In Silence She Screams (Midnight Mayhem 3)

“What was wrong with your real home?” I realize I don’t know shit about her, and I also know that no one here is going to tell me shit about her either, so may as well ask.

Her fingers twist over her stomach before she takes out the other earbud and places them both on a small table. “Nothing at all. It was fine.” When her eyes swing back to mine, she has that same sarcastic smirk on her face. Almost as good as mine.

I don’t believe a word she just said.

“What about you?” she asks. “Isn’t this the part where I ask you how your childhood was?” She pushes up from her position, her hands sinking into the sofa and her hair messy around her head. “Were you hugged enough as a child?”

Shaking my head with a soft chuckle, I reach forward and catch her lip between my finger and thumb. “Such a smart little mouth.”

She peers up at me, batting long lashes that fan out over her high cheekbones. “Whatever will you do with it…” She slides her tongue beneath my thumb, and just like that, she fucking owns me.

I have Eli’s thumb in my mouth with no intention of letting it go, but when Keaton drops down onto one of the La-Z-Boys in the lounge, Eli releases his thumb with a soft growl escaping his chest.

“Who is driving?” I ask Keaton as he runs his fingers through his hair before resting his palms on his abs. Keaton is covered in tattoos, not one inch of him clean. He even has writing on the side of his head, not that I know what it says.

“Colin, one of our drivers.”

“You guys don’t drive?” Eli asks, his hands still resting on my legs. I don’t usually enjoy anyone touching me, much less a male, but I’ve found when it comes to him and Kyrin, my body doesn’t seem to mind.

“Nah, it tires us out.” He leans forward and slides open a drawer that’s beneath the coffee table, pulling out a deck of cards. He looks over the back of the sofa and grins. “Let’s play a game…”

“Lilith,” Kosta, my father, purred in my ear as I lay stretched out wide over cool metal, a dampness between my thighs that was too unnatural to feel normal. Training days. In this room, I would do anything, be anything, because I knew that’s what he wanted. “Stretch your knees wider.” I do, widening them farther. The white sterile walls stank with the stench of bleach, but it was the underlying scent of metallic that made me twist and turn.

“There once was a house that he built…” she started whispering beside me. My fingers connected with hers and I squeezed gently. “…the foundation was cheap, the walls crumbled to his feet…” Skin slapping together sounded through the air, and the salty smell of sweat and bodily fluid whiffed through my nostrils, powerful enough to override the bleach. “…but it didn’t matter because she was there.” She sang off the same rhyme during every training session.

I never asked why.

Keaton deals the cards out onto the table as Eli slides a rolled cigarette between his lips and lights the end, puffing small hits of the joint before passing it to me. I suck in the sweet burning herb and hold it in for a second before exhaling while passing it to Keaton.

“The game is called—” Keaton begins, but he’s rudely interrupted.

“—we’re not doing this.” Kyrin bypasses all of us and saunters into the kitchen.

Keaton’s mouth curls up at the edges, his fingers shuffling through the cards. “—Gin.”

I relax into the sofa as the THC continues to fill all of the tension that I didn’t know was coiled deep in the tissue of my muscles.

“I don’t know how to play that,” I confess, shaking my head when Eli offers me another hit. My eyes are already half-moon and I doubt I’ll stay up long enough to learn how to play the game if I take another. Weed is my poison of choice, but I’ve always used it for sleeping purposes.

I tense when I see Kyrin reenter out of the corner of my eye, taking a seat on the sofa opposite us while resting a glass of what looks like water but I bet is vodka on the top of his thigh.

“Question…” Keaton interrupts as I stretch my arm over my head, bringing my eyes to his.

“For me?”

He begins dealing out the cards, but his attention hasn’t moved from me. “Why just men?”

I reach aimlessly for the cards on the table, swinging my legs off Eli to sit upright. The deck is black with their Four Brothers of Kiznitch star over the top. “What makes you think women were there?” I pretend to look through my hand, even though I still don’t know how to play this game.