Chapter 7 – Evelyn
EVELYN
The silence made me want to scream.
The modern apartment, with its stainless steel and cement flooring, echoed my footsteps as I paced back and forth from the kitchen to the office in search of something to do.
There weren’t even any decorative books on the fancy coffee table in front of the TV for me to browse through.
Okay, I really shouldn’t complain about the apartment.
It was a beautiful apartment, and the guys had done their best over the last week to make it feel homey for me while I couldn’t go back to the manor.
Comfy blankets in jeweled tones were thrown across the back of a couch that felt like sitting on a cloud.
Even if Adrian regularly tried to hide the coffeemaker, they were still trying to make this place a home, and having dinner with them the last few nights this week at the table had admittedly been a high point in a really long week.
But the silence this morning was starting to get to me.
Adrian and Alexander were determined to enforce “work-life boundaries” for me after learning just how little sleep I got over the last six years.
Which meant that I was home on a weekend while they were all at the office finishing up the mountain of work we had been dealing with all week.
And it was too damn quiet.
The apartment wasn’t the only quiet thing driving me crazy.
We hadn’t heard a peep from the FIA all week.
Other than being tailed every time we left the building, there hadn’t been a word from Agent Dominic Hayes and Agent Mike Holden since our interview on Monday.
It was giving me the “heebie jeebies“, as Izzy called them. Liam and Sebastian hadn’t been able to dig up anything from the FIA’s servers.
It was like their whole investigation into the Archers was being conducted off official agency servers.
Other than the memo directing the start of the investigation, there was no formal documentation anywhere.
And that made me nervous. The FIA had to have had something to launch the investigation. So what did they have?
We were still no closer to answers, and unfortunately, that meant that everything had to be business as usual.
I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
I hadn’t anticipated that putting my professional mask back on would be this hard.
It felt like cutting off my right arm having to go back to just being Evelyn Harper, executive assistant to SDS’s leadership.
Not having the outlet of Eve Harper, leader of the Archers, was wearing on me more than I thought it would.
Sure, Liam and Sebastian had set up a mini-command center in the office of the apartment, but I was used to pulling twenty-hour days.
Working from 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. at SDS, then turning around and going to work for the Archers till the early hours of the morning.
I was used to always being on the go. Always immersed in work, not being forced to just sit and do nothing.
The guys meant well, I knew that, but I couldn’t just sit around.
I was going to go crazy. It was 11:30 a.m., and I had already reorganized my closet three times.
Like an answer to my prayers, there was a knock on the door. I flew to the door, sliding across the polished floor in my socks in a move that would make my eight-year-old self proud.
Sebastian’s smiling face greeted me through the peephole. I threw open the door. Relief rushed through me. I thought he was at the office.
“Evie, my darling!” Sebastian smacked a kiss on my cheek as he breezed by me. He set down his armload on the coffee table. Takeout bags from my favorite Italian restaurant sat on top of a stack of board games. I arched an eyebrow. Board games?
“I thought you were supposed to be at the office?”
Sebastian, more than anyone, had been slammed this week, as a lot of Citadel’s former clients needed security systems. The product team had been slammed.
“Why would I be at the office when I could be home with you?” Sebastian’s easy reply had my heart swooning even as I kept my face neutral.
“Charmer,” I accused him, but I grinned. My playful golden retriever was the perfect cure for my boredom. And maybe we could finish what we started the other day in the office breakroom.
“Anything for my darling,” Sebastian said. He clapped his hands together. “So! We have options. Obviously, I brought food. It’s not Alexander’s lasagna, but it’ll do. And then I brought board games, or we can go spar down in the gym.”
Clearly, the guys had been picking up on the restless energy I was trying to hide.
“It’s that obvious?” I frowned. I thought I had been doing a good job of acting like everything was normal, but if my restlessness was showing, was I slipping up in other areas? I couldn’t afford to slip up with the FIA watching me so closely.
“Only for us, because we care. So what will it be?”
I thought about it. Sparring sounded great, but it was probably just going to amp me up further. Plus with the concussion I should probably be taking it easy. And I hadn’t played a board game in forever. “Let’s play board games.”
“Good choice,” Sebastian said, pulling containers out of the takeout bag. “But first, food.”
