24
TATE
Green darker than the Avri on my suit snakes through me.
Everyone pauses, Tiger’s eyes already large and round as his drama-radar perks up, his mouth stuffed full of pasta and the fork in his hand hovering mid-air.
“U-uh . . .” Alby stutters, and my eyes narrow to slits, forehead creasing.
I take an angry bite of my seasoned chicken as I scrutinise him, trying to figure out what he’s hiding . . . what secrets I can pluck from his baby head.
“Leave my bestie alone, Tater Tot.”
My scorching glare slides over to Tiger. “Did you just call me a potato?”
“What? It’s cute.”
I’m going to lob him to the other end of the world.
But then I remember my question went unanswered, and my attention lasers into Alby again, whose chin’s now dipped so low it practically rests on his chest as he twirls the spaghetti on his plate around his fork.
Definitely hiding something.
I snap, “What aren’t you telling us?”
Flinching, his gaze darts up to meet mine, before immediately zapping elsewhere, then ping-ponging around the room, unable to settle. “N-nothing!”
“Don’t lie, you fuckface—”
“Hey!” Tiger cuts in angrily, but his boyish pout takes away any of the intimidation he was trying for. “No one calls my bestie names!”
“Your bestie is lying to us, shitface—”
“Don’t talk to my brother like that, Tate—”
Voices overlap, the volume in the room rapidly increasing as a long-winded argument ensues; curses and insults fly back and forth across the table, and when one aims at me, I whack it right back ten times harder, stabbing my knife at the offender as I imagine skinning him alive.
“OKAY, I’VE BEEN KEEPING A SECRET!”
With the strength of a tidal wave, my focus crashes back onto Alby, as does everyone else’s, the shock of the table palpable.
I don’t think anyone’s ever heard him speak so loud before.
“I’ve been keeping a secret . . .” he repeats in a volume much closer to his default this time, almost a whisper.
“I knew it,” I hiss, grip tightening on my knife, ready to butcher the guy if I don’t like his answer.
“Put that down,” Scotty sighs. “He won’t be comfortable enough to get it out if you’re openly threatening to stab him.”
I glower. “I won’t stab him unless he gives me a reason to.”
“Comforting.” The muttered word comes from my right as Cooper tips his crystal glass back, taking a sip of his water and looking ahead of him at the onyx wall like he’s entirely uninterested in this conversation.
“I’m . . .” Alby’s words are even harder to pick up on now, and my ears strain to catch each one as he continues, “Ezla kind of . . . spoke to me . . . in my head . . .”
Silence.
Then everyone speaks at once, Cooper no longer acting like he’s any better than us as he fixes all his attention on Alby too:
“OMG, Bestie! And you didn’t tell me?!—”
“She spoke to you?—”
“She was in your head?—”
“Does that mean you heard her voice? Her actual voice?—”
“Yes!”
The tiny affirmative is like an itty mouse’s, and yet we all quiet down, every one of us eager to hear more about my Bonded—my because I’m still not so sure about sharing Havoc with these buffoons, not until they give me solid proof of what they can offer her—my wrath put on a temporary hold because nothing is more interesting than my girl.
“Yes to all of them.” Alby fidgets nervously in his chair, gaze trained on his plate again. “It—it was after Game 1. Right at the end—just after I’d bonded her. It was . . .” He gulps up a bathtub of oxygen like he can’t breathe properly, and I understand him there. Havoc really is breathtaking.
Literally.
I wonder if she’d strangle me if I asked?
Preferably with my cock buried inside her with her pussy strangling me at the same time.
“It was beautiful . . .” Alby visibly melts for my girl.
“Like a . . . like a sultry purr”—his flush becomes even more prominent that it already had been—“with . . . with an edge of danger that warns you away, but you can’t help but come closer.
Like a siren . . .” At this point, he appears as though he’s talking more to himself, forgetting us completely as his mind firmly lodges itself in Ezla Land. “Velvety . . . smoky . . .”
“Huh. I didn’t know he was a poet.”
Cooper’s words break Alby out of his trance, and he sinks down in his seat, the red on his cheeks now reaching concerning shades.
Fucker. I was enjoying that.
Maybe I should ask Alby to write some poems about Havoc for me?
Or maybe I should string him up using his intestines for thinking about my girl how he does.
Hmmm . . . decisions, decisions . . .
Before I can decide on which option is calling to me the most, Scotty says solemnly, “Why didn’t you tell us?”
