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

everybody staring at me?”
    Alex huffed out in exasperation while pushing himself up into a standing position. “Apparently, you decided that I was your new cuddle buddy.”
    David smiled a satisfied grin just before he stopped suddenly.  He brought his shirt up to his nose and his face twisted in obvious disgust.  “Sonofabitch!  I’ve been sullied!  Seriously, Alex!  Go home and shower and change.  This shirt cost a lot of money and now….”  David lifted the shirt to his nose again. “Now, I’m going to have to…”  He ripped the shirt off of himself and tossed it into a trash can by Daemon’s bedside table.  After shooting a disgusted glare in Alex’ direction, David crawled off the bed and stomped out of the room.    Alex’ booming laugh competed with Daemon’s.   I climbed off the bed and sniffed the sheets.
    “Holy crap, Alex, David wasn’t kidding.  Seriously, you need to change.”  I started peeling the sheets off the bed as Alex glared at me.
    “Well, it’s not like I’ve had a hell of a lot of time to go home.  I’d intended to change this morning if I wasn’t called over here to babysit your ass.”
    Daemon’s face had turned red by this point and I worried about his oxygen levels being depleted by his uncontrolled laughter.  He finally made his way over to help me strip the sheets from the bed as Alex marched out of the room.
    “Is it always like this around them?”
    I looked up into the face of my man and smiled.  “Yeah, mostly.”
    We finished removing the sheets and Daemon walked them out to go place them in the wash as I pulled new sheets from his closet.  After making the bed, I strolled out into the living room to find Daemon speaking with David and Alex in the living room.  All three sets of eyes widened at the sight of me and they suddenly became quiet.  Confused by their reaction, I inspected myself to make sure that I hadn’t grown a third arm or leg.  Having found that everything was normal and where it should be, I looked up in question.  “What?”
    Alex and Daemon laughed and shook their heads.
    “Alright man, well, I’m going to get out of here.  I need a shower and a change of clothes.  What the fuck time is it anyway? Alex grabbed his phone from the table to check the time.  As soon as his thumb swiped across the screen, his eyes widened again, before his face took on a slight shade of purple.  “What the fuck?!”
    I puckered my lips together to keep from breaking out into a grin as Alex looked over the picture of his phone.  His eyes caught mine and narrowed.  “You did this.”  David peeked around to look at Alex’ phone and squealed in delight.  “Oh, how cute!  Alex, you should leave that.”
    Alex moved quickly to erase all evidence of his cuddlefest with David, while David searched his phone to delightedly find that he too had the shot.  After correcting the offending screen image, Alex began to stomp in the direction of the front door.  “Whatever, Paige.  I’ll see you all later on.”
    ~
    Daemon breathed deeply as he slept next to my side.  We were cuddled up on his large bed, now with clean smelling sheets.  He fell asleep watching some stupid war movie while I pounded away on my laptop keyboard in search of Chris.  The hunt was not going well and it was apparent that Chris kept himself off the radar more than most people.   I’d pulled his background report earlier to discover only a few scattered addresses through the years, one or two stints in jail for petty thefts and about four vehicle registrations.   Much like when I pulled Daemon’s report months ago, there were no relatives listed, no possible acquaintances and his history read more like a visitor to this life, rather than a resident.  He had no credit cards, no property in his name…nothing.  The report did include two obsolete phone numbers that were so old, I imagined they now belonged to new people who were clueless to the fact that their