“All the dudes are hot,” Brady complained.
“Well, duh. Of course they are. It’sfantasy. May as well fantasize right.”
“I don’t think fantasy’s supposed to be about actual fantasizing. It’s about imagination. It’s—”
“Shhh,” Layla interjected. “Let me listen. It’s getting to the good parts.”
“It’s pretty much all been ‘good parts.’”
“Shhhh,” Layla hissed, and Brady finally quieted as he sauntered over to us.
“…she thought, perhaps, she should have been frightened of his fangs. They were long, curved, and wicked like the swords worn by her father’s soldiers. The nearest candle shone across them, making them gleam while also bathing them in shadows. Guillaume lowered his mouth to her neck, whisking away her breath. He bit her in the precise instant his sex glided inside hers. Her surprise thundered through her body, her climax fast on its heels as she crested. She screamed so that all in the palace would hear her ecstasy, her cries spiraling down all the way to the dungeons, where Rafael festered, his wolf—”
Abruptly, the narrator’s voice cut off.
Brady was holding Layla’s phone. She lunged for it, but he was half a foot taller and held it easily out of reach.
“Give. It. Back,” she growled.
“I will once you calm the fuck down. Don’t you think we’ve got better things to do than listen to your smutty books?”
“Of course we do. That’s exactly why I was trying to distract myself.”
Griffin cut in urgently.
Layla said in a panicked whine.
She jumped for the phone. Brady whisked it away.
They’d been playing this particular game for as long as I could remember. Those memories had to be real.
I asked.
Hunt set down his book on the table, giving me my first good view of the cover:An Argument for the Purposeful and Controlled Modification of the Human Genome in the Twenty-First Century.
Noticing my attention, he said,
Layla sank into the L of the couch, chortling, her phone and argument with Brady forgotten.
Hunt shrugged.
I said.
With both hands now free, he scratched behind each of Bobo’s ears. My dog’s eyes closed. His smile stretched the width of his face.
My afterglow ebbed a little, much of the tension Griffin had so effectively erased returning in a rush of nerves.
Even before they replied, I knew their answers. Their eyes went hard and unforgiving. Their mouths set in furious, determined lines.
Layla bit out.
I’d been thinking about it while Griffin, Bobo, and I walked over here.
