Sulli frowns down at me. “Why are you staying?”
I rub my hands. “He’s one of my men. I need to make sure he’s alright.” Off her snort of disbelief, I try not to smile hearing the sound, and I just add, “It’s a security thing.”
“Sure.” Sulli lowers into her chair. “Whatever you say, Kits.”
Tension piles between us in the unbearable silence. I lean back and glance over at Sulli more than once. Arms crossed over her chest, she glares at the ground.
I’m the one building walls, and shit, everything in me is screaming to tear them down.
“How have you been?” I ask.
Her eyes flit to me, softening instantly. “Miserable. Just like Banks.” She studies my face. “You?”
I think about lying.
I can be cruel. But not that cruel.
Sliding my thumb across my fingers, I say, “I’m having nightmares again.”
She rotates more to me. Our knees knock. “Sorry,” she apologizes.
Neither of us move away. I want to say everything but nothing leaves through my lips. As her eyes well, I’m certain she can see how much pain I’m in.
I choke out, “You don’t have to be sorry.”
“I’m not sorry for falling in love with you, how’s that?” Sulli says with a shaky voice.
That gives me too much hope to come back. I pinch my eyes. We’re quiet for another tensed beat.
“Your nightmares…?”
I drop my hand. “It’s fine.”
“They’ve never been fine.” She tries to place a comforting hand atop my knee, but I pull away.
Sulli careens back, wincing.
“Sorry,” I say fast and hold out my hand. “I don’t want you to think there’s a door open for us.”
Please shut the door.
“It is open,” Sulli refutes. “On my side. On Banks’. It’s been fucking open, and it’ll be wide fucking open—”
“Stop,” I cut her off. Pain starts piercing all over me, and I take off my beanie and crumple it in my hand. “I need you to be angry at me.”
“I can’t.”
My insides are being shredded. “I broke your heart, Sul.”
“You broke your own heart first,” she growls. “You’re trying to protect mine. I know what you’re doing—I fucking get it, even if I don’t like it. You can warn me how you’re the bad boy again, Kits, but you’re not fooling me this time. You’re my hero who’s risking everything to save me, and I’m fucking telling you that I’d rather leave the safety of the castle with you than be locked in there without you.”
I let her words wash over me, but I keep seeing flashes of that night. The mania, the mobs, Sulli being grabbed—stop.
I stare at the carpet, then glance over at the receptionist. Did she hear us?
The desk is empty, so she must’ve retreated to the back.
Sulli hugs her arms around herself. When I look over again, she gives me a sad smile. “Loving you is easier than hating you, Kits. It always has been.”
Raw emotion threatens to pummel me, and I fight everything.
Minutes later, the office door swings open and Banks and the doctor slip out together.
Sulli and I shoot to our feet.
“We’ll be in touch soon,” the neurologist says with a handshake before disappearing through the same doors.
Banks turns and freezes. “I’ll be damned…you came.” Surprise touches his eyes, then confusion when he sees a morose Sulli. “What’d I miss?”
Sulli waves a hand at me. “Akara’s just here for security, apparently.”
Banks frowns, coming closer to us. “Security?”
I stand stiffer. “You’re SFO. I just want to make sure everything is going well with you, health-wise.”
Banks lets out a short laugh that picks up vigor. “Yeah, right. You’re just here to check up on one of your bodyguards.” He threads his arms. “You’re not fooling anyone, Akara.”
“That’s what I told him,” Sulli says too like they see through me. “Maybe he’s fooling himself though.”
“He’s doin’ a bang-up job of that.”
I feel myself start to smile. “Fuck, Banks—”
Right as I swear, they both slug me at the same time, left arm, right arm. The bet I lost. They haven’t forgotten. They haven’t forgotten me. I smile and grimace, and I can’t even wish they would forget—because I wouldn’t wish forgetting them on myself.
Banks smiles more. “I do love this gold-star hospitality from my boss. Let’s me know you care.”
