“Noah, she hit me. Are you going to let her do that? Your shift, your responsibility.”
Noah grabbed my wrists, pressing them together and pulling them over his left shoulder.
“Behave yourself.” Amusement rode his tone. “Don’t pick on him just because he’s your least favourite Adair.”
I immediately felt sorry for Cabe, who only grumbled a reply to Noah’s statement, prompting me to pull out of Noah’s grip. I crawled on my hands and knees to the other side of the cupboard. It was hard to see anything in the dark, but I could feel the material of Cabe’s pants against my wrists as I inched between his legs. He didn’t reach out and pull me in, as I had expected him to, so I kept going until I was close to his face.
“Lucifer?” I whispered, squinting at his face in the darkness.
“Don’t fall for it.” Noah sounded like he was trying not to laugh, but the muffled quality of his voice might have also been a product of him trying to be quiet.
Cabe didn’t say a thing. He didn’t move a muscle. I was really concerned now, and I lifted one of my hands, feeling along his chest until my fingers brushed the bare skin of his neck. He still didn’t make a sound, but I could feel the sudden burn of his emotion, just the same as I had felt it the night before, and I paused with my fingers hovering over his jaw. A silence thicker than the previous silence swept through our dark little space, and Cabe gently reached for me, pulling me astride his hips. My fingers traced higher, and I felt his smile.
“Traitor,” I whispered.
“Hmm,” he replied, his fingers trailing up from my knees to my thighs. He settled his hands in a hold that framed the waistband of my jeans, pulling me closer. “I really shouldn’t be feeling like this right now. Not with what’s going on downstairs.”
“You’re sick,” Noah said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“Very,” Cabe affirmed. “Seph?”
“W-what?”
“You’re shaking.”
I glanced down at myself. He was right. There was a tremble radiating out from my bones and I couldn’t seem to control it. His hands left my jeans to push up into my shirt, settling around my sides, his thumbs brushing low across my stomach as his fingers fanned against my back. I pulled in a deep breath, my head growing suddenly heavy. It was difficult to concentrate on anything but the brush of his thumbs against my skin. His thighs were tense against mine and I was shaking too much to keep myself upright, so I sagged forward, my chest catching against his, my hands clutching his arms. I could hear him breathing now, and it sounded strained.
“If I’d have known that she’d be pushing that feeling through the bond so goddamn often, I might have put off the bonding a little longer.” Noah spoke in a breathy growl. “Seph, maybe go back to needing space. For our sanity.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I protested.
Even to me, I sounded distracted.
Cabe didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the conversation at all. He lifted his head and I could suddenly feel his breath against my cheek. I wanted to turn my head, to encourage him to kiss me, but now really wasn’t the time or place. He seemed to be struggling with the same thought. His thumbs made another brushing motion against my stomach, pressing in lightly against the slight give of muscle. I pushed back instinctively. He groaned quietly, and his head fell away from me, gently thudding against the shelves behind him.
“Take her,” he choked out. “These are going to be quick shifts.”
Noah pulled me back with a swiftness that should have injured me somehow, but I only ended up falling soundlessly into his lap. He kept me facing away from him, and I was glad. I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable.
“Should we play a game or something?” I asked hesitantly.
“My mind’s in the wrong place right now,” Noah replied. “Not sure what kind of game you mean.”
“I mean to pass the time. A word association game or something.”
“I don’t know any word association games,” Cabe admitted.
“Truth or dare, then,” I offered. “I’m sure people play that in closets all the time.”
Behind me, Noah chuckled.
“What is it with you and that game?” Cabe sounded amused.
“I really have no idea.”
“Fine. But the dare part isn’t a good idea. Not unless you feel like taking your clothes off and sitting on me again—”
“Jesus, Cabe,” Noah growled. “Could you not?”
“Just being honest. So let’s just play truth. Or not, actually… considering what I just said. Maybe we should play a different game?”
I was shaking my head, my hands covering my face, but only Noah could tell. Eventually, I found my voice again.
“Um… never have I ever?”
“Never have you ever what?” Cabe asked.
“It’s a game. One person says ‘never have I ever,’ and they insert a random activity into the sentence, and the other people have to say that they have or they haven’t done that thing.”
“Never have I ever thought about kissing someone in a closet with a hostage situation going on a few hundred yards away.” Cabe was apparently hell-bent on proving that he could sabotage all of my game ideas.
“I have.” Noah laughed quietly.
“I have,” I said, somewhat grumpily. For some reason, they both went quiet. “What now?” I prompted.
“Wasn’t expecting you to admit it, pretty girl.”
It was several hours before any of our phones vibrated again, and I had been passed back and forth between Noah and Cabe so many times that I’d simply given up trying to sit with them, and was now crouched in the middle of the closet again.
“No,” Noah answered whoever had called him. “It’s not. It’s hell in here. No, nobody’s hurt. Because it just is, trust me. I’ll put you in a dark closet with the little devil one day and you’ll understand. Fine, here.” He handed the phone to me.
I put it to my ear, whispering, “Hello?”
“What the hell is Noah talking about?” Silas sounded frustrated.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you still under a desk?”
