A small nod.
He wasn’t crying. That was good.
“I wish you hadn’t brought him here,” Oliver mumbled, voice muffled against me.
I sighed, knowing where this conversation was headed, and tilted his chin up gently so I could see his face. His eyes were heavy-lidded, exhaustion dragging them down, but there was frustration there too.
A spark.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he added quietly. “He really didn’t either.”
Ah.
There it was.
I wrapped my fingers in his hair and sharply tugged his head back, making him hiss.
“I was just being polite,” Oliver snapped weakly. “You can’t just—” He huffed softly. “You can’t just kill every person who talks to me.”
I considered that.
Nah.
“We can,” I corrected.
His lips twitched despite himself. He hated when we did that—answered literally instead of reasonably.
I leaned down, pressing my mouth to his forehead instead of his lips this time. “We can do whatever we want,” I whispered against his skin.
Oliver went quiet.
I wrapped my arm tighter around his waist, waiting.
His chest deflated some, and he pressed his face into my shoulder. “I know…”
“So, are you ever going to let someone buy you a drink again?”
His fingers tightened in my shirt again. “No, Master.”
“Good,” I answered. “We wouldn’t want you forgetting who you belong to.”
“I don’t forget,” he whispered. “I never do.”
No.
He didn’t.
Even when he was angry. Even when he rolled his eyes. Even when he shoved at us and called us dramatic psychopaths under his breath.
He never truly forgot. He just needed someremindingfrom time to time.
I thought of it more as him testing us.
Testing to see if any weak spots in the fence had developed.
And every time, we proved to him that he was just as trapped as he’d been at the beginning of it all.
Suddenly, there were footsteps coming up the stairs leading to the second floor.
