Page 7

Joey seriously considered grabbingKatie and running away.

Then he remembered he had nowhere to go, not without money and a safer place to hide.

When he stepped out of his room some time later, he bumped into Samsen.

Samsen looked a lot healthier now that he’d fed from Valor, his skin flushed pink. He frowned when he saw Joey, though. “What’s wrong?”

“Blade knows I have a secret.”

Samsen glanced at Katie, who was babbling in Joey’s chest carrier. He chewed on his lip. “Do you want me to ask Valor if Katie will be okay?”

Joey shook his head quickly. “He’s closer to Blade than me. I don’t see why he’d stick up for me instead of his friend.”

“He’d listen to me, though. I think.”

“It’s still too risky.” Joey squirmed.

“Are you not going to move in with him, then?”

“I’m seriously considering moving in with Elson and Yaeger, sex sounds be damned.” Joey winced. “But I think they’d drive me crazy.”

“You could still stay with us.”

“If we do, Katie’s going to burn down even more things. I can’t do that to you guys.”

Samsen frowned. “I think Blade’s a good person. Katie will be safe with him.”

Joey bit his lip. “She’s all I have left.”

Samsen’s face fell. He leaned in and gave Joey a sideways hug.

Before Samsen could try to comfort Joey again, Valor came up the stairs. “What happened?” Valor asked.

Then his nose twitched, and he sniffed.

Too late, Joey remembered Valor was a wolf shifter. He could probably smell exactly what Blade and Joey had done.

Valor raised an eyebrow. “Why the long face?”

Joey squirmed. “Can I... trust Blade?”

“Yes,” Valor said. “We wouldn’t send you to live with him if we don’t. Hell, we won’t even let him be all over you, if we don’t trust him.”

Samsen’s eyebrows shot up. Then he looked at Joey and sniffed, and gasped. “Oh!”

Joey blushed harder. Now both of them knew what he and Blade had done.

“I don’t want him to take Katie away from me,” Joey mumbled.

“He won’t take her away if she’s yours.” Valor pursed his lips. Joey could almost see the cogs turning in his head, until— “Huh.”

He’d figured it out, hadn’t he? Joey gulped.

“I trust him to do what’s right,” Valor said carefully.

Which only made Joey more nervous, because he didn’t know where Katie had come from, before the kidnappers.

After three months as her dad, he wasn’t sure he was ready to let her go.

But... what if her parents were out there somewhere, searching for her?

How long could Joey keep her without feeling guilty?

“In any case, I think he likes you,” Valor said kindly. “He’ll be gentle.”

Would he really? If he found out that Joey was a thief, and had been a thief most of his life?

Blade’s disappointment would drive Joey away.

“Maybe I don’t even need to pack,” Joey mumbled.

“Do it,” Valor said. “His place is the best option for Katie right now.”

He was right.

Joey sighed. “Okay.”

“Tell you what. I’ll drive you there and drop you off,” Valor said. “Let you get settled in before he gets home. It might help you adjust better.”

And maybe Joey could beg someone to take him and Katie away if it was too much.

Samsen hugged him again. “I think you’ll be all right,” he whispered. “At worst, he’ll give you a baby to replace Katie?”

Joey looked down at Katie, who was gumming on her fingers. He couldn’t stand the thought of replacing her.

“Blade wants a family,” Valor said finally. “I think he’ll do his best to keep what he can. You can trust him, Joey.”

“And if it doesn’t work out, you can always come back here,” Samsen promised.

Blade livedin a mansion laughably close to Valor’s.

They drove for less than a minute.

When they arrived, they pulled up at an iron gate buried in a tall hedge, with leaves so dense it was impossible to see inside unless you were at the gate.

Blade and his friends... they really valued their privacy, didn’t they? Joey remembered the towering hedge around Onyx’s mansion, and Yaeger’s penthouse on the highest floor of his apartment building.

Were these men trying to keep the outside world away?

Or... were they protecting their secrets from the rest of the world?

Did Blade have something he was hiding?

What kind of creature was he, anyway?

Maybe Joey should’ve found out before he started this whole thing with Blade, but... it didn’t matter anymore, did it?

The gate opened. Valor drove them up the driveway and parked in front of the two-story building. “We’re here.”

“Thanks,” Joey said, glancing out of Valor’s car to find that the shopping cart friend he’d made at Ess-Mart had followed them all the way through Blade’s iron gates. It lingered around for a bit, before finding two other shopping carts on the property and zooming away to make friends.

Joey cracked a smile and turned back to peek at Blade’s mansion.

He realized, suddenly, that the building looked strange. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered the front-facing side of the mansion. But the wall on the adjacent side had no windows at all.

The front doors were very, very large. Twice Blade’s height, maybe, and just as wide.

Joey slowly clambered out of Valor’s car, filled with trepidation.

