Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Jonus
Four days of sleeping next to Sloane Adams without touching her and I have officially run out of cold water in this house.
Every morning is the same. I wake up with her body pressed against mine, her auburn hair tickling my chin, her soft curves molded to my side like she was specifically designed to fit there.
And every morning, my cock is rock hard and pressed against her in a way that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.
I extract myself carefully. She murmurs in her sleep and reaches for me, her fingers grasping at the warm space I’ve left behind. It takes actual physical effort to leave her behind.
Then I lock myself in the bathroom.
This is my new routine. Wake up, untangle from beautiful female, shower, masturbate, get my shit together, go back out there and pretend I’m not losing my mind.
I’m getting very efficient at it.
Wednesday morning, I finish my shower and dress quickly. When I return, Sloane is awake, sitting up against the pillows, her phone already in her hand. She’s smiling at the screen.
“The group chat?” I ask.
“Anna sent a picture of her kitten, Dinah, wearing a tiny, knitted hat.” She turns her phone to show me. The cat looks furious. “Ellie is dying.”
This group chat has become the soundtrack to our days.
Ellie created soon after initially meeting Sloane and named it “Orc Brides & Associates”—a title that made Sloane snort-laugh and Anna respond with a wall of crying-laughing emojis.
I don’t read their messages. I don’t need to.
I can track the emotional temperature by the frequency of Sloane’s laughter throughout the day.
Anna and Sloane’s connection happened fast. It started professional—Sloane had questions about the evidence chain, details about the domestic fraud that only Anna could confirm.
But it got personal quickly. Anna feels indebted to Sloane for almost dying to finish what Anna started.
And Sloane feels connected to Anna because they survived the same monster.
Different pits. Same enemy.
“Wound care,” I announce, kneeling at the foot of the bed. She extends her feet toward me without being asked. This part, I will never rush.
I unwrap the bandages from her left foot and examine the healing skin. The smaller cuts are nearly gone now and all that’s left are pink lines where open wounds used to be. The heel that’s stitched with dissolvable stitches is closing well, no redness, no heat. She’s healing fast.
“Looking good,” I tell her, my thumb, yet again, tracing the arch of her foot where the skin is smooth and undamaged.
Her breath hitches.
“You’ll be walking soon,” I continue, applying the ointment with more focus than strictly necessary. “Short distances at first. Maybe by this weekend.”
“Really?” Her face lights up. “I can’t wait to stop being carried everywhere.”
I can wait a very long time.
I don’t say this out loud. Instead I wrap her feet in fresh bandages, lingering on the task longer than needed because I’m a selfish male who likes having her soft skin under my hands. She watches me work, quiet, her cheeks slightly flushed.
After wound care, I carry her to the bathroom so she can get ready for the day.
Then I go out to the main room while she gets ready.
I start on breakfast for her. Sometimes I can get her some of what everyone else is eating, or some days I cook food just for Sloane.
Today I get out a fresh pan and make her favorite—scrambled eggs, toast and bacon.
I’ll get her coffee for her when we come out here.
I know exactly how she likes it, which is mostly cream and sugar with some coffee as an afterthought.
I enjoy learning my female’s likes and dislikes. She hates the crusts on toast and likes an unusual amount of salt on her eggs.
These are the things that loathsome human, Ryan Krychek, never learned in however many months of being her fiancé. And yet I learned them in four days. I keep this observation to myself because it makes me feel smug and I’m trying very hard not to be smug.
I return to the bathroom and find her ready. I carry my sexy future bride out to the kitchen. She enjoys being out here early enough to catch Garlen, Ellie and Zoe before they all leave for the day. All of us, including Aldar, are eating and talking.
Afterwards, Sloane settles onto the couch, and I place her second cup of coffee on the side table within reach. Loki immediately hops up beside her, pressing his ridiculous fluffy body against her thigh.
“Thank you,” she says, picking up her coffee. “You don’t have to make me breakfast and get my coffee every morning, you know.”
“I know.”
“But you’re going to keep doing it.”
“Yes.”
She smiles into her mug.
I smile into mine.
This is what our days look like now and I am obsessed.
We work side by side on the couch, laptops open, Loki between us.
