Page 218 of What We Bury

“Please—Eli, I need you?—”

“Not yet,” I growl, thrusting my fingers deeper, my free hand coming down in another sharp slap that makes her cry out. “You wanted me to lose control? This is it, Sage. This is what happens when I let go.” I add a third finger, stretching her, my palm connecting with her ass in a rhythm that’s as punishing as it is precise, her body clenching around me with every strike. She’s shaking now, tears in her eyes, but the way she pushes back, the desperate pleas falling from her lips—it’s everything I’ve been denying myself, and I can’t stop, not when she’s covered in welts and so close to breaking.

“Your safe word is ‘hangmen.’”

FIFTY-NINE

MILO

“Should we be watching this?”

The question leaves my mouth approximately three seconds too late, because I’ve already seen enough to know that Eli Ward—our stoic, buttoned-up, kindergarten-teaching team leader—is spanking Sage while she’s bent over a chaise lounge with her hands bound above her head.

So that’s new.

We’re standing in the viewing gallery next to the private room, the four of us lined up like kids at an aquarium exhibit, frozen in various stages of shock and arousal that none of us are going to acknowledge.

“Holy shit,” Holden says, his voice flat and stunned in a way I’ve never heard before. Holden doesn’t do stunned. Holden does controlled reactions and measured assessments. Right now he looks like someone just told him the earth is flat and showed him the receipts. “Did anyone know Eli was into this?”

“I did,” Micah says quietly.

We all look at him.

He shrugs, ears going slightly pink. “You all know we’ve done stuff. Don’t pretend like you didn’t.”

It’s not every day you get to watch your most tightly wound teammate go absolutely feral, but here we are.

Through the thick glass, Sage is writhing under Eli’s hand, her ass already switching from pink to wildfire red. There’s a little bloom of wet on the velvet under her hips. She’s so loud I can hear her through two inches of soundproof, and it might be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.

Knox is next to me, arms folded, jaw ticking. Then he crosses to the wall panel and hits a button. The glass frosts over, turning opaque, cutting off the view mid-scene.

“She was literally about to squirt everywhere!” Holden complains.

“We shouldn’t be watching,” he says. His voice is the same flat rumble it always is, but there’s something underneath it. Something that says this is a line even Knox won’t cross.

“In our defense,” I say, gesturing at the now-opaque glass. “It’s literally labeled the voyeur room. There’s a giant two-way mirror. Eli knows exactly what room he took her into. Plus, kitten really gets off on being watched.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Knox turns his back to the glass. “She didn’t communicate she wanted to be watched. Not by us. Not right now.”

That lands. It lands hard, because he’s right. Whatever’s happening in there—and based on what we witnessed, what’s happening in there is spectacular—Sage walked into that room to have a conversation with one man. Not to perform for four more.

Unfortunately.

“Fair point,” Holden says, pushing off the wall.

“Yeah.” I take one last, longing look at the frosted glass. “Fair but devastating.”

We file out of the gallery like students leaving a class they weren’t supposed to be in. Knox leads, and Holden follows, jaw working, hands in his pockets. Micah walks beside me, quiet. I want to ask him a hundred questions and also none.

The main bar is empty. Knox goes behind it and sets out four glasses without asking what anyone wants. Whiskey. Neat. At seven-forty-five in the morning. We’ve earned it.

I take my glass and park myself on a stool. Holden sits two seats down. Micah takes the one between us, because Micah is always between things—between people, between moods, between the version of us that kills and the version that sits at a bar pretending we didn’t just see our boss getting pegged by his own repression.

Not literally pegged. No one wants to see that.

Actually, that’s a lie. I think I wouldn’t mind watching Eli getting pegged by Sage . . .

Something to wish for the next time I blow out birthday candles.