“Fuck yes.” I lifted up, holding him in place, and kissing him. I was claiming him.

All those girls at that house last night. Hell no. All those orgies happening. Fuck no. They wanted him. Victoria. Her friends. Whatever was going on there. No, no, no. Just no. A primal thirst had opened inside me, and I wasn’t shutting it up. I was letting it out and I was reveling in it.

Kash was mine. I didn’t care who tried to take him from me, or who would take him from me. He was mine right now.

Mine. Just mine.

And for the next hour, he showed me how much I was his, too.

THIRTY-SIX

The whole reveal never happened.

Kash was supposed to tell me everything. He didn’t.

I woke late the next morning and Kash was gone. He left a text on my phone.

Emergency. I’ll be back when I can.

I didn’t know what the emergency was. No one shared, and no one else acted like they knew. And over the next few days, Kash was gone. Matt left, too, so it was me, Marie, Theresa, and the kids. Quinn was at her charity meetings/functions. My father was around. I heard his voice one day when I was on my computer, set up in Marie’s office. After Kash left, I asked to be let back on, and Marie was okay with it. The fact that it was her who gave me the okay wasn’t lost on me. Ironic. Or karma. Either of those, but I was eternally grateful to her.

Working on that computer saved me, because those few days turned into weeks.

Kash was able to return, but only at night, and he’d be gone the next morning. I knew this because he’d wake me up while sliding into bed. If he didn’t wake me that way, he woke me with his mouth on me. He would roll on top of me and take me to new heights, night after night. Or it was night after night, until it became every other night. Then every third night.

I missed him.

I loved spending time with Cyclone and Seraphina. I loved being able to work on my security program, and a small part of me was even enjoying the brief moments when my dad would enter Marie’s office to talk to her. I knew she let him know I was behind the wall partition, because he’d get quiet right away and leave. But after a week of this, she stopped telling him. I never moved.

I sat suspended until he would leave.

He’d come in for a general report from her. He wanted to know how Cyclone was during the day, what projects he spent time on, his dietary habits even. He would ask about Seraphina. He would ask if she had heard from Matt. He got the layout of how the staff was doing, who was complaining, who was doing well. He liked to praise the ones who worked the hardest, and he would watch the ones Marie said weren’t working. After a week, one of those was let go. After two weeks, a second one was let go.

He even asked about Quinn, wanting to know when she left, what charities she had mentioned to Marie.

She told him what she knew. Marie never hesitated or lied.

The only two people he never asked about were Kash and me.

It stung at first. I mean, how could it not? A father that I was foisted on. He was gone the first few weeks, then here, and still not talking to me—or about me even. But then again, maybe he asked when I wasn’t around? Maybe he knew I was there? Maybe that’s why he continued to ask her those questions, knowing I was there, wanting, in a weird way, to build a connection to me?

I didn’t know.

He just didn’t ask about me. That’s what I knew.

A month passed, and another couple weeks after that.

More days spent with my siblings. More nights with Kash. It was now nearing the end of July, and I was missing Chrissy.

“Heya, lonely sister, but one that’s so much more mature than me.”

Matt dropped into the chair behind me with a collapsing sigh. His head fell back, his mouth opened, and a full groan left him. “It’s fucking hot.” He rotated in the chair, casting a beady look at Marie, who was sitting at her desk. “I know you like it hot, but would it kill you to put a fan in here?” He gestured to me. “At least for Bailey’s sake. There’s a whole sweat line going down her back.”

“There is?”

I shot him a look. “Dumbass. I’m fine.”

“Doesn’t matter, because,” Matt stood, saying to me, “I came to rescue you.”

“Rescue?” I was still pissed at him. We had never talked about the sex club night.

“From Victoria and the German tutor for Cyclone. They have lessons in an hour, and I know Quinn is intending to ask both of them to stay for lunch.”