by James Tate
Of course there were no dishes out; they'd probably been eating straight from the box. I started heading past the den to find myself a plate until—
"Pay up," someone said.
I froze, thinking they were talking to me, but an annoyed sigh came from one of the other boys. "Damn. I'll be broke if the pretty, pink princess keeps up this unpredictable bullshit."
Ugh. That was definitely Archer. No mistaking that surly, dickish voice.
Still, it made me happy to know he was losing money betting against me.
"Coming to sit with us, Madison Kate?" Green-eyes—Kodiak—asked, slinging an arm over the back of the couch and giving me a curious look. "Steele made sure we didn't eat all the pizza until you got here."
I shot a quick look at the pierced, tattooed guy, but he was ignoring me as he helped himself to the pizza in question, then flopped down on a beanbag.
"Uh, no thanks," I replied, running my tongue over my suddenly dry lips. Kody's gaze dropped to my mouth, and I was reminded of the fact that he'd kissed me when I arrived. What the fuck was that all about, anyway? Not that I was any stranger to kissing boys, but it had been a long time... "I was just going to grab a plate and head back to my room."
"Told you," Archer commented from the couch, not bothering to turn or even sit up to look at me. "She's a scared little girl. Fifty bucks says we hear her crying into her pillow tonight."
"Damn, Arch, you hate your money or something?" Steele laughed, his mouth still full of pizza. "I'll take that bet. I need new parts for the Ducati, and those fuckers don't come cheap."
My jaw had dropped slightly at the blatant bullshit I was listening to. Were these bastards for fucking real?
Anger burned through me, and my jaw clenched. Kody was still watching me, and his eyes widened a fraction at what was probably a very obvious shift in my mood.
It pissed me off that they were taking bets on my behavior, but of the two of them—Archer and Steele—I disliked Archer more.
"You know what?" I announced, forcing a bit of fake sunshine into my voice, which otherwise dripped scorn. "I guess I am feeling social after all." Marching my butt over to them, I stepped quite deliberately over Archer's legs. I bent over and scooped up a big slice of supreme pizza, then plonked my ass dead center on the couch between Archer and Kodiak. Blue and Green.
Crap, this might have been a mistake.
"Interesting choice," Steele murmured, almost under his breath. I frowned a moment before seeing he was talking about my choice of pizza. What had he said to me upstairs? I looked like an all or nothing kind of girl?
How right he was.
"What are we playing?" I asked, like casual confidence was in my damn bloodstream.
Archer just glared at me, and as we were sitting close enough that our knees brushed, it was kind of intense. Like, scary intense. My stomach flipped, and a little part of my brain challenged me on whether that was nerves or attraction.
"Beach Buggy Racing," Kody replied, drawing my attention to my other side. He was in one of those obnoxiously male sprawls, where he took up way more space than a normal human should. It also meant that his arm was draped along the back of the couch, behind me, while his other hand held the PlayStation controller loosely. "You want a turn?"
His lids were heavy over those gorgeous green eyes, and a telling dark shadow of stubble dusted his jaw. Not that I’d thought his blond was anything but bleached. He looked like he was about to fall asleep any minute now, which only made my stupid, sex-starved mind wander off to what his bed might look like. Or whether he slept in the nude.
That little voice in my head laughed at me, and I wanted to punch the bitch.
"Sure," I replied with a shrug, holding my hand out for the controller. As he passed it to me, our fingers brushed, and it took all my self-control not to jump like I'd been electrocuted.
Kody smirked, like he knew the effect he was having on me, so I scowled back at him. I had to keep reminding myself he wasn't just some hot guy who'd saved me from Zane and his gang. Who'd given me his jacket when I was cold and in shock. He was the one who'd almost seen me locked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and no matter how fucking sexy he and his friends were, I'd never forgive that.
"Hey, if Madison Kate is playing, we can do four-player," Steele commented from his beanbag, licking pizza grease from long fingers. Tattoos stretched from the cuff of his shirt and webbed across the back of his hand, and I was crazy curious to get a better look. Pity he couldn't be someone else. Anyone else. I'd have been all fucking over him.
