Watching Ames (XO Surveillance Book 1), page 22
“Good, because I got two.”
I stared back up at Alex, my eyebrows raised in defiance, expecting him to argue with me when the two black balls of fur tumbled out of the box and immediately started chasing each other throughout the giant living room. I saw the shift as it happened, lighthearted Alex who was first and foremost my friend, slowly turning into the dangerous, shady figure I knew he could be. His eyes tracked the kittens running around the room before shifting to me.
I felt the heat of his gaze tracing over the hands on my hips, the taut line of my lips, before landing on my challenging stare. And again, even though I knew that gaze should scare me, even though I knew he had infiltrated my apartment and my life and my mind, the only thing my traitorous body felt was pure heat, flooding my veins until I could feel a pulse deep in my belly, needy and wanton.
Alex took two quick strides, closing the distance between us before I could even feel shame for the arousal I felt pooling between my thighs. I barely squeaked out a noise of surprise before his mouth crashed down on mine, tongue parting my lips and delving into my mouth. I returned the kiss with equal fervor, no thoughts in my mind other than how good and right he felt with his body pressed against mine, his thigh pressed between my legs, so close to where I wanted him most. His mouth moved against mine effortlessly, drawing my need higher each time his tongue tangled with mine. I heard a moan fall from my mouth just as Alex pulled away, leaving me unsteady without his body to hold mine up.
I stared at him for a moment, reality trickling back in slowly and then all at once, the overwhelming emotions forcing me to close my eyes for a moment. It was one thing to come here under duress, another to agree to stay here while I waited for my locks to get changed. And while I had fallen back into our friendship headfirst without regret, it was something entirely different to fall into a relationship with him. Giving him my pride and my attention was unavoidable at this point; my body was something I could hold onto. Or so I thought. One look and my self-control was on the floor.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, the rational voice inside my head tried to remind me as I kept my eyes on Alex’s lips, red and swollen from our kisses. But as I kept staring at him, trying to conjure up the slightest shred of regret or shame at our kiss, the only thought that ran through my mind was that what I should really be protecting is my heart, because I wasn’t sure anyone would be able to break it as thoroughly as the man standing in front of me.
Chapter 21
Him
She stood in front of me, flushed and breathing hard, lips and mouth raw from where my scruff had marked her skin. My cock hardened even further at the sight, loving the idea that I’d marked her. That she’d wear my scent on her skin for however long it lasted. It took every shred of control I had to keep from taking her mouth again, forcing her lips apart with my tongue and tasting every bit of her over and over again. But when I glanced up from her lips, I saw the guarded look in her eyes, the one that told me she wasn’t quite ready to accept us, that her brain had succeeded again in talking her out of falling fully for me.
“That’s twice now you’ve given me that look after I’ve kissed you. Next time, Ames, I’m going to make you beg for it. So when I kiss you, you can’t try to take it back or talk yourself into regretting it.”
Her unsure face turned into one of surprise, and her cheeks darkened further with lust, though I couldn’t tell if it was because I read the words written across her face so easily or because of the dark promise in my words.
This girl was fucking made for me. She was everything I never imagined I would find, meeting every challenge without backing down. Her stubborn look when she confronted me about the cats was my kryptonite, causing me to lose control in an instant. But even though she had kissed me back with equal intensity, her chest still rising and falling with the effort, those eyes still held the last bit of doubt, my teeth clenching as I watched her breathing slow and her shoulders stiffen like a cornered animal.
She liked the darker side of me, this I knew without an ounce of doubt, but she wasn’t quite ready for that part of me. She accepted the stalking and my friendship, but for some reason becoming mine was just outside of my reach. But I was a patient man. I had waited for months before coming out of the shadows, and I could wait a little longer until she gave me every inch of herself.
So I pulled back on the incessant need that pounded through my veins whenever she was near, instead reverting back to the friend she preferred. I reached out and brushed her hair back from where it had fallen in her face during our kiss, pulling my lips in a semblance of a smile that only she and a few others could pull out of me, her body relaxing at the familiar gesture even before I pulled her earlobe with my fingers.
“Let’s see what you bought for the house.”
Chapter 22
Her
Alex kept his promise the rest of the week. He didn’t try to kiss me a single time, even though I caught the desire in his eyes at random times. Once when he caught me playing with the kittens, laughing as they attacked my bare feet with their small claws. Another when he came home from work to find me in the garden with Wren, both of us sweaty and covered in dirt. A few times in the mornings, when I would wake up wrapped in his arms, his eyes on my lips as if he were debating breaking his promise. But most often, I would catch him looking at me as if he were planning ways to make me beg when I argued with him.
The first time was just a few hours after our kiss, after we had finished unloading the car and putting everything I bought into their proper places. I had pulled the keys out of my pocket, holding them out for Alex to take back now that I was done using his car.
“You keep them,” he waved the keys off with one hand as he broke down the last of the boxes, tucking them under an arm as he took them out to the recycling.
I followed behind him, fingers still partially outstretched with the keys dangling between them. “What do you mean, keep them?”
