Ensnared (Brutes of Bristlebrook #1)

by Rebecca Quinn

Survival tip #220 Don’t risk your men. No matter how pretty she is.

Survival tip #12 Laugh lines can be deceptive. Sure, maybe this person is good humored and trustworthy. But maybe they laugh while they dismember corpses. Exercise caution.

“I knew it!” Lucky grins, a godless glint in his eyes. “Eden could never resist temptation.” Beau snorts at Lucky. “That’s Eve, idiot. Didn’t your mama ever send you to Sunday school?”

Survival tip #2 Don’t wait for the next bad thing to happen. Move on before it does.

It has to be my exhaustion. At breaking point, some people get furious, some cry—and I apparently become wildly aroused.

You can never experience as much in your lifetime, or see through so many eyes, as you will by reading what others have to say. Books will glue our world back together, if anything can.”

In the end, it didn’t matter. Our reckoning was over, and it wasn’t pestilence, or death, or famine that killed us. It was war.

Survival tip #230 Beautiful men make your brain fuzzy. Thinking is important. Abort!

I wonder if they have more cheese.

Survival tip #238 You won’t actually pass out from embarrassment. It’s not a good defense mechanism.

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.

So this isn’t normal?

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

Survival tip #124 Everyone has a past. Make sure theirs won’t come back to bite you.

My mama would have rinsed my mouth with soap for telling such a bald-faced lie.

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.

Not that it matters. I have no intention of touching her—it’d only encourage Beau’s fantasy, and I’d rather spend the time fixing our shit than setting us both up for failure again.

Here’s when I realized that either Jaykob or Lucky… or both are the ones that die. Maybe even beau?

Lucky’s never put a snake in my bed. Well, not the fanged kind anyway.

What would those two have to argue about? Whether caviar tastes better with crackers, or just on the tiny little silver spoons they were born with?

He doesn’t know she grew up poor?

“No, Jayk! Dom already took my lunch money this week!”

“I’m not braiding it anywhere else, though. I don’t care who you are, manscaping is important.” I shove him toward the door again. “I manscape, dickhead.” “You manscape your dick head? Wow, you should talk to Beau about that. Pretty sure you’re not meant to have hair there.”

Damn it. Maybe it’s not heartburn. Something is seriously wrong with me if I’m quoting I-only-drink-water-with-a-squeeze-of-lime himself.

Survival tip #336 Don’t ever underestimate the bravery of a woman who looks at you with stars in her eyes.