Yale
Waking up with Silence isn’t unfamiliar. We’ve fallen asleep mid-movie too many times, and she’ll always snuggle into me, resting peacefully like we’ve always been this way. So, when I open my eyes to darkness and Silence’s feet tangled with mine, it feels right.
She’s cuddled into Zayden, but in the night, I felt her get closer to me, like she needed the contact. Xavier is on the other side of the bed, fast asleep. He’s not much of a cuddler, happier to be in his own space.
My phone says it’s almost two in the morning, but I already know going back to sleep isn’t an option. As if sensing my eyes opening, Bullet clambers onto my side of the bed, panting happily. I get up and leave the others sleeping and go downstairs with the dog.
Xavier went to the nearest town yesterday to pick up some food, but there wasn’t exactly a wide selection considering we’re in the middle of nowhere. So, I snatch up a brand of chips that I’m fairly sure went out of circulation when I was a kid, and head to the living room.
Sitting on the couch, I open my laptop and the bag of chips, and log into the secure server that allows me to browse without being traced.
I spend the next hour looking into Mercy, full name Mercy Harrison.
There’s a sealed record from when she was fourteen—assault and battery.
She put a classmate in the hospital, a few broken ribs and a fractured cheekbone, and the statement she gave was that the girl was a bully and deserved it.
She was given community service and put into anger management for a minimum of five years.
It seems she was advised to channel her anger into something safer, so she picked up mixed martial arts and did well until her early twenties.
She had her first and only daughter, Ashley, and opened an MMA center for kids.
She never committed another crime—at least, not one she was caught for.
It seems cut and dry, but I delve deeper—into emails, financial records, text messages, trips, frequent stops on her car’s navigation, purchases out of town, large cash withdrawals … but nothing is out of the ordinary.
By the time I’ve decided Mercy is a safe bet, the sun is rising, and I’m not alone.
“What are you doing?” Silence asks sleepily, rubbing her eyes as she climbs onto the couch with me. She’s in one of Zayden’s T-shirts, hair mussed.
“Work.” I close the laptop and lift my arm for her to snuggle into me. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore.”
I laugh softly. “Good sore?”
“Very good sore.” She sighs. “We’re okay, though, right? We’re still friends?”
My heart warms that she’s worried, because I was, too. But after last night, I now know we’re stronger than to let something like this break us. I kiss her forehead. “We’ll always be friends. Nothing would change that.”
“What if I smothered Xavier in his sleep?”
“You’d probably have good reason.”
She laughs and picks up my laptop, placing it on the coffee table before straddling me. I rest my hands on her hips, eager to slide them up her sides and cup her breasts but waiting for her signal.
She lets out a shaky exhale. “We’re alone.”
“We are,” I say. “What do you want to do?”
“I have an idea.”
I smile, and she leans down to kiss me. It’s slow, her tongue dipping into my mouth leisurely, as if we have all the time in the world. She rests her hands on my shoulders, and I run my palms up her front.
Cupping her breasts, I groan softly. “You were so perfect last night.”
“So were you. It was more than I ever thought it could be.” She kisses me again, more urgent this time.
My dick is already hard, and I run my thumbs over her peaked nipples. I’ve always known Silence was beautiful, but seeing her writhe in pleasure like she did last night was like meeting a secret side of her, and I need more.
“You’re sore, Silence.”
“Then fuck me slow.” She grins, and I growl, gripping her hips and flipping her onto her back.
She pulls off her T-shirt, and I take off mine, throwing it aside.
She captures my mouth with hers again, and pushes down my sweats, freeing my cock.
I grip the back of her knee, hiking it up before sliding inside her.
“Oh,” she gasps, head dropping back.
Her warmth quivers around me, and I breathe into her neck, moving slow, my thrusts deep, tender, dragging my cock in and out of her. I kiss across her throat, nibbling her jaw until I reach her mouth again.
“You’re made for us, Silence,” I whisper.
She locks her eyes on me, lips parted. “Then never stop making me feel this way.”
I’ve never had sex like this. Not just the slowness, but the feeling of completion, like we fit together. It feels like we’re one, like I might die if this ever ends, and I can’t stop watching her.
Now I understand why Zayden can do this. Seeing her unravel for me, the pleasure washing across her features, the total peace in her expression—it’s addictive. If my brothers and I can give this to her, we will.
“Yale,” she breathes, squeezing her eyes closed as she comes. She pulses around me, waves of warmth wrapping around my spine as my orgasm follows. I fill her, groaning through gritted teeth. My muscles relax, and I lie with my cheek on her chest as I catch my breath.
Just like last night, Silence runs her fingers through my hair and holds me. Her heartbeat thunders against my ear, and I close my eyes.
“I wish we’d done this years ago,” she says, gliding her nails across my shoulders.
For a few minutes, we’re quiet. Silence continues stroking my back, and I close my eyes, happy to fall asleep here if she’ll let me. She seemingly does, because when I next open them, it’s almost eight in the morning.
“Yale,” she whispers. “I need to pee. If I sleep any longer with cum in me it’ll fuck up my pH balance.”
I smile and lift off her, allowing her to stand. She squeezes her thighs together, tiptoeing out of the living room.
“You look like a T-rex.”
