Chapter Twenty-Eight
SAGE
Piper is waiting for us at the clubhouse, and this time we tell her everything, including the break-in, the package, and the photograph of her outside the studio.
Ghost sits through the entire conversation without flinching, and when Piper turns her attention to him directly, signing instead of routing it through me, something in my chest loosens just slightly.
‘What’s the plan?’ she signs.
‘We’re building one,’ Ghost signs back, steady and unhurried. ‘You’re safe here. That part isn’t up for discussion.’
Piper studies him a moment longer. ‘You know you look like you’re about to give a briefing. Relax, soldier.’
‘I don’t know how to do that,’ he signs, completely serious, and Piper laughs, the sound of it loosening something in the room that’s been tight since I walked through the door with that package.
I expect Piper to head for bed, but she doesn’t.
Instead, she drags a chair up beside Ghost’s and drops into it like she’s done it a hundred times, arms crossed, watching the financial map scroll across his monitor. There’s nothing amused in her face now, none of the teasing from a minute ago.
‘Show me the committee websites,’ she signs. ‘The oversight ones. All of them.’
Ghost glances at me, one eyebrow lifting slightly, like he’s checking whether I want to intervene. I don’t. Something about the set of my sister’s jaw tells me this isn’t a whim.
I give him the smallest nod… let her.
He pulls up the sites, six of them, all bland, all professional in that specific way that means somebody paid real money to make them forgettable.
Piper leans in, scrolling through each one fast, the way I’ve watched her scan a contract or a design brief a hundred times, reading it in a language that isn’t quite mine.
‘Same person built all of these,’ she signs, barely thirty seconds in.
‘How do you know that?’ Ghost asks.
‘Font pairing.’ She points at the screen without looking away.
‘Same two fonts, same weights, same spacing between the header and the nav bar, down to what’s probably the pixel.
Nobody picks that combination twice by accident.
That’s a template. A designer’s signature, whether they meant to leave one or not.
’ She pulls two of the sites up side by side.
‘And look… same stock photo, cropped two different ways, on two ‘unrelated’ grant pages. Whoever built this either got lazy, or got rushed, or never thought anyone would put them next to each other.’
I watch Ghost go still, the way he does when something new has just dropped into place. It’s not proof. Not yet. But it’s a thread nobody had ten seconds ago, and I know exactly what that look on his face means for how much sleep he’s about to get tonight.
“That’s useful,” he says aloud, and something in his voice makes it clear he means it a lot more than two words can carry.
Piper sits back, and there’s something steadier in her whole posture than there was a minute ago, like being handed something real to do fixed a piece of her that a week of being protected hadn’t touched.
‘I’ve been sitting in that guest room feeling like a problem everyone’s managing,’ she signs. ‘I’d rather be someone who’s helping fix it.’
My throat goes tight. I press the back of my hand to my mouth and don’t trust myself to sign anything back right away, so I nod, hard, and slip out toward the hallway before either of them can see exactly how close that got me.
I look back to see Ghost sign, ‘Okay. Same time tomorrow. Bring your laptop.’
And Piper, grinning like she’s just been handed exactly what she wanted. ‘Try and stop me.’
***
That night, Ghost sits at his workstation well past midnight, the glow of the monitor the only light in the room, and I find myself watching him from the doorway before I even decide to walk over. “You installed a visual alert system for Piper?” I ask, settling onto the edge of his desk.
“Yeah.”
“At midnight?”
He shrugs. “Took twenty minutes.”
I shake my head. “Ghost…”
“The front door of the clubhouse, the back door, and the door to her room are all linked now.” He keeps typing as he talks. “If someone knocks, or rings the bell, or one of the brothers needs her, the receiver in her room flashes instead of relying on someone hearing it.”
I blink at him. “You… researched that?”
He finally looks up from his screen, like the answer should be obvious. “She shouldn’t have to wonder if somebody’s standing outside her door.”
My chest does something stupid. “You really thought of everything.”
One shoulder lifts in a small shrug. “Not everything.”
“Ghost…”
“Just the things I could fix.”
I look at him for a long moment, my brain still trying to come up with something witty while the rest of me has apparently decided I’m just going to fall in love with him instead. “Come to bed,” I say. “The file will still be there in the morning.”