Alby’s cheek dips in as he bites the inside of it, hesitating to respond.
Then his shoulders droop, and he mumbles, “It felt like a secret. I mean . . . I doubt many people have heard her voice, so I wanted to respect that by not sharing anything about it with anyone. And also . . .” His voice drops so low I struggle to pick up his next words.
“And also, I felt special knowing it was only me she’d chosen to speak to so intimately. ”
The room goes soundless again.
Then I gesture at him with the knife in my hand, and his panicked gaze darts from it to my face. “I’ll ask you again . . . Why is my girl so interested in you?”
“THAT’S ENOUGH!”
Thunderstruck, the entire table reels back.
And we all look at Tiger, where none of his usual sunshine casts its rays over everyone in the vicinity, but instead a storm cloud rages.
There’s no spark in his eyes, just a furious expression on his face that I didn’t even know he was capable of.
“He doesn’t need to be interrogated! And fuck you, Tate!
Ezla is our Bonded, not just yours! It’s her choice who can be with her—not yours!
You’re not the only one who can pursue her!
And I, for one, will not stop just because of your stupid fucking jealousy! ”
Then he violently shoves away from the table, chair screeching across the floor. He marches down the hallway to his bedroom, fists clenched at his sides.
Scotty’s hard stare of reproach is louder than any words could be before he rises and follows his brother.
Cooper and Alby don’t move a muscle.
And I . . . For the first time ever, I think I might feel something like . . . guilt.
***
“I need you to spot me, Havoc, baby. Please.”
I can feel her unflinching expression behind her visor as she stands a few feet away with her arms crossed over her chest.
You look so hot, Havoc.
I try to push the words from my mind to hers, but, like always, they seem to meet a solid wall.
I huff.
I’ll get inside you one day, baby. In all the ways possible.
My back on one of the benches in the private training room we’ve claimed as ours, I bench-press 120 kg early in the morning, going through the personal fitness routine I’ve been doing for years, now with some minor tweaks from my girl.
I pretend I’m not doing peachy and act as if the bar is about to fall on my neck and crush my windpipe.
She’s as unmoving as a statue and far more uncompromising.
“Havoc, please.” It comes out a whine, but I don’t give two shits—she should know how desperate I am for her. I’m not ashamed of it.
“Downplaying your talents will do you no favours, Player 4.”
Player. 4.
That’s it.
Hissing, I throw the damn barbell carelessly over my shoulder, its collision with the taalk floor shaking the entire room and the loud BOOM!
rattling my eardrums. Then I reach out and fucking grab The Bonding Games Champion, unyielding as I dump her on top of me.
Wrapping myself around her like a monkey to a tree, I make sure she can’t move an inch.
“Tate!” Scotty barks from somewhere, but I don’t acknowledge him in the slightest, all of me focused on my girl as I feel her delicious little body up against mine.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was caught off guard.
Letting out a groan, I punch my hips up greedily, grinding against that hot cunt.
Growling, she moves the only part of her available, and her helmet comes rushing at my unprotected head.
Thinking fast, I move one hand and quickly catch the glossy taalk before she can knock my lights out.
But now an arm is free, and she doesn’t hesitate to slam her fist into my face.
Oh yeah, that’s sexy as hell.
My cock agrees, pulsing with my need for her.
“Fuck’s sake, Tate.” With my neck forced to twist to the side from the power of my sweet Havoc’s blow, I see Scotty in my line of vision, standing a few feet away with an agitated hand messing up those usually tidy blond locks on his head.
He looks as though he’d been preparing to intervene but thought better of it.
Which is good for him because I’d throttle him to his early demise if he dared to try and interrupt mine and my baby’s foreplay.
“Again, my tantalising little Havoc,” I purr.
She snatches up my chin in an unshakable grasp, keeping my vision filled with nothing but her. As if I’d ever want to look at anything else. “Do that again, and I will kill you.”
Her cold, robotically modified voice has a pleasurable shiver rolling through me, yet simultaneously a slice of annoyance. No one will take me away from the woman I love. Not even Havoc herself.
“I’m yours. You will not throw me away.”
She stills.
My eyes narrow. What is this? What emotion is this, dammit?
A low rumble like an avalanche builds up from my chest and into my throat. I need to know what she’s feeling. Why can’t she let those maddening mental walls down and feed me everything? And why can’t I see her face? I want to know every part of her, see every part of her. Own every part of her.
I need more.