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21
River
I can feelthe angry energy roiling under my skin after my encounter with Ash, all the sated, relaxed feeling from the orgasms nothing but a distant memory already. I’m on edge and pissed off, and I hate it. It’s like the ground is shifting out from beneath me, like I can’t find solid footing anywhere, and that unbalanced sensation makes me want to lash out.
It would make the most sense to go up to my room and hide out until I feel better, but for some reason, I don’t want to do that. Being idle sounds shitty, so after depositing my shit upstairs, I stalk around the house instead, feeling defiant.
So far, I haven’t poked around their space too much. I go from the room they gave me to the kitchen and sometimes to the living room, but not really beyond that.
Now I don’t stop myself from doing what I want, striding from room to room as if the whole house is my personal domain. I yank open a door down a corridor off the main entryway and find a well-kept baby grand piano inside.
I roll my eyes at the fucking luxury these assholes clearly live in and look the instrument over. One of them must play. Even though they have so much nice shit, it would be stupid to have a whole-ass piano in here if it didn’t get used. Which one is it, I wonder?
Staring at it doesn’t yield any answers, so I march back out, closing the door behind me.
Another couple of doors just lead to closets, and I bypass them, not caring enough to rifle through coats and boxes and shit. But the next door I try reveals a small library.
That’s the only good word for the room full of books. There are shelves lining three of the walls, and an arm chair with a small end table beside it tucked into a corner. It looks like the kind of place that gets a lot of use, which is surprising as hell since none of the guys seem like the intellectual types.
Just the thought of Ash or Knox sitting in that chair with a cup of tea and a thick book is almost enough to make me laugh. It’s a toss-up with Priest, and Gage could go either way too.
There’s a set of encyclopedias on one of the shelves, and I roll my eyes because apparently we’re back in the dark ages or some shit. I move on from those and find a stretch of classic books.
The titles stand out in gold on the spines, things likeThe Works of Edgar Allen Poe,The Prince,The Odyssey, andThe Iliad. Books like they make you read in high school, full of shit you’ll never care about again.
I take a couple off the shelves and check them out, running my hands over the smooth leather of the covers and the embossed letters of the titles. I flip through one,The Odyssey, and am surprised to see little notes in the margins.
Whole passages have been underlined, and the handwriting is cramped off to the side, but I can just make some of it out.
I don’t know anything about books, but reading the stuff in the margins feels like getting a peek into someone’s soul. Whoever wrote these notes had a soul full of rage and pain, and they were connecting with the pain felt by the characters in the books.
Each book I pull off the shelf to look through is like that, with little notes off to the side and underlined parts. Some words are circled, others crossed out. It’s like whoever did it dedicated themselves to reading each book and finding the parts that either pissed them off or resonated with them the most.
I’m putting a few of them back and reaching for another one when someone steps into the room.
“What the fuck are you doing?” a deep voice intones behind me.
Gage.
And he’s pissed. As usual.
I turn around to look at him, and something in the way his face looks so guarded and angry makes me pretty damn sure these books are his.
I’m still on edge, feeling exposed from what happened with Ash. I hate that these men have gotten under my skin. That was never supposed to be part of the plan. I was just supposed to fuck with them, not let them fuck with me back.
“Just exploring,” I tell him, shrugging. “Seeing what there is to see in here. Found these books.”
“You shouldn’t go poking around in other people’s shit,” he snaps, his broad frame looming in the doorway.
I shrug. “It was all just here, so I figured, why not? They’re yours, aren’t they? Or at least, you’re the one who wrote these things in them.”
His jade eyes flash with irritation, and I know I’m right. He wouldn’t care so much if they weren’t his and he wasn’t the one who’d gone through all the trouble to make these notes.
“So what’s all this about, then?” I ask, flipping open one of the books to a random page. It’s got so many notes on it I can barely make them all out, and I lift an eyebrow. “There’s some heavy stuff in here. One of the characters is talking about… I don’t even know what. The suffering they’re going through. And then you wrote a whole tiny little paragraph about how they don’t even know what true suffering is.”
“Stop it,” he grits out, a warning in each syllable.
I don’t stop, though. Because this feels good. More addictive than any drug. I want to poke at him, want to get under his skin the way they’ve all gotten under mine.
