by Rose, Callie
They chose each other.
And I choose them.
Theo’s fingers dig into my hips, some of the gentleness of the kiss fading as need flares between us like a physical force. He holds me tightly, guiding my movements as his hips thrust up against me—slow at first, then harder and faster, hitting my clit with each thrust.
I whimper into his mouth, breaking the connection of our lips to press my forehead against his, our noses practically touching as our gazes lock. His face is so close to mine that I can barely focus on him, but somehow I feel like I can see all of him.
I can see the way his mouth drops open slightly, his lips tight with effort as his sharp breaths collide with my own. I can see the way his eyes churn like a stormy sea as he pauses his strokes, grinding his clothed cock against my pussy as his grip on me shifts slightly, his palms sliding lower to grab handfuls of my ass.
My toes curl and my breath catches as I grind down on him too, using the thick length of him to chase the pleasure building in my core. We’re hardly moving anymore—just small, intense pulses as we hover on the precipice, rubbing against each other as if we’re trying to fuse our bodies together.
“Fuck, Rose.”
The words are a shuddering, whispered groan. Theo lifts his head off the mattress, finding my lips with his again as his whole body goes rigid. He thrusts his hips hard, and the pleasure rising up inside me reaches its peak, sending me tumbling over the other side.
I writhe against him, breath coming in choppy gasps, and as the orgasm cascades through me, I feel the warm, wet heat of his release. His cum spurts into his boxer briefs, soaking into my pajama bottoms as his cock pulses again and again, spilling every last drop.
My arm gives out, and I collapse on top of him, my face buried in the crook of his neck.
We’re both breathing hard, our chests pressing tighter together with each of our inhales. His skin is warm, flushed with arousal, and he wraps his arms around me, hugging me against him.
His cum is a sticky mess between us, but he doesn’t let go of me. He doesn’t roll me off of him and slide out of bed to get cleaned up. He just holds me.
And when I start to cry again, slow tears that seep from my eyes like molasses, he presses a kiss to my temple, reaching up to run his fingers through my hair.
Chapter 6
I fall asleep again for a while after the tears stop, my body still draped over Theo’s and his arms still wrapped protectively around me.
Whether because of the orgasm or because of Theo’s touch, I sleep peacefully for a few blessed hours before blinking my eyes open again.
He’s awake already—hell, maybe he never slept—and when I lift my head from the crook of his neck, he smiles at me softly. The sadness still lingers in his eyes, just like I’m sure it does mine, but I think he looks a little less haunted than he did earlier.
He tilts my head up a little with a knuckle under my chin, meeting my gaze. “Hey. You okay?”
I nod, and he presses a small kiss to my lips before letting my head drop back down again.
For a few moments, neither of us moves. The smell of his skin is like a drug, better than any fucking anti-anxiety medication out there, and I let myself breathe him in with long, steady inhales.
I don’t know what this means, and I can’t quite bring myself to think too hard about it.
My heart is in rough shape already—I don’t think it can handle the monumental, life-altering truth that hovers just outside of my conscious thought. It’s there to see if I let myself examine it, but I’m too fucked up in the head right now to do it.
One thing I am sure of, though, is that I’m not giving up on Marcus.
Not until I see a body.
Not until I see evidence I can’t deny.
Until that happens, I’ll keep feeding the little scraps of hope that live in my chest, and I’ll do whatever I can to help Ryland and Theo find him. I lived through the night I was shot outside Club 47. So why couldn’t he live through this too?
Those thoughts churn in my head, making me anxious to get up and get moving, to do something.
I shift in Theo’s hold, and he hums in his throat. Keeping his arms wrapped around me, he rolls over to deposit me gently on my back. His face is a little wan and hollowed out as he gazes down at me, but his eyes are warm.
“I’ll let you get up and get dressed,” he says quietly, tucking a lock of my dark hair behind my ear. “I think Ryland slept over, and he’s probably up already. We’ll get some food, then he and I can go over to your place and see if anything is salvageable.”
“I’m coming with you,” I say automatically. It’s a knee-jerk response, out of my mouth before I even think about it, but I mean every word. I bashed my head pretty fucking good when I hit the ground yesterday, but Doctor Adelman cleared me. If there’s nothing seriously wrong with me, I’ll take some painkillers and keep going.
Theo opens his mouth, his brows pulling together in concern, but before he can speak, I add, “I can’t sit around doing nothing. I’ll go fucking crazy.”
He hesitates, understanding washing through his expression. Then he nods slowly. “You’ll have to convince Ryland too. But I’ll have your back.”
“Thanks.”
Theo nods. The fingers that tucked my hair behind my ear linger on my face, tracing the line of my jaw, and I can feel how much he wants to kiss me again. But instead, he pushes the covers back a little and slides out of bed.
There’s a stain on the front of his boxer briefs where his cum soaked through the fabric, and I swear he flushes a little as he adjusts himself. I look away, biting my lip to hide a smile, then watch him move toward the door and quietly slip outside.
Ryland grabbed my whole duffel from Marcus’s house, and it sits next to the bathroom door. I packed some extra stuff, so I’ve got enough clothes to last me for a couple more days in there—although I don’t have my prosthetic arm. I left that at my apartment, and there’s a good chance it melted in the fire.
