Page 54 of Kyle

“Okay.” Her brows pulled together.

“The women are…” Anaya stiffened, misreading my pause. “They’ll mean well but they’re gonna swarm around you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they all know what happened in Timor-Leste. They’ll want to make sure you’re okay. They know you mean something to me so they’ll also want to feel you out. But mostly they’re gonna want to make sure you feel welcome. They’ll just be pushy when they go about that.”

“They know?” she whispered.

“Sweetheart, when you went missing it was a companywide effort to find you. With Omni looming over our heads, the women are in the office every day and their husbands don’t keep shit from them. Which means they know you were taken. They don’t know anything about your past and they won’t, not unless you feel like sharing. With that said, if you wanna share, you won’t find a better group of women to have your back.”

“I mean something to you?”

Anaya didn’t miss much and I didn’t think she’d allow my admission to go unquestioned.

“Hell, yeah you do. What is it you think we’re doing here?”

“I guess I just don’t understand how I could mean anything to you when we just met.”

“That makes two of us. But I’m not questioning it and I’m not fighting it.”

On that thought, I slowly brought my hands up to cup her cheeks and leaned down to brush my lips against hers. I was desperate to really kiss her. Wet, deep, and thorough. But I tamped down the urge knowing the parking garage was not the right place to push her.

When I straightened, her eyes were hazy, and fuck I wanted to see that look more often. Preferably when we were alone where I could test her boundaries, or rather after I’d tested those boundaries and she was lying satisfied in my arms. I bet that look would be even better—way fucking better.

Slow and steady wins the race.

And I definitely planned on winning.

“You ready to go up?” I asked.

Her entire being transformed right in front of me and I smiled. “Of course I am.”

There was the Anaya I first met.

At the time, I hadn’t known her confidence was laced with a healthy dose of fortitude. That just under the surface lay fear she worked hard to overcome, and every time I witnessed her conquer it, I had the urge to kiss the hell out of her. Tell her I was so proud of her. Tell her I was impressed with her tenacity.

So fucking strong.

“Then let’s go up. But if at any time it gets to be too much for you, let me know.”

“You’re handling me again,” she snapped.

“No,” I denied. “I’m telling you, I have your back. And when we get upstairs, you’ll get it.”

I led us out of the garage and into the front door of Z Corps. Ivy was noticeably missing from the front desk where she spent most of her day. Zane’s wife had taken over most of the duties his old personal assistant, Rena, had performed and then some, but Ivy refused to work in the office next to her husband, and no one in their right mind would refer to Ivy as Zane’s assistant. She preferred to do her work at the front desk, work that consisted of running the company so Zane didn’t have to.

I keyed in the code to unlock the front door and walked us through the empty reception area to another door and stopped. I placed my fingers on the biometric scanner and entered my eight-digit code, once accepted the lock clicked and I pushed open the door.

Our footsteps echoed in the hallway leading us to the elevator and when we stopped, I placed my face in front of the retinal scanner and waited.

“Where are you taking me, Area 51?” Anaya muttered beside me.

The elevator door slid open and I motioned for her to precede me.

“There’s one more security checkpoint,” I informed her.

“Seriously?”