“Thought so.” He slowly drops his hand, but he doesn’t lean back. “Look at that. Two things we’re in agreement on. I think that’s more than enough to ensure some peace between us. Don’t you think so?”

I feel like he’s hypnotized me. I sway toward him before I can stop myself. “Yes.”

“Three things.” He leans down and brushes a light kiss to my lips. “We’re off to one hell of a start, Bride.”

My whole body is zinging by the time Shiloh makes it back to us. She got us all tacos, and it’s just as delicious as the smells promised. Or I assume it is. I’m so distracted, I can’t properly enjoy it.

It’s only reasonable for Broderick and me to officially call a ceasefire. I don’t want him dead, and apparently he doesn’t want that fate for me, either. Even as my rational side tries to convince me that it’s to avoid war, a small part of me can’t help replaying his soft words.

I don’t want you dead.

Maybe this really could be the start of…something.

The next two weeks pass in a strange, happy blur. My days are filled with reassuring my mother that she doesn’t need to take extreme measures against the Paine brothers, and all the millions of tasks that come with helping run a very successful corporation.

My nights are filled with Shiloh and Broderick.

It’s just so fucking easy. Broderick and Shiloh seem to have gotten over that bump from friendship to fucking, and if part of me was a little worried they’d move on without me, it hasn’t happened.

Every single morning, Broderick gets up before us and brings coffee back to the room before we go our separate ways, Shiloh and I to the office, Broderick to oversee most of the day-to-day stuff in the compound. Every single evening, he picks us up and we spend a little time exploring the Raider faction, revisiting places from his childhood, planting new memories of our own.

We make Shiloh come so hard she cries in the park where he and his brothers used to hang out and get up to mischief. He and Shiloh take turns fingering me at the old movie theater that used to be one of his teenage haunts. The three of us nearly get caught fucking in the truck at his old make-out spot near the train tracks that cut through the south part of the faction.

It’s fun.

The only blip is Shiloh.

Sometimes I catch her with a strange look on her face, something almost like fear. It’s usually in the office or on our way back to Raider territory after work. No matter how many ways I approach the topic, she won’t let me in.