It doesn’t really matter much. The prosthesis is cosmetic, something I wore when I didn’t want to deal with the looks I got from people as they ogled my stump. It wasn’t actually functional, and I’ve learned to get by just fine with only one hand and part of my right arm.
There’s a cum-stain on the front of my pants too, and something warm flickers in my chest as I shuck my clothes in the bathroom before stepping into the shower again.
I don’t know what that was, and I didn’t expect it—but I think I needed it. And I think Theo did too.
The shower goes quicker this morning than it did yesterday. I don’t need to comb chunks of clotted blood out of my hair, and I’m more coherent this morning than I was then, so I’m a lot more efficient. After I towel off and throw on fresh clothes, I glance at the bloody pile in the corner of the bathroom.
My stomach churns.
Fuck. I need to throw those away.
It hurts to look at them. To wonder how much of the blood on them is Marcus’s and how much is Carson’s.
Shoving that thought forcefully out of my head, I stuff the clothes into the small trashcan that sits under the sink, then carry the whole thing downstairs with me.
Theo and Ryland are in the kitchen, standing at the marble-top island in the middle of the space. They both have cups of coffee in front of them, and their hands are braced on the smooth countertop, their heads bent together as they converse in low voices.
I hesitate in the doorway, still holding the trashcan full of bloody clothes, as I take in the sight of them.
I see it now, more vividly than I ever have—the closeness between them, the way they complement each other and almost seem to share a brain sometimes. It was obvious from the minute I met all three of the men that they had a bond very few people ever experience. But now, with Marcus gone, it’s as if the threads that bind them have thickened and strengthened. As if the loss of one of their own has only strengthened the impulse to stick together, to function as a unit.
&nb
sp; My chest aches softly.
I’m glad they still have each other. And I’m glad Marcus has them. I’m glad he has two friends who will search to the ends of the earth to find him—even if it’s just to give him a proper burial.
“Hey, Ro—”
Theo looks up when he notices me standing in the doorway, then stops when he sees what I’m holding. He steps forward quickly and grabs the trashcan from me, dumping it into the larger kitchen trash before tugging the bag out of the bin and tying it closed.
“I told Ry you want to come with us,” he tells me over his shoulder before disappearing from the kitchen with the large trash bag.
My gaze shifts to Ryland. I’m already formulating my argument, prepared to have to fight hard to get him to relent.
But to my surprise, he nods once. “You can come.”
“Really?” My eyebrows shoot up.
Ryland’s jaw tenses, and his nostrils flare as he draws in a breath. He looks like he’s already considering taking his words back, but he nods again. Then he takes a step closer to me, leaving the island as his hands fall to his sides.
“I spent weeks… months… years trying to convince Marcus that you’d be better off without us in your life. I wanted to pay your medical bills and then leave you alone, let you live your life without all this bullshit.”
He gestures around vaguely, seeming to encompass everything about their lives. Then his lips press together and he shakes his head.
“But it’s too late. You’re in it. Yesterday, you got thrown into the fucking deep end. We can’t force you out. We can’t undo what’s happened. All we can do is keep you safe.” His hands clench into fists. “I’ve already seen what happens when we try to keep you in the dark to protect you. When we try to push you away to keep you safe. I’m not going down that fucking road again. So you can come with us.”
My chest squeezes.
Ryland’s face is intrinsically harder to read than Theo’s. He keeps his emotions buried under a solid foot of concrete most of the time. His blowup at Doctor Adelman’s office was the most emotional I’ve ever seen him. It was like a flip had been switched, the feelings he keeps under such tight control bursting out of him whether he wanted them to or not.
He’s back under control this morning, his features carefully blank. But beneath his strong, dark brows, his hazel eyes glint with pain.
All three of the men who stalked me in the shadows for two and a half years did their best to protect me, even if it manifested in different ways.
I wish like fuck I could protect them back.
Nodding, I wrap my hand around the bicep of my opposite arm, fingers covering up the dark red flowers and gray-blue shading that covers my skin. “Thanks. I want to help.”
Theo steps back into the kitchen a second later, glancing between me and Ryland as he picks up his coffee cup. “We all good?”
“Yeah.” Ryland breaks his gaze away from mine and swipes his coffee off the kitchen island too. “We’re good.”
The guys insist on feeding me and getting more painkillers into my system before we go anywhere, and while I eat, they update me on what the hacker they’ve been in touch with has found—which is, unfortunately, pretty much nothing.
It only took a few minutes for him to realize that all the security footage around the warehouses had been wiped, but combing through camera feeds from the surrounding areas is more complicated and time consuming. So far, nothing has turned up, but he’s still looking.
My stomach turns into a ball of lead as they talk, and I have to shove away my plate with the rest of my breakfast half-eaten. Ryland shoots me a semi-disapproving look, but he doesn’t give me any shit for not being able to finish.
The fresh painkillers have taken the edge off my headache, and the bright rays of sunshine that glint off the other cars on the road as we drive over to my apartment don’t hurt my eyes like they did yesterday.
