Page 62 of Obey

The music wraps around me as I near the doorway, my pulse climbing harder with every quiet step. Then I look through the crack in the door and freeze.

The room beyond is nothing like the office.

Low amber light spills across black leather and dark wood, catching the gold accents of furniture meant for other purposes. The city glows beyond tinted floor-to-ceiling windows. Shelves hold decanters and books arranged with unnerving precision. My stomach flips.

Oh.

Oh.

Nate sits in a leather chair at the center of it all, shirt unbuttoned, dark slacks pulled taut over his thighs. And Jace—

Jace kneels between Nate’s spread legs, wearing nothing but black briefs. Sweat glistens along his collarbone; his curls cling to his forehead. Faint, dark red marks bloom along the side of his throat.

“You going to keep staring at me,” Nate says, voice low and controlled, “or are you finally going to explain why you thought locking me out of my own presentation was funny?”

Jace grins, unrepentant. “It was objectively funny.”

“You put a screaming goat where quarterly projections should be.”

“The analytics team loved it.”

A laugh catches in my throat. Jace’s eyes dart up toward the sound, but Nate’s hand is already there, cupping his jaw, forcing his attention back.

“Eyes. On me.”

The shift in Jace is immediate. His lashes dip for a second—submission or strategy, I can’t tell— before he meets Nate’s gaze head-on. He looks wrecked and glorious like this, lit from within by whatever game they’re playing.

Heat coils low in my belly.

I lean closer just as Nate drags his thumb slowly over Jace’s bottom lip. Then he kisses him, deep and claiming, and the sound Jace makes is so raw and wanting my thighs clamp together on reflex.

Oh my God.

I need to leave.

Now.

I stumble backward from the door, my shoulder blades colliding with a solid wall of heat.

“Easy, Little Doe.” Elias’s voice is a low rasp against my ear, and my entire body goes rigid. I hadn’t heard a footstep, hadn’t sensed his presence until he was already behind me.

“Leaving so soon,” he murmurs, his breath stirring the hair at my temple as his hand lands on my waist.

My gaze darts toward the distant elevator lights. Run, my mind shrieks, but my feet are rooted to the polished floor. “You can go, but I doubt you want to miss this.”

It shouldn’t have sounded like an order coming from him—not here, not like this—but it did. The command hummed beneath the words, undeniable.

I hesitantly turn back to the sliver of light from the playroom. Behind me, Elias makes a soft, approving noise deep in his chest. His hand slides more fully around my waist, pulling me back against him until I can feel the hard line of his body pressed against mine.

“That’s what I thought.”

Inside, Nate breaks the kiss, pulling back just enough to study Jace’s flushed face, and slowly runs his tongue over his bottom lip as if savoring the taste left behind.

“Still feeling funny?” Nate asks, his voice dangerously calm.

Jace grins up at him, utterly unrepentant. “Depends,” he says, the word breathless. “How do you feel about screaming goat merch? Because I have mock-ups.”

My own lips press together to trap a hysterical laugh.