“Weather reports a white-out blizzard at zero-nine-hundred hours.” Thatcher’s voice resounds through comms.

I pull out my earpiece while I ascend wooden stairs to the second floor. It’s pushing 5 a.m. after a never-ending Omega meeting where we all planned security for the tour. I thought I left Thatcher in the fucking kitchen.

Now he’s in my eardrum. With the volume high, I still hear him. “Be alert if you’re driving to the lake house—”

I swivel my radio’s knob, and his voice cuts off. Security agreed to spend the night at the main house and not security’s cabin a mile out. There are plenty of vacant rooms, but I choose the one with Maximoff.

Quietly, I slip inside the bedroom and expect to find him sound asleep. He’s upright, leaning against the log headboard. Maximoff types relentlessly on his laptop. Dark crescent moons shadow his eyes.

He looks spent, but he’s still forcing himself awake.

I frown and slam the door shut behind me.

“Hey,” he greets, not flinching. Not looking up. He props his phone beneath his ear. Listening to a voicemail or something equivalent since he doesn’t speak.

I sidle to the bed and unclip my radio from my waistband. I wrap the earpiece cord and set it on the night table. “A call or notification wake you up?” I ask and rest a knee on the bear-printed quilt.

Maximoff lowers his phone and returns to his laptop. “Never went to sleep.” He tries to catch a yawn and fails.

“Okay, enough.” I push his computer closed. He rubs his eyes and doesn’t try to reopen the laptop.

I step back, keeping an eye on him, and I find black drawstring pants in my duffel.

When I unzip my pants, Maximoff hones in on my tattooed fingers. Especially as I fish the button through. He likes that.

My lips rise.

He tears his gaze off me, neck slightly reddened, and he rotates his strained deltoids, computer still on his lap. “You’ve been awake for just as long,” he says.

“And I’m not the one that looks like shit.”

Maximoff bites down to fight a small smile, which sharpens his jawline.

I skim his striking features from afar, my blood hot, and then I step out of my pants and into the drawstring ones.

“We’re not the same,” I remind him, lifting the elastic band to my waist. “I’m used to vigilant nights. Sometimes they even excite me.” I kick my duffel aside. “But clearly, sleeplessness isn’t your thing. Let go and just sleep.”

Maximoff rakes a rough hand through his thick, dark brown hair. “If I’m going to be out of the office for four months, I have a million-and-one things I need to take care of and schedule.”

His work ethic is admirable and insane.

I sit on the bed. “Plan tomorrow. It’s not going anywhere. And your parents are trying to beat an incoming blizzard right now. They’ll be here earlier than you think.”

His muscles flex, readying himself for that shit storm.

I put his laptop on a night table, and I edge closer to Maximoff. When I lean back against the log headboard, our shoulders brush. Close. Both of us on top of the quilt and shirtless. His charcoal gray boxer-briefs cling to his toned build.

Maximoff fixes his messy hair. A knockout sexual tension grips us both, his muscles flexing. My jaw clenching, hot breath brewing at ninety-degrees inside of me.

He probably wants to make the first move. But I reach out and massage his taut shoulder.

His breathing heavies, and our tough gazes bore into each other.

Maximoff leans forward, allowing me to go lower. For a guy that doesn’t trust easily, his permission to “go lower” is absolutely priceless. I want to give him more.

And more.

I knead his muscles, using my whole body to massage deeper. I run the heel of my palm down the length of his back.

“Fuck,” he mutters, blinking repeatedly to keep his eyes wide open.

If he weren’t tired, he’d flip me over by now. I like how hungered he usually is, but there’s something extremely fucking sexy about how he’s trying to battle his exhaustion.

I pull him between my legs to massage his back with two hands. I brace more of my weight against him, and my thumbs knead the base of his neck.

He swallows a wolfish groan, the noise almost fisting my cock.

I grit down and shift slightly.

Maximoff glances back at me, his fuck me, kiss me eyes in full blood-boiling effect. Before I even make a move, he rotates his body to take charge. And he yanks my leg, pulling me down—my head hits the pillow.

Damn.

My pulse hammers in my throat as I lie beneath him.

I clutch his neck and bring his mouth to mine. The starved kiss turns deep and heady as his tongue parts my lips. Fuck, Maximoff.

The way he uses his mouth is fucking killing me.

He falls to his elbows. Lowering his pelvis against my pelvis, thin fabric separates us, but he’s grinding while deepening a kiss.

