Ensnared (Brutes of Bristlebrook #1)

by Rebecca Quinn

But they found me, curled under my silly bush that suddenly seemed like no protection at all when their leader—Sam—dragged me from it. He stank like filthy thoughts and sour sweat, but he was so distracted calling for the others that his grip slipped, and I bolted. I escaped.

women aren’t often found these days either, and certainly not alone, and yet here she is. Trouble in a shapeless sack of an outfit.

Those lips are trembling now, though she’s trying to press them together. And that’s a problem. Her nervousness excites me—it pricks my instincts hard—and a raw, unexpected picture of those lips wrapped slickly around my cock slides into my mind. Fuck. We don’t have time for this. Damn her for being nervous.

Now why in the world would a scared girl immediately make you think of head…. Weirdo

I know what will happen if they catch me. I’ve seen the leftovers of others caught by men like this, and the images still haunt my nightmares. Unfortunately, most people who survived the lawless years after the strikes aren’t the sort I want to be caught by—which is why I hid myself away in my cave for four years. A woman alone is far too vulnerable.

The tip of Lucky’s tongue wets his bottom lip. He bites down and lets out a pained groan. “A librarian? You’re joking, right?” Something hotter, more intent, joins the twinkle in his eye. “That’s . . . Damn it, Dom. I want her. Gimme.” Beau nods his agreement.

“If they both want you to come, then I won’t say no, but there are rules, Eden. Rules I don’t think you’ll be so quick to agree to.” I give Dom a sharp look, unsure if I’m more unsettled by this idea of “rules” or that he actually caught my name earlier. Beau shifts. “Is this really necessary?” One of Dom’s midnight brows arches. “You going to keep your hands off her?” My eyes widen. Beau’s Adam’s apple works as he swallows. He says nothing. When he looks at me, his gaze is considering. Wait. Hold on. He actually wants to . . .

“There are five of us at Bristlebrook, darlin’. We’ve had women there before and it . . . Well, it don’t work too well. Not when there’s the chance she’s the last woman we’ll ever see, you understand? Too much jealousy. Whole heap of drama. Whether you can pull your weight or not, well, that isn’t really the problem.” Beau’s voice has taken on that slow, coaxing tone again, like he’s worried I’m going to bolt. I’m not altogether sure I won’t. “We decided after the last time that if we had a woman under our roof again, she’d belong to all of us. Equally. Or she couldn’t stay.”

The first suture drives all thoughts of his face from my head, and I cry out in pain despite myself. His lips compress and eyebrows lower, but he keeps going. “Beau, you can’t torture her for not coming with us,” Lucky calls. “You know that, right?”

“Beau—” I begin. “Is the thought of it really so awful for you?” he asks, voice low and demanding. His eyes flick up and there’s a fire lit behind them, the gentleness gone. “Would it be so hard for you to give yourself to me?” My breath catches when I realize his face is only inches from mine. I want to look away, but his gaze won’t release me.

it’s not that simp . . . ” Heat floods my cheeks. “I’ve never . . . ” A different look crosses his face then; a calculating light enters his woodland eyes. I shiver. “Beau⁠—” His hand slides from my shoulder up my neck and into my bound hair. The pressure yanks my head back, and before I can react, his mouth covers mine.

Uhhhmmmmm that’s actually not how this works

My blouse lifts with his grip, tangling precariously under my breasts as he grinds me against him, a parody of the close grip we shared earlier. I shift over his hardness, shuddering in shock at the feel of him pressing against my core. There’s almost nothing between us, just a few shifts of fabric and we’d be⁠— Liquid heat floods me. I cling to his hard shoulders as the pressure on my hair makes my back arch. I press my chest against him, my hips down over him, shivering at the friction as he rubs his tongue across mine.

Meanwhile everyone else is just watching ? 😂

I burn. Ache. I have to do something to ease this terrible, incredible tension inside me. Mindless, I shift again so I can rub against him, panting against his punishing mouth. “Fucking hell. Cool it, idiot. I’m not watching you fuck her on the bank.”

I don’t recognize the fourth man by the bar but this has to be the mysterious Jaykob. As I watch, he cracks a bottle open on the belt of his jeans, letting the bottle top fall to the floor as he takes a drag.

His face is rough-hewn—rawly attractive rather than classically handsome. He has elaborate, full-sleeve tattoos on both thickly muscled arms and his once-white T-shirt strains across his chest; it’s dirtied with some sort of black paint. Not that he seems the artistic type. Despite his stillness, his eyes hold a kind of dangerous turbulence that makes me uneasy . . .

