Page 84 of Hunted

I couldn’t put my finger on the exact notes, but gods did I want to sit here and try. He smelled good enough to eat—and I was seconds from falling out of the bed when that thought popped into my wayward brain. I would have, too—if not for the gigantic pair of warm, tanned hands that caught me on the way down.

“I’d go down…”

Beck frowned. “What?”

Fuck. My eyes almost fell right out of my stupid head, realising I’d said that last part out loud.

Brain, meet mouth. Horrid time to reacquaint yourselves. Perhaps you should meet my foot instead.

“Nothing,” I blurted. “Just bemoaning my lack of hosiery.” I wriggled my bare toes for show, hoping that would be enough to distract him from the earlier admission.

Beckett glanced down, his frown deepening, then strode over to the dresser on the opposite wall. He plucked a neatly rolled ball of black socks from the top right drawer and turned, hesitating. Evidently deciding I was more trouble than I was worth, he knelt beside the bed, silently motioning for my foot.

“I can put my own socks on, Beck. Seriously, I already feel way better than I should today.”

He paused, unballed socks held tightly between his fingers. A light pink stained his cheeks adorably as he cleared his throat and he rumbled, “That’ll be Nadine’s nanotech. The effects will wear off by dinner, when you’re due for the next one. We have a lot to do between now and then, so just let me help you get ready so we can go.”

“Go?” I echoed dumbly.

“We’re not leaving campus if that’s what you’re asking.”

Dang.

“But we are heading to a part of it you’ve never been to before.”

Interest successfully piqued, I grinned, shoving my right foot in his face. “Hurry up, Alfred, we haven’t got all day!”

“Alfred?” He reared back. “You did not just Batman me.”

“Sue me. I’m a wealth of millennial pop culture references,” I snarked back, shoving my sole remaining bare foot into his hands.

“Maybe I will,” he rumbled, rolling his spare sock up my leg, all the way to my mid-calf. His fingertips lingered there, toeing the line between helpful and dangerous.

Suddenly self-conscious and worried about which bits I had shaved and when, I shifted, pulling my foot back.

Beckett let go—fingers flaring—then grunted and rose with the fluidity of a panther. “Since you have nothing else to wear for the time being, you can borrow this”—he tossed me a black standard-issue hoodie, embroidered with the Academy’s winged emblem.

Nothing personal for the big guy anywhere in this place. My gaze flicked to the bookshelf. Well, almost nothing.

I threw the hoodie on, secretly relishing drowning in his cologne, and followed him out into the kitchen where the other two bodyguards—chaperones?—waited with forced casualness. Deklan leaned back against the counter, sipping from a sage green mug, while Evander sat at the dining table with one ankle resting across his other knee. “Morning,” he hummed happily.

The aroma of fresh coffee assaulted my senses, and if I’d thought Beck smelled good enough to eat earlier, it had nothing on that same scent combining with the one drink I would absolutely have a torrid love affair with, if remotely possible.

“Can I have some of that, please?”

My mouth filled with saliva at the thought. It had been a very long eighteen months caffeine-free as a self-confessed coffeeholic.

Dek’s brows rose and one disappeared beneath his side-swept fringe. “Do my ears deceive me?” he mocked. “Or did our Sleeping Deadly just use the P word?”

“No, she definitely did,” Van answered, grinning. “Although I’m not loving that nickname, dude.”

“Nor am I,” I mumbled, reaching for Deklan’s mug.

He snatched it back, tutting, then procured a hot pink travel mug from the bench behind him. “Yours is to go.”

I almost swooned right then and there. Wist-filled and grateful, I breathed, “Is it too soon to say I love you?”

“Decidedly. But I’ll take it anyway.” He winked, ignoring Van’s scoff and Beck’s eyeroll.