I rub my arm where Sulli slugged. “I do care just as your boss.” Before I can ask, Sulli chimes in first.
“How’d it go?” she asks, concern drawing her towards him.
“Is everything good?” I wonder too. He’s not torn up or quiet, so maybe the news is good.
He lifts his shoulders. “Don’t know. They said they’d call me in a couple hours with the results.”
Sulli lets out a long breath. “Two hours. We can wait that out.”
“It’ll be nothing,” Banks agrees and then careens his head back to me. “You want to wait with us?”
What?
I don’t move.
I can’t.
Banks smacks my chest with the back of his hand. “I could be about to hear some potentially career-ending news.”
“You’re going to be fine, Banks,” I say, letting that statement out into existence. He’ll be fine. And it’s not his career I care about. It’s his health.
It’s him.
He shrugs. “Still, you can join us.”
I shouldn’t.
I really, really shouldn’t.
Feel the moment, Nine.
With a deeper breath and before I can stop myself, I exhale the words, “As your boss, I can do that.”
“As my boss,” Banks repeats with a shadowy smile. Like I’m full of crap.
I shake my head at him, trying not to smile back. “You think the MRI is going to tell us if you have a screw loose?”
“If so, we should order one for you.”
Sulli laughs, and I hear my laugh that feels ancient. Dusty. Newly uncovered.
I missed them.
Feeling it is different than thinking it. And like an idiot, I’m doing both.
Laughter leaves fast as I remember what I should be doing. You’re just his boss. She’s just a client. “Let’s head out.”
Banks clasps Sulli’s hand, and with the shortest glance backwards, I see them share a smile. I’m giving them too much hope.
This is wrong.
Then why do I keep moving?
While I lead out front, the three of us and the temp bodyguard exit the revolving glass doors. I go outside first.
Scanning the snowy Philly sidewalk, a crowd of ten or twelve has amassed, but nothing major. Nothing like New Year’s Eve. Seeing the calm just reinforces why I broke up with them.
So she could have this.
Banks leads Sulli forward and I hawk-eye the paparazzi who push closer. “Stay back!” I shout, arm outstretched.
“We parked in the deck,” Sulli says. “To the lef—” She’s cut off.
In a single instant, someone pelts a projectile too fast to catch. Banks only has time to raise his arm to block the assault. Something smashes into him and explodes—white powder mushrooms around the three of us and the temp. We’re covered. Sulli coughs as I wrap an arm over her shoulders with Banks, about to pull her to the ground in case another projectile is launched.
“CHEATER!” someone screams angrily.
Whoever just assaulted Banks—they thought he was Thatcher. The projectile wasn’t meant for Sulli. Alarm has snapped me into total focus. I can’t see the person through the white, dusty cloud.
“Bernard!” I shout at the temp, and I order him to go detain the heckler.
Banks wafts the air around our faces.
“What…what the fuck is this?” Sulli wipes the white powder out of her eyes. I check on
her with a fast sweep. She’s okay.
I taste it on my lips.
Flour.
With our hair and face and shoulders dusted with baking flour, Banks and I share a brief, readied look.
“Get her out of here,” I tell him. “I’ll meet you at the penthouse.”
Sulli’s bathroom.
That humongous fudging tub. The water. Him and her.
Still caked in flour, I lean against the sink and grip the counter behind me, trying to peel my gaze off a memory. In a flash of a moment, a second, I can almost feel us in the water. Taking Sulli’s virginity against the stone of her tub, the trust and affection and emotion…
It’s right there, Nine.
“I can’t fucking believe they mixed you up with your brother,” Sulli fumes, running a damp towel over her face.
Banks soaks another washcloth in the sink. “It happens.” He’s unaffected by the blunder. “This is one of those times I’m glad I’m employed by you.” He meets my eyes, speaking to me, and a levity inflates my lungs. “Can you imagine the fuckin’ old guard after a flour-bomb?”
I start to smile and mimic Alpha bodyguards. “Back then, we had to deal with repeated flour-bombers in public locations. Like a damn ski slope!”