“The mouse?” he scoffs. His voice is gravel and windburn. “Whatever. I’ll make do.” I flinch, and Jasper curses softly behind me. My gaze swings back around to find Jaykob stalking up to me. I barely see the dark intent in his midnight blue eyes before his hand grasps my chin and his mouth fits flush against mine. My lips part on a sound of surprise, and he takes the opportunity to plunder my mouth. His grip moves to the back of my head, almost painfully, and his other hand grasps my backside, pulling me hard against him.

Yo wtf why yall treating her like an object

No one has ever been this rough with me. My breasts rub against him, shockingly sensitive through the thin silk. Then he’s yanked away, and a hand grasps my elbow, keeping me upright. I suck in air, panting jaggedly, heat rising in my cheeks as I take in the scene in front of me. Jasper, who had been closest, was the one who dragged Jaykob off me, and Beau is helping him hold back the now-swearing man. Lucky has abandoned his game and stands between them and me, and Dom . . . Dom has my elbow. I look up at him, wide eyed and damp lipped, and he gives me a stern, searching look. “The fuck was that?” Beau snaps.

Jaykob smirks at him, chest heaving as he half-heartedly tries to shake the two men off. “It is what she’s here for, ain’t it?”

Yea fuck that guy

My one experience attempting a grand oral seduction had ended after all of five seconds, with Henry pulling my mouth off him and telling me I was prettier when I acted like a lady. I hadn’t exactly protested, though. The clinging odor of urine had turned my stomach and left me wondering if I would embarrass myself further by vomiting all over his crotch.

Uhm wtf ew also is he gay???

Lucky snorts, eyes still caught on the game as he shoots his way across an abandoned airport. “She had shitty sex a half a dozen times as a teenager. Probably in one position, no foreplay, with the lights off. Making out with Beau was probably the highlight of her sexual career. She’ll be fine. She just needs to get Lucky.”

“Do you want me to fuck you?” The dirty words make my breath catch in shock, but my eyes drop to his lips. “I want . . . ” The words stall in my throat. I’m breathing embarrassingly hard. “Say yes, pet.” Pet? I feel like I should have a problem with that word. Beau rests his forehead against mine, and his closeness is decadent. Inebriating. Maybe later I’ll have a problem with it. “I—” His mouth tasted like a promise. Like sin. But surely that was just sleep deprivation. Surely it wasn’t that good. I should probably double check. “Yes.”

Stop, stop, stop, one voice chants. They’re all watching! Another voice—a better voice, I decide—gasps a husky, I know. Hot, right?

“Dom,” Beau says in a strained, rough voice. His knees inside mine nudge me open further until my thighs strain and I’m all but dripping onto the floor. He tilts me toward Dom like a virgin sacrifice. An offering to our king. But the golden eyes don’t lift. He turns another page. Shame tangles around my lust, spicy and barbed, as Beau’s chest vibrates. The sound he lets out is suspiciously like a growl.

I’m struggling to keep myself to a simmer. Between trying to scare Eden away from coming home with us, shunning her in the games room, and then dragging me out of the house at the crack of dawn this morning before I could even steal a good-morning cuddle, Dom is getting on my last nerve. He’s lucky I’m so even tempered. Not one to hold a grudge.

“I don’t want a mouse for a pet!” he bursts out, eyes flashing with temper. “God damn it, I want⁠—” Dom’s mouth snaps shut, and my lips twist bitterly, choosing to ignore that he’s insulted Eden twice now. I won’t let it slide a third. “She’s gone, Dom.” He shakes his head sharply, like that wasn’t where he was going, even though we both know it was.

I always thought it’d be him and me, preferably with some pretty subbie between us, right up until we got dusted. That had always been The Plan. Then Heather happened, and suddenly Dom was telling me good and clear that I didn’t feature in his new idea of Happy Ever After. That it wasn’t going to be me and him and our girl—it was just him and his girl, and maybe Beau as a little side piece whenever Heather was feeling adventurous. Like I was an extra man-shaped dildo they could pull out when I served a purpose. He loved her more than me, and so fifteen years of friendship and The Plan got nuked with one brutal conversation. When Heather blindsided all of us and ran off with Thomas instead, I was there with him, despite it all.

