Pouting, Angel stuck her tongue out at him. “I wasn’t being nosy, I just didn’t realize you could tell someone’s experiences from their hard limits.”

“Well, you have to be particularly wise and insightful... Ouch!” Damn her elbows were sharp. And she’d somehow managed to get him in almost the exact same spot she’d poked him earlier. Considering she was both pregnant and not his, he didn’t have much in the way of recourse either, unless he wanted to tattle on her to Adam, and he had way too much dignity to stoop so low. Not to mention, he wasn’t entirely sure Adam wouldn’t just reward her. The two of them got along fairly well, but Michael liked to needle the other man just for fun sometimes. His best defense was probably to just distract her. “So she talked about it with you, huh?”

“Not any details, but yeah a little,” Angel said, making a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl. “We all did.”

Michael frowned. “What do you mean you all did?”

“We all shared our bad experiences,” Angel said with a shrug, although he could tell she was feeling uncomfortable saying so. Which was unusual because not much embarrassed Angel and finding a topic she was uncomfortable talking about was kind of like finding a unicorn. His frown deepened, a surge of protective anger rising inside of him.

“What bad experiences?”

“Oh geez, you had to go and get him going too?” Lexie asked, walking back into the room, followed by Patrick. She was wearing her usual attire for home when there was company - one of Patrick’s big shirts. Michael was fairly certain Patrick just kept her completely naked all the time when no one else was around.

Smart bastard.

Patrick, on the other hand, was fully clothed in jeans and a t-shirt, his dark eyes appreciatively wandering over Lexie’s exposed legs. He had the smug look of someone who was feeling very satisfied at the moment. No wonder they’d been taking so long in the kitchen. Michael just hoped they hadn’t done something horribly unhygienic, because the sandwiches Lexie was setting down on the coffee table looked delicious, as did the fruit salad Patrick was carrying.

“What?” Angel asked, looking defensive as she pushed herself into a sitting position. “It’s not my fault they all flip out as soon as they hear something bad once happened. News flash guys, bad things happen to everyone. I didn’t even get to the part where we deal with this shit on a daily basis.”

“What?”

“Not, like being molested,” she waved her hand at him, as if that was going to help him calm down. “But walking down the street, the cat calling, the guys pulling over their cars to try and talk to us.”

“They what?”