If we were somewhere else and if she didn’t have a boyfriend, I’d take her hand and let her feel.
Sulli uses her bicep and body to open the water bottle, managing to twist off the cap herself. A tense silence lingers until she asks, “What are you doing with that?”
She notices the shoelace in Akara’s hand.
Akara and I share another look like you wanna tell her?
I lift a shoulder in a why not? He’s usually a “buddy-guard” with her and always walks a professional tightrope.
Akara says, “We were talking about restraint knots.”
“For…?” Her eyes tighten in more confusion.
“Sex,” he says.
I add, “Headboards.” I put down my beer and stick a toothpick between my lips, a growing pang pounding the back of my head.
Fuck this thunder-fucking migraine.
“Right, I figured it’d be, you know, P-in-the-V action.” She pauses and frowns. “That’s actually not entirely fucking true. I did think that maybe it’d be security related. Like cuffing someone and…” Her eyes ping between us and she avoids our gazes again, her neck flushed. “Um…I’m going to…” She jabs a thumb behind her shoulder. Towards a wall.
“Disappear into the wall?” I tease.
She glances back there. “Fuck…um, no. I meant…you know, I don’t know what I meant, but…” Her eyes widen like she’s a hot second from running away.
“We come in peace,” Akara says with a smile.
“Do you?” She shrugs like she doesn’t know him anymore.
His smile vanishes. “Sul.”
“Don’t Sul me, Kits. I’m allowed to be mad.”
“You are,” he agrees. “Just don’t hate me forever.”
She winces. “I don’t hate you…I couldn’t…” She glances at me, like she’s remembering what I whispered against her ear at the bar.
I told Sulli, “Akara would never hurt you. He just did what he thought was right. And you can try to shove me back all night, all day. But I’m seven-inches taller and can throw you over my shoulder.”
Ever since I said that last part, she’s been looking at me like she wants to competitively test that.
“Are we good?” Akara asks right here, right now, his concern still tight on her.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Sulli struggles to screw the cap back on her water before even taking a sip, and she doesn’t let us help.
“Does that hurt?” Akara asks about her bandaged hand, and just as he says it, a splitting pain nails my head.
Christ fuck Almighty.
I close one eye and try to rub my temple without drawing attention.
“Not that much.” Sulli stares at her healing palm in thought. I want to tell her that at least we can all agree her boyfriend is a shitbag for complaining about Akara being at the bachelor party.
It’s not like they went together. He was there for Farrow. She was there for Maximoff.
But I think she already knows this. Or else she wouldn’t be so quick to break up with him in the first place. I have to give it to Sulli, she doesn’t play around.
Will made one big asshole move, and she cut him off.
“Are you ghosting me?” Akara wonders. “You haven’t replied to any of my texts.”
“Feels pretty fucking shitty, huh?”
Akara frowns. “You’re ignoring me to get back at me for being standoffish?”
“No. I did it because I didn’t know what to fucking say to you…and maybe I need a day or two…” At this, she literally runs away. Out of the room, up the stairs.
“Sulli!” he calls, one second from chasing after her.
Neither of us move. Maximoff is already jogging after his cousin. He sends me and Akara a sharp-edged Hale glare before disappearing to where Sulli fled.
Reason number one million why I’m glad these families have Maximoff. Family picking up the pieces is different than a bodyguard picking up the pieces. Sometimes a bodyguard can be better, but in this situation, family definitely is.
Akara breathes out a frustrated breath, then tells me, “That feels irreparably damaged…but I can’t give up on her. I don’t know how.”
I bite down on my toothpick. “It might not be as bad as you think.”
Things aren’t headed towards a porta shitter, but I can’t tell where it’ll end up. Where it’s going. But it doesn’t matter if I can’t see the future.
I’m always ready for anything.
Thanks so much for reading this bonus scene! We can’t wait for you to read all about Banks, Sulli, and Akara’s epic MFM romance in Wild Like Us!
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