Page 19 of Love’s Strongest Soldier

“I’ll bring your stuff in here.”

Exiting the room, I went and grabbed her luggage and brought it back to her. She immediately went into it to find herself something to put on. I went back to get my suitcase and found me a pair of pajama pants and a T-shirt. By the time I headed to the bathroom, Luxe was coming out. She brushed up against me, swiping her ass cheek against my dick. Her eyes damn near bulged from her head. I wasn’t sure how this—us sleeping in the same bed—was going to work.

I shut the door behind me and took a quick shower. When I came out the bathroom, Luxe was already in bed with her pillow divider. She had the cover pulled up to her neck, lying on her back with her phone up to her face.

I flipped the light off and climbed in on the other side of the pillows. “Good night,” left my lips as I turned on my side, giving her my back. Not long after, the room went completely dark. There was a shift on Luxe’s side of the bed, and then I felt something hit my leg.

I flipped the light on the nightstand and saw that Luxe had tossed her leg over mine. So much for staying on our sides of the bed. My lips fixed for me to say something, but she was knocked out with her mouth wide open, and the sound of a lawn mower escaped her lips. It should be a crime for something that loud to come from something so beautiful. Not wanting to disturb her, I just turned the light off and lay down.

I jumped up from the sound of my phone going off. It was muffled, but I could still hear the alarms. I tossed the cover back and searched underneath the pillows. Ghost sat up and rubbed his eyes with his fists.

“What’s going on?” he questioned me.

“I’m not sure.” The pads of my fingers finally touched my phone, and I pulled it out. On the screen was several notifications from my alarm company. “Something’s going on back at the house,” I told him as I unlocked the phone and went straight to the application.

“What?”

My eyes bucked as I stared at the masked men moving through my house. They were knocking over everything glass, yanking my paintings down off the walls. “Hey! That was fifty thousand dollars!” I yelled at the phone.

“What’s going on?”

Ghost snatched the phone away from me. A frown formed on his face as he glared at the screen. He tossed it back into my lap and then grabbed his own off the nightstand and climbed out of bed.

“Where are you going?” I asked him and turned my attention back to the phone. By the time I looked, they had found my shotgun hanging in the pantry. “Put it back!” It was my favorite. Daddy had bought it for me for my twentieth birthday. Fumes seeped from my ears. They were really pissing me the fuck off at this point.

Ghost ignored me and continued out of the room. I turned on the intercom and said, “If you don’t put my shit back and get the hell out of my house.”

One of the masked men stopped and stared up at the camera in the kitchen. He gave me the bird finger. I noticed this tattoo on his wrist, so I zoomed in on it and screenshotted it. Whoever he was, he damn sure was gon’ regret ever strolling his ass into my fucking house by the time I was done with his ass.

“Wheels up in an hour,” Ghost said when he came back into the bedroom. He had clothes in his hands and headed straight into the bathroom. This wasn’t how I was expecting my lil trip to end.

Back in Montgomery

The jet pulled into the hangar, and I jumped to my feet. I needed to make it back to the house so that I could see just how much damage they caused and what was stolen. Ghost stepped out in front of me. He wasn’t about to allow me to get off this plane before him.

We got off, and he took me over to the truck. “Wait right here,” he said when he opened the back passenger door. I slid into the seat and sat there, waiting for him to load the truck. It wasn’t like I could go anywhere. He had the keys. Now, if the truck was already running, I probably would’ve pulled off and left his ass.

Once we were done, he hopped into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the hangar. It was when he made a left at the light that I realized he wasn’t going in the direction of my house.

“Uh, where are we going? I don’t have time for any detours. I have to go check on my house.”

“That’s something you don’t need to worry about right now. Your house is handled.”

I frowned. “Says who?”

“Says me,” was his only response.

“That’s not good enough for me. I have to check on it myself. I need to make sure they didn’t take all my stuff.”

“We already had someone go by the house to check on it. It’s fucked up pretty bad. For now, you’re going to have to go home with me.”

“With you?” I stared at him as he whipped through traffic. To his house? That was unchartered territory. “What about my things?”

“While you were in The Bahamas, I had some of your stuff moved over to my place.”

“Oh . . .” I poked the tip of my tongue into the inside of my jaw. He was plotting shit behind my back and leaving me out the loop. “You thought you were slick with that one, huh? I’m not going to your house without my collection.”

“Your collection?”