When Grayson started tensing, Reece felt the mirroringtenseness in his own body. The hands in Reece’s hair tightened, just slightly, because even this far gone, Grayson was being careful not to hurt him, and through the muffled sleeping back he thought he heard, or maybe felt, Grayson stutter his name.
And then all of Reece’s coherent thoughts were gone, swallowed by the tide of pleasure that overtook him, and the feel of Grayson against him, and the bone-deep certainty that whatever happened next, Evan was his and no one could ever take his touch away again.
Chapter Thirty
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Stone Solutions has “requested” that we kill your feature piece, “The Empathy Industrial Complex or: How the American War Machine Learned to Leverage Fear and Feelings for Profit,” and leadership has agreed.
It sure is interesting what kind of stories get censored when the people who own the corporations also own the media.
—Internal note at theEmerald Tribune
The night’s storm had left Seattle blanketed in a thin layer of snow that had quickly turned ice-edged and slushy. Kickoff wasn’t until noon, but as the wet, gray morning stretched over downtown, the early crew was already trickling into Lumen Field: sports analysts settling into the press box, vendors starting up their kitchens, ushers prepping for the fans’ arrival, local news reporting live from the field’s bright green Astroturf coated with its patchy layer of white.
Lennox stood in the aisle of the club seats at center field, looking over with narrowed eyes at the floor-to-ceiling glass that enclosed the Stone Solutions’ luxury box.
Guarding a dozen empaths was about the most unnecessary thing Lennox had ever done for Charles Stone. After their call with Charles, the empaths had been huddled in weepy circles, and Lennox had been so bored he’d dozed off.
When he’d woken, however, the camera in the suite had been dark.
Now he craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the empaths through the box’s glass walls, but they must have been huddled too deeply in the suite to be seen. Charles had been right about that too, then; they weren’t trying to draw attention from reporters or anyone else, just meekly hiding in the box as instructed under threat of violence to the others.
Stupidly easy to manipulate or not, Lennox still needed eyes on them. He’d been planning to try to catch the players warming up, and now he’d have to deal with the annoying little fucks first.
His eyes were still narrowed as he climbed the stairs from the club to the suite level, and then strode with quick, irritated steps down the hall to the Stone Solutions’ box, unlocking the door and ducking inside.
Sure enough, the empaths were huddled together around the coffee table, some of them on the couch and chairs, some on the rug, a couple of them in each other’s laps. Beyond them, the glass surrounding the dual rows of recliners framed a slice of downtown’s skyscrapers and the snow-spotted green field below.
The empaths hadn’t looked up when he stepped inside, involved in their own whispered discussion. Lennox yanked the door shut behind him with a loud bang. “Hey!”
The empaths still didn’t look up. They didn’t even twitch.
“Hey,” Lennox said again. “Fix the camera.”
Not a single head even turned his way. Lennox rapped his knuckles on the wall, harsh and loud. “I’m talking to you,” hesnapped. “The camera is down. And you will be so fucking sorry if I have to come over there and fix it myself.”
No response again. He might as well have been invisible.
Lennox cracked his knuckles pointedly. Looked like he was going to get a target for his irritation, at least. And empaths were the easiest targets he’d ever faced: a couple of slaps to one of them and the rest would be begging him to stop and rushing to do what he wanted.
“If that’s how you want it,” he said, fists curling automatically. “I don’t actually like hitting you little freaks, you know.”
All of the empaths looked up and over at him as one.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
“That was a lie,” one of the empaths said, in a whisper that filled the suite.
“What?” Lennox started to say.
But the empaths were on him.
The chime of her phone woke Gretel from a restless sleep. She stared for a moment at the living room ceiling above Jamey’s couch, her thoughts immediately taking off like a sprinter, as if she hadn’t slept at all.
She reached for her phone. Her dad’s friend from the Stone Solutions board of directors, Roger Spade, had responded to her email.
From: [email protected]
