Page 66 of Nugget

“Yeah?” Stryker smirked.

“I like seeing the real you. The one that no one else gets.”

Stryker bit his lip. “You know that I don’t feel like I deserve you. This.” Stryker waved his hand around. “Any of this.”

“You do though. The fates brought the two of us together for a reason.” Gavin picked up Stryker’s hand and kissed the back of it. “I am more sure of that than anything else in my life.”

“What if I fuck up?” Stryker asked.

“I would think you’d have realized by now that you're not the only troublemaker in this family.”

Stryker shook his head. “I’m not talking about fun pranks or sneaking off. I’ve done some shitty things in my life.”

“You’ve had to do a lot to survive,” Gavin said.

“I didn’thaveto do everything I did.”

“Do you think I judge you?” Gavin questioned. “The man who admitted to hunting down humans?”

“They killed your family,” Stryker argued.

“Doesn’t mean I was right. There might have been another way.” It was a question that Gavin didn’t like thinking about.

“They killed your family,” Stryker repeated.

“You don’t talk about your family,” Gavin said gently.

“Yeah,” Stryker said. “Not much to say about them.”

“Parents?”

“Left me in a fire station when I was five. I don’t remember them,” Stryker said.

“Damn.”

“I was bounced from foster home to group homes to another foster until I turned eighteen and aged out of the system. I was never in any place for more than six months at a time,” Stryker shared.

“You never had a real home.” That explained so much.

“Even once I was on my own, I moved from place to place. Just staying long enough until someone became suspicious.”

“I’d imagine that you have stolen enough money to have a house of your own,” Gavin said. It was a question that Gavin had been curious about for some time now.

“I guess I never found anywhere I want to stay permanently.” Stryker shrugged. “Until now.”

Gavin smiled. “Until now. With me?”

“Yes, with you.”

Gavin drew Stryker down to kiss him. He pulled back and cupped Stryker’s cheek. “That makes me very happy.”

“Me too. Just one thing.” Stryker held up one finger.

“What’s that, my mate?” His mate. His boy. His special person.

“Adam is not in charge of our mating celebration. I have no idea how things got so out of hand. It’s like every demon we passed just turned direction and followed us home. Before I knew it, there were two dozen demons here and we were having a party. It was nuts.”

Gavin nodded. “I agree.”

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