“I mean keep them. The car is yours.”
I froze in the doorway to the garage, watching Alex’s muscles bunch under his dress shirt as he threw the cardboard into the bin. I tried to keep a steady voice as I chastised him, “Alex, you can’t just give me your car.”
At that, he turned around, cocking his head in the stubborn way I’d become familiar with the past couple of months.
“It’s not my car. I bought it for you, right after you asked me for it.”
“I didn’t ask you to buy me a car, Alex,” I scoffed, hands migrating to my hips as I settled in for a fight.
His eyes followed the motion, the same lust I had seen earlier in the afternoon returning in full force, but he kept his distance as he casually leaned against his car. “When you fell asleep, after Bex left and you were caught in the rain, you said you loved my car, and if you ever had the money to buy a new one, you’d buy one just like mine. I just figured the bigger one would be easier with your work, to make room for larger orders without worrying about trunk space. I can get you the smaller one if you’d prefer that.”
“I can’t just take a car as a gift.”
“You need a way to get to work,” he countered, voice calm as he tried to rationalize a way to convince me to take the car. “Besides, I won’t return it. So either you’ll use it, or it’ll sit here in the garage until it falls into disrepair.”
The argument followed us from the garage to the living room to the kitchen as we made dinner. As our debate became more heated, so did I, cheeks flushing as we continued arguing the same points over the car. Alex never wavered from his cool, even tone, though his eyes continued to track my terse movements, darkening occasionally when I would stomp my foot or stab a finger into his chest to make a point.
I eventually had to concede when the lust in his eyes had me trembling, worse than ever since I knew firsthand what could come from that look. Agreeing to use the car through the end of my stay with him, I excused myself to take an ice cold shower before returning back downstairs for dinner. I was relieved to find his demeanor back to the friendly attitude I could handle more easily than the dark one that threw all my rational thought out the window.
But even if he kept his lips to himself, Alex was never far from me. He still touched me whenever he could, resting his arm on the back of my chair or pressing his palm against the small of my back as we walked. Occasionally he would hold my hand, especially if we were with Dev and Wren. At first, I thought it was a strange sort of claiming, but I quickly realized that being with his friends was the only time he let his guard down and relaxed enough to touch me so casually.
After the kiss on Monday, the rest of the week followed the routine we had fallen into before the Peter incident. Tuesday morning Alex drove me to work, stopping first by Ironwood so we could grab coffee and pastries. I had to avoid the questioning stares from Adam and Delon, who watched Alex’s hand on my waist with barely-contained glee, their excitement echoed by June when Alex walked me inside the studio a short drive later.
I all but ran to the back when Alex brushed his lips across my forehead, much to the delight of June, who called out an open invitation for Alex to sit in on any class in the future as he headed out the door. June knew me well enough to avoid any type of emotional conversation about my relationship status, but as I set up my stations for my first class, I felt her arms wrap around me from behind in a gentle hug as she whispered in a sweetly smug tone, “I told you I liked him.”
Spending time with Alex meant being fully accepted into their ragtag group, who truly treated each other as family despite both Wren and Dev having blood families of their own, though both lived on opposite sides of the country.
“We all just kind of fit together,” Wren explained later in the week, when I stopped by her shop - aptly named In Bloom - for the first time, choosing to take her up on her offer to visit after my classes finished for the day. I spent the first hour exploring the shop as she dealt with customers, making a game of finding Wren’s darker inclinations - the tastes that created the floral creations I coveted so much - hidden among the traditional items throughout the store.
There was a bouquet of red roses, leaves, and greenery spilling over the edges, highlighting the hollow eyes of the skull vase they sat in. The walk-in fridge was filled to bursting with flowers, but I recognized more than a few of the flowers she had used for my bouquets. There were dark flowers that looked ink-stained, paper thin white flowers that looked almost translucent, and spiky sprays of foliage alongside the sunflowers and red roses.
She plucked flowers of the former type as I stood shivering behind her, sticking the flowers in a bucket I held until it was filled. She directed me to set the bucket next to the front counter before moving toward the wall of vases behind her. Wren grabbed a round, matte black vase and brought it back toward me, quickly arranging a bouquet within it. I watched as she plucked flowers among the bundle, sorting them easily within the neck of the vase. She started with dark burgundy dahlias, following with mauve roses and white ranunculus, finishing with small sprigs of eucalyptus that perfumed the entire space with its soothing scent. It was gorgeous, similar to the types of arrangements Alex had gotten for me, and I considered taking a picture or making a note to have Wren recreate it for me another time.
She was quiet as she arranged the flowers, stepping back every so often and observing the arrangement from different angles, slightly adjusting the petals or snipping the stems shorter so they lay evenly alongside the others. It was nice, seeing her in her element, the opposing side to the flirty, talkative personality I had seen at Alex’s. Both were still her, just two sides of the same coin. Like her outfit - a matching skirt and bandeau set, with large sunflowers printed on the white cotton - and the moody bouquet she just created. Opposites that somehow created a comprehensive whole.
