Free Conquer (Control) by M.S. Willis Page A

manner as I had before.  Talk to people.  Find out as much as we could and follow up on any leads or information that we could pull from those who knew Chris.  “I’ll pull a background report on him.  We can talk to whoever appears to be connected to him;  family, friends, old roommates if there are any.  Maybe, he’s worked other places and some of the employees might remember something about him.”
    “Pull the report.  However, you are not going anywhere alone.  Alex or I will accompany you at all times.  Agreed?”
    “Yeah,” I grudgingly agreed.  This sucked. Even though I appreciated that he wanted to make sure I was safe, I still hated feeling like a child who needed someone to watch over me.
    Daemon chuckled and kissed me on the forehead.  “Good girl.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go kick the two men who just slept with my girlfri…oh wait…can I call you girlfriend now, or are we still not doing labels?”  His head cocked to the side in amusement of having put me on the spot.
    I wavered.  I mean, sure, I was committed to him, but the word “girlfriend” felt like a commitment to that commitment.  That was like a double commitment and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.  It’s not that I didn’t want to be Daemon’s girlfriend, but I’d lived so long not really being anybody’s anything. It was a security blanket that I kept tucked tightly around myself.  If there was no commitment, there were no expectations.  Expectations made me nervous.  I’m not good with expectations.  I usually end up falling short of them with my newest wild scheme.
    I could feel Daemon’s laughter at my silence rumble through his body.  “Either way, I need to go kick those two out of my bed.”
    I moved aside to allow Daemon to exit the kitchen, but followed along to assist him in removing my friends from his bed.  When we entered the room, I startled at the sight of Alex and David cuddled up together.  A broad smile took over my face and I had to cup my hand over my mouth to keep from audibly laughing.  Daemon’s lip quirked up into a grin and I nudged him before indicating that I wanted him to hand me his phone.  His shoulders bobbed up and down as he attempted to stifle his own laughter.  He handed me his phone and I quickly snapped off a couple photos.  I held up my finger to Daemon to indicate that I needed a minute.  My fingers moved deftly over his keyboard as I texted the photo to both Alex and David’s phones.  Quickly moving back out into the living room, I spotted both of their phones sitting on the coffee table in the living room.  I grabbed each phone, opened the texts, and saved the photo as their home screens.  Giggling to myself, I placed both their phones back where I found them and ran back to the bedroom.
    Daemon turned to me and said, “Did you want to wake them or should I?”
    I looked over at my friends.  They looked so innocent and content, like two little boys curled up together after a long day.  No…wait…that imagery wasn’t exactly normal, was it?  I shrugged my shoulders and walked over to the bed before climbing on and jumping up and down at their feet.  “Rise and shine boys!”
    They both startled awake and opened their eyes to find that their arms and legs were twisted together like pretzels.   Alex jumped immediately when he realized his close proximity to David and he rolled over and OFF the bed after his discovery.  He hit the ground with a heavy thump before popping back up off the ground to survey his surroundings.  “What the hell?!”
    David let out a big yawn and resembled a cat as he stretched his long lean form out of its previously curled position.   David finally opened his honey brown eyes and looked around to find me standing on the bed above him, a confused Alex kneeling on the floor next to the bed, and a snickering Daemon standing at the foot of the bed.  “Well, hey guys.  What’s going on?  Why’s