Page 18 of The Guarded Monster’s Truth

I come with both hands locked around his horns and his cock buried so deep I feel him everywhere. My pussy grips him in waves that make my vision blur, and the clench pulls him over with me. He buries himself to the hilt and comes with a sound that starts as my name and breaks apart into a word from a language I don't speak, his body shaking from the horns down, the purring so loud the bed frame hums against the wall.

His head rests on my stomach. My fingers follow the horn symbols while the purring runs under my ear like a second heartbeat winding down from a sprint.

"The watchtower." My fingertip follows the carved groove at the base. "I've had my own theory since day two. Tell me yours."

"It was my first mark. Carved it at twenty-two, the week I went rogue." His voice comes low against my skin. "It means I see everything."

My fingertip finds the next symbol. Crossed lines, cut shallow, several of them. "These?"

"Threat neutralized."

My finger moves to the closed circles, one for each year, evenly spaced. "And the circles?"

"A year survived."

I find the closed eye. Fresh, the edges still sharp enough to catch my fingertip. He carved it yesterday while I sat on the bed and watched. "This one?"

He doesn't answer right away. His arm tightens across my hips.

"They found me."

He stays quiet. His breath warms my skin and the purring softens to a hum. I don't push. Some answers you hear louder in the silence than you would in the words.

I run my thumb across the watchtower one more time. Then I press my lips to the base of his horn, where the first mark lives, and his whole body shudders beneath the kiss.

He gets dressed without turning on the overhead light. Jeans, boots, radio off the nightstand. He presses his lips to the top of my head on the way out.

The monitors cycle feeds while he runs a perimeter check. I sit at the desk in his t-shirt with my notebook open and the corkboard filling my peripheral vision.

My pen finds the paper.

Ridgeline Strategic appears twice on this board. Once connected to my editor. Once connected to Humans First.

Two investigations on one wall, overlapping where a Virginia consulting firm paid a magazine editor and funded a hate group in the same zip code. I cap the pen and pull my phone from the desk and send a message to Ellie.

Can you check one more thing? Any county-level filings tied to Ridgeline Strategic in the past eighteen months. Donations, contracts, grants.

Her reply comes in nine minutes.

Already on it. Colt asked the same question yesterday.

Chapter 8

Bruiser

The shower runs behind the bathroom door. Ava hums through the steam, something tuneless, and the sound fills the apartment the way her scent fills it—reaching every corner I used to keep bare.

Her laptop sits open on the bed where she left it an hour ago, the afternoon's interview notes half-transcribed and Her recorder sits on the nightstand. Digital Olympus, brushed silver housing, a few years of wear on the record button.

I intercepted its Bluetooth signal her first week in the compound. Listened to every file it produced. Logged its broadcast frequency, its battery cycle, its output pattern. I know this device the way I know any equipment that enters my space.

But I never opened the housing.

Eleven years of fieldcraft, and I missed the one thing sitting six inches from my pillow.

The screwdriver tip fits the seam along the battery compartment. Four micro-screws, Phillips head, factory standard. The back panel lifts free and I set it on the desk beside the frequency analyzer.

A transmitter sits behind the battery housing, flush-mounted against the circuit board, soldered to the power rail so it draws current whenever the recorder holds a charge. Smaller than a grain of rice and passive, with no antenna visible to the naked eye. The antenna runs through the housing itself, the casing functioning as a broadcast element that pings every fifteen minutes on a frequency my scanner doesn't catch. The scanner sweeps for active transmitters. This one sits dormant between pings, invisible. I haven't handled hardware this elegant since Langley.