“It was, and it was so much easier for me then, you know? Fresh from being with all of you. Fills me up. But by the end of the day, I’m already running on empty. The Plain just bowls me over.”
It reminds Gideon, and he pulls a slightly squished chocolate bar from his apron pocket just as they round the last corner to their street.
“Here. Sorry, it’s warm—forgot it was in there.”
Grayson grins, peeling back the wrapper. “Aww, you are so sw—”
“Do not finish that sentence, or I will—”
Grayson cuts him off with a kiss to the cheek, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his pink-tipped ear.
Gideon bats the hand away, hiding a smirk when Grayson chuckles.
“Something happened, then? With Professor Enthusiastic McBadittude?” (And yes, Gideon can thank Luca for that moniker.) Professor Kirwan was strangely enthusiastic to the extreme, but also rigid and condescending at the same time.
Grayson says it leaves you feeling as if youshouldlike her, but you can’t.
“Quit that, or one day I’m going to call her that out loud.”
Grayson doesn’t answer the question, though—not really. Just a faint flush creeping high on his cheeks.
The gate slides open the second they reach the end of the drive, right on cue.
“I am so glad to be home. Are the girls still up?”
Before Gideon can answer, Nix appears beside the car. Running alongside the vehicle, he flings himself through the open window headfirst, right across Grayson’s lap.
“Nix!” Grayson gasps, grasping him around the waist as Gideon hits the brakes.
His head lands in Gideon’s lap, bare ass in the air, feet still hanging out the window.
Flipping over like a pancake, he grins, as if he hadn’t stopped Gideon’s heart for the second time that day. “Hi.”
“Kitten,” Gideon bites out, as visions of Nix being dragged under the car cause his stomach to drop and almost come back up again. “This. Vehicle. Was. In. Motion.”
“I couldn’t wait. This is serious. Gray, something is messing with our bon—”
“We are talking about this later,” Gideon puts the car back into motion as Nix rights himself on his knees over Grayson’s thighs so he can press his nose under Grayson’s collar. “Where is your keeper?”
“I don’t need a keeper, Gideon.Idecide where I go and what I do.”
Nix glares and sticks his tongue out like a petulant child caught staying up too late by the babysitter. He follows it up by sticking his nose back inside Grayson’s collar, this time licking and sucking a mark where everyone can see.
“Angel, you could have been hurt.”
“Gideon wasn’t driving that fast. Besides, I’ve done it loads of times.”
There is silence as both he and Grayson let the words sink in. They imply practice. Jumping into moving vehicles. Through the window.
Before he knows it, Gideon is speaking, “Car, call Logan Frost. Sentinel Security.”
Nix scrambles for the disconnect button on the steering wheel, causing the SUV to swerve up the drive. “No! Don’t call Logan! You’re not the boss of me, Gideon Carnell.”
All the ways that statements is true do nothing to make Gideon any less angry…
…nor, by the looks of it, do they pacify Jay.
Standing in front of the garage is their red-faced and 100% livid Pack Alpha.
