what. But as I blink my bleary eyes open, I sit up in my bed and immediately realize what it must have been. Saige is gone.

She doesn’t always climb into my bed, and a part of me had hoped that after mine and Kade’s conversation this morning, she wouldn’t tonight.

No amount of cold showers could drive the thoughts Kade had inserted into my mind out again. Any innocent touch she made, any time she smiled at me as I changed her bandages, reminded me of Kade’s words.

“She needs one of us.”

Every day I’ve helped her bathe and carefully kept my gaze averted from her body because she wasn’t comfortable with me seeing her scars. I’d always noticed the way she tried to hide them from me, but today, having her naked in the same room was a special kind of torture.

I remember how she’d leaned into my kiss and brushed her fingers against my jaw as I fought the urge to lay her back on her bed and deepen the kiss. Is that why Kade is so convinced that Saige needs something good to forget about the bad? Him seeing her reaction to my kiss?

When she appeared in my doorway dressed in another of Kade’s white t-shirts, her cheeks a little flushed, and her gaze fixed on my chin, as she shuffled a little from foot to foot, I’d done what I had always done. Lifted the edge of the cover, smiled, and invited her to get in.

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