She writes her article—the Aldridge exposé that’s going to blow the roof off everything—and I coordinate the release strategy with the human media, lining up contacts at three major outlets for simultaneous publication.
The same approach we used for Anna’s evidence, but bigger.
We make a good team. She’s the hunter. I’m the strategist. She finds the truth and I figure out how to make the world pay attention to it.
At one point she reads me a paragraph about the shell company structure and asks for my take. I suggest reframing it around the human impact—the communities affected by the money laundering, the people hurt—rather than leading with the financial mechanics.
She stares at me. “That’s brilliant.”
I shrug. “I’m more than a pretty face.”
Sloane laughs and goes back to typing, but I catch her glancing at me a few times after that.
Sometimes her foot ends up on my thigh while she works.
Sometimes my hand rests on her knee. Small touches that neither of us acknowledges but neither of us stops.
I’m playing the long game here and I know it.
Every casual touch is a brick in the foundation of something permanent.
She doesn’t know this yet, but I do. That’s fine. I can be patient when it matters.
By mid-morning, Aldar appears with his tablet. He’s been out coordinating with law enforcement contacts and doing whatever else Aldar does when he disappears for hours.
“FBI update,” he announces, settling into the armchair. “They’re very interested in Sloane’s evidence. They’re building an international case against Aldridge. Her testimony connecting the domestic fraud to the cartel money laundering could be the linchpin.”
Sloane looks up from her laptop. “Good. I want that asshole in prison.”
“They will want you in DC for a deposition at some point.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
Aldar nods and glances at his tablet.
“How’s Lucy?” I ask casually.
His eyes snap to mine. “I haven’t spoken to Lucy yet today.”
“And yet you just looked at your phone and your expression changed.” I lean back, stretching my arm along the back of the couch behind Sloane. “She texted you.”
“It was a logistical message.”
“At barely nine in the morning?”
“She’s on East Coast time. She was already at work.” His tone gets defensive and clipped. “It was about the FBI coordination.”
“Uh huh.”
Sloane’s eyes dart between us. I can practically see her filing this away for the group chat later.
Aldar redirects with the subtlety of a charging bull. “Can we focus? The FBI contact wants a timeline for when the article will be ready for publication.”
“A few more days,” Sloane answers. “The draft is nearly complete. I’m waiting on one more piece of documentation from the Cayman banking records, and then I need to go through legal review with my editor.”
“Good. The sooner it’s out, the sooner Aldridge loses his reason to silence you.”
The word silence lands heavily in the room. Nobody responds to it.
Aldar leaves shortly after—off to check on the additional security cameras he ordered and pick up supplies from town. The house settles back into its quiet rhythm.
By late morning Sloane is deep in her article with that focused expression I’ve come to love—brow furrowed, lower lip caught between her teeth, fingers flying across the keyboard.
She’s been remarking a lot lately about how much she loves this town and specifically this neighborhood.
Yesterday she stood at the window while I held her up and stared at the mountains and said, “I can’t believe places like this actually exist. Georgetown is all brick and humidity and traffic. This feels like a different planet.”
I filed that away, tucked it close alongside every other small sign that she might want to stay and make something permanent here.
On the other hand, I’ve started to wonder if I could live in Georgetown with Sloane.
Possibly. I refuse to be like her ex, making her do all the relocation work to keep their relationship intact.
After this is all over, I will need to be flexible if I want to keep this amazing female in my life.
If she wants to live in Truckee, that’s what we will do.
If she wants to stay in Georgetown because that makes more sense… that’s what we will do.
My secret wish is that she will fall in love with this area so much she’ll want to move into that house I saw for sale recently, just two doors down from Dane and Laurie.
In fact, I might’ve gotten in contact with the real estate agent.
I’m in the kitchen making her a sandwich—turkey and swiss on sourdough, no crusts—when the doorbell rings.
Loki lets out an explosive bark, launches himself off the couch and skids across the hardwood toward the front door.
I freeze.
We’re not expecting anyone. Dane and Laurie always text before coming over. Garlen and Ellie are at work. Aldar has a key and never rings the bell. Deliveries go to a PO box in town—Aldar set that up specifically so nothing traces to this address.