Hot friction hardens him and me. Veins throb in my cock, and his dick pulses against mine. Fuckfuck. A gruff noise cages inside my lungs.

Maximoff shifts his head and scans me in a slow, thundering wave. One that clearly reads I want to fuck you.

His voice is more hollowed out as he says, “I don’t want to fucking sleep. Not yet.”

With him above me, I run my palm down his hard chest and the valleys of his abs. Our stinging lips brushing, I whisper strongly, “You want to fuck me?”

His mouth crushes against my mouth, and his hips buck against my waist before he grows more against my thigh. Fuck, I love feeling a guy harden.

Our muscular legs tangle; my ankle rubs his calf, and I grip his hair with one hand, our tongues wrestling. I could flip him to his back, but instead, my other hand travels to the waistband of his boxer-briefs. Dipping under them, I cup his perfect bare ass.

He grumbles an aroused curse against my mouth.

Huskily, I ask, “Did you like that?”

His gaze narrows in want.

I test something and edge my fingers towards his—he tenses. Badly. Enough to where I draw my hand back to his shoulder, and he stays rigid and catches his breath.

I have to ask. “You still want to try to bottom?”

Maximoff lifts his body off me a little more. His palm on the quilt by my shoulder. His eyes trace an inked skull pirate on my ribcage. “Yeah,” he says with a heavy breath. “I do, but I keep thinking about the tour bus and how the fuck this’ll work.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I say, confident about this.

He waits for me to add something else. A strategy or a plan. Maximoff likes to pack his survival gear, and I’m basically saying, just trust me with what we have on our backs.

He makes a face. “So we’ll figure it out in a million light-years.”

I roll my eyes into a short laugh. “I meant we’ll figure it out in the moment, not when we’re both buried six feet under the ground.” His phone rings and then buzzes somewhere on the bed.

He sits up. “I could be immortal.”

I sit up too. “You’re definitely not humble.” I find his phone beneath his pillow and toss it to him. “Here you go, beautiful.”

Maximoff catches his cell and looks thoroughly annoyed by me. Job well done. “Thanks,” he says. “Now I’m eternally sterile.”

“That’s not how that works,” I say. “Looks like you need elementary biology.”

His next words are garbled in a long yawn.

“And sleep,” I add as he pinches his tired eyes—he drops his hand, glowering. His forest-greens flit to my rock-hard bulge, then his bulge.

“I can tell you who’s bigger. And it’s not you.”

He tries hard not to break into a smile. “Funny.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

He glares. “Now I’m fucking limp. Thank you.”

I tilt my head. “Do I really need to point out the lie here?”

He ignores me by pulling the quilt over our legs. Then he unlocks his phone. “It’s probably Dari.” His assistant. “I emailed her about the tour.” A frown crests his face. “I missed a call. Maybe a butt dial since it didn’t ring that many times…and a text from the same person.” He straightens up.

I rest my elbow on my bent knee. “It’s not Dari,” I assume.

He flashes his cell, a text on the screen.

Can we talk when you have time? – Dr. Keene.

Fucking hell. My father is texting him. On a subject unrelated to his health.

Someone among the Hales, Cobalts or Meadows must’ve told my father that I’m dating Maximoff. It makes the most sense.

And instead of contacting me, his son, he’s reaching out to Maximoff. I sense the strain between me and my father all the time, but it seems to yank tighter.

Maximoff cracks a knuckle. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t care.” I’d rather he just lie back down and try to sleep than deal with this shit.

“You do fucking care,” he rebuts, “or else you wouldn’t look ready to uppercut a punching bag right now.”

“If that were true, then it’d mean my father pisses me off.” I’m about to swing my legs off the bed. “And when it comes to him, I feel nothing.”

Maximoff catches my bicep before I move away. “You seriously feel nothing?”

“It’s irritating that he’s texting you and not me, but that’s it. I didn’t start the cold war. It’s all him.” My father wants me to join the family legacy and be a practicing doctor. I have the MD, but I’m never finishing my residency. It’s just not what I want, and he hasn’t accepted that.

Maximoff nods. “I’ll call him back later.”

I try to slide off the bed again.

Maximoff pulls me back for a second time. “Where the fuck are you going?” he asks.

My lip quirks. He really doesn’t want me to leave him, and I struggle to look anywhere else but at him. Consumed. “Need my hand?”

“No,” he says firmly. “I just want you.”

That hits me hard. I almost crawl back. Do your motherfucking job, Farrow. I grit down and then tell him, “I have to get my phone. I haven’t checked social media threats tonight.”