The front doors burst open violently.

Joey jumped. Katie turned to see what had made the sound.

“Cop Master’s consort!” A cheery, plump man sprang down the front steps, his arms spread. “Welcome to his humble abode!”

Joey looked over his shoulder at Valor and Samsen, and all they did was shrug.

“That’s Blade’s butler,” Valor said.

“I’m Hong!” The butler skidded to a stop in front of Joey, bright eyes studying him. His mustache was a wispy thing trailing down at the ends, and his beard was scraggly and long.

“Why’re you wearing a... a robe?” Joey blurted.

It wasn’t really a robe. More like a dark blue silky gown that made Hong look like he’d stepped right out of a Chinese historical drama, one of those well-fed government officials that loved to stroke their beard thoughtfully as they spouted wisdom.

Joey blamed his mom for making him watch those TV shows, and he blamed Hong for making him miss her, all of a sudden.

“You look like a judge from The Golden Dragon,” Joey blurted. “Just missing the... the black hat with the flappy ears.”

Hong gasped, his eyes growing comically round. “You’ve watched The Golden Dragon?”

“Yes?” Joey said uncertainly.

“O-M-G. We’re going to be best friends.” Hong sketched a bow, beaming widely. “Cop Master hates that show.”

Really?

“Are you, Henry, Hudson, and Hans blood brothers?” Joey blurted instead. The other shapeshifter butlers didn’t attempt to look Asian in any way. Hong wore his hair black and his skin with a golden hue.

“Yup! I’m a half-brother. I wear my inner soul on the outside.” Hong gestured at himself with a flourish. Then he eyed Joey and cackled. “Cop Master hasn’t been able to stop talking about you.”

Joey blushed. “Um, really?”

“He’s been all ‘Joey this,’ ‘Joey that.’ ‘Joey, the man I fantasize about every night.’ ‘Joey, after my conversations with you, I feel like I’m walking on clouds.’” Hong rolled his eyes fondly. “Not that Cop Master puts all that into actual words, but he certainly feels like a changed man.”

“And that is all we needed to know,” Valor said dryly. “I had no idea any of this was happening until today.”

“He came home with a pair of pink lace panties a few days ago,” Hong announced in a dramatic whisper. “With the price-tag still on.”

Joey blinked rapidly. “From Ess-Mart?”

“Why, I believe it was. I found it in his bed.” Hong cackled.

Samsen groaned in the background. “I probably shouldn’t have heard that!”

“But I didn’t even wear it,” Joey protested. “I just threw it at him!”

Hong clutched his chest. “Ah. A token from his mate. The most romantic.”

“We’re not mates,” Joey spluttered.

“You’re... soulmates?” Hong clarified.

Joey dragged his hands down his face. “No. I just told him those panties were a washcloth and I scrubbed my face with them.”

Hong howled with gleeful laughter. “You’ll fit right in.”

Joey almost confessed to his crimes. But he thought about Katie, and knew he couldn’t afford to lose this safe place just because he felt guilty.

“I’m just me,” Joey mumbled. “I don’t know if I actually belong here.”

“You do,” Hong said firmly. “Anyone who can make Cop Master spoon cereal down the side of his face absolutely belongs here.”

“And that’s our cue to go,” Valor said.

“Give Hans my regards,” Hong called after them, waving a frilly handkerchief he’d pulled out from somewhere. “He will not one-up me this time. I will emerge victorious in our eternal brotherly competition.”

Joey gave him a wary look. “What competition?”

“Where we attempt to embarrass our masters in the most outrageous ways possible.” Hong grinned.

“But that’s... not nice,” Joey said weakly.

“Do you, or do you not want to hear Blade’s embarrassing childhood stories?”

Joey sucked in a slow breath.

Hong’s smile turned triumphant. “See? You do. And better yet, I got Blade’s parents to share the worst ones with me.”

Joey bit his lip. “Shouldn’t you wait for Blade’s permission before you tell me?”

“He won’t ever let me, because they’re that tragic.” Hong shook his head sadly. “Like the time he ripped his pants while wearing the ugly boxers with the yellow sponge guy. In front of his boss.”

Joey cringed so hard. And he felt so sorry for Blade. “Why would he wear—But—But that’s not a childhood story?”

Hong grinned. His childhood stories are worse.”

“How can they be worse than that?”

“Oh, they can. Like the time with the ice cream cone...” Hong gave Joey a speculative look. And he pretended to zip his mouth.

Joey groaned. “You can’t do that to me!”

“Yes I can!” Hong grabbed Joey’s bags that Valor had left on the ground. “C’mon, let’s get you moved into Cop Master’s mastering-room.”

Joey’s face burned. “Um. Are you sure? He might not want me to.”

