I raise an eyebrow. “How am I feeling? Noah’s lucky he’s still breathing, today. How are you?”
Kai playfully musses her hair. “I don’t think you need to worry about Isla. She just stood her ground against Karlie.”
I glance back at Isla. “Karlie upset you?”
She comes and flops down on the sofa by my knees. “I think she’s jealous. But she was just so…mean.”
“I told her to keep our names out of her mouth and banned her from the clubhouse for a month,” Kai says.
“Good. If you hadn’t, I would.”
Isla smiles softly. “You don’t even know what she did.”
“Don’t need to. I’m on your side.”
Isla’s forehead gets lines. “But I could be in the wrong, for all you know.”
I shrug. “Really doesn’t matter. If you’re wrong, we talk about it behind closed doors, but out there”—I point toward the window—“we’re on one side.”
“That,” she says, putting her hands either side of my shoulders on the chair arm, “is very sweet.”
When her lips reach mine again, I slip my good arm around her and grip the back of her neck, holding her here.
All day, I’ve been having more spontaneous erections than I think I had when I was a horny teenager. My thoughts kept circling two things: The way it felt to share her with Kai. The way it felt to share my Wild with Isla.
When Kai told me he caught Noah one step from sexually assaulting her, I felt like my whole world was about to implode.
The idea that she could be taken from us any minute has been like the persistent chirp of the deathwatch beetle, all fucking day.
But now she’s home and safe and…
Home.
“Someone’s feeling better,” Wild mutters. He closes the curtains, given it’s going dark, and drops down onto the other end of the sofa with a grunt. Then, he stretches his legs out like he owns the place.
Which, to be fair, he does.
And so do I.
And, philosophically, so does Isla, because she belongs here with us. I flash ahead to a future where maybe she lives here, and we keep her house across the street so Kai’s huge family can stay there when they come visit.
“That massage stretched me out good,” I say, my eyes never leaving hers.
I feel her smile against my lips, and that action alone does something steadying to my chest. It seems Isla has that effect on me. Somehow, she reaches into the noisy parts of me and turns the dial down in a way only Kai has ever been able to do.
But while Kai does it by anchoring me, by standing unshakably by my side, Isla does it with a softness and quiet assurance that makes the world feel less sharp.
She pulls back just enough so that she can see me. There’s a tenderness in her eyes as she fixes my hair, and I know deep in my gut that she sees who I am and accepts me anyway.
There’s only one other person on this planet who has shown me that kind of unconditional love, and I shift my eyes to his, for a second. He’s lying with his head back on the sofa, eyes closed, but I see his chest lift and fall in a contented sigh.
“I missed you today,” Isla says.
“You were only gone for eight hours.” I don’t know why I still feel the need to deflect rather than accept the compliment, that she thinks of me during the day in a way that leaves her keen to get home. So, I rethink my answer. “I missed you too.”
She leans in again, slower this time, and I let myself sink into her. My body registers familiar things. Her warmth and the way she smells faintly like some fruity soap. How we fit, even though there’s a tension in her arms to make sure she doesn’t hurt me more.
“I should go get changed out of these scrubs,” Isla says, pulling back, her fingers lingering as they drag across my collarbone. “I smell like dogs.”