Banks laughs.
Sulli smiles over at me. “Was this when Jane and Moffy were babies?”
I nod. “Yeah, way before our time on security. And you weren’t even born yet.”
“You know the worst one?” Banks says to me, rubbing streaks of flour off his face. “Disneyland.”
I groan into a bigger smile. “Don’t even start.”
“What?” Sulli is confused and excited to hear security’s secrets.
Banks explains, “The old guard who went on the Disneyland trip when you were a kid.”
“They never shut up about it,” I add. “At least the ones who haven’t retired.” There are only a handful left from that generation.
Sulli tries to shake out flour from her hair. “A lot of the time I forget you two are bodyguards and not just my boyfriends.”
Boyfriends. I stiffen.
She realizes her slip with flushed cheeks. “I mean, boyfriend for Banks but friend for Akara or…whatever the fuck we are…” She reddens more. “Cumbuckets.”
Cumbuckets. I missed that.
“It’s okay, Sul,” I tell her softly.
Banks looks cautiously between us.
Maybe I shouldn’t be here, but Banks is still waiting on the phone call…and no part of me wants to walk away.
Sulli tries to rewind the conversation. “I hate that people who love Jane are now trying to assault her husband. It’s fucked up.”
I jump up on the counter, sitting. “Yeah, that’s an issue.”
Thatcher Moretti.
I still care about my friend; I’ll always care—even if he’s been pushing me away and we haven’t sewed what ripped. For the longest time, it’s been me and Thatcher trying to make tough calls. Trying to figure crap out behind-the-scenes and clinking beers after a hard night, leaning on each other when no one else understands the core of the job—and now he’s a target for hate.
“Thatcher will be alright,” Banks says. “He can take flour to the face as well as I can. It’s nothing.”
I give him a hard look. “I love you, Banks, but you two need to stop flexing. Just because you can take a hit doesn’t mean you should.”
His mouth curves up. “You love me, Akara?”
Son of a mother trucker.
I lick my dried lips. You know I do.
He slips a toothpick between his teeth with a shadow of a smile. He sees right through my silence.
Sulli begins to smile.
Shoot.
I grip the edge of the counter, not jumping down yet. But I remind them, “I’m leaving once the doctor calls.”
That sobers the room.
Smiles vanish.
We go back to dealing with the flour. Banks squeezes dirty water out of the washcloth into the sink. I run a hand through my hair, flour kicking up. I’m covered. It’ll take more than a sponge-bath to get clean.
Sulli struggles with her hair. “Fuck, it’s everywhere.”
Help her, Nine.
Before Banks or I can even think of moving, Sulli dashes to the large glass shower, surrounded by two oversized elephant ear plants. Vibrant. Green. Tropical rain forest vibes are sky-high and totally Sulli.
After she turns on the faucet, water hits the black slate and spills into the drain.
She hasn’t stepped in yet.
Sulli faces us and pulls off her long-sleeve shirt.
Dang. She’s braless.
Shoot.
Fuck.
I divert my gaze to the ground. Too late. Her nipples are perked. Yeah, I saw her tits. My muscles flex more.
“I’m getting in,” she says. “If you guys want to join, you can.”
Guys.
Plural.
Me and him.
I drill my gaze fiercer at the floor. Hearing the unzip of her pants. Seeing her panties fall on top of her shirt.
Hearing the water splash. Sulli must step inside the shower.
“Akara,” Banks whispers.
I look up.
He’s right in front of me. Brown eyes on mine. Concern pumping from him to me. “You gonna keep beating yourself up and down?” he asks. “Or are you gonna get in?”
I careen my head back, conflicted. I have to protect her. But Sulli has already contested the defense I want to say out loud.
She’s telling me not to guard the castle. To just leave the fortress and follow her and him out.
Banks steps closer, to shut off the sink faucet he left on. Our knees knock together for a second.