"No," Archer snapped, shooting a flat stare at his friend. "You're not allowed to play, and you know it."
Steele rolled his eyes dramatically. "Come on, Arch. One game of Beach Buggy won't spark the apocalypse. Don't be such a stick in the mud."
"Besides," Kody added, "it's about sixteen thousand times less dangerous than working in the garage. Yet you don't stop him from doing that."
Archer made an angry sound in his throat, and for the first time since arriving, I wasn't the target of his ire. "Have you tried to stop Steele from working in the garage?"
Kody just snickered, and Steele whooped.
"Four-way it is!" the gray-eyed enigma announced, then shot a sly wink at me. "Four player I mean. Unless..." He left the question hanging, and my cheeks flamed with heat. Words failed me. Had he seriously just propositioned me? With a four-way? How did that even work? Wait, why the fuck was I thinking about this?
Archer made a snide sound. "Princess Danvers would rather stick rusty pins under her toenails than have a four-way with us," he reported, smug as all fuck. "Or what else was it? You'd rather set your pubic hair on fire?" The other guys cringed, and I glowered.
"If I had any, as you already pointed out, yes," I snarked back at him. "Now, are we playing this beach cart game or not?"
Archer just laughed softly, shaking his head at me like he'd somehow won that round. He hadn't.
"It's Beach Buggy Racing," Kody corrected me, getting up from the couch to fetch two extra controllers. "Do you need me to give you a crash course?"
Not wanting to accept any kind of help from these guys, I shook my head. "I'll work it out."
Archer snorted, like he thought I was incompetent or something, which just made me more determined to work it out on my own. Bastard.
* * *
As it turned out, the real reason why Archer didn't want Steele to play—at least as far as I could tell—was because Steele kicked his ass. He kicked all our asses. Not that I put up much fight. I spent the first twenty minutes driving into walls or going backward around the track. Some people had a natural affinity with video games, and I was not one of them.
"You seriously suck at this," Kody commented after my seventh straight loss. By a long shot. I'd tossed my controller back onto the table and declared I was done.
"Shut up," I grumbled, rubbing my hands over my face and trying to swallow a yawn. "I'm jet-lagged and consumed by rage and resentment. It tends to split one's focus."
Except, those words felt hollow. For the first time in a really long time, I wasn't feeling those venomous emotions. I was just straight up exhausted. Maybe too tired for hate?
Then again, the fact that Archer had left the room to take a phone call some half hour earlier and not returned might have played a part in my improved mood.
"It is pretty late," Steele agreed. "Play again tomorrow?"
He was so hopeful I opened my mouth to agree. Thankfully, Kody cut me off.
"Nice try, asshole," he scolded. "You shouldn't have even played this many games. Jase will murder us if he finds out tomorrow."
Steele huffed and grumbled something about living with jailers, and I wrinkled my nose in confusion. Jet lag was making me all dizzy, like I'd been drinking all night.
"Who's Jase?" I asked them. "And why is everyone stressing over you playing PlayStation? Do you have a gaming addiction or something?"
Kody started to answer
me, but Steele cut him off with a shake of his head. Shifting his attention to me, his smile turned sly. "I thought you'd learned everything you needed to know about us on social media."
I rolled my eyes. "About those two, sure." I jerked my thumb in Kody's direction. "I'd only just started on you when you swiped my phone."
Steele grinned. "Well, come find me tomorrow if you still haven't worked it out. I'll tell you if you can't guess."
I frowned. "What? Why not just tell me?"
Kody laughed sleepily beside me. "'Cause Steele likes games." He yawned heavily. "I'm done. Catch you guys tomorrow?" It was phrased like a question, and his gaze rested on me like he was waiting on a response.
I stood up myself, stretching my arms over my head and flipping my long pink hair over my shoulder. I'd woven it into a quick braid while we'd been playing, after it kept distracting me. "I live here, so I don't see why not."
Despite the casual comfort of the evening, I needed to snap out of it. This was clearly early onset Stockholm syndrome setting in, where I started humanizing my enemies. I needed to cut it off before it got any worse.