“No, we moved to the closet.” I pulled my knees a little tighter to my chest, feeling the ache in my spine grow worse.
“Do you still have your clothes on?” His tone was too even, too calculating.
“Yes.”
“And the others?”
“Yes.”
He was silent for a moment, and I felt a small pressure squeeze around my heart.
Finally, he let out a rough breath. “Keep in mind that I’ll force you to tell me everything they do to you; and whatever it is, I’ll do it twice over as soon as I have my hands on you. Those are the new rules. So be sure that you’re ready for whatever you do. Think about it before you do it. Understood?”
My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t seem to find the words to reply to him. He was unerringly patient, waiting for his words to sink in and take hold, wrapping around me in a promise of something that I couldn’t quite understand. Or, at least my mind couldn’t quite understand it. There was an undercurrent to what he had said, and my body was the only part of me that seemed to be receiving the message. It heated immediately.
“U-understood,” I finally stuttered.
He hummed some sort of approval and told me to hand the phone to Cabe, which I did. I crouched there, blinking in the darkness until the curiosity finally got the better of me and I turned toward Noah, crawling over to him. He tensed as soon as I was before him, but he reached for my face, swiping a comforting touch along the curve of my jaw.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered.
I worried my lip, trying to force the words out before Cabe was off the phone. I had no such luck, however, because he hung up before I could even think of how to phrase my question.
“Seph?” Noah prompted gently.
I was suddenly too embarrassed to ask him, a
nd I ducked my head forward even though he couldn’t see the blush staining my cheeks. I burrowed into the side of his neck, and his fingers threaded into my hair.
“Never mind,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be embarrassed.” He passed his hand down over my back before sweeping it back up to my hair again. “Ask me what you need to ask me.”
“How did you know I needed to ask you something?” My words were slightly garbled since I still hid inside the crook of his neck, but he must have heard me.
“You’re practically vibrating with a question. Ask, Seph.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“I can handle it.”
I pulled back from his neck, but I still couldn’t face him, even in the darkness, so I rested my forehead in the same spot. “Do you remember when we went to the beach after Poison’s party?”
He stiffened, and I could even hear Cabe suck in a breath. Crap, that was right before Jayden had taken their memories.
“Yes.” Noah’s voice was hoarse, laced with trepidation, and I immediately wanted to soothe him.
“Do you remember…” I trailed off, fighting through my discomfort. “When you bit me?”
The tension drained out of him immediately, but a different energy now hung in the air. His hand dropped from the back of my head.
“Does this have something to do with Silas?” he asked.
I nodded, slightly, and Noah pulled against my knees, dragging me over his lap the same way Cabe had earlier, though his hands didn’t push into my shirt.
“You want to know why the biting feels good?” he asked, his hands flexing where they held onto my legs, right above my knees.
I mumbled an affirmative, though my question had actually been a little more specific. I had wanted to know why pain felt good. I wasn’t naïve, I knew that some people liked pain just as much as they enjoyed pleasure, but I hadn’t been prepared to call myself one of them. I had been grabbed by too many strangers, molested too often by my own father, and had encountered too many abused prostitutes in my own living room to possibly be unaware of this sexual niche—and yet, here I was, trembling simply from the implied threat in Silas’s voice.
Noah seemed to release a breath that I hadn’t even been aware of him holding, and his hands finally pushed higher, skimming my hips and settling into a hold around my rib cage.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about,” he whispered. “It can engage more of the senses at once; some people enjoy it.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“I’m not sure,” he admittedly, slowly.
“Some people like to give it more than they like to receive it,” Cabe spoke up, his voice low. He seemed to know exactly what I was talking about.
“Do you give it or receive it?” I asked, not even sure which one of them I was questioning.
“Both,” Cabe replied.
“Oh.” I tried to think about whether I was both, like Cabe, but couldn’t seem to come to a conclusion.
Noah still hadn’t answered, but his hands had tightened where he held me. “Give,” he finally ground out, shifting uncomfortably beneath me.
I thought I was becoming heavy on his legs, so I pulled up a little bit. His fingers flexed as though the movement had surprised him, and he pulled, probably thinking that I was trying to move away from him. I slid forward, my hips landing flush against his. He sucked in a deep breath and I had a moment of panic where I wondered if I had hurt him as I started to pull off again, but his hands dropped to my hips, keeping me where I was.
“Just… crap. Stop moving.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, and attempted to stay as still as possible. Unfortunately, that required me to pay a lot of attention to my body, which in turn, directed all of my attention to what was pushing against my body, directly between my legs. I squeezed him with my thighs curiously, since it couldn’t really be considered moving, and Noah swore roughly. He pressed up, his hands grinding me downward at the same time, drawing a whimper to my throat that I half-swallowed. A shiver passed right through me and into Noah, forcing a tremble into his hands as his grip flexed and tightened. The constricting vice of his hands seemed to stem from the tremble of restraint that still marked his limbs, and I knew that he was redirecting his attention to his grip so that he wouldn’t move me again. I touched my fingers to the side of his face, feeling the taut vice of his jaw.