Theo’s driving today, and I’m up front beside him with Ryland in the back. I almost wish I’d sat in the back seat too, but I still don’t know quite where Ryland stands or how he feels about me. I don’t know if sharing his pain with someone would make it better or worse, so I don’t want to push him.
The drive is mostly quiet, broken only by the soft music that plays through the speakers. Theo slows the car to a crawl as he nears my apartment, and my skin prickles as the scent of smoke and ash reaches my nostrils even through the closed car window.
“Fuck…”
Theo’s voice is low, and I’m not even sure he meant to speak the word out loud. But it’s pretty much all there is to say about the burned-out shell of the building in front of us.
The lower stories don’t seem to have gotten hit as bad as the upper floors, but I don’t even think we’ll be able to get inside to check if any of my stuff survived the fire—or that it would be safe to walk upstairs in the fire-damaged building.
Sharp anger cuts through me like a knife.
Carson Purcell did this.
He destroyed not just my belongings, not just my apartment, but over a half-dozen other innocent people’s homes. Did he even care about the havoc he would wreak on their lives?
No.
I’m sure he didn’t even fucking think about it.
My hand tightens on the door handle as Theo pulls to a stop in front of my old building, cutting off the engine. But I make no move to open the door.
“It’s not fair,” I mutter, my voice harsh. “I want to kill Carson for this, but he’s already fucking dead. A bullet through the head was too good for that asshole.”
The vehemence of my words startles me, but I realize I mean them. Because I’m not just mad on my own behalf. I’m fucking furious that Carson treated innocent people—people he didn’t even know—as expendable in his bid to win the game. I have to believe none of the men who became my shadows would do something like that. Marcus killed Devin Brooks, but I can’t believe he would’ve willingly sacrificed innocent bystanders.
Hell, I was an innocent bystander who almost died, and he spent two and a half years following me, watching me, and obsessing over me.
If I’d stepped between a bullet and Carson Purcell, he probably wouldn’t even remember my name two years later.
“Vicious.”
Ryland’s voice from the backseat is a low growl, but it doesn’t sound like a condemnation of my words. If anything, he sounds proud.
Theo’s fingers drum over the steering wheel as he ducks his head, gazing out the window at the wreckage of the building that was once my shoddy home.
“You’re right.” He rests a hand on my knee, grounding me with his touch. “Carson’s gone. And we can’t touch Dominic until Luca starts the next game. But there’s someone else who had a hand in this. Someone else who played a part, and she still needs to pay for what she fucking did.”
I drag my gaze away from the charred apartment building and glance over at him. His gaze is serious, his lips set in a hard line, and I know exactly who he’s talking about before he even utters the name.
Natalie.
Chapter 7
We decide to track down Natalie on the University of Halston campus.
It’s not exactly a small school, so I’m not sure how easy our search will be. But beyond having an assload of money, Theo can also be charming as fuck when he wants to be. We make a quick stop at the registrar’s office, where he manages to flirt his way into getting a complete list of Natalie’s classes this semester.
The middle-aged woman behind the desk lets out an audible sigh as he gives her one last crooked smile and heads back toward me and Ryland where we hover in the doorway.
“I think she just came,” I remark dryly as we make our way out of the office. “She’s probably sitting in a fucking puddle right now.”
Theo shoots me a look that brings back a rush of memories from this morning, and a small shiver works its way down my spine. I guess I shouldn’t make fun of that poor woman. She’s not the only one who’s a
ffected by this man.
Using her schedule as our guide, we find the building where her third class of the day is being held and stand in a tight knot as we wait outside. I can feel tension gathering in the men standing on either side of me as we wait—and in myself too. By the time Natalie emerges from the building about ten minutes later, it feels like all three of us are spring-loaded.
Ryland steps forward the second he sees her, and his movement draws her attention. Her green eyes widen slightly, a hint of fear appearing in their depths. Then she pivots on her heel and begins to walk quickly in the other direction.
That’s a fucking mistake.
You don’t run from a predator. It only feeds their hunter’s instinct.
Ryland doesn’t even break stride. He picks up his pace, and Theo and I hurry to join him as he bears down on Natalie like a fucking runaway train.
She glances over her shoulder as she feels us approach, and I can see the bluster she’s trying to put on over her fear. Finally, she stops and whirls around to face us, lifting her chin defiantly.
“What do you wa—”
The words aren’t even all the way out of her mouth when Ryland reaches her. He still doesn’t stop, grabbing her arm in a vise-like grip and dragging her around the corner of a building. There’s no pathway that cuts between this building and the one beside it, so there’s no foot traffic coming through. He pulls her along for several more yards until we’re well away from any populated areas. Then he shoves her against the wall.
I don’t believe in violence.
Or, I didn’t.
But a lot has changed in my life since I met these men, and I can’t work up even a single ounce of dismay over Ryland’s rough treatment of Natalie.
She lets out a soft grunt as her back hits the side of the building, and when Ryland releases her, she straightens quickly, glaring at all three of us.
“What the fuck do you want?” She tosses her strawberry-blonde hair over her shoulder, her round face a mask of angry disdain. “If you mess with me, Carson—”