Security’s tech team spends more time doing this tedious shit for us. But personal bodyguards are still supposed to “stay updated” and “aware” of the discourse about our client on social media.

With the media fallout, it’s more important for me to gauge the climate surrounding Maximoff.

“You can do it on my phone,” he tells me, handing me his cell. Trusting me with it.

I can imagine the envy of girls and guys everywhere. And he chose me.

He loves me.

Damn.

My chest swells for a second.

Maximoff lies back, smashes a pillow and then places his head down. He yawns. “I think I’m going to…” He yawns again.

He’s going to pass out. Exhaustion starts drawing his eyes closed.

Good.

He needs that.

I’ve slept in the same bed with him enough to know that he’s typically not a cuddler until a couple hours into sleep. It’s a private, personal fact that tabloids would crave and reprint a hundred times. And it’s all mine for safekeeping.

I stack a couple pillows and lie flat. I’m not about to click into his texts. Privacy is already hard for him, and I’ve never been a nosy little bastard.

I download a program to his phone. It filters certain words on all social medias, and I select a time range. Basically from the last time I did this yesterday to now. Then I type out variations of phrases I need searched like:

kill Maximoff Hale

die Moffy

murder Lily & Lo’s son

Results pop up, 99% just hyperbolic bullshit or slang. I scroll and scroll for two hours. Long enough that Maximoff turns on his side towards me, and our legs interlace.

He rests his head on my shoulder, his arm splayed across my abs. A small smile edges my mouth, and I rub his back before holding him against me.

With my other hand, I still scroll. I have to reach the bottom of the list. About finished, I hover over a search result: @maximoffdeadhale

Usernames like that one are rare. I click on @maximoffdeadhale to find the origin. An Instagram account: 3 posts, 0 followers, 1 following.

I go very still, and my gaze narrows on the oldest photo.

Posted 8 hours ago, the user photoshopped Maximoff reading a comic at Superheroes & Scones into a gory death scene. Eyes crossed out, swords impale Maximoff’s chest, and blood gushes. In the comments, the user posted only one thing: #DeservesToDie

Motherfucker. I grit my teeth, my nose flaring. Distaste runs into the back of my throat. I pop up a second photo, posted 7 hours ago.

An altered photo of Maximoff in his Audi. Where he’s halfway out of the windshield. Blood soaking the glass. My stomach roils. I swallow a rock, and I remember to view this horrific account as his bodyguard.

Not his boyfriend.

Right now, I have to separate the two. My job description says, scrutinize visual deaths of your client with rational thought and care. But I’m scrutinizing visual deaths of the guy I love. I may as well slap a hot iron at my face. Painful—and it’s pissing me off.

I grind my teeth a few times.

Be his bodyguard. I can’t lash out in the comment section of an anonymous internet user. I can’t be overly sensitive to idiotic fuckers. I’m the shield that protects Maximoff Hale, and I’m never going to break and leave him defenseless.

See, I have to practice a great deal of restraint. Especially now.

I examine the photo closer. Real threat or fake threat?

It could be a troll account. I don’t have enough information yet.

Third and most recent photo, posted 5 hours ago, shows Maximoff outside of the nightclub Tidal Wave. And he’s decapitated.

Fuck.

My chest constricts, and Maximoff shifts his jaw more in the crook of my neck and shoulder. He’s only vulnerable like this with me, and usually, it happens when we’re alone. Shit, I just want to protect the fuck out of him.

Staying motionless, I try my best not to wake Maximoff.

And I force myself to analyze the third photo. Searching for anything to help determine if it’s a real or fake threat.

Seems fake. But my heart rate elevates. Because I recognize it’s not 100% confirmed. With the slimmest chance, someone out there may truly want Maximoff Hale to die.

Enough to make it happen.

“Farrow?” Maximoff lifts his head groggily.

“Go back to sleep,” I whisper and click his phone screen to black.

He squints and rubs his eyes roughly. “Your whole body is flexed…” His gaze lands on the black-screened phone, and he readies himself like a soldier for combat. Immediately sitting up, alert and awake.

“Maximoff—”

He steals the phone out of my hand. Basically, I let him have it. I’m not here to cultivate secrets and lies between us. Do I wish he wouldn’t have to see that account? Yeah.

Will I willfully keep him in the dark? Never.

