Ensnared (Brutes of Bristlebrook, #1)(63)

When recognition crosses her face, she scowls.

Huh. Not the warm response Lucky usually evokes. Especially not the one I thought she’d be giving him after what I heard yesterday.

He strolls over and leans against the wall on Eden’s other side, effectively pinning her between us, and presses a kiss to her cheek. “Hey, beautiful.”

“Lucky?” I prompt. “Do you mind?”

It does sound a lot like “fuck off” when I say it out loud like that.

Lucky looks at me in surprise. “Oh! Of course. Sorry.” He leans up and kisses me on the cheek.

“You’re beautiful too, Beau,” he says seriously.

I snort, but Eden sucks in an audible breath, eyes darting between the two of us from under her glasses, then back at our half-naked bodies pressed around her. Her hand absently rubs against my chest for one cock-stirring moment before she snatches it back, cradling it against her throat as if she felt the blistering heat as fiercely as I did.

“S-sorry,” she stammers.

I give her a slow smile. “You don’t ever need to apologize for touching me, Eden.”

“Yeah. Or for peeking through your curtains and eye fucking us for forty minutes. We’re cool with that too,” Lucky chimes in cheerfully.

Eden’s head whips toward him. “What?” Her voice is pure panic. “I did not—”

My lips twitch. “Word to the wise, darlin’, it ain’t a real good idea to lie to your dom.”

Her mouth opens, then snicks shut, and I watch as the rose color in her cheeks deepens, then rolls into the tips of her ears.

“You really saw me?” she asks in a small voice.

“Oh yeah.” I grin. “We saw you.”

She squeals, burying her face in her hands.

Lucky snickers and ruffles her hair. “I’m going to make breakfast. You watch that sweet butt of yours, Eden.”

She bats his hand away and glares after him as he leaves.

At my confused look, she scowls. “Lucky is the devil himself, and if he gets me killed, I would appreciate it if you buried him next to me so I can haunt him in our next life.”

I frown. “I thought y’all played a game of Twister. That doesn’t sound—”

“Have you ever played one of Lucky’s games, Beau?” she asks in her gorgeous, husky voice. The blue-gray of her eyes spears me, not seeming at all shy in that moment.

The sound of my name rolling off her tongue hits me low in my stomach.

“A few times,” I tell her, surreptitiously looking her over for burn marks. “I’m usually his best bet for anything close to a game.”

“Well, I’m surprised you escaped unscathed,” she hisses, darting another nervous glance at the stairs. Then she blinks and bites her lip with a little wince. “I don’t want to talk about Lucky.”

I don’t really want to talk about Lucky either.

Taking her hand, I lace our fingers together and tug gently. “Come sit with me for a minute.”

Hesitating, Eden looks up at the top floor, then at me. But when she meets my eyes, her shoulders relax, and she follows me easily.

I walk backwards toward the sitting-room chairs, enjoying the bashful little looks she’s giving me. As we sit, I shift the med bag I dumped when I got back the other day.

To my surprise, she looks it over curiously. “Are those your medical supplies?”

“Some of them.”

It’s not often anyone pays any mind to my gear. Not unless they need me to patch them up, that is. Or when they get carried away on the booze and come begging for painkillers.

“May I?” she asks.

Tickled by her interest, I unzip it for her and lay it out on the coffee table. She leans over the bag, examining the contents with open fascination. She turns a bottle with one slender finger.

“You have diazepam, morphine—oh, and a cricothyrotomy kit! Narcan, antibiotics . . . ” She shakes her head, and her hair shivers prettily around her shoulders. “You could have bars of solid gold in here and they’d be worth less.”

I nod absently, then nudge her with a questioning look. “How do you know about all this? The guys went through first responder training, and some days I still doubt they’d be able to perform a crike, even with the kit.”

Eden sits back. Rueful eyes meet mine. When she twists her mouth like that, I notice how her nose crinkles . . . though I have no idea why that detail should have my heart thundering like a herd of horses.

“I don’t know that I could perform one, either. I’ve only read about them.” One shoulder lifts lightly. “I studied what I could, but the herbology books were more helpful, since I didn’t have access to medicine like this. But I’ll take any tips you have, in case this doesn’t work out.”

Something in my gut drops. “Why wouldn’t this work out?”

Dom. Damn it, I knew he was scaring her off.

“Oh, I just mean, I . . . ” Eden pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I’m not sure this is sustainable. What we’re doing. And all these rules . . . I don’t know that it . . . That I’m—”

“Eden, you don’t need to worry. You’re perfect—more than enough for any one of us.” I take her hand again, rubbing my thumb over her knuckles. “No one’s kicking you out. You haven’t done anything wrong.”