My jaw tightened more and more with every thought, my arms wrapping around my body in an unconsciously defensive pose, and Kody sighed.
"I see. Princess Danvers is back. It was nice while it lasted." Shooting Steele a quick nod, he swaggered out of the den.
For his part, Steele just watched me with those mysterious gray eyes.
"What?" I snapped.
He shrugged. "Wondering what just changed inside your head, pretty girl. You seemed to be enjoying yourself for a minute there. What happened?"
"I remembered where I was," I replied with biting cold. "I remembered who I was with, and what you all did to ruin my life."
He drew a deep breath, releasing it slowly as he stood up as well. A couple of steps and we were toe to toe, with his storm-cloud eyes peering far too deeply into my soul.
"Yet here we are, living under the same roof. How do you plan to deal with that conundrum, Madison Kate?" His voice was soft, but the challenge was clear.
I let my lips curl into a cold smile, meeting his eyes unflinchingly and raising my chin with defiance. "Simple, Max Steele," I whispered. "We don't. You three need to find somewhere else to live, or..."
He raised a brow. "Or what, pretty girl?"
"Or I'll make your lives hell here. It's your choice." I smiled sweetly. "Don't say I didn’t warn you."
He stared down at me, his face impassive. Steele was an easy eight inches taller than me, and my neck was getting a bit sore at this angle. For a moment, I second-guessed myself. Was I making a mistake, taking on these three? They could destroy me. They already nearly had. Did I seriously have the ovaries to go head-to-head with all three of them?
Steele ran his tongue over his lower lip, showing off that tongue stud I’d glimpsed as he’d smiled, and I found my attention all but fucking glued to his mouth.
"Game on, Madison Kate," he laughed, reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. "I doubt you'll find it as easy to get rid of us as you think." He paused, giving me a smirk. "But it'll be fun to see you try."
Scowling and at a total loss for words—because my heart was thundering and my mind kept focusing on that tongue stud—I brushed past him and skulked back to my room. Thankfully, Archer was still nowhere to be seen, but I still went to sleep with plans for revenge on my mind.
7
The incessant vibration of my phone was what woke me up early Saturday morning. And when I say early, I mean way too freaking early, considering how late we'd played racing games the night before.
"What the fuck?" I grumbled into the device as I stabbed at the speakerphone button. "What time is it?"
"Uh, like ten-oh-one?" Bree replied, sounding distinctly like she was full of shit. "What's the gate code, babe? I'm out front."
I groaned like a dying animal and rubbed a hand over my face to try and wake up. "Huh?"
"The gate code, MK," Bree repeated. "So I can get into your Dad's mega-mansion. Dude, this place is massive."
Slowly, the fog of sleep was clearing from my brain. "Uh, I don't know it," I told her.
"What?" she replied. "How do you not know your own gate code?"
I sighed. "Long story. Hang on."
Dragging my half-asleep ass out of bed, I staggered out into the hallway and made a beeline for the closest door to mine. It was closed, but I gave less than zero shits about the privacy of my temporary housemates. So, I barged in without pausing to knock.
I expected to find the occupant of this room fast asleep. I’d wake him up, get the gate code before he fully comprehended the question, then get out again. I didn’t expect to find Kodiak fucking Jones stark freaking naked and dripping wet as he exited the attached bathroom.
“Fuck!” I shouted, clapping my hands over my eyes and smacking myself in the face with my phone. Not before I got a damn good eyeful, though, and ho-oo-ly shit. Wow. If I didn’t hate the guy on principle, I’d be probably offering to—
Stop it! Stop sexualizing the enemy!
“Can I help you, gorgeous?” Kody asked, his voice full of mirth.
Biting my lip to keep from saying any of the thousand inappropriate responses on the tip of my tongue, I silently counted to five.
“Sorry,” I muttered eventually, keeping my hands over my eyes. Not because I respected his privacy—because fuck him—but because I didn’t trust myself not to drool. “I need the gate code.”