He closes the laptop without hesitation and follows me down the hall.
We move to the bedroom, and the bedroom door barely shuts before he’s got me backed against it, one hand braced beside my head, the other gripping my hip like he’s been thinking about doing it all night and finally ran out of patience.
“You’ve been sitting on that desk for twenty minutes…
” he says, voice low and rough, “… driving me out of my fucking mind.”
“Being this hot for you is hard work,” I say, and he huffs something close to a laugh against my throat before he bites down gently on the curve of my neck, and every smart thing in my head empties at once.
He kisses me hard, one hand sliding into my hair and fisting it just enough to tip my head back the way he likes, before yanking off his club cut and sliding it onto the desk.
I grab a handful of his shirt and yank it up over his head because I’m done waiting too.
His chest is warm under my palms, and I drag my nails down it, just to hear the low sound he makes in response.
“Careful,” he growls.
“Or what?”
His eyes darken, and he backs me toward the bed without answering, which is answer enough.
My knees hit the mattress, and I go down.
He follows, caging me in with a hand planted on either side of my head, taking his time now, dragging his mouth from my jaw down the column of my throat, over my collarbone, unhurried in a way that has me arching up into him just to get more contact.
“You’re doing that thing…” I say, breathless already, “… where you make everything take forever.”
“I’m thorough.” He drags his teeth along the swell of my breast, and I feel the smirk against my skin. “You’ve complained about that before.”
“I lied.”
He laughs and finally strips me out of my clothes, quick and certain now, no fumbling, and when I’m naked beneath him, he pauses just long enough to look at me like I’m something he’s still not entirely convinced he’s allowed to have.
I reach for his belt, but he catches my wrist and pins it gently to the mattress above my head.
“Not yet.”
“Ghost—”
“Not yet,” he says again, and drags two fingers through my folds, and I curse loud enough that he smirks against my collarbone.
“Patience isn’t your strong suit, Objection.
” He kisses down my stomach, unhurried, watching me the whole way, and when he settles between my thighs, he doesn’t move straight for it.
He presses a kiss to my hip first, and I feel his breath warm against my skin as he drags his mouth lower.
“Ghost.”
“Patience,” he murmurs, and kisses the crease of my thigh instead, close enough that I arch up toward him, and he pulls back just slightly, denying me on purpose.
He does it again. Mouth trailing over to my other hip, teeth grazing gently, and my hands fist in the sheets on either side of me, my entire body strung tight, waiting.
Every time I think he’s finally going to give me what I want, he shifts, kisses somewhere else instead—the inside of my knee, the soft skin of my thigh, taking his time like he has all night to spend right here and no intention of rushing a second of it.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I say, breathless already.
He looks up at me, something wicked in his eyes. “Obviously.”
Then, finally, his mouth finds where I need him, his tongue circling my clit, and the sound that tears out of me isn’t remotely quiet.
My hips buck up on instinct, and his hands come down firmly on my thighs, holding me still, holding me right where he wants me.
He doesn’t let up, working me slowly and thoroughly, exactly the way he does everything, like he intends to learn every single thing that makes me fall apart and commit it fully to memory.
My back arches off the mattress. My fingers twist harder into the sheets. And Ghost, steady and unhurried even now, simply holds me there and keeps going.
“Ghost, I swear to God—”
He hums against me, which is worse, and keeps going until my body is shaking and I’m right on the edge, and then he pulls back again. I snap my head down to glare at him, and I actually growl at him, dragging him up by the hair. “You’re an ass for doing this to me again.”
“Noted.” He finally kicks off the rest of his clothes and settles between my thighs, gripping my hip hard enough to bruise.
“But I’m about to make up for it.” His voice is thick with lust as he thrusts into me with one long, deep stroke that punches the air straight out of my lungs.
He doesn’t move right away. He holds there, forehead dropped against mine, breathing hard, as if he needs a second to remember he’s not supposed to lose his mind completely.
Then he starts moving, and it isn’t soft, but it isn’t the wild, half-crazed thing from before either.
It’s deep and steady, every drag of his hips punching a groan out of me that he swallows straight from my mouth.
His hand slides down and hooks under my knee, dragging it up higher against his hip, and the new angle has me cursing his name right into his shoulder. “Fuck, Ghost!”