“Noah?” I whispered.
He released his hold on me immediately, instead filling his fingers with my hair as he yanked my mouth to his. His rumbling sound of defeat vibrated against my lips as he slanted his mouth over mine. He didn’t start slowly, or ease me into it… but I wouldn’t have expected that from him. He was intense in everything that he did, and it seemed that kissing was no different. His mouth was a driving, drugging demand that completely unraveled me. I responded to him because I had no other choice; he had chased away all rational thought in a bare fraction of a second, reducing my reality to the direction he lent me. When he pressed against me, I pushed closer. When he squeezed the back of my neck, I parted my lips to allow him deeper access to my mouth. He wanted and I gave, somehow understanding exactly what he was asking for. We kissed as though we had been kissing each other for years, though the overwhelming rush of feeling that flooded into me was enough to remind me that my body still considered this a new experience. He broke away too quickly, his hands on my shoulders, pushing me back.
“I didn’t deserve that,” he ground out, his body vibrating with emotion. “You shouldn’t kiss me. I don’t deserve it.”
I didn’t know what to say because I was still reeling from the kiss itself, and Cabe seemed to know the exact moment that he was required to swoop in and draw me away. I shivered on the other side of the closet as Noah released a litany of whispered curses that somehow managed to spill another round of tremors through me.
“How much longer do we have to be in here?” he asked, the ragged timbre of his voice making my chest feel tight.
Cabe didn’t answer and I didn’t answer either. I couldn’t. Cabe wasn’t drawing me closer, so I assumed that he was feeling the same way as Noah. I took a shuddering breath, stood, and pushed open the cupboard door. I stepped out, closed it behind me, and hurried over to the desk, huddling beneath it. They didn’t come after me and I was grateful for that small fact—that is, until the door opened again. I froze, drawing my knees up tighter to my chest, dread churning in my stomach.
“Seph? Cabe? Noah?”
I spilled out, scrambling in my haste, and the cupboard doors burst open as I launched myself at Quillan.
“Bossman,” I groaned. “I’m so happy to see you!”
He accepted my hug, probably because he could feel the complicated mess of my emotion as it churned sickeningly beneath the surface of my skin. My feet lifted from the floor and I locked my arms around his neck, clinging to him.
Safe, comfortable Quillan. God, I loved him.
Wait, what?
Pushing that thought way back, I struggled out of his arms and looked to the open doorway. “Is it over?”
“Yeah.” He was cocking his head at me, his eyes narrowed in curiosity. When he realised that we were all waiting for him to say something more, he turned to regard Noah and Cabe. “The human police took a lifetime to negotiate with them, but everyone’s fine. What’s wrong with you two?”
I refused to look at Noah and Cabe, not wanting to see whatever Quillan was seeing.
“Nothing,” Noah grunted. “Can we go now? If I spend one more second inside this office I’m going to break something.”
Quillan’s eyebrows shot up and he flicked his eyes between the three of us. “Did something happen? Danny wasn’t there today.”
I shook my head numbly, but frowned when I heard that Danny hadn’t shown up to his lecture. “Maybe he knew this was going to happen?” I asked, my forehead crinkling with worry.
That would mean that he was working with Weston, and
I didn’t like that idea at all.
“This doesn’t really seem like something he’d be interested in,” Cabe spoke up. “He likes terrorizing Seph, not Zevs in general.”
I was still frowning as I pulled my phone out and dialed Silas.
He answered after the fourth ring. “Is everyone okay?”
“Yes.” I walked over to the window, tapping a few fingers against the sill.
From what I could see of the campus grounds, the parking lots were all overflowing with news vans and emergency vehicles. The ambulances were beginning to draw away now, since nobody had been injured. As far as hostage situations went, this had been a fairly boring one… not that I had any experience with hostage situations. Maybe they were all like this.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes against the sight. “Where are you?” I asked Silas. He didn’t answer me, and that was all the answer I needed. I turned to the others and met Quillan’s eyes, keeping the phone to my mouth as I said, “He lied to us.”
Quillan snatched the phone out of my hand, but only stared at it. I realised why when I spotted the screen displaying that Silas had hung up the call. Panic swept through me with enough potency to cause black spots to flash across my vision, and then I was dialing Silas’s number again. It rang out. I cursed and dialed Clarin instead.
“We were just about to call you,” he answered. “Are you guys okay?”
“Yes,” I bit out. “Can you meet us in your dorm room?”
“Sure.”
I hung up and made to storm out of the office, but Quillan grabbed me as I passed him.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find out where Danny is.”
He nodded and released me, and they all fell into step behind me as I wrenched the door open. Andrei and Hans stood there, looking unharmed and unfazed and—if possible—a little bored. I nodded to them, they nodded back, and I continued marching. The six of us had to dodge press interviews, emergency crews and crying college students as we made our way to the boys’ residential building, but then the crowds thinned out. Clarin was waiting in the hallway and he tucked me into his side as soon as he saw me, steering me into the room. Poison jumped up from his bed and drew me into a quick hug, but I could tell from their expressions that they knew something was going on. Something more than the after-effects of the hostage situation.
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