Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 114284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Some things had changed; we’d traveled a long, painful journey to mature and get to where we were today, and yet that feeling had never disappeared. I didn’t even believe in soul mates as a concept, but here I was.
The thing was, I had that same gut feeling about our new family in the making. Like Walker had told me, he wanted the four of us close. Walker and me, Lane and Ty. With a side of Dean. We had something to build on here. I wanted long dinners where we lost track of time around the table, laughter, wine, talks, Lane and me doting on our Owners…
Spontaneous trips down to Florida. Heading out on Walker’s boat.
This dream was suddenly greater than anything I’d ever turned into a goal before.
“Now, where are you with Lane?” I asked.
Ty’s smirk filled with a sense of you really wanna go there? “That’s a whole other shitshow, innit? He’s guarded, I can tell you that.”
I straightened. “So you’ve talked to him since you got back?” Because that was news to me. Lane hadn’t mentioned anything.
“We’ve texted,” Ty corrected. “I’m workin’ on it, though. I think I have a plan.”
Okay, well… I had a suggestion, and I brought it up with a straight face. “Have you considered kidnapping him?”
Yeah, see, he was laughing, but I was kind of, sort of serious! My boyfriend had a myriad of dub-con fantasies, and he trusted Ty implicitly when it came to high-risk kink. If anyone could pull off a rough playtime involving some forced proximity, it was this hedonist standing in front of me.
“You think I’m joking.” I grinned and scratched my nose.
He snorted and simmered down. “I’m hoping you are.”
I shrugged a little again. “One way or another, you’re gonna have to force him to hear you out. He will show his gratitude forever afterward, but he needs to be chased down—and I hope you know it has nothing to do with you.”
Ty turned introspective, for which I couldn’t blame him. If I’d pegged him right, Ty wasn’t one to jump the gun or theorize about anything when not much had happened yet. And I got it. A week of summer romance was probably not a whole lot to hitch your future to. But at the same time, Ty felt something. Something that was strong enough for him to take up that chase.
“Both you and Walker seem certain Lane will want more,” he noted.
Well, yeah.
“I know my boyfriend to that degree anyway,” I replied. “And when Walker isn’t balls deep in figuring out changes going on around him, he’s frustratingly good at reading people.”
“Yeah, yeah, everyone picked up on our chemistry.” Ty repeated what he must’ve been told before. We were right, though. We had picked up on their chemistry. “I gotta get to the bottom of where I’ve seen Lane before too. It’s drivin’ me up the fuckin’ wall.”
Oh shit.
Abort, abort!
I swallowed a bout of unease that settled heavily in my stomach.
I was not going anywhere near that topic, so of course, I chose to ramble and circle back to the kidnapping idea. “Anyway—to reiterate. The kidnapping. Obviously, I’m not talking about bag-over-his-head and a getaway car…” Like, my rant was impressive. I went on and on. Off the top of my head, he could convince Lane to go somewhere close by, and then Ty could just keep driving. You know? Just for a while. Long enough to put them in the same little space for a few hours. Something like that. And in order to coordinate such a fun outing, I went on to give Ty a bunch of information he might need. Lane’s usual work hours, his most common errands, where he lived, that the code to enter his building was 7943, where he worked out—in the gym in his own building—where he bought his snake food, the fact that Corey, his cousin, lived a few floors down, and what kind of moods meant keep going and full stop.
I wasn’t a complete asshole. One had to catch Lane in the right mood.
Ty stared at me blankly.
I was on a roll, so I just kept going. “And you wanna pay attention to the following signs, because they mean he’s genuinely uncomfortable and anxious. He’ll put a lot of effort into keeping his expression composed, which I guess requires a fuck-ton of energy, so you have to know the tics. Like how he chews gum really fast, or how he’ll drum his fingers on his leg and struggle to sit still. He’ll zone out too, and—” That was when I felt a hand on my shoulder, which slipped up to grasp my neck.
Walker was in the house.
Saved by the Master!
“Hi!” I blew out a breath, partly relieved, partly peeved at being cut off because my epic idea was epic.