Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3), Kristen Ashley [reading eggs books txt] 📗

it feels like … flirting. Or a come-on. Or an invitation or something.”

“You think this whackjob genuinely has a thing for you outside being a whackjob who clearly has a thing for you?”

“For us.”

“Hattie, I can see wanting to think that in order to make it less disturbing, but I’m not sure it says that.”

“Okay,” I muttered, starting to get off the stool so I could go and get dressed.

“Babe,” he called, wrapping a hand around the side of my neck, so I stopped moving and looked up at him again. “You want someone, you approach them at a bar and hand them a line. You do not send them pictures and movies without even introducing yourself. Again, Boone doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty, but they find partners in the normal way. A lot of the time, they can just sense who is who and who likes what. They also have signals, like shit people wear, bracelets and necklaces and stuff. And they got their own thing going on where they can be around like-minded people and meet potential partners at bars, clubs, parties. They don’t find someone they like who they have no idea if they’re in the life or not, follow them, leave unsettling presents on their doorstep, and invade their lives.”

I nodded.

That made sense.

“Yeah?” he asked, even though I nodded.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“You okay?” he pushed.

I couldn’t shake something.

I nodded again.

“Tell me the truth, Hattie,” he said gently. “I wanna deal with this,” he indicated my laptop with his head, “but you’re more important so I need to know you’re good.”

“I’m good. I just think … ” I shrugged and finished, “Something is off.”

“Something is definitely off,” he agreed.

“Not just this guy being whacked. Something else.”

“We’ll get down to it.” He gave my neck a squeeze. “Get dressed, honey. We gotta go.”

I nodded again, he gave me another squeeze and then he let me go.

I ran and got dressed.

* * *

We were all standing around Axl’s workstation (and, by the by, Axl’s workplace was serious cool, precisely what you’d think of as commando central!).

All of us (though, I wasn’t standing, Axl told me to take a seat in his chair, which I thought was sweet).

That all of us included Axl, Boone, Ryn, Axl’s boss, Hawk, and the office manager, Elvira.

They’d connected remotely with some IT guru to Ryn’s computer and he had some diagnostics running.

But they were watching the montages sent to me on mine.

As was not in question, I liked porn.

Watching porn montages sitting at Axl’s workstation with our friends, his coworker and his boss?

Awkward.

“Well, not much you can say about this dude, ’cept he’s got good taste in porn,” Elvira remarked.

Ryn made a choking noise and I knew why because I was swallowing my own laughter.

“Vira,” Hawk’s deep voice tumbled from one side of me, where he was standing, to the other, where Elvira was, and I fought holding on to the arms of Axl’s chair so the force of his unhappiness wouldn’t knock me over.

FYI: pre-Axl, I would probably be apoplectic around Hawk Delgado (much like the semi-functioning apoplectic I was around Axl).

Yes, he was that handsome.

Then again, none of the guys were slouches, far from it.

But they’d been picked for my girls.

Hawk, though (even if he was very married).

Dayum.

I looked up at him.

Dayum to infinity.

His face was carved in stone.

One could say he did not like his boys dicked with, especially not through their women.

Or just not at all.

But one of his men having an issue was one thing.

Another one dragged in?

Man, whoever was doing this was up shit’s creek.

“I watched this one,” Ryn declared. “Start of it was a three out of ten, but I was bored so I let it roll. Totally ended on a bang.” Pause. “Literally.”

Elvira laughed.

Ryn laughed with her.

I chewed my lips in order not to laugh with them and wondered how they could sally forth in such a manner with the suffocating, pissed-off, alpha-male vibe weighing down the air.

“Hattie, could you place any of the pictures this guy sent?” Hawk asked me, muffling the fury in his tone, but just barely. “Did he take stills from porn movies you may have seen and that’s what he sent to you?”

I shook my head at him.

Hawk shifted his gaze.

“Ryn seen the pictures?” Hawk asked Boone.

“Not yet.”

“Show her, see if she can place them,” Hawk directed.

“I’ll get ’em,” Axl said, then he was off.

“Play it again,” Elvira said.

I looked to her then down to my laptop to see the short, three-minute clip had ended.

I reached out to hit play when Hawk repeated, “Vira.”

“What?” she asked.

Nothing from him for a second, then an audible sigh.

Before I could hit go, Axl came back and handed a folder to Ryn.

She opened it, studied what was in it, turned one of the photos over, and went completely white.

Oh no.

“What?” Boone barked.

Barked!

Yikes.

Her eyes drifted up to him.

“Can we talk?” she asked in a strangled voice.

Oh no!

Quick as a flash, he had her hand and was dragging her down the row.

It was safe to say this was not good.

Everyone watched as they had an intense discussion with Boone’s neck bent deep so he could get his ear close to Ryn’s lips.

And this discussion did not go well, and I knew that starting with the muscle that played in his cheek, but also because eventually Boone’s face …

No …

Every inch of his body nearly screamed he needed to hurt someone.

“Oh no,” I whispered.

They came back, and Ryn looked sheepish, Boone still looked murderous and he was walking like his shoulders were a wall of cinder blocks swinging to and fro.

Eep!

Still, he did it again holding her hand.

Sweet.

“Well, some of you know, some of you don’t, and it’s never fun to be outed when you don’t call that ball, but here we go,” Ryn started. “I’m in the life. I had a Dom and he tied me up just like this chick.” She lifted the folder and shook it. “Exactly like this chick. He was not a good Dom