We ate in comfortable silence. Sebastian was never at a loss for words, but he seemed content to just sit and eat, and by the end of lunch, I was already relaxing back on the couch.
My restlessness seemed to settle just from being in his very presence.
Part of me hated that they all had that effect on me—a byproduct of having to do everything and handle everything myself—but the larger part of me appreciated it.
I wasn’t used to being cared for, but I was learning.
Sebastian cleared our plates and took them to the kitchen. I leaned forward to peruse the board game options he had brought. The classics were all there: Monopoly, Clue, Sorry, Candyland, and more. A slightly battered box at the bottom of the stack caught my eye, and I grinned.
Alone in my apartment with one of my attractive boyfriends?
This game was perfect. Maybe it was the intimate moment we shared at the office earlier this week, but I was comfortable with Sebastian.
It wasn’t that I ever felt unsafe with any of them, but I was more comfortable initiating things now.
At least, I wanted to be. And Sebastian seemed to bring out the lighter, more playful side of me.
Like remnants of a childhood I should have had instead of the one I did.
“Twister?” Sebastian said from behind me. He grinned when he pointed to the box I held. “Good choice.”
I grinned at him. “Ready to be beaten?” I was pretty flexible. I had to be, as the Archers often got me into tight spaces. Grace wasn’t the only one who’d had to hide in a cabinet or two over the years.
“Oh, you’re going down,” Sebastian said, rounding the couch.
We lifted the coffee table and moved it against the wall of windows, clearing a space to spread the mat out.
“Who’s going to spin the dial?” I asked, frowning. I hadn’t thought of that.
“I have an app on my phone that calls out a color based on a computer-generated spin,” Sebastian said.
I arched an eyebrow. “Played a bit, have we?”
Sebastian smirked. “Only when Marcus loses a bet.”
I laughed. I would pay good money to see Marcus trying to contort his body in a game of Twister. As if reading my thoughts, Sebastian grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll make that dream a reality. He can never resist a bet.”
“I’m looking forward to it. Let’s play.”
Sebastian presses play on his app. The app was actually pretty neat.
Every thirty seconds it would call out a different color for each player to move to.
It started easy, right foot on blue, left hand on yellow, etc.
Sebastian was surprisingly flexible and matched every move I made with lithe grace.
I was competitive and determined to win, however.
When the app called for my right leg on green, I saw my opening.
Instead of sliding my right foot from the yellow dot to the green dot right next to it, I pivoted my body, swinging it up and over Sebastian’s body until I was in a table position on top of him.
I wasn’t leaning against him; in fact, we were barely touching, but the length of our bodies lined up against each other.
The barely there touches caused a flutter of heat in my stomach.
“Oh, that’s how it’s going to be.” Sebastian smirked up at me.
I sniffed primly at him. “I don’t know what you mean.” Hopefully, this would distract him, so I could claim victory.
His next move could have untangled himself from our position, but instead he just slid it down slightly so he pressed into me more fully. My inhale was quick and noticeable, and his smirk widened.
The app called out the next move, and I was forced to shift away in order to make it. I nearly groaned at the lack of his body heat, but I held it together. I had a game to win, after all.
I didn’t have to wait long, though. His next move had our bodies pressing together again, my back against his chest, or actually more like his belly. When the app called out the next combination, I saw my opening. I slid my leg up until I was in a runner’s lunge, my ass pressed against his groin.
Sebastian tilted his head forward, burying his face in my hair as he groaned.
I could feel his warm breath against my ear, and I fought the shiver that swept down my spine, even as he grinned.
The app called out his next move, and I grinned wider when I realized he wasn’t going to be able to make it.
“Are you ready to concede defeat?” I teased him.
He groaned and collapsed, pulling me down on top of him. I giggled as I let him roll me until I was underneath him. His weight pressed against me like a comforting blanket, even as desire rose in me.
“Is it really a loss if I end up with you in my arms?” he said softly, his intense blue eyes searching mine softly.
“It feels like winning to me.” I tugged him down into a kiss.
His lips were warm and soft against mine, coaxing my mouth open. Heat shot straight through me. I was alone in my apartment with one of my handsome boyfriends, and I had a huge bed down the hall.
“Sebastian,” I gasped as he pulled away to pepper kisses down my jawline.
“Yes, my darling.”
“Take me to bed.”