Ensnared (Brutes of Bristlebrook, #1)(46)
Seeing Jasper gives me a familiar jolt, though, and I slide the fresh fruit salad I prepared into a bowl and place it in front of him. From under my lashes, I take in the familiar icy irritation in the set of his angular jaw and silently add a piping chocolate pancake to a plate and slide that over too. He’d never admit it—he’s always rigorously in control of what he eats—but I know he loves the sweet stuff.
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.
In the long years in our new base camp here, our relationship has changed. 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.
And if my stomach still twists every time he talks about his ex-wife, or I still stare too long when his eyelashes cast secretive shadows over his face, and if I still think he’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, well, we’ve both gotten pretty good at ignoring that too.
An image flashes into my mind of Eden kitted out in leather and whips, and I can’t help but snort at my own fantasy. Dirty she may secretly be, but somehow I seriously doubt she has it in her to take control like that.
The image is chased away by another, of her kneeling next to me, our trembles and tears mixing as we wait to serve a different master.
I choke on my chocolate chips.
“Is there some part of this I’m missing that is funny to you, Lucien?” Dom glares at me.
I turn the stove off, angling my body behind the counter so they don’t catch sight of the erection suddenly tenting my apron, and give him a wounded look. From anyone but Jasper, “Lucien” means I’m in trouble.
Well, fine. If I’m in trouble, then I’m keeping the rest of the chocolate pancakes for myself. And for Eden, I guess. If she’s nice to me.
I really hope she’s nice to me.
“Nah, boss. Your call, one hundred percent.”
Over Dom’s shoulder, Beau’s look turns dry, and I can practically see him calling me a coward. But whatever. Ole Doctor Decent knows I agree with him—I just have better self-preservation skills than he does. I give him a one-shouldered shrug when Dom turns back around, and he rolls his eyes.
“And you?” Dom snaps at Jasper, who’s perched elegantly on the breakfast bar stool, for all the world as though it’s a throne. “You think we should tell her about the hunters?”
Jasper sips from his coffee before answering, the measured delay after Dom’s demanding tone clearly deliberate. As the military psychologist, Jasper is the only one of us who hasn’t been directly under Dom’s command. He was responsible for our debriefings, supervised our reintegration, and because of the nature of our specialist deployment, we’d all had regular—and mandatory—sessions with him to work through our shit. Before he retired and left us, that is. Between that and the fact that this is still Jasper’s home, he made it clear early on that his obedience to Dom is just a courtesy.
“I don’t think we should tell her, no.”
Jasper neatly cubes his pancake and quiet pleasure unfurls in my chest, even though he doesn’t so much as glance my way.
Still, I really wish he wasn’t taking Dom’s side on this one. I hate this authoritarian crap.
Well . . . for this kind of thing I hate it.
Jasper continues, “She’s frightened and skittish, only just now recovering from days of running from these men. We don’t yet know to what extent—or if—we’re even facing a threat. They might not even be aware their comrades are dead. Telling her about them now would be premature and perhaps send her into a flight that would only put her in more danger. We need to assess the danger, prepare accordingly, and inform her calmly when we have the facts and can be sure she won’t put herself, and us, at risk.”
Dom nods once and Beau shakes his head with a frustrated hiss.
“Ridiculous,” he says under his breath.
Jasper ignores him.
“It’s final; no one says a word to her,” Dom says firmly. “Clear?”
“Clear, Cap,” I say with a pang of regret, and Jasper murmurs his agreement.
After a beat of silence, Dom’s golden gaze swings back to Beau. Their eyes lock.
Even after all these years, I’m not sure I completely understand their relationship. For a while I thought maybe they were like me. But I figure I’ve got secret desire pretty much locked down by now, and I just don’t see it curling between them.
The team is tight enough, but we all know these guys are partners. They balance each other, watch each other’s six, and they’d leave the rest of us in the dirt before they’d leave each other.
But things have been off with them since the Heather drama, and I do not love the weird tension. It makes me itchy.