Maximoff swipes out of the lock screen, and the @maximoffdeadhale Instagram account is already popped up. Almost instantly, his head swerves to me. “It’s a fucking troll account.” He tosses the phone on my lap. “It’s not a big deal.”

I cock my head, watching him smash the pillow again to lie back down. “You just saw visual depictions of your death, created by someone out in the world, and you feel fine?”

He yawns into his bicep and then clutches my gaze. “I get death threats every damn week. They’ve never been serious.”

“Someone took the time to photoshop your head off your body, and that doesn’t seem serious?” I honestly wonder if he hears himself. When I was his mom’s bodyguard, I saw plenty of fucked-up graphics.

Like pie charts poorly estimating Lily’s sex partners, her head photoshopped on rabbits, slut typed a hundred times on her face—but not her being murdered.

Not like this.

Maximoff brushes a hand through his disheveled hair. “Sounds like a normal Sunday through Saturday to me.”

I nod a couple times. “At least now we know you’re desensitized to your own death.”

Maximoff rubs his jaw. “Maybe I am, but you don’t need to worry about troll accounts and my plausible death with no sleep at whatever a.m.”

“It’s my job,” I remind him. I deal with this so he doesn’t have to. “I’m flagging this fucking account to be taken down.” And that’ll be the end of that. My gut instinct says differently, but I let it go for now.

Just as I report the account, an aggressive knock raps the door.

Maximoff slides off the bed at the exact same time as me. The knock practically electrocuted him into action. We exchange a look that says, I’m answering the door. Stay back.

He’s too stubborn to listen, and I love seeing him try to catch up to me too much to let him go ahead.

We bolt to the door and race to be the first. I’m already out in front. “I thought you planned to sleep,” I say, about to grab the doorknob.

His arm bangs into mine, but I clutch the knob first, smile widening.

Maximoff barely steps back, squeezing his build against my build. “I thought I told you that I open my own doors.”

“Number 52 on your list of rules. I remember.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I remember everything…but see, this is our door.”

His forest-greens drop to my mouth and my lip piercing. He also layers on a half-hearted glare. “Pretty sure for my things to become your things, we’d need a legal binding agreement.”

Shock ratchets up my brows. “Marriage?”

“No,” he says definitively, shutting that down.

I roll my eyes. I know he’s exaggerating his point, but he’s more defensive than usual. “Technically, you don’t own the lake house,” I tell him. “So it’s not even your door.”

Maximoff groans and sends a daggered glare to the ceiling.

“Was that glare meant for me or the light fixtures?”

“The lights,” he says. “This is for you.” He gives me a middle finger.

I laugh a short laugh, and just as he tries to reach for the knob, I turn it and swing the door open.

Oscar Oliveira stands on the other side, brown hair curly and damp like he just showered. He steadies a cream cheese bagel near his mouth.

Arms crossed, eyes narrowed, Maximoff looks ready for hell and back. His resolve is fucking sexy.

I tell Oscar, “I didn’t sign up for the Oscar Oliveira Wake Up Call.” I lean on the door frame.

Oscar’s eyes drift from me to Maximoff, who stands rigid only one-foot away in boxer-briefs. His muscles are front-page-worthy, his defined V-line disappearing beneath his waistband. His lips are a little reddened from earlier, and his usually combed hair is wild and unkempt.

Mine isn’t much different. I smooth my hair back with two hands.

Oscar fastens his gaze on me, not able to restrain a smile. “It’s almost growing on me. You two…together.” He bites into his bagel. “Though I didn’t realize you like them young, Redford—”

“You don’t realize a lot of things, Oliveira,” I cut him off, “still, we try not to hold it against you.”

He laughs into another bite.

Maximoff stands sturdy, layering on authority like he’s commanding a boardroom. “I’m not young or naïve,” he says, his firm tone instantly quieting Oscar. “And if you’re here just to shoot the shit, tell me. Because I could be sleeping.”

Okay, that was hot.

Oscar wipes cream cheese off the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “I’m here as a courtesy.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Oscar licks his thumb, but his expression is more serious. “Lily and Lo just got here.” He looks at Maximoff. “Your parents said they’d wait until you woke up to talk, but I thought you’d appreciate an extra warning.”

“Thank you,” he says, grabbing his jeans from the floor.

“No problem.” Oscar flashes a wince at me. “Boyfriend’s parents are already pissed at you, Redford. I don’t envy your position.”

I’d say parents love me, but I’m not a liar or a kiss ass. And I’m painfully certain that I’ve fallen onto Loren Hale’s permanent shit list.