Chapter 14 #2
Brown butter. Sea salt. The good stuff.
Through the open archway to the living room, I watch them. They aren’t relaxing anymore. They’re in crisis mode. Apparently, the server migration in Dublin went sideways twenty minutes ago. The vibe in the room is electric.
It’s terrifying.
It’s hot.
Declan is at the main desk, headset on, typing with a speed that blurs his fingers.
“Reroute the traffic to the secondary node,” he barks into the mic. “I don’t care about the latency, just keep the connection alive. Bypass the firewall.”
Knox and Rhys are on the floor, surrounded by laptops, speaking to each other in a language of half-sentences and code.
“Load is spiking on cluster four,” Rhys murmurs, eyes darting across a graph that looks like a heart attack.
“I see it,” Knox replies, voice tight. “Throttling the intake. Patch is ready.”
“Deploying in three… two…”
“Mark.”
Eli is the conductor. He’s pacing behind them, phone to his ear, tablet in hand.
“We’re aware of the outage,” he says smoothly, his voice dropping into a register that vibrates with authority. “The patch is deploying now. We’ll have stability in under two minutes. Yes.”
He hangs up, scans the monitors, and points at Declan. “Dek, check the redundancy.”
“Way ahead of you, boss. We’re green.”
I stand there, gripping a spatula, completely mesmerized.
They are brilliant. They are powerful. They are undeniably successful men running a global tech empire from their living room in sweatpants.
The timer on the oven beeps.
Heads snap up. I go still, spatula raised like a flag. One second they’re decoding the matrix; the next, they’re looking at me like wolves scenting a rabbit.
I clear my throat, turning to pull the tray out, the smell of melted chocolate and browned butter filling the air as I slide it onto a cooling rack.
“I…made payment,” I say softly.
Knox is there before I even set the potholder down, looking like a man who hasn’t eaten in a week. He reaches for a cookie, ignoring the heat.
“Careful! They’re hot.”
He takes a bite, groans, and closes his eyes. “Oh my god.”
Rhys appears at his shoulder. “Share.”
“Get your own.”
Rhys steals the other half of the cookie right out of Knox’s hand.
It escalates instantly. Declan abandons his headset, Eli slides his phone into his pocket, and they both descend on the island.
Declan takes a bite and braces his hands on the counter on either side of me, trapping me against the edge. He leans down, his face inches from mine, chewing slowly. His gaze swallows me, the moss-green gone dark and intense.
“You made these?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
Knox reaches for another one. He catches a drop of melted chocolate on his thumb. Instead of wiping it on a napkin, he brings his thumb to his mouth, licking it clean while holding my gaze. His tongue drags slowly over the skin.
My breath hitches.
“Good girl,” he murmurs.
The praise hits me right in the center of my chest. My face flames. They’re devouring what I made them, all while looking at me like I’m the next course.
Rhys leans his hip against the counter, crowding my space even more. He doesn’t say anything, just watches me, his gaze dropping to my mouth, then back up to my eyes.
The air in the kitchen goes thick. Heavy. Charged.
I open my mouth to say…something. I don’t know what. To tell them to back up? To tell them to come closer?
Then Rhys stiffens.
His head snaps toward the sliding glass door that leads to their backyard.
“Movement,” he says sharply. “Hedge line.”
The heavy, sensual mood vanishes instantly, all of them suddenly alert.
Knox turns, eyes narrowing. “Is that…?”
I squint through the glass into their dark yard. A small, white shape is squeezing itself under the hedge that separates our properties, dragging something behind it.
Something colorful.
Something lacy.
My heart stops.
“Is that…” I whisper. “My turquoise thong?”
The air in the room drops ten degrees.
“That,” Rhys growls, rising to his full height slowly, “is the thief.”
“The dog,” Declan breathes. “It’s the damn dog.”
Pip wiggles the rest of the way under the fence, entering their backyard with a mouthful of my laundry. He gives a mighty tug on a long string of fabric. My panties. My lace panties.
“He’s got the stash,” Knox says, voice tight.
“Get the door,” Eli orders.
Declan slides the door open.
We spill out onto their patio at the same time that Pip looks up. He freezes, my thong strap dangling from his jaws. He sees four large men and one mortified woman and I swear the dog frowns.
And he does not look guilty. He looks challenged.
