Page 76 of Wild Thorns

What kind of person does something like this with two different men? With brothers?

Brothers. Plural. The reminder of what I'd done, was doing, sent a fresh wave of guilt through me. Jasper's hands on my skin, his laugh vibrating against my throat. Eli's mouth on mine, his fingers tracing patterns I could still feel like phantom touches. And the constant, unsettling awareness of Callum watching me from doorways, his golden eyes tracking my movements with an intensity I didn't understand.

What kind of person am I becoming?

The question gnawed at me as I straightened my clothes, ran fingers through my tangled hair. I'd never been this woman. Never been someone who fell into one man's arms while the taste of another still lingered. My whole life I'd been careful. Controlled. Safe.

And now I was standing in a hidden basement, aching for a man I barely knew, while my body hummed with the memory of his brother's touch.

Marcus would have called me a whore.

The thought rose unbidden, ugly and familiar. All those years of conditioning, of being told what kind of woman I was, what kind of woman I should be. Good women didn't feel desire for multiple men. Good women didn't let themselves be touched in dusty basements. Good women...

"I should go," I mumbled.

Eli's brow furrowed. "Are you alright?"

"Fine. Just... I need to think."

"Don't," Eli whispered.

I startled. "Don't what?"

"Whatever you're thinking right now—don't." He reached out, took my hand, and pressed another kiss to my palm. "You haven't done anything wrong, Serena. I promise."

"How can you possibly know what I'm thinking?"

"I can see it on your face." His thumb traced circles on my wrist, finding my pulse point again. "You can't hide it. The voice in your head telling you that wanting things makes you bad—tell it to fuck off."

I flinched. He wasn't wrong.

"That voice," he said, "doesn't belong to you. It belongs to someone who wanted to control you. His opinions don't get to live in your head rent-free anymore."

Something cracked in my chest. A tiny fissure in the wall I'd built.

Eli's grip on my hand tightened.

I didn't know what to say to that. So I didn't say anything.

But I knew this was wrong... or complicated. This was going to make everything so much harder.

Eli moved toward me slowly, giving me time to retreat if I wanted. I didn't.

"In my family," he said, as if he could read my thoughts, "we believe that connections aren't always... conventional. That sometimes, something bigger than individual choice is at work."

"Like what? Fate?"

I didn't wait for him to respond. I turned and climbed the stone stairs, leaving him alone among the archives, my lips swollen from his kisses, my body confused and alive.

Outside, somewhere in the distance, I heard it again. That sound I'd been trying to explain away for weeks. Howling. Rising and falling through the preserve, eerie, beautiful, and utterly inhuman. I paused on the stairs, listening. The sound raised goosebumps on my arms, but not from fear. From something else. Recognition.

And when I reached the top of the stairs, my head swimming with Thornwood history and the particular intensity of Eli's attention, I found Jasper waiting at the top.

Chapter twenty

You Belong to Me

Marcus found me at the Muddy Boot.