“That ain’t it, Dom. It’s not just because she’s here. She’s more than just convenient; I want to know her better. And you don’t get to make the decision that I don’t, just because you’re scared I’ll choose her over you, the way you chose Heather over me.”

Tears prick my eyes as I make my way to my room. Damn it. This is going to be a disaster. I’m not even naked yet and his disappointment is still enough to chill me to the core. Then I see the clothes. Spread across my bed are jeans, blouses, sweaters, activewear, loungewear, boots, and pretty dresses that I itch to slip into. I wonder if I could get away with wearing dresses like those while I’m here. It’s been years since I’ve been able to wear anything but the most practical clothing. Sitting beside my new clothes, piles and piles of lacy, sinful lingerie beg for my attention.

“Venison backstrap with blackberry sauce, roast potatoes, pumpkin, and asparagus,” Lucky announces proudly. Half his long hair is in Viking braids today, not in its usual messy bun. It makes the angles of his face more pronounced. He even tidied his close-cut beard. I smile at him. “You look very nice tonight, Lucky. Thank you for cooking.” He blinks at me, seeming taken aback by the compliment. Then a smile blooms across his face.

Inhaling through my nose, I realize he doesn’t smell bad at all, not like Henry did. Slightly musky, his natural scent is stronger here, but it’s far from unpleasant. Clean and very Jaykob.

My hair is a wild mess around me—my hair tie was lost to Jaykob’s floor—and I’m in his overlarge shirt, and if I smell even a fifth as strong as the room I woke up in, then I reek of sex. Not to mention, I’m aching everywhere, and covered in sweat—not all of it my own—and other fluids that I do not particularly want to think about in the judgy light of day. It’s no secret what we were up to, but I still find myself wincing at their knowing looks.

“Mornin’, darlin’. Want some breakfast?” He holds a mug of coffee with one hand and, with the other, he catches me round the waist and pulls me close to his body in a quick hug. I can’t stop my slight gasp of discomfort. Beau steps back sharply,

“How bad is it?” Beau snaps, and I jump at the harshness of his tone. It’s only a few bruises. I’ve always bruised easily. But Dom doesn’t wait for me to answer. His hand bunches in the back of my shirt and he yanks it up, exposing my bare body to the waist. I screech and try to pull it down with no success. Beau is quivering. I look up at him, bewildered, as I fight against Dom’s grip on the shirt. “I’m going to kill him, Dom.” Fury makes his hazel eyes flash.

“I’m not making excuses. He didn’t do anything I didn’t want him to do,” I insist, trying to make my voice firm, even as humiliation washes over me. “Please, sir, let him go.” The “sir” seems to catch him. Dom looks over his shoulder at me, studying my face.

“Explain what? He drew the card for the first night. We did . . . stuff. The stuff I’m here for. Consensual stuff. All very consensual. All types of consensual.” Then I add in a mutter, “And nobody else’s business, thank you.” Why is it so hard to sound prim and proper when talking about . . . stuff? Dom’s eyes press closed at my words, his jaw clenching. He shakes his head just once. At himself? “Then why in holy flaming hell, darlin’,” Beau grinds out, looking between me and Jayk, “does it look like he’s come off a war zone?”

. I might have . . . gottenalittlecarriedaway.” The words leave me in a rush of squirming embarrassment. I worry my bottom lip between my teeth. “I should maybe cut my nails, and—um—you’ve had your tetanus shot, right?” Jaykob glances down at his chest. “Might need to get you a muzzle too.”

Dom curses. “Jayk, I’m sorry. But what the fuck were we meant to think? She doesn’t exactly scream claw-your-back sex.” I flinch and look at my feet, his words like tiny cuts of shattered glass. “Trust me, she screams plenty,” Jaykob taunts. Jasper lets out a low laugh behind me. “Interesting. She may enjoy me yet.”

The muscles in my back clench as I turn back to the stove. Memories of Jasper’s cruel care, the torturously perfect pain he can inflict, are too vivid, even after all this time, for me to ever relax properly around him. Now, normally I would say that letting your psychologist whip you until you come somewhat stretches the bounds of friendship—but lying to myself isn’t my kink. Jasper is torturously perfect. Perfectly painful. And if he’d wanted to work me over every night since our very own D-day to satisfy his frustrated sadistic needs, I’d have buckled the handcuffs myself. But I’m not that lucky.

