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“Like hell she will!” Christopher exclaimed and Gabriel growled menacingly.
I put up a hand to stop them.
“Please, guys—we have to pick our battles here. I don’t want either of you getting shot—all right?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Gabriel snapped.
“Yes, I do,” I said. With trembling hands, I took off both their shirts and handed them to Lupio, who put the bowl and the water bottles on the floor and took them from me.
“Good.” He nodded, his eyes raking over my bare body. I covered myself with my arms as best I could.
“Now what?” Christopher asked.
Lupio shrugged.
“Now the three of you have supper and wait for the will of Don Diego. I expect he will probably contact us again sometime around noon. He works late into the night, and so he is not an early riser.” He nodded at the guard with the gun. “Come—we’re going now.”
The guard seemed reluctant to leave—he was staring at my bare body in a way that made my skin crawl. But at last the two of them exited and I heard the deadbolt click into place again.
We were alone again but I was naked and shivering and I had no idea why the drug king wanted to keep me that way.
TWENTY-ONE
Dinner turned out to be cold corn tortillas and the bottled water Lupio had brought us. I sat on the freezing tiles eating, with my knees drawn up almost to my chin. I was leaning with my back against the chilly wall and I shivered as I ate one of the tortillas, holding it to my mouth with both hands.
Gabriel looked at me and gave a short bark of a laugh.
“What?” I looked up at him with irritation. He had eaten his tortillas in a few bites and now he was pacing around the room again, looking for a way out that didn’t exist. His black tattoos seemed to curl and writhe over his muscular chest and arms with his restless motions.
“It’s just that now you really do look like a little mouse,” he remarked. “Are you sure you don’t want anything to wear?”
He and Christopher had both offered me their jeans, which they were still wearing, but I had declined. I didn’t want Lupio coming in to check on us again and shooting one of them for letting me wear their clothes. Besides, it wasn’t really my legs that were cold—it was my top half that was covered in goosebumps. Which was why I was sitting in the most compact way possible and keeping my arms and legs close to my torso to try and conserve my body heat.
My posture also helped me hide my nakedness. I’d been naked in front of my stepbrothers before, of course, but that was back when I was having my partial Heat Cycle and needed to let them touch me. Now I had no such excuse and I felt shy around them again.
“Zoe, come here.” Christopher was sitting beside me but he patted his lap and motioned for me to come to him.
“Why?” I gave him a sidelong glance. I couldn’t help remembering the last time I had sat on his lap—the way he and Gabriel had touched me and explored my body and made me come over and over.
“So I can warm you up,” he said. His voice turned low and coaxing. “Come on, Little Sis—I can see how cold you are—let me help you.”
I bit my lip—of the two of them, Christopher had always been more gentle and kind, maybe because of his Beta nature. Gabriel was more harsh, though he could display a rough kind of tenderness that nearly took my breath away when he wanted to.
Now, however, he frowned and shook his head.
“You really shouldn’t cuddle her too much, brother,” he said to Christopher. “If anyone comes for us—if either the Pack Master or Moncrieff finds out what happened and comes to rescue us—we don’t want our scent all over our little sister’s body. They’ll assume we broke the Unbreakable Laws if they smell us on her.”
Christopher frowned mutinously.
“Fuck that. We don’t know that anyone is coming—they probably don’t even know what happened to us. I’m going to warm Zoe up…if she’ll let me.” He held out his arms to me. “Will you let me, Little Sis?”
I couldn’t resist his use of the sweet nickname and besides, I really was freezing. I crawled awkwardly into his lap and Christopher cuddled me close to his broad, bare chest. I breathed in his warm cedar and spice scent and was comforted…though it still felt like something was missing.
Of course what was missing was my other brother. Gabriel kept pacing back and forth, frowning at us, though he didn’t lecture us anymore. I wondered if he was thinking of the way he and Christopher had slept on either side of me those few precious nights, cradling me and bracketing my much smaller body with their big, muscular forms.
