From Sanctum with Love (Masters and Mercenaries #10) - Lexi Blake Page 0,35

don’t think he’ll ever be close to his biological family again. I think in the end we make our own families.”

And Kai was like her brother. Yeah. Her non-blood between them, really wished he would slap her ass hard brother. There wasn’t anything weird about that. She gave Serena a big hug. That was one of the gifts Sarah had given her. She’d never been a hugger. When she’d come to Sanctum, there had been a bitch of a sub who loved to screw with everyone. Sarah had joined and Maia had told her Kori loved to be hugged.

She hadn’t been quite able to shove the girl away, and over the years she’d not only gotten used to random acts of affection from her friends, she’d come to crave them.

Another gift from Sanctum.

“It’s going to be awesome, Serena. You’re going to be awesome.”

Serena squeezed her tight. “Thank you. I needed that.”

And that was a gift from Kai. She’d watched him help people for years and one of the things she’d learned was sometimes people needed to hear that they could do a thing before they believed it themselves. It was all good and great to be able to look in the mirror and be confident without outside voices, but sometimes it was also good to hear that people were behind you.

Withholding that affection had been the norm where she’d come from. It felt so good to let it flow now.

Like that moment when she’d wrapped her fingers around Kai’s hand and she’d felt him sigh in relief. He’d needed her and that had been a revelation.

She watched Serena walk away, likely back to the lounge section of the locker room where she and Avery O’Donnell kept a couple of comfy chairs. Serena would sit with her computer in her lap and type away.

And she would watch Kai with his brother and wish for that moment when he needed her again.

She quietly joined the others as Charlotte Taggart began her talk.

Twenty minutes later, she stepped out of the locker room to the sound of thudding industrial music. The sound soothed her, familiar and comforting. She looked around but Sanctum was still Sanctum. There might be a few extra people in the club, but it looked exactly the same otherwise. Somehow she’d worried she would step out and find the dungeon had changed.

“Did Lady Taggart give you the speech on respecting famous people because they sometimes have small penises and that means they want to be left alone?” Vince hurried up to where she and Sarah and Mia stood. A broad grin was on his face. “Because that was pretty much how Lord Taggart put it. He also said something about the first sub who screamed or fainted at the sight of some douchebag actor in a pair of leathers would spend the next month lighting the hamster wheel up. And the awesome part was Jared Johns was actually in the locker room when he said it. I love Master Ian. I think I would go gay for him if he had a vagina.”

“If he had a vagina you wouldn’t be gay,” Sarah pointed out. “And Charlotte talked a whole bunch about how men can be sexually harassed, too, but I was mostly thinking about how hot his character on Dart is. Do you think he can really kill two men with one dart?”

“I don’t understand why he doesn’t pick up a gun,” Mia said with a shake of her head as she looked out over the dungeon. “That would be way easier than darts.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Kori muttered. Everyone was a critic. “And it was also a comic book at one point. Those fan boys and girls can get vicious when they think the source material isn’t being respected. Who’s here tonight?”

She needed a single Dom, or one of the marrieds whose wife didn’t mind celibate play.

“A bunch of the MT group is out of town. Simon and Jesse are in California and Liam O’Donnell is on vacation in the Caribbean somewhere,” Vince explained.

“Doesn’t that strike you as weird?” Mia asked. “I would think it would be too soon.”

“Too soon after what?” Sarah asked.

“Too soon after they lost a teammate in that part of the world,” Mia whispered. “It seems odd that Theo Taggart died there and now Liam O’Donnell is taking his wife and kid for a vacay.”

“The Caribbean is a big place,” Sarah replied. “I’m sure it’s not the same island.”

“And I heard they weren’t in the Caribbean.” She’d