Liar (Madison Kate #2)(30)

He'd known I could hear them talking in my bedroom. He hadn't made any attempt to lower his voice. He’d wanted me to hear him, meaning there was a pretty good chance there was no tracking device at all and he just wanted me to be paranoid.

Sneaky motherfucker.

Coming into the kitchen I found the three of them sitting around the island with the remains of a pancake breakfast on the plates in front of them. All three sets of eyes seemed to follow me like laser-beams as I grabbed out a coffee mug and set about making coffee—again.

"I thought you were going somewhere today?" I asked, breaking the awkward-as-fuck silence that seemed to be clogging the air of the kitchen. "I was quite looking forward to a nice, peaceful Thanksgiving with just the staff."

"We are going somewhere today, yes," Archer replied, sipping his pitch-black coffee sludge like he actually enjoyed it. "But how did you know that?"

My shoulders tensed. "I heard Kody yelling about it outside my room earlier," I half-lied. "It's what woke me up, you asshole." I glared at Kody, and he just stared back at me with narrowed eyes. He was far too intuitive for my liking.

"Here, I saved you some breakfast," Steele told me, pushing across a plate wrapped in foil. "Arch wants to hit the road ASAP, so eat fast."

"Hit the road to where?" I asked, peeling the foil back and finding a short stack of pancakes. My stomach rumbled as I grabbed the maple syrup and drowned the whole pile.

"It's a surprise," Archer replied in a dry tone. It sounded less like a surprise and more like a power trip. Well, lucky for him, two orgasms before breakfast put me in a pretty chilled mood, so I just shrugged and started on my food.

Kody cleared his throat, and I looked up at him. Except he was glaring at Steele.

"Steele," he muttered, and there was a solid sound like he'd just kicked him. "You got something to tell MK this morning?"

"Uh..." Steele shot a look to me, and I kept my face carefully blank. Archer, though? He looked all kinds of smug. Was he seriously entertained by the prospect of Steele... what, exactly? Telling me he'd fucked "another woman" this morning? Even if that was what'd happened, he shouldn't be so damn gleeful about it.

Or maybe he just wanted everyone to be as miserable as he was.

Too bad it was going to backfire on him.

"What did you need to tell me, Max Steele?" I placed a bite of maple-smothered pancake in my mouth and gave him my very best blank and innocent expression.

He narrowed his eyes back at me, a smile playing at his lips like he wanted to call me on my shit. He wouldn't, though. We'd definitely crossed into new territory since the time he’d bragged to his buddies about finger-fucking me in that dirty bathroom.

"Nothing," he muttered, shooting Kody a dark look. "Kody's stirring shit."

Archer sat back in his seat, folding his arms like he was thoroughly enjoying himself. All he needed was a box of popcorn, smug fuck.

"Kody's not stirring shit," Kody growled, talking about himself in third person in a bit of an adorable kind of way. The fact that he seemed to be looking out for my best interests was going a long way in his favor. "Tell her about the girl in your room this morning, Steele. How'd you sneak her out without anyone seeing her, anyway?"

Steele glared death at Kody, then shifted his gaze to me.

Archer was watching me with barely concealed glee, like he was waiting for my head to explode, and all I could think was... damn, these two are dumb as fuck.

"I didn't sneak anyone out," Steele said truthfully, then fought a grin. "I was just watching porn."

My brows shot up, and I filled my mouth with more pancake to stop from laughing out loud.

"Bullshit," Archer remarked, cool as ever. "No porn sounds like that."

Steele just shrugged, his eyes not leaving me as he replied. "Maybe you need to watch better porn, bro."

I choked on my mouthful.

After a minute of coughing while Kody patted me on the back, I took a long sip of coffee to try and clear my throat before wiping my streaming eyes on the hem of my shirt.

When I was done, everyone was staring at me again. Except this time they weren't staring like they were waiting for my head to pop off with outrage about Steele's "other woman." This time they were staring with an odd mixture of anger and worry, all underscored with a thread of heated desire.

It took me a minute, but the way Archer stared at my midsection clued me in. They'd just seen my scar when I raised my shirt to wipe my eyes. And probably my bra, too, but fuck it. Bras weren't anything to be ashamed of, and mine were pretty enough to be seen.

I wasn't in the mood to discuss heavy topics like my stabbing, though, so I swapped back to something less intense: Steele's fake infidelity.

"So, was she a better lay than me?" I asked him, totally deadpan. His eyes flared with heat, and Kody's mouth dropped open slightly. Archer just scowled like he could kill us all with the force of his frown.

Steele gave me a lopsided smirk, meeting my gaze without hesitation. "No one is better than you, Hellcat."

Archer made a disgusted sound and scraped his chair back to stand up. "Fuck this," he grumbled. "I'm grabbing the truck. Better pack a bag, Princess Danvers; we won't be back here tonight."