She flips me off and I laugh as she waddles away, quietly begging my cum to stay inside her, as if she can negotiate with it.
While Silence is gone, I lie on my back, gazing at the ceiling as I try not to dwell on what the day could bring. Not just for our relationship, but our safety.
I’m confident that hiring Mercy is the right move.
We could use the extra help now that Grant is gone.
I’ve also been dipping in and out of the accounts and ownership of the Agency, preparing for if this all goes wrong.
If it turns out that Ryker has more power than we realize, we need to be ready to give him what he wants, even if it’s the last resort.
My phone pings, and I’m relieved when I see the message.
CHARLIE: whatever you need, Y. Tell me the time and place and we’ll fuck shit up.
I grin and pull on my sweats and T-shirt before glancing over my shoulder when I hear footsteps.
“Morning,” Zayden says. “Is Silence down here?”
I stretch. “She’s in the bathroom.”
“PH balance?”
“Yep.”
He nods. “Xavier’s on his way down. We all need a meeting.”
A sliver of panic works its way into my blood. “About last night?”
“No, that’s still fine. It’s about Seattle,” he says, just as Xavier wanders down the stairs in his hoody and sweats. He runs his fingers through his hair, eyes half-closed.
“I popped a stitch fucking your wife,” he grumbles.
“What a difficult life you lead,” Zayden teases.
A door opens and closes, and we watch Silence leaving the downstairs bathroom. She’s back in Zayden’s T-shirt, her cheeks still a little flushed.
We all stare at her, and she pauses in place. “What?”
“Nothing,” we say.
“You’re all very intimidating in the day. You’re intense times three,” she says, wandering up to Zayden and pushing herself onto her tiptoes to kiss him. “Morning.”
“Morning, baby. Do you need coffee, or was coming enough to wake you up?”
She purses her lips to hide her smile, and Xavier seems to come to life. “Who came? You came? And no one woke me the fuck up? Traitors.”
“Kitchen, coffee, meeting,” Zayden says. “In that order.”
We do as we’re told, and once Xavier and I are sitting at the table and Zayden is leaning against the kitchen island, he fills us in.
“You sure you still want to know everything, Q?” he asks, and she nods as she walks to the table, placing her coffee down.
Xavier tugs her onto his lap, and she blushes crimson.
She’s used to us being tactile, but Xavier has spent years keeping her at a distance, so it’s endearing to see her a little off her game with him.
“Yep, go ahead,” she says. From somewhere underneath the table, Xavier lifts the dildo from last night and pokes Silence in the cheek with it. She cackles and smacks it away. “Stop that.”
“We’re in deep shit,” Zayden begins, and our smiles vanish. Xavier tactfully places the dildo out of sight, wrapping an arm around Silence’s waist to balance her on his lap.
“How deep?” I ask, sitting up.
“War deep,” Zayden says. “Envy called me to Seattle because one of our recruits was killed—”
“Oh my God,” Silence says. “That’s awful.”
Xavier shakes his head. “It’s fine. Happens a lot.”
“It’s not fine. It was a person,” she says.
“And now they’re a dead person.”
She tuts, and Zayden continues. “It was Gio Morelli. He somehow managed to become a recruit, confessed to another recruit who he was, and was killed.”
Fuck. I’m out of my chair and going for my laptop before anyone can ask another question.
Returning to the kitchen table, I pull up missing persons reports and any email from the East Coast using Gio’s name.
As the system scans through online correspondence, I open the last message I got on my phone and tap dial, before putting it on speaker.
“That was fast,” Charlie says.
“Charlie, you’re on speaker with X, Z and Silence.”
He whistles. “The whole crew. Nice to kind of meet you, Silence. You bringing your wife into this mess, Z?”
“Not voluntarily,” he says, folding his arms.
“I’ve got a hypothetical for you, Charlie,” I say, just as the search narrows down mention of any Morelli before moving onto Gio. “Say you stumbled across the relative of someone important, and that relative was dead, how bad would that be?”
He pulls in a breath. “How important are we talking?”
“Not top, but close.”
“What coast?”
I meet Zayden’s eye, and he waits a beat before nodding. “Yours,” I say.
Charlie is quiet for a sec. “Don’t tell me a name. I don’t want to have to make a difficult choice, here.”
“No names. Purely hypothetical.”
He sighs. “If it’s just a relative, cousin twice removed or—”
“A brother.”
“Holy fuck, Yale,” he groans, and Silence leans into Xavier’s chest. His expression is stony, as is Z’s. “Well, we’re talking purely hypotheticals, so I’m guessing you’re not talking about Sabina Morelli’s little brother going missing a few months back.”
Zayden pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Never heard of them,” I say.
“How much of a hand have you had in it? Are we talking trigger finger or—”
Zayden says, “A miscommunication, Charlie. Not intentional.”
“Sabina doesn’t tend to care about intentions, Z.
Pissing her off is not a way to prolong your life,” he says.
“If it was anyone else, I’d say fall on your sword.
Arrange a meeting, explain, maybe lose a few of your body parts, or maybe they’d take just one of you as payment. But with Sabina … bury it.”
Zayden swears under his breath. “You’re sure?”
“Unless you want your wife to become a widow.”