Page 69 of Sawyer and the Bookworms

“Stop talking like you know what’s inside my head.”

“Ky, what the fuck is going on with you? Wanna go home, leave her here?”

“You don’t fucking talk to me, and make up plans as you go along?—”

“Not now,” Archer snaps, that low growl returning in his voice. “We’ll discuss it tonight. Let’s get a table. Unless you want to go, Ky. Up to you.”

“I’m staying,” Kyrian says after a long, tense moment. “I’m goddamn curious.”

Archer is watching him like a hawk. He nods. “I promise we’ll talk later.”

“Whatever.”

Holy fuck, we’re actually getting a table to watch Brinlee’s show. Archer goes to talk to the scary ticket lady, and Roman whispers something in Kyrian’s ear that doesn’t seem to ease his annoyance.

I don’t know what to do with myself.

So I pace, twisting my hands together, feeling my anxiety build inside my chest, as more customers file inside, taking their seats. More and more, filling up the club.

What’s Archer’s plan? I feel… strange, staying after she sent me away. Staying to see her dancing on the stage, in that makeup and those clothes. That’s not my girl. My girl is a hippy dressed in long skirts or loose pants and Boho tops, her hair wild, her eyes smiling, lost inside books and stories.

My pixie girl.

This version of Brin is like sexy Alice in a twisted Wonderland.

Do I even know her? I thought I did, but here I am, inside a strip club, a paying customer, waiting for the tables to fill up and for her to step onto that double stage.

I don’t even know myself right now.

Fuck, my heart is racing like it’s about to take a running leap out of my chest, Alien-style. I keep wiping my hands on my thighs. My mouth is dry.

“Sawyer, come here,” Archer says softly, and there’s a deer vibration in his voice. A purr. It snags my attention. “Come sit here with me. It will be all right.”

Suddenly, I can breathe again and I obey without thinking, sitting down beside him.

“Good man,” he says and I feel that’s not exactly what he’d meant to say.

“Good boy. You did great.”

It’s as if he’s patted my head. What’s worse, I should hate it, but I fucking love it. I all but pant, craving more, that goddamn alpha purr burrowing under my skin, soothing, dominant, and reassuring.

He smirks at me, knowing what he’s doing to me, and I’m about to find my snark and tell him off, but he puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes, saying, “Are we okay here, Sawyer?”

I nod. He’s doing this for Brinlee, for me. I have a question, though: “Are you really interested in her?”

“Define interested.”

“Do you want her for your pack? Really?”

He stills. His smirk is still there, but it’s kind of frozen, too. “I want more,” he says finally, his gaze boring into mine. “I want two people more. Can you guess who they are?”

I swallow hard, a knot stuck in my throat. “Is that only you speaking? Or all three of you?”

He sighs. “Roman is with me. Kyrian… we need to talk.”

“Shouldn’t he be your priority?” I snap.

He winces. “He is one of my priorities,” he corrects me. “Kyrian is… complicated. I need to handle this carefully.”

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