No matter how he tries to insist otherwise, I’m more than his patient now. More than his friend. Even if he’s still never accepted pleasure from me. Even if he only doles it out so sparingly I could starve between the nights he really looks my way.

“Don’t sleep with her.” The words are halfway between a plea and an order. They hang in the air for too long.

As his finger strokes along my jaw, my mouth grows dry, and I watch as his darkening gaze fixes on my mouth. “Hey, hands off. It’s my turn!” The sudden sound of Lucky’s voice makes me flinch back, and there’s an undertone to it that I can’t quite decipher. Jasper doesn’t drop his hand, though, nor does he acknowledge Lucky’s presence.

Shit head

“You owe me,” Lucky finally says in a low, serious voice. Something silently passes between the two men. After a long, tense moment, Jasper inclines his head. “Very well.” Then his eyes narrow and his voice becomes granite. “Though don’t presume, Lucien, that there is any debt between us. We both know better than that. I have never taken more than was offered.”

“So, here’s how we play. Since there’s only two of us, and I’m not having any of the other bozos crash the party, rather than spinning the wheel to choose where we place our hands and feet, we’re going to ask each other questions. If the other person answers truthfully and completely, then they get to choose where to move one of their limbs. If they don’t answer to the questioner’s satisfaction, however, the questioner chooses where they place their limb. And they get to demand a dare from the other person.” His face was far too innocent as he

He catches my panic, and his smile turns slow and lazy. “All right, beautiful.” His free hand wraps around my free ankle and tugs, nearly sending me off balance. Biting my lip, I let him guide me, and he sets my right foot on the other side of him. My balance shifts until my body is curved over the top of his. To my surprise, I realize the position stabilizes me—but it means I have a foot placed on either side of his head, and my skirt now barely covers my ass. He must be getting a full view of my now-soaking lacy blue panties. In this spread position, I feel my swollen lips part. My breath strangles.

“Don’t you know? Tragic hero is my aesthetic.” His dimple flashes. “Just like bossy jerk is yours, grumpy Hulk is Jayk’s, self-righteous sweetheart is Beau’s, and sexy nerd is Eden’s.”

Lucky tilts his head as if puzzled. “Which time? I’ve been rolling around all night.” Dom and I exchange a loaded married-couple look. I raise my brows, and glance at them without moving my head. Should we do something? Dom lowers his chin, then tilts it in a negative. Not our business. “Don’t test me, Lucien.” Jasper takes a sharp step forward, and

“Kintsugi,” he says, setting it down. “It’s a Japanese art form.” He hands me a cup and saucer. Our fingers don’t brush, but I track the near miss with obsessive focus. “To show that sometimes the greatest beauty lies in our flaws. The most strength, in the ways we break.”

“Please stop apologizing,” he tells me gently. I release a breath. I’ve only technically apologized to him twice today, but I know he’s asking more than that. “You intimidate me,” I confess quietly. Jasper’s chin dips. “I’m aware.” “Of course you are.”

“She was fine, as long as I followed her rules. But I minded my manners and went to church when she told me to, so we didn’t have any problems.” His eyelashes shade his eyes, and when they fly open again, there’s a crease between his brows. “What I said to you, in the library, about your manners . . . that wasn’t based on anything you said or did, Eden. I’m sorry if I hit a nerve. I was upset about something else, and I have an unfortunate habit of cruelty when I’m caught off guard.”

“Henry . . . he took an interest in me. I’m still not quite sure why. His parents were rather hard on him, and I think he liked playing the hero. His family was wealthy, you see, and terribly educated.” Jasper trains his eyes on the board, but the lines of him are carefully still. I know he’s paying attention. I lift my hand in a dismissive wave, though my throat thickens at the humiliating memories. “It’s all very predictable, I’m afraid. He was kind to me, and so willing to ‘teach’ me to be a better person—in their eyes, of course. How I should dress, and talk, and eat so I could fit into his world. It didn’t matter, though. His parents hated me.”

“Henry was in the Army for a few years, and I had just finished my degree when he was dishonorably discharged—found criminally negligent in his basic duties.” Dead silence. Jasper sits back in his chair, and I can tell I’ve surprised him. “It was sloppiness, really. I genuinely don’t believe he would have done anything malicious, but he was always careless when things didn’t interest or benefit him. Two men died because of his actions, and he was serving his time in a military prison when the strikes happened.” “You left him while he was in prison?”

If he deserved to be left it doesn’t matter when she leaves