Page 31 of Wild Like Us

“Shit,” Akara mutters and fits a baseball hat on backwards.

We roll to a stop.

Sulli has halted in front of a display of tents. Two fingers rest to her lips in her iconicconcentration face.An expression that has graced sports magazine covers.

Brown hair falling over her shoulder, she turns to Akara and me. “How fucking big should the tent be? Do I need two—?”

“Protocol is one,” Akara reminds her. “But if you’d be more comfortable with—”

“One is fine,” she cuts him off, her voice tight. “Just fucking fine.” She tries to whisper but she’s terrible at it.

I hang my head, smiling.

Akara meets my gaze, smiling too. Even in her frustration, she’s really cute.

“Hey, string bean,” Akara calls to Sulli. “Maybe up it to a four-person tent for this one.” He squeezes my shoulder.

I smile again, biting on the toothpick.

She sizes me up, starting from my feet. No, really—shelingerson my feet, on my hands, then my dick. “Yeah, Jane said your brother has a big shoe size.” It tenses the air. “I mean, I’m just guessing your size is the fucking same.”

“Shoe size, yeah, but we’re not the same.”

“Oh hey, I know.”

I nod more.Christ, I feel like a jackass for assuming she might see me like a carbon copy of Thatcher. I hate being treated like we’re the same person.

We’re twoseparate human beings with individual thoughts and desires, and I forget we even look alike half the time.

I motion to a teal four-person tent. “That one looks good.”

“This one?” she points and looks for confirmation.

I nod.

She reads the tag for details.

Comms crackle in my earpiece, and I hear the Alpha lead. “Price to Akara and Banks, we’re heading inside the store.”

Akara clicks his mic. “See you.”

My focused gaze diverts to the entrance. Two bodyguards are escorting a scruffy-jawed fifty-year-old Ryke Meadows and his forty-three-year-old bubbly wife. She’s not bouncing on her toes like usual. Daisy Calloway searches left and right for her daughter. Concern etched in her eyes.

“Ca-caw!” Daisy calls out.

Sulli cups her hands over her mouth. “Ca-caw!”

Daisy spins around in the wrong direction.

Being six-seven, I’m the only one who can see over the shelves. I wave a hand until Sulli’s mom spots me. Her face lights up, she speaks to Ryke, and they both sprint over to the tents.

When I was Xander’s bodyguard, I dealt with Ryke’s half-brother: Loren Hale. Xander is a particular client, and mostly Lo was grateful for me and Thatcher.

Ryke is different. He’s told me,“Don’t get too fucking close”when I was already standing four hockey sticks away from Sulli.

He has more guards up around me than around Akara.

Because A.) two bodyguards havefuckedclients. One of them is my brother. And B.) Ryke hasn’t known me like he knows Akara.