Silence that Sizzles Read Online Free

make her way through the crowded sidewalk when suddenly she felt someone grab her arm and whirl her around. For a moment, she thought that Oak Tree had finally sent someone to take care of her. Then she looked up into Kyle’s steely gray-blue eyes.
    “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “Anywhere but here,” Kelly said fiercely. She had basically begged him to help her, and he had treated her like shit. Kelly Malone was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a weakling. If Kyle wasn’t going to help her, she’d figure it out by herself. She could take care of herself; she had done it for years.
    Kyle’s face softened as he noticed her flinch at the intensity of his stare. “You didn’t finish your drink.”
    Kelly felt her mouth fall open. He had insulted her, and now he was pissed that she hadn’t finished her free drink? “I’m not like those girls in there. I know where I’m not welcome.”
    “I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Kyle said with a sigh. “Why don’t you come back inside and tell me what’s going on?”
    Kelly stared up into his eyes and wondered if he ever thought about that night in the foxhole the way that she did. They were memories that helped her get to sleep some nights. Other nights, just thinking about it was like her torment. Her skin would tingle with sensations, and there was no way to reach her release.
    “I don’t want to be a bother.” Those words these were the truth. She didn’t want to be a bother to anyone, much less to Kyle.
    “People come here for help all the time. Maybe I’d forgotten that for a moment. Most of the time they’re shifters, but we don’t turn anyone away who’s in need.”
    That was something that Kelly did know. It had been in the surveillance reports as well. She thought that Kyle and his business partners thought they might be above scrutiny at this point. They all seemed to be rich and well-to-do, and they ran the entire clan of shifters that lived in Copper City. Although they publicly dismissed the idea that the Urban Dwellers were a clan.
    Clans were the way that the shifter communities were organized. All of the members of the clan obeyed the rule of the clan’s alpha. And there was always an alpha. That was the strange thing about the Urban Dwellers. There had been much media speculation about which one of the three was the alpha in the group. None of them claimed it, though. That was also unusual. Whenever there was an alpha present, not unlike the most famous alpha, the Greyelf alpha Lukas Kasper, they were always the first one to tell you they were the alpha.
    Kelly was probably one of the few humans who knew more about shifters, shifter politics, and shifter behavior than almost anyone else in the world. It had been the main focus of her department’s research division at Oak Tree. That was with the exception of Kyle’s business partner, Anthony Atwood. But Anthony was a shifter, so he knew things by his very nature that Kelly had to uncover on her own. To Kelly, that almost didn’t count.
    “You’ll really hear me out?” There was a part of her that said that she should still leave. Coming to Kyle had been an idea that opened up a whole can of worms that she wasn’t really sure if she wanted to deal with, and yet she couldn’t stay away.
    There was a faint smile that crossed Kyle’s lips. “I’ll do more than that if you let me.”
    The words hung in the air between them, and Kelly felt her heart speed up. What was he offering? What was she willing to accept? She was scared shitless of the answer to both of those questions. He offered his arm to her, and she hooked hers through it without hesitation. She was into Kyle, hook line and sinker, and it seemed almost silly to deny it.
    Once back inside, Kyle surprised Kelly by leading her towards the back of the club and up a small flight of stairs. They arrived at a door at the top of the stairs, and he opened it and allowed her to walk through first. She found herself in