Kody laughed, and it sounded like he was coming closer. Fuck, I hoped he’d put a towel on or… something. “So you thought you’d bust in here without knocking? Where are your manners, Princess?”
He was mocking me, and it just pissed me off. “I guess I left them in the Shadow Grove lockup last year,” I snarled back, dropping my hands from my face. I just felt fucking stupid having this argument with my face hidden like a blushing virgin. That was one thing I most definitely was not.
Ugh, god damn. I should have known.
Of course he hadn’t put any pants on. He hadn’t even bothered to cover up with a towel. And I mean, I couldn’t blame him with a body like that. Was it even legal for a guy of… I had no idea how old Kody was. Twenty? Twenty-two? Hard to tell. Either way, his body was to fucking die for. Then again, considering his whole profile as an up-and-coming celebrity fitness trainer, it made sense.
“See something you like, Madison Kate?” he teased, reaching out to brush a long strand of pink hair behind my ear. His fingers followed it the whole way to the ends, brushing lightly down my bare arm, and I couldn’t suppress a shiver. He was deliberately reminding me of the night we’d met. The night he’d helped me control my claustrophobia by turning me on… and the night he’d set me up for B&E.
That was like an ice-cold shower over my arousal.
“Hardly,” I sneered, unconvincingly. “Give me the gate code, Kody. Then you can continue… whatever you were doing awake at this ungodly hour.” I waved my hand vaguely in the direction of the bathroom where steam was still billowing out. Now that I’d torn my eyes off his hard, tanned, tattooed chest—thank God he was now so close it was his chest in my direct line of sight and not his dick—I noticed the work-out clothes dropped haphazardly on the carpet.
Kody just grinned, but no four-digit numbers exited his mouth.
“Kody,” I growled. “Give me the damn code.”
He tilted his head to the side, giving me a mischievous look as he stroked another long strand of my hair. Ugh, I needed to start tying my hair up around this dickhead.
"Hmm, let's see. You want something from me... I want something from you. So, let's make a trade." His deep emerald-green eyes twinkled with danger, and my anger was only stoking higher.
My hands balled into fists at my sides—or one did; the other still clutched my phone where Bree was probably listening to the whole exchange with a box of popcorn.
"What could you possibly want from me, Kodiak Jones?" I de
manded, my voice full of scorn as I used his full name. Partly because it infuriated me when people used my full name. Partly to remind him that he was supposedly some hotshot Instagram superstar and could have anything he wanted.
His full lips pulled up in a smile, like I was playing into his hands. "I want plenty of things from you, Madison Kate Danvers," he replied, and I seethed. "But for now, let's keep it simple. Coffee. Come out with me for coffee today."
My brows dropped into a confused scowl. "Huh?" That... was not what I'd expected him to say.
His grin only spread wider. "See, I'm not such an asshole. I could have asked you to blow me."
I glared death at him. "I'd just as soon bite your dick off."
"And I knew that. See, I already get you on a deeper level, babe. We're practically made for each other." There was an edge of sarcasm in his voice, but not enough. "So? Gate code for a coffee date. Deal?"
I shook my head, biting the inside of my lip. I should just tell him to fuck himself and call my dad for the code. But...
"I can't right now," my traitorous mouth said instead. "I'm doing shit with Bree."
Confusion creased his brow a moment. "Who's Bree?" Then he shrugged. "Later then."
He was up to something; it was so painfully obvious. But my curiosity was hooked. "Just coffee?"
Kody smiled like a cat with a bowl of cream. "Maybe cake, too. Think you can handle that without gagging, Princess?"
His choice of words chilled me, but then there was no way he knew about my brief experimentation with eating disorders as a thirteen-year-old. It was a coincidence.
"Fine," I snapped, and his gorgeous face flashed with victory. "The code?"
"Five-two-eight-three," he told me with a smug smile. "Now, I was about to get dressed, but if you're sticking around I'm happy to stay naked." He paused, pulling an exaggerated thinking face. "But full disclosure, I won't be held responsible for how hard my dick gets around you. He's got a mind of his own and keeps fantasizing about getting you alone in the dark again."