Tangled Like Us (Like Us, #4)

by Krista Ritchie

Jane appears the furthest thing from annoyed when I’m quiet, and that stuns me. She just looks me over with that mounting curiosity, and she scuffs sand with her bare foot.

Her breezy voice and distinctive way of speaking is like honey dripping down my throat.

What I’ve learned about the Cobalt Empire: the family of nine loves pacts, oaths, soul-binding agreements that put loyalty and trust to the test.

Eight months later, I know I’m in deep, but I can control myself and my nine-inch cock.

“Thatcher.” I’ve greeted him five times today already. He crosses his arms. “Jane.” His deep tone is never scolding towards me.

I possess the unfortunate inability to run away from my own mortification.

Thatcher is like a sacred text. I’m tempted to rush through the pages, but something has compelled me to draw out each line, each word. Reading so slowly and carefully so as to never miss a syllable. So a single book, a single person, could last me forever.

“Oh my God,” I breathe underneath my breath. I just checked out my bodyguard’s ass. It wouldn’t be the first time. “You’re most surely going to hell, Jane,” I whisper more softly to myself.

My lips rise. My mom is a brilliant, ball-busting woman who takes no shit from anyone, especially not from her husband. My dad acts like her rival, but they’re equals in every way, shape, and form. I love them dearly.

I won’t devalue her achievements just to find value in myself. My mom is brilliant and beautiful. And so am I. Just in my own way.

“This is the Cobalt way,” I answer with pride. “It’s what I know. We’re given choices. Every choice has costs and benefits, and it’s up to us to choose accordingly. She’s made the cost of working here much higher so that I’ll quit on my own terms.” I tie my hair back into a low pony. “It’s a mental chess game.”

“It’s not checkmate yet,” I say to myself. I’m not a sad little cub about to be eaten. I’m a motherfucking lion.

Six years later and he’s still one of the few people who tongue-tie me.

Moffy is a part of me. We’ve shared so many experiences together. We grew older together. Only one-month apart in age.

“Bruno Bandoni recommended us to the Tri-Force.”

You asked what I was doing when I was eighteen to twenty-two. I was in the Marines, Jane.”

Something horrible is happening. Because Moffy is not supposed to call me. This morning, he made me a cup of coffee for my first day at work, and he specifically said, “I’m not texting you. I’m not calling you. Not until five p.m. when you clock out. Today is about you, and you’ll kickass as long as you stay focused on yourself. Alright? No family distractions.”

Her rich grandmother contacted the press, her rich grandmother paid for the ad, and I’ve been mentally calling her rich grandmother a fucking jackass.

“I’ve got your six, always.”

But my biggest irritation is the radio. Omega uses comms like a gossip network or complaint hotline. It was fucking painful during the FanCon. Banks and I say that it’s 104.1 Call-In-Your-Bullshit channel.

This year, she ranked in the Top 20 Most Instagram Followers in the world. Her mom ranked at 8. Her aunts ranked at 4 and 11.

He wants to meet Jane. Good luck. She’s an American princess. Take a fucking number and wait forever. Because I’m never letting it happen.

“But in my family, there’s also a thrill in irritating my dad with superstitions. As you’re probably aware, along with the rest of the world, he’s solely logic-based, but my mom is very much fate-driven. I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle.”

I think Farrow is a beautiful person inside and out, and I will never desire to go backwards. To a time where he’s not with us. To just me and Maximoff. Our worlds are more full of life with him here.

My brothers think I should change the requirements of the ad. Make “twelve-inch dick” a prerequisite and weed out everyone, and while funny, it’d only cause more headaches and bad press.

“Famous ones.” Farrow looks between the two of us with slowly rising brows. “Your inexperience is showing.”

I shouldn’t want to be that phone. I shouldn’t want to be the receiver of Jane’s vibrant energy or any fucking thing that belongs to her mind or body, but I keep thinking, look at me.

me. I was raised in a family with parents and siblings who love to be right. The ego of my dad alone could fill the entire Milky Way.

“Just date Moretti,” Oscar suggests so suddenly, and the room explodes in two exclamations: “What?!” “Oscar?!” My big eyes have just popped out of my flushed face and rolled across the hardwood toward the source of my heat, shock, and all other tragically startled things. Thatcher. Thatcher. Thatcher. His name is a heartbeat in my head.

There is only one of Jane, no other person can be all of who she is, and anyone who harasses this girl might as well be tearing the wings off an angel.

“If I’m too heavy, you can set me down,” she says conversationally. “I don’t mind.” My chest tightens, and I narrow a stern look on Jane. “I could bench press you all night.”

“You’re meant to be in my arms, Jane.”

Last time Eliot and Tom attached a tracker to Charlie’s phone, we almost had a Cobalt Civil War.

“Just a fair warning: if you fuck with Jane during this fake-dating stunt, I won’t come for you,” Maximoff says firmly, spearing a territorial glare into me. “Because I’ll go after your brother instead, and I’ll break both of his kneecaps and stake his head on a fucking pitchfork.”

“Not a high probability.” “No?” I hang on the edge of his words. “If I put my cock in your pussy, there’s a hundred-percent certainty you’d orgasm in my arms. More than twice.”

“Jane,” he says, deeper and deeper. He is making love to all four letters of my name. Eight hard inches inside one syllable.

I think my heart just came, if hearts could cum. Mine just did.

“I love your butt,” I say as pointedly as he did. Light reaches his brown eyes. He expels breath through his nose, pent-up. I can clearly see how badly. He nods. “I love your voice.”

She begins to smile more brightly. “It seems we are dreadfully tangled, you and I.” Couldn’t agree more.

“Thatcher called me honey,” I confess in a whisper to Maximoff.

He scrutinizes me. “I’ve never seen you like a guy this much.”

As he nears, he’s only staring at me. “Thatcher,” I greet, a smile playing at my lips. “Jane,” he says huskily, looking into me with open-booked desire. In public. It’s not only allowed, it’s encouraged.

Men. I love them dearly, but their concern comes so powerfully in my family and security. It could bowl you over, and while Luna, Sulli, and I are harassed more heavily and frequently, we were all raised by three extraordinary sisters who could summon hell and part seas together.

“I want to know all about you, but I can’t ask fast enough—and when I think about you, I wonder what your hands have held. What your eyes have seen.” My pulse has skyrocketed, but I keep speaking. “What your ears have heard and where your feet have landed.”

When I’m working, I’m thinking about protecting Jane. When I’m not working, I’m thinking about having sex with Jane.

We’re all here for the ugly, painful realities of what these families go through. To carry them out of ditches. To unfuck whatever is fucked. Not being able to help clean up whatever the hell is going on is one of the hardest orders I have to obey. And not just for me.

“Yeah, we’d have to get Donnelly to tattoo hypocrite on his ass.” If that’s what it took to make things right with him, I’d fucking do it.

The Oliveira brothers probably get the most ass of anyone on the team. I’m straight, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see that they’re good-looking men.

“Tom called you an honorary Cobalt this morning on the phone,” she says. I didn’t know that.

My first instinct is to look back at the first lounge. Where Sulli’s bodyguard sits. Akara and Banks are eagle-eyeing the fuck out of this guy.