Page 196 of What We Become

I keep my voice calm. Steady. “I thought you said I was the only one with control over that camera.”

“Huh?”

I watch the screens cycle through the footage. Me, over and over, in every state of undress and intimacy.

A strange, dizzy feeling washes over me. Not quite anger. Not quite arousal. Something in between.

I tilt my head. I don’t hate this.

“Wait,” I say. “Is this part of your gift? Recordings of us all having sex?” I glance at him. “I have to say . . . I’m not mad about it. We look . . . hot.”

“What are you—” That’s when Milo sits up.

His face changes. The post-sex haze evaporates. His eyes widen, then his brow furrows as he studies the screens, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing.

“This wasn’t me,” he says.

“What do you mean? I thought these were from your camera. Before Holden drowned it.”

“No, kitten.” He’s standing now, moving toward the wall. “You controlled that feed. I never turned it on without you.”

His eyes stop moving. He points to the small housing visible above the bed.

“That’s my camera. Right there in the picture.”

I stare at it.

“This was filmed from somewhere else.” His face is white when he turns toward me.

The clip with him and Holden starts again. Our first night together. I remember looking up at the camera. Thinking about switching it on.

Leaving it off.

Someone recorded us anyway.

The room goes cold. Nobody moves.

Then Holden is off the platform and reaching for his pants at the same time Knox reaches for me.

“Eyes on me, Fury,” Knox says, one hand cupping the back of my neck, the other dragging a discarded shirt over my shoulders like he can erase the feeling of being watched by covering my skin. “Look at me.”

I comply because his voice is steady and the room isn’t.

He’s the one who taught me being looked at could feel like being chosen. An alley, his hand between my legs, the whole street one turned head from seeing all of it. He doesn’t know he taught me that. He doesn’t know somebody just took it back.

Milo is already at the wall of mirrored drawers, yanking one open after another until he finds the control panel hidden behind a velvet-lined compartment of cuffs.

“No, no, no. Come on—” His fingers fly over a touchscreen inset into the wood. “How the fuck are they getting into this room?”

Eli gets the leash off me so fast the chain barely jingles.

I slide off the platform on shaking legs, Knox’s shirt hanging off one shoulder, and the leather beneath me squeaks where my skin leaves it. Every screen still shows me.

Me laughing. Me coming. Me sleeping.

It’s not the sex that hits hardest. It’s the sleeping. The private, unguarded moments. The ones nobody was supposed to own but me.

My stomach turns.