Gage walks in behind her. “Don’t mind him. It’s the steroids,” he announces, flopping down on the couch beside me. He doesn’t seem to care that I’m here. He doesn’t seem to care about much at all.
“Don’t start that shit again,” Alessa says, sitting on the love seat in front of us, tucking her legs underneath her and doing everything she can to avoid eye contact with me.
A guy I haven’t seen before with shoulder-length curly hair walks into the room, head down. He hands her a folder and then sits in a chair beside her, typing furiously on a laptop that was in his other hand. I raise my eyebrow at her in question.
“Holden,” she answers and shrugs. “He’s quite talkative.” I remember my brothers mentioning him, but they didn’t know much about him, just that he was newer to her team.
Gage snorts, turning the tv on. “Yeah. You can never get him to shut the fuck up.”
Holden never even looks up, but I can see his lips twitch.
I shake my head at Gage. He’s done nothing but joke around with me, but I can see the watchful way he observes around him. Evander and Mateo warned me about him. He seems easygoing, but he hid a wealth of crazy.
Alessa opens the folder, flipping through what looks like pictures and separating them into piles.
I want to ask, but it’s none of my business, and I’m sure she won’t tell me anyway.
“Anyone interesting?” Gage asks.
“A few,” she replies.
“Tonight?” he asks.
She looks at me and then back to Gage. “Sure. Why not?”
Gage whoops. “Yes!”
“Holden,” she says gently. He finally looks up, but I can tell he won’t look her directly in the face. “Get me more on these two.” She hands him two pictures and shoves the others back into the folder. He nods and disappears from the room.
“I guess you aren’t going to tell me what that was about,” I ask her.
“Um. No,” Alessa answers. I can’t tell if she’s still pissed or not. Her face is devoid of all emotion, and it’s starting to wear on my nerves.
“Fair enough.” I nod. “But I had to ask.”
“You want to know what she does?” Gage sits up on the couch, animated. “She’s a superhero. She flies around with her megabat wings and saves the city.”
Alessa rolls her eyes. “Shut up, and stop reading my smutty books.”
“Hey. I learn a lot from those books,” Gage defends.
I shrug. “He’s not wrong.”
Her mouth pops open. “You read them too?”Finally, a reaction.
I grin. “I’ve learned a thing or two from them.”
Her face looks suspiciously like she’s blushing, remembering our night together like I am, but she hides it with her hair. I pulled a few things out of those books.
“Dude,” Gage exclaims. “That’s fucking awesome. I have something you need to read,” he says, jumping from the couch and jogging from the room.
Alessa watches him go. “You don’t know what you just got yourself into.”
Before she can elaborate, he rushes back into the room and thrusts a book into my hands with a hot, curvy redhead on the cover. “Read it. There are five books, and I stole them from Les. They’re about these six dudes banging the same witch.”
Alessa giggles. “Gage, they’re about so much more than that.”
“Oh, for sure,” he nods. “The dudes bang each other too.”