As she finished the arrangement, she took a step back, looking up at me for the first time in a while, and continued her thought as if no time had passed. “I love my parents. We get together a couple of times a year, and we talk on the phone at least weekly. But they’ve never understood me.”
I watched a self-deprecating smile tug at her lips as she continued, “I know I sound like a sullen teenager. But it’s true. I’ve always been more brash than my family, joking and flirting more than they ever found appropriate. And when I wanted to start my business, they begged me to choose something more stable, thinking a floral business would never take off. They especially hated my darker arrangements, saying they were too morose and too ‘goth’ -” her sarcastic emphasis on the word made me laugh, “- to ever get any business. But with Dev and Alex and you, I don’t know. I never felt that disconnect. You guys all got me. It was so seamless, being fit into their little twosome. It just felt right. You know what I mean.”
She didn’t pose it as a question, but her words settled deep in my gut, the description matching exactly how I felt with them.
“Yeah,” I whispered, nodding as I admitted, “I know exactly what you mean.”
And when she pushed the finished arrangement in my direction, winking as she rested the familiar silver note card among the petals, it felt just like she said: right.
While we never planned to hang out together, Dev was constantly at the house. He often worked out in the fully outfitted indoor gym he and Alex had installed in the basement, popped by to discuss business with Alex, and dragged boxes to and from the large shed they used for work. It sat further back on the property from the gardening shed, blending among the trees so well I hadn’t noticed it when I first saw the house. It looked big enough to be a pool house or an in-law suite, though I had never seen the inside. Alex had asked me early on in the week to avoid the space, and while I wasn’t sure what was inside, I knew it was likely either dangerous or confidential, and I respected the one boundary he placed on my stay here.
He also worked, of course, doing the ‘legwork’ of their business, meaning he spent his days tracking down targets or installing security cameras when people were less-than-aware of it.
But when Dev wasn’t doing any of those things, he was spending time with me. Either keeping me company at the house when I wasn’t working - which was less than normal, considering I had paused orders for my small business until I had a place to live - or cajoling me into a few reps of whatever exercise he was doing when I’d venture downstairs to interrupt his workout. He was a good teacher, encouraging but tough, but I was a terrible student, hating any form of exercise that required more effort than a walk.
After a few rounds of bickering over how many reps I should do, I was usually able to convince him to let me free with the promise of food. We’d often eat on the patio, or sometimes at the island if the kittens were awake. The two black balls of fur had adjusted well to their new home, spending most of their days laying in the rays of sun that filtered in through the large windows. Nyx and Chaos were aptly named, Nyx often hiding in the shadows before jumping out at your ankles - usually Dev’s - while Chaos jumped from the cabinets onto your shoulders without warning.
When we weren’t playing with the kittens, Dev and I chatted about work and Alex and Wren until one of the two would inevitably stop by, our one-on-one chats often turning into a family dinner. There was a reason Alex had such a large kitchen, I had quickly learned, and it was because everyone often congregated at his house.
There was always enough food to feed an army, a deep freezer full of meat ready to be defrosted at a moment’s notice and a fully-stocked pantry of essentials hidden in the basement. It seemed like a survivalist’s dream when I first stumbled upon it, but I realized how necessary it was when we ended up feeding Wren and Dev almost every other night in the week I lived at the house.
Even Bex had somewhat settled into our little group, though she kept herself distanced enough from everyone but me, mostly stopping by when she thought I’d be alone. We would go exploring in the few acres surrounding the house, attempting to carve out hiking paths through the trees with just our footfalls and a few markers we’d tied to trees as guidance. She was still looking for work, and when I brought up trying to get her a job at June’s studio, she promptly shut me down.
“I was offered a job recently, actually,” she confessed one afternoon, words barely making their way to me as I led us through a particularly tight patch of trees.
I twisted on my toes, almost losing my footing on the uneven ground, catching myself at the last minute on the trunk of a tree.
“What?! Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t help the excitement in my voice, though I watched as Bex rolled her eyes at my dramatics. I knew she hadn’t been able to find a stable job since her court case. She had kept afloat by taking small-time jobs in retail and food service, where they were usually willing to overlook a criminal record, but I knew her true passion was computers.
Unfortunately, that was also where she had gotten into trouble before, meaning not many reputable companies were willing to take a chance on her past the background check process.
“Chill, mama bear.” I huffed at the rare nickname, which she only brought out when I was being especially mom-ish. “I’m not sure I’m going to take the job.”
“Why not?”
“It’s…personal. Anyway, I haven’t said no yet, I just asked for some time. It’s my dream job, really. But things might get complicated if I take it.” She hesitated a moment, and I turned back toward the path, allowing her to work out whether or not she wanted to say what was clearly on the tip of her tongue. After a few moments, she finally spoke back up, voice quiet as she asked, “What would you do? Risk the disaster?”
“To be honest, I wouldn’t take the risk. But look where that got me.” I gestured around us, not at the forest but at the situation I had found myself in. “Becoming friends with Alex was the most reckless thing I can remember doing in my life, and it’s been the best thing. So, don’t do what I would do. Do what you’ve always done and take the risk, but be careful.”
