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“What areyouthinking about?”
He eases off me, dragging his fingers over my breast before tapping them. ‘Nothing.’
“Now who’s the liar?”
He bites me, and it makes me smile, even if he bites too damn hard, and he lets up when I let out a small hiss of pain. His tongue soothes the mark, which will be there for a while, and I feel him trace the tooth imprints with the pad of his thumb.
‘Go to Kane.’ I start to shake my head, but Ari grabs me by the chin as he settles his ass on my thighs. ‘Go to Kane,’ he repeats. All of the boys’ names have a tapping pattern, and they’re the first words I recognized without having to try. ‘Go.’
Rejection settles like a stone in my gut. I know that dealing with this sort of thing is hard for Ari. Hell, it seems almost impossible. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten emotional, and every time before it, he’s also kicked me out and sent me to one of the boys.
I always follow his advice, and it’s always good. He seems to know exactly who can help me best—but it’s never him. I need to remember to be fair with Ari because heiswith me. I can’t expect him to shape himself into a person he’s not just because I want it.
I just need to learn how to live with it the way the others have.
I push at Ari’s chest, and he rolls off me as I swing my legs over the bed and hunt for a shirt. I can feel him watching me, but he doesn’t try to get my attention as I find his discarded T-shirt with rust-colored stains I know aren’t paint and slip it over my head.
The weight of his gaze gets heavier, but I don’t look back.
I wait for something—anything—from him, but the silence follows me into the hall. The door shuts with a heavy click, and I make my way over the strip of padded carpet until I come to a stop in front of Kane’s door.
It’s too damn early for any of this, but I’m strangely not surprised when I find his door cracked open as though he was waiting for me. I push it open, my feet tapping gently across the floor, the only sound in the room apart from his breathing. For a moment, I think he’s asleep, but then he pulls back the blankets and sighs.
“Come on, darling.”
He doesn’t usually call me that—not with the same passion James does, but it feels nice to hear it right now. It makes me feel…I don’t know.
Important.
Precious.
I slide my cold legs under the sheets, and he pulls me against his naked body. He’s on his side, and his leg lifts—the injured one. He’s done this a lot since the pain eased up from his second surgery. His stump curls around me and tucks just barely between my thighs. It’s smaller than his other leg now, but it’s still powerful the way it cradles me.
I’m going to be his wife, I think to myself as his breathing evens out along the back of my neck. This man is going to marry me, and while I’ll belong to all of them, he will be my husband. I can’t say I’ve ever entertained the idea of marriage, and not to a man like him.
He’s the opposite of everything I’d been planning to run from the moment I started college. But now, here I am, barely missing what I left behind. Now, I can picture myself with a wedding band on my finger and fire in my eyes and revenge like acid on the tip of my tongue.
I can see myself making Guido Romano not just sorry but bleeding for his sins.
The dream tugs at me again, and I know why. It’s because it was real. It might not be a memory, but it was a plan. He would have paraded me on a stage and sold me to some dirty old fuck who would have made the rest of my days a living hell.
I know now that I wouldn’t go back and save myself from any of this because these men saved me.
“Go to sleep, princess,” Kane mumbles. “I’m right here.”
My body’s tense, but I allow myself to relax as he sleepily draws lines up my arms. I wish he’d do more. I wish he’d pin me down, kiss me, make me come on his tongue before filling me with his cock. I wish I could have the pieces of him that I’m missing.
But, as he’s constantly reminding me, patience is a virtue.
* * *
I don’t meanto sleep in, but when I get up, it’s late, and I’m dragging ass harder than I have been in a while. It’s three days before the party, and my shitty sleep is only getting worse. Last night’s dream was one of the worst I’ve had, but the string of nightmares is no longer unusual.
I trudge to the bathroom and stare down at the counter with sullen frustration at the pregnancy test that will no doubt, once again, be negative. I want to tell Kane that there’s probably something wrong with me that it’s been six weeks and four days and James can’t seem to knock me up in spite of the amount of come he’s put inside me. I doubt it’s him with the sheer amount he releases, and there’s never been anything wrong with his fertility tests.
But I know if I do, Kane will just give me a mocking smile and tell me that these things take time, so I don’t bother putting up a fight.
I tear the package, sit on the toilet, and wet the stick. Snapping on the cap, I leave it on the counter, then wash my hands and use his toothbrush before heading down for coffee. The insomnia is wreaking havoc on my body, and all I want to do is curl up in a patch of sun and nap until the feeling goes away.