Hong raised an eyebrow. “He does. He’s even acquired some clothes for Katie.”

“You know Katie’s name?”

The butler sighed. “Joey, that man is obsessed about you.”

“He... doesn’t feel obsessed,” Joey mumbled, blushing.

“He hides it real well.” Hong grinned. “C’mon, I’ll show you his bedroom.”

Joey rubbed Katie’s back to anchor himself. “There’s some things he doesn’t know about me,” he said miserably. “I don’t know if he’ll still want me after he knows.”

“Of course he does!”

“I’m not the sort of person a policeman would want!”

Hong blinked owlishly.

Katie began to cry. Joey winced, rocking her and rubbing her ears. He’d shouted too loudly, hadn’t he? His shoulders sagged. “I’m not a good dad.”

“Oh, hon.” Hong set a compassionate hand on his shoulder. “Let Cop Master be the judge of that.”

“He’s a policeman,” Joey mumbled.

“And he’s also a red-blooded dr—man who’s dead set on getting you into his bed.”

That made Joey blush. “For now.”

“You’ll see.”

Joey dragged his feet. “How do you know him, anyway?”

“Once upon a time, I was a lowly rat working in a kitchen. My employers were withholding my wages and making me work longer and longer hours. Well, I was muttering to myself in the pantry one day, stealing food—”

Joey gasped. “You stole food?”

Hong looked indignant. “I couldn’t feed myself with no money. They had my money. So I stuffed my face with crackers and apples and fresh tomatoes, and Cop Master walked by while he was going to the restroom. He caught me.”

“He caught you?” Joey squeaked.

“Well, he couldn’t do much about it, since my bosses didn’t know about me stealing and weren’t filing a report. But he came back after my shift and sat me down outside, and we talked. Then he hired me.”

Joey’s insides melted into goop. “Oh,” he said softly.

Hong smiled and nudged him. “So you might have a spotty past, but I think he’ll be able to look past that.”

Hope fluttered in Joey’s chest. Then he looked at Katie and the hope fizzled out. “I don’t know.”

“It’ll be okay,” Hong said genuinely. “Have faith.”

Joey shrugged. Being a thief was one thing. But harboring a stolen baby? That was a whole other level of wrong.

If Joey knew for sure what had happened to Katie’s parents...

It made him queasy, either way.

They walked through the mansion, with its incredibly spacious entrance hall. It was so large, an elephant could probably fit in there.

In fact, all the doorways were tall and wide, like an elephant could wander through the house and possibly not destroy the walls. The living room flowed into the kitchen and dining area, and other rooms led away with more reasonably-sized doors. Those doors were still large, because Blade was such a large man.

To Joey, the mansion felt like a giant’s castle.

The grand staircase was wide and open, leading up to an ample hallway. There, they passed several large landscape paintings done in vivid detail—grassy meadows, majestic mountains, lush forests.

At the end of the hallway, Hong stopped at a set of double doors—mostly wood, but with the occasional detail painted in gold.

“The mastering-room,” Hong said as he swept the door open.

Joey flushed. “What kind of mastering goes on in there?”

Hong waggled his eyebrows. “That’s between you and Cop Master, but I’m always available for suggestions.”

The master bedroom had a high ceiling, held up with exposed steel beams. In fact, the bed was huge. You could fit a small room in that square footage, and still have space left over.

“Why’s it so big?” Joey breathed.

Hong cackled. “I’m sure Cop Master would love that question.”

Joey covered his face and groaned.

“You seem... inexperienced,” Hong said after a while. “Do you need lessons, Joey? I have several resources. In fact, there’s a book that just came out—it has the most cringe-worthy pickup lines known to all of mankind.”

Hong pulled out his phone and typed into it. Then he turned it to show Joey.

The two of us can swing from a lamppost. When we pass each other, we will trail our tongues across each other’s faces in a gesture of LOVE.

“What,” Joey said.

Hong nodded sagely. “It’s written by a fictional character. I got all my brothers a copy each. Best investment ever.”

“Why?”

Hong puffed out his chest. “For you? So you’ll understand what not to say to your loved one. For my brothers? Because they can use these lines to annoy their masters to hell and back. But for all you know, Cop Master might actually find these endearing.”

Joey gaped. “Blade? Find that... that endearing?”

Hong grinned. “Hey, you never know. Whisper them into his ear at bedtime.”

“He’d send me to a mental institution!”

“I have a better idea! What if you painted them on your buttcheeks? Cop Master would be delighted!”

“He would not!” Joey groaned.

But the ludicrous idea distracted him, and eased the weight in his chest.

Hong set Joey’s bags at the end of the large bed. “Make yourself comfortable. In fact, I will retrieve my personal copy of the book for you. I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared through the double doors, and Joey looked down at Katie. Katie blew a spit bubble.

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Joey whispered.