I’ve thought about attraction. Whether I’m attracted to Banks like I am to Sulli. I guess I just keep coming back to one question: Is it possible to be in love with someone and not be sexually attracted to them?
Our legs brush again as he shifts away, and we both glance back at the shower at the same time. Sullivan Meadows is already naked beneath the cascading water. As she wipes steam off the shower door, she watches our interaction.
And then she blows a raspberry on the glass.
I burst into laughter with Banks.
Adorable doesn’t even cut it.
Banks and I are smiling, and he’s quick to shed his shirt, pants, boxer-briefs. One last glance to me, he says, “Stay or leave, it’s up to you.” Then he runs after Sulli and climbs into the shower. They rinse off under the hot water together. Fog starts to coat the glass.
Everything inside me is calling and beckoning me to just go. To her. With her.
With them.
What am I doing?
What am I doing?
Like it’s the most natural thing in the world, I just move towards them. Jumping off the sink counter, I strip to nothing, and I take confident strides towards the shower. With each step, pain lessens. Weight lifts off me. Until the glass door swings open without me even touching it.
Until I’m inside the rainfall with them.
Until I’m home.
Hands roam. Mine along Sulli, hers along me and him, and we’re huddled together. Close underneath the warmth of the water.
I knead my fingers through Sulli’s hair. Shampoo foaming as I scrub. She faces Banks while he lathers her toned body with soap, but she tilts her head back a little. Just to smile up at me. “You better be fucking careful, Kits—a girl could get used to this.”
“A guy already is,” I whisper. Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll handle later—right now, I have to be here. I want to be here.
I can’t just walk away again.
I can’t.
“Two guys already are,” Banks rephrases.
We all share a smile, and I wash Sulli’s hair while she nearly melts against my shoulder, eyes shut in ecstasy.
She reaches back, holding onto my neck. Banks pries off a hand wand and rinses off the soap suds along he
r arms and chest. He teases the water against her pussy, and she squirms against me, arching her hips.
My muscles contract. Heat brewing.
Her eyes snap open, longing pooled in them. After I rinse out her shampoo, she runs a washcloth along my abs, along his abs. Like she’s wiping a window clean.
Our breaths go shallow. Banks and I wash our own hair, and she watches as our fingers brush back and forth along our heads. She zones in on my biceps that flex a little.
I smile more. “You like what you see, string bean?”
She collects her hair on her bare shoulder. “Is that even a fucking question? You both could sizzle the ground you walk on.”
“The earth isn’t burning beneath my feet,” Banks says, wiping water out of his eyes.
I playfully check beneath my soles. “Shit, mine are on fire. I must be hotter than Banks.”
He chucks a washcloth at me. I duck, and Sulli slugs my arm. I was waiting for the curse word penalty. Honestly, I just wanted to feel her skin against my skin.
I’m smiling as I steal the hand wand and squirt Sulli’s face.
“Kits!” she laughs before collecting water in her mouth. She spits out a fountain-like stream at me.
We’re all laughing.
Soap and washed-off flour swirl down into the drain. Clean. We’re clean. This can’t be the end, but Sulli is reaching for the faucet. Shower shuts off.
I push back my wet hair, droplets streaming down my jaw and abs. Banks rakes a hand through his wet strands, and while Sulli stands naked between our bare bodies—an aching, sweltering tension stretches. Pulses inside my veins, inside my core.
Sulli glances from him, to me. From him to me. I watch beads of water rolling along her tits, down her abs, down the long length of her legs and unshaven pussy. My brain is yelling at me to pick her up. To run my hands along the curve of her body—to fill her entirely, until tears squeeze out of her eyes and she cries into the highest damn peak.
Yeah.
I want Sulli.
I need Sulli.
Her body shifts under the heat of my gaze.
“You like what you see, Kits?” Her raspy voice squeezes my cock.
I smile, pushing my hair back again. “Yeah, Lady Meadows, you’re a total babe who’s lit more than just the ground on fire.” I’m burning up.
Her lips lift, and once she glances back at Banks, he flexes in arousal.
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