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“They’ll f-f-find . . . you.” His breaths start rattling. “Th-they’re . . . com . . . coming.”
“Our friendship can’t take another hit, Beau.” He looks up at me, golden eyes solemn. “We’re full of holes as it is.” “I didn’t break us, Dom.” I smile at him, a little bitterly. “You did.” His eyes flinch shut, and his head drops back against the tree. “I know.”
We’re broken, riddled with wounds, and we have been for three years.
Eden melts through my memories—her chin lift, her clever, quiet regard—and I give Dom a grave look. “You’re wrong about her. And if you wait too long, she’ll move on before you realize exactly how wrong you are.” His mouth curls up in a half smile, his eyes full of phantoms. “They always move on, Beau. That’s why I need you.” My eyes travel over his face, hurting for his pain. “You always have me, Dom. Always.”
I need to figure out how to make the asshole fall for Eden. Whatever he thinks, we need a third. Someone smart, someone kind—someone who can soothe over the scar tissue that’s forming between us. We need Eden. But I have to get Dom on board, because no matter what he’s afraid of, I could never choose anyone over our friendship.
This is a man’s house, and it is aggressively obvious that men own this space.
And after years of fending for myself, of the unending responsibility, and dirt, and toil, it’s so lovely to allow myself to be soft. Just a little. Just for a while.
I don’t feel threatened here. Or if I do, it’s in a secret, delicious way that I struggle to admit even to myself. I feel protected. Pliant. I want to yield to the strength around me. It makes me want to temper some of the harshness, to balance it somehow, though I’m not sure where to begin.
Can I force myself back into the person I was before? Do I want to?
I know what I signed up for, and my feelings don’t matter. Survival does. And maybe, if I’m very lucky, I will have the chance to not be alone. I can give up my independence for that, I think. I have to. I can’t take another year by myself.
Jasper misled me, and Beau did too. I’m not their equal . . . I’m just their pet. And a silly, stupid girl.
“If you want it rough, princess,” he drawls, “all you gotta do is ask.”
“There,” he mocks. “Very fair. Reciprocal. See? I’m a fucking gentleman.”
Jaykob’s stormy eyes narrow. “Sugar, I’m not your boyfriend. You wanna have a heart-to-heart? Go run to Beau.”
“Second option. You can walk out that door and I’ll even be a gentleman and tell the others we fucked. No questions asked.” He smirks. “If you can prove you don’t actually want me to bury my cock deep inside that princess fucking pussy of yours.”
His fingers are coarse on the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. So male to my female.
“Or, if you’re as soaking wet as I reckon you are, you shut up with your good-girl protests and let me fuck you. Not with the lights off, not with a please and thank you and seven hours of foreplay. My way.” His lips brush mine as his fingers catch on the edge of my panties. “Fast, rough, and messy.”
Oh, God. Time to turn your eyes away, Jesus.
“Filthy bitch.”
“My way,” he reminds me, his voice barely more than a growl. I look up and he’s watching me with that mean, knowing smirk again. “The others might be sucked into the big save-me eyes, ladies-first bullshit. But I’m the real feminist, princess. Equal opportunities.”
“Move your tongue, princess. Lick me. Neat and tidy ain’t gonna work; get it nice and wet.”
A hand comes down hard on my right ass cheek. “Shut it, sugar.”
Survival tip #150 When men start swinging their dicks around—duck!
But Eden was never pure. I was made to be corrupted.
Why are all these men so tall and constantly in the way?
But they aren’t keeping me here to start a relationship. If I fit at all, it will be between their sheets, or under their feet.
He looked at her like he was captivated. Owned. Alive. But not at me. Not like that.
God, how is it that in one week among people, all my insecurities have returned so viciously? I hate this. Hate the unsteady ground I’m walking on here. At least with Henry I knew the rules. Why do I always seem to be living by someone else’s?
He listens so carefully, absorbs me so utterly in his attention, that after so many years of walking unseen and unheard through the forest, I’m turned real, turned flesh, just by the weight of it. Flesh that feels. Flesh that craves.
“No, I don’t, because I am not a pet, Beau,” I yell. I yell and I want to keep yelling. “I’m Eden, and I deserve better than this, damn you.”
My rage is free and wild. It’s as if, when I filled my lungs to shout, I finally breathed in properly for the first time. With abandon. Like my worries and irritations have been suppressing my lungs, and every time I bit my tongue, I was cutting off my oxygen.
But, at the end of the day, oxygen is fire fuel, and it’s licking through my whole body now. Is it possible to burn alive from frustration? God, I do deserve better than this. I’m a survivor. I’ve fought my own battles for years. At some point this has to stop—I...
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“I am Eden. A person, not a doll, not your pet. And I am. Pissed. Off.”
Beau doesn’t see me as well as he thinks.
I put my hand into hers and shake. With her small, warm palm in mine, I have the strangest feeling that I’m handing over far more than I bargained for. Maybe she’s the faerie queen after all.
“Our pretty slut.” Beau scrapes his teeth over my nipple, then turns his attention to the other one. “You’re doing so well, darlin’. Keep fucking his thigh, just like that.”
“That’s it,” he croons. “Such a good little murderess.”
“You did kill him, right? Pretty, bloodthirsty girl.”
Beau tugs me to him and presses his mouth to mine in a fierce kiss. “Be safe, pet.”
“Enough. Go, little librarian. I can’t keep you all safe at once.”
With a sting of regret, I think of Eden and how pretty she was as she lay nestled between me and Dom by the waterside. I’m so sorry, darlin’. Don’t see why I can’t pray to her too. Being with her is about as close to a religious experience as I’ve had in years.
Survival tip #336 Don’t ever underestimate the bravery of a woman who looks at you with stars in her eyes.
That girl may have just saved our asses for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.