He tightens his grip on the lace and bolts across their lawn.
“LEFT! GO LEFT!” Knox roars.
Rhys hits the grass running while Knox goes low, cutting off the escape route to the side gate. Declan snatches a heavy blue moving blanket from the stack of boxes, shouting, “I got him!”
But Pip is faster than sound. He slides left, leaving Declan grasping at empty air and nearly tripping over his own feet.
“He’s slippery!” Declan shouts. “Why is he so fast?!”
“Rhys!” Knox yells.
Rhys drops into a crouch near the back fence, waiting for the terrier to commit to the gap.
And then he lunges.
It’s a smooth scoop. He hits the grass, rolls, and comes up with the squirming, growling bundle of energy tucked tight against his chest.
“Got him,” Rhys grunts.
The yard falls silent. Declan is panting. Knox is wiping dirt from his forehead.
And I am standing on the patio, staring at the ball of ruined fabric hanging from the dog’s mouth.
My underwear.
My missing lace.
Pip drops it, and it lands on the lawn with a wet plop. It is…shredded. Chewed. Destroyed.
Eli walks over, takes the wriggling dog from Rhys, and sighs. “I’ll take him home.” Then his gaze shifts to me. “Mia?”
“I…” I stare at the lace. “It was the dog. The whole time.”
“Yeah,” Knox says, coming to stand beside me.
I walk out onto the grass as Eli leaves with the dog, disappearing through the side gate. Rhys is still standing there, looking down at the ruined pile of lingerie. He reaches down and picks up a scrap of turquoise lace.
My face burns hot enough to light the yard.
“You thought it was us,” Rhys says. “Didn’t you.”
Guilt swarms in my chest. I look up at him. At Knox standing behind me. Then at Declan watching, his expression unreadable.
“I… yes,” I whisper. “I thought…I didn’t know.”
Rhys steps closer. The moonlight catches the sharp edge of his jaw. I expect him to look offended, but he doesn’t. He looks…hungry? And insulted.
“You thought we crept into your yard and stole these?” He lifts the lace, the fabric wrapping around his large fingers. “Like rats? Like scavengers?”
“It sounds crazy now,” I stammer, backing up a step.
“It’s not crazy.” He steps with me, closing the distance. He lowers his head, inhaling deeply near the fabric, his upper lip curling slightly at the smell of wet dog covering my scent. “It’s instinct.”
Heat floods my belly. Knox steps in closer from behind me. I can feel the heat of his chest against my back, caging me between them.
“If we wanted your scent, Mia,” Knox murmurs, his mouth close enough to my ear that his breath stirs my hair, “we wouldn’t settle for cold laundry.”
I shiver.
Rhys drops the lace. It hits the grass, forgotten. He steps over it, crowding me back until I bump into Knox’s solid frame.
“We don’t steal,” Rhys says, his voice a rough rasp that vibrates through my bones. “We take.”
He reaches out, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck, his thumb pressing against the pulse point under my jaw, his skin rough and hot.
“We’d take it from the source,” he tells me, eyes black in the dark. “We’d wait until you were slick and sweet and begging, and we’d take everything we wanted.”
He tilts my head back, exposing my throat to the moonlight. To him.
“So, no. We didn’t steal your panties.”
My knees give out. I lean back against Knox, and his arm comes around my waist instantly, clamping me to him. Solid. Iron-hard. Possessive.
For a second, nobody moves. The air is so thick with alpha pheromones I can taste it.
“Boys,” Eli’s voice cuts through the thick, sexual haze like a whip from the gate.
We all freeze.
Eli walks back into the yard. He looks at Knox’s arm locked around my waist. He looks at Rhys’s hand on my neck.
His eyes darken, nostrils flaring as he takes in the scene. He doesn’t look like he wants to stop them. He looks like he wants to join them.
But he stops.
“Back down,” he says, his voice strained. “She’s shaking.”
Rhys’s thumb strokes my neck one last time. A caress. A warning. Then he pulls his hand back slowly. Knox loosens his grip, but he doesn’t let go completely. He drags his nose along the shell of my ear before he steps back.
“We’re good,” Rhys says, voice rough.
I let out a breath.
I am shaking.
But I’m not shaking from fear.
I’m shaking because for a terrifying, wonderful second…I wanted them to take everything.