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“Oh, she has somewhere to go,” Cian says, leaning back in his seat as his gaze settles on the ceiling. “I just don’t think she wants us to know where that place is.”
Sounds like Cian caught that lengthy pause before Everleigh answered Rune earlier. I know I did. I keep my gaze trained on Rune. “You say you don’t feel easy about tossing a traumatized omega on the street, but that isn’t all of it. I saw the way you were watching her at the party and then just now. You’re attracted to her.”
I know I am.
Rune rises, crossing over to the drinks cabinet to mix up a drink. Scotch on the rocks. “She’s beautiful. But she’s not our omega. She’s Lawrence’s.”
“It won’t be the first time a man has wanted something that doesn’t belong to him, and it won’t be the last.” Cian drags his gaze from the ceiling and aims it at Rune. “She’s stirred all your protective teddy bear urges right to the surface, hasn’t she? She had you damn near purring up there wanting to comfort her.”
I snort a laugh. “Stirred what now?”
“She stirred nothing,” Rune cuts off, turning to spear me with a hard stare. “And what the fuck was that in the garden?”
I blink. “You told me to—”
“Groan a couple of times. Maybe throw out a couple of ‘ah fucks,’ not make love to yourself next to the omega,” Rune says.
I’m still not sure why I went as far as I did. Maybe because Everleigh was sitting so prettily beside me. She’d been so graceful and elegant despite her tumbled hair, like she’d just had a long night of messy sex.
She’d been burrowing into my jacket as if she couldn’t get enough of my scent. Oh, she’d been trying to hide it, but I’d seen it. It had made me wonder, and not for the first time, what the beautiful blonde smelled like under Lawrence’s pheromones.
I’d wanted to shake that perfect calm, see if I could make her burn a little.
From her restlessness and her flushed cheeks, I’d made her burn a lot. If she’d known she was the woman I was envisioning giving me a slow ride to paradise, what would she have done? How much would she have burned then?
A smile twitches my lips as I rake a hand through my hair, scratching my scalp. “So you don’t want to know what her reaction was?”
Rune stares at me. He doesn’t want to ask. He really doesn’t want to ask but…
“You say that like there was a reaction,” Rune rumbles.
“Make me a drink and I might just tell you,” I counter, smirking.
“Make your own damn drink and tell me or I’ll ram this glass down your throat,” he growls. But a split-second later, he says, “What was it?”
“She was terrified,” Cian interrupts, his eyes narrowing. “She refused to let you help her up. That was the reaction.”
“Before I held my hand out to her, she was interested,” I correct him. “And she was trying hard not to be.”
Cian and Rune study me for a beat, considering her response. None of us had expected to find Everleigh Wentworth trying to scale a hedge. I’d initially been smiling, ready to crack a joke. Until she’d realized she wasn’t alone and spun around. All my amusement died then.
Her face had been tear-stained, and the concealer she must have used to cover the fading blue bruise on her jaw was missing. She’d been desperate to get away. So desperate, she hadn’t even noticed she was no longer alone. And she’d been terrified.
It’s been years since I’ve seen an expression like hers. Mostly from the wives and girlfriends of the men I’d collect payment for my former employers. They wouldn’t always want to pay. It was my job to motivate them.
That had been in another life, one I’d lived before I met Rune and Cian.
Lawrence Wentworth had been abusing Everleigh. She’d done a good job of hiding signs of abuse in the ballroom. Her smile had never slipped. Her makeup, her hair, her poise… everything had pointed to a woman who had everything and wanted for nothing.
But in a beautiful landscape garden was a terrified woman who didn’t care how many nails she ripped off her fingers trying to escape her abuser.
None of us had seen the signs. Not even Cian, and he sees everything.
Is she just that talented at hiding the storm behind the perfect façade, or has Lawrence been hanging something over her head to make her too terrified to slip up?
“She’s afraid of alphas,” Rune reminds me.
I shrug, climbing to my feet. After tonight, seeing Everleigh’s terror and being reminded of a past life that nearly killed me more than once, I need something to help me forget.
