Page 42 of Dual Destruction

“This is going to end in disaster.” I scrubbed my hands down my face and turned my back to him.

He stepped closer, boxing me in against the counter and pressing his chest against my back until I bent forward.

“It’s gonna be a sight,” he whispered, dragging his lips across the shell of my ear.

“This looks like more than recuperation.” Rich’s voice rang clear from the doorway and I sighed, tilting my face to the side to see him. Sage made no effort to move, instead smiling at Rich, who looked like he wanted to remove Sage’s skin from his body. Sage’s lips twitched against my ear and I pushed back against him until we were standing. The half-hard outline of Sage’s cock pressed against my back and I was thankful he chose to stay behind me instead of beside me.

“Everything is fine,” I assured him.

“Looks more than fine.”

“Richard,” I hissed.

“More than fine,” Sage confirmed.

“And who are you?”

I dared a glance over my shoulder at Sage. The way he watched Rich was something I was familiar with. It was the way I appraised a target the first time I caught sight of them. He was testing Rich, cataloguing his expressions, his stature, his tells.

“Sage.” I turned and pressed my palm against his chest, using the few inches I had on him to block Rich from his view. “He’s one of my best friends.”

Sage’s eyes flickered from Rich to me, softening in the slightest. The change in his expression caught me off-guard, my breath catching in my throat. For his part, Sage caught the shift and his expression softened further. There was a feeling, a thought, a moment that I recognized the emotion behind his eyes. My mouth went dry and I sucked in a soft breath, barely audible, even to my own ears.

“Shit,” I whispered.

“I’m not ready to say it yet.” Sage looked away, hardening his features like the exchange had never happened.

“You can come explain when you’re ready,” Rich said, his shoes clacking against the floor as he walked away.

My shoulders sagged and I rested my forehead against Sage’s shoulder.

“A disaster waiting to happen.”

He petted the back of my head, even though it was more of a rough slap. I groaned, and he tangled his fingers into my hair, yanking me back so I looked down at him.

“What are you going to tell your friends?” he asked.

“Enough to get them off my back.”

“Is that how you treat your friends?”

“They don’t know what I do.” I chewed my cheek between my teeth and grabbed a different bottle of wine from the counter. “They can’t know who you are.”

“They gonna snitch?”

I scoffed, shaking my head. “Snitch? Come on. I just don’t want them exposed.”

Sage looked at me and traced the outline of one of my eyebrows with his thumb.

“I want to talk to you when they’re gone,” he said, stepping back and leaving me feeling oddly bereft and abandoned. “About what you said earlier about my dad.”

“Alright,” I agreed.

He tapped my cheek with his hand and slipped past me down the hall. The door to the bedroom closed, but didn’t lock. I took a handful of breaths to steady myself before returning to the living room with a better bottle of wine.

“So,” I said, passing the bottle to Ronan and offering my friends the sincerest smile I could muster. “What did you want to know?”

Chapter Fourteen