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SIX
Decima
I knewsomething was up the next morning the moment I entered the kitchen and saw all the guys talking around Julius’s card table of army figures. They spoke quietly, not even glancing over as I grabbed a glass of water. I lingered for a moment, trying to catch a snippet of conversation.
Then it clicked.
This scene looked familiar. It was exactly what I’d seen when they’d been planning their last mission. I watched as Julius moved a few figures across the board, and Talon readjusted one, saying something in his usual low tone. Blaze shifted from foot to foot as he added a few lines to a sketch on the whiteboard, and Garrison monitored the expressions of his friends rather than the board itself.
I itched to go over and find out what they were up to now, but… this was their work. If they’d wanted me involved, they’d have asked me, right?
They were doing so much to help me without my even asking them to, without my having any hope of repaying them in any material way. I didn’t want to overstep and sour the budding peace we’d made.
The restless itch didn’t leave with those thoughts, though. I turned and headed back to my room, which held both my cot and the guys’ exercise equipment. Working out was always my go-to method of burning off tension.
As I stepped onto the treadmill, I paused. How much was this habit my own, and how much was it simply something Noelle had drilled into me?
My hesitation only lasted a few seconds. My trainers had pushed me to stay strong and lean, but when I’d decided that I needed a release in the middle of the night, it hadn’t been Noelle who’d compelled me to do sets of cardio exercises. I’d turned to that outlet of my own accord.
I set the pace slow to start, a brisk walk that transformed quickly into a jog. When my legs felt warm and supple, I turned the jog into a sprint and finished the last quarter of a mile. As the second mile rolled around, I sprinted half of it and slowed to a jog. By the time I finally slowed to a walk again, my breath was coming a little rough. Good.
I took myself through some stretches, and then I jumped into a weight training rotation that had me sprawling on the floor, breathless and satiated. The rush of exhausted exhilaration after a good workout was something that I’d never be able to top any other way.
Well, maybe I’d found at least one other way recently. My attention settled on the weight rack for a moment, remembering Talon’s firm hands hefting me up there, his body scorching against mine, his cock filling me. A giddy flush rose over my body.
I stood and strode toward the cabinet against the wall, pulling out a scratchy towel and wiping away my sweat. When I brushed the towel over my face, I caught a hint of laundry detergent, but it had been overpowered by the reek of male perspiration. Despite being clean, the towel still smelled of musk from overuse.
I couldn’t stop myself from running it over my face again and breathing in the scent deeply. It reminded me of Talon—of how sweaty we’d gotten during the collision of our bodies in that very atypical workout the other day.
The exercise hadn’t totally burned away my restlessness, though. My nerves still twitched with uncertainty. I needed something more.
I stalked out into the common room to find the guys had vanished while I’d been working out. Steffie had arrived and was wiping down the kitchen sink. Giving her a wide berth, I paced from one end of the apartment to the other. That didn’t help. I clearly wasn’t going anywhere.
“Full of bees,” Steffie said in her dry voice.
I turned toward her. “What?”
She swiped her cloth across the kitchen island. “Full of bees. It’s what my mother always used to say when I couldn’t sit still. Like I had a hive riled up inside me. A frequent problem of Blaze’s, you might have noticed. Seems like you’ve got the same difficulty at the moment.” She shot me a crooked smile that didn’t totally fit with the grandmotherly vibe of her gray-and-white streaked bun of hair and softly plump figure.
“Yeah…” I wasn’t sure how much to say to her. The guys had introduced me briefly to the woman who took care of their cleaning and errands, but I’d barely spoken to her before. Did she even know what they’d found out about who I was and why I was here?
I ambled over and started unloading the dishwasher, which was both something to occupy myself and a show of solidarity. Joining someone in their work was one way of forming a connection. I’d mostly used that trick with targets I was planning to kill, but there was no reason it couldn’t work with a potential ally.
Steffie raised her eyebrows but didn’t shoo me away. When I was halfway through sticking the dishes back in the cupboards, I judged it safe to venture, “How long have you been working for the crew anyway?”
“Oh, years and years,” she said. “I watched them train Garrison in. But obviously I have seniority over all of them.” She winked at me.
“So, what, they put up a job application online or something?”
She burst out laughing: a rich, vibrant sound that spoke of a big personality within her subdued exterior. “That wouldn’t do for work like this. No, I was… part of a job, and they decided it was a good idea to keep me on to do jobs for them.”
It was hard to keep my jaw from dropping. I had a sudden image of Steffie stalking through dark corridors alongside the guys with a gun in her hand, which would have seemed totally ridiculous if not for the glint in her eyes. “A job? I mean—I know what kind of jobs they do.”
“Yes, they mentioned that the air had been cleared.” She moved to start wiping down the front of the fridge, scrubbing hard at a few stray splatters of food. For a minute, I thought she might have decided she didn’t trust me enough to say anything else. Then she sucked in her breath.
“They’re good boys—you should know that. I’d been sold to the people they were hired to go after. People who used me as a slave. I’d been with them for years too. I hardly remembered… I didn’t have anything but my name when Julius set me free. But he saw something in me and he knew I’d been cleaning for the men who’d ‘owned’ me, so he suggested that I could look after this apartment for them. And then when that worked out, other properties they wanted kept up. And other responsibilities on top of that.” She shot a glance at me over her shoulder with a quirk of her lips. “I know a good situation when I’ve got one. I made myself as useful as possible.”
The thought of Julius extending that offer of kindness to her wasn’t too hard to believe after he’d opened his home to me too, but hearing her explanation sent a waft of warmth through me. These men were killers, but they weren’t just that, any more than I was.
