Ensnared (Brutes of Bristlebrook, #1)(76)

Would they want me without this deal? If they had to answer all the questions they want to hide? If they had to reveal themselves as nakedly as Jasper just did?

“I’m sorry if he hurt you,” Lucky whispers to me. “I know how he can be.”

There’s something in that. Something that niggles at me, but my thoughts are starting to slip away under their hands. Their lips.

Lucky’s thumb rubs across my mouth. Both of them move slowly, leisurely, not like they’re trying to stir me up, but more like they’re exploring, worshiping me with their hands and mouths.

It hurts.

It helps.

I kiss Lucky’s thumb.

“You’re so pretty like this,” Lucky tells me on a sigh, resting his forehead against mine.

Everything in me grows soft and warm. In the next instant, Beau’s tongue slides, slow and silken, over my sensitive flesh. I gasp, knees weakening, and Lucky ducks his head to brush my mouth with his, kissing the sound, rubbing his lips against mine.

The competing sensations are too much—the wet heat against my neck and mouth, their bodies all over me. I remember the way they pinned me, sweaty and shirtless in the sitting room.

I whimper in pleasure.

Dom’s clipped voice cuts through the snuggly, slick fog. “Is dinner ready?”

No. I don’t want dinner.

I want kisses for dinner.

Lucky presses one more brief peck to my lips, then pulls back. I attempt to frown at him, but he just winks, twinkly eyed and flushed, and leaves for the kitchen.

Beau makes a frustrated sound against my neck—and I swear he mutters, “Like clockwork.”

Whatever that means.

He nips me lightly before straightening, though his arms stay wrapped around me.

I clear my throat. “Yes, sir. Lucky’s just finishing with the potatoes.”

My pulse quickens at the electric flash in Dom’s eyes. Oh. I called him “sir” again. It’s slipping out as naturally as breathing now.

And he likes it.

The, ah, pressure in his jeans tells me so. Not that I’m looking. It isn’t my fault it’s just . . . there. Demanding attention.

Pretty damn worthy of it too.

Realizing my attention has drifted—and not at all subtly—I snap my eyes back to his face. He’s studying me in that intent way of his.

“Not such a prude then after all,” he mocks.

Does that really need to be the first thing he’s said to me since beating up on Jayk? Even then, he wasn’t really talking to me.

Embarrassment rocks me, and it follows a little too closely on the heels of today’s earlier humiliation. He doesn’t seem to be looking for a response, but the words slip out of me anyway.

“I really hate that word. Why is it that when women embrace their sexuality they’re demonized as sluts, but when they don’t, they’re condemned as prudes and called frigid? There’s no winning.”

Flinging the door open, Jaykob stalks through and plants himself in a chair without a word. The door hits the wall with a clang, making me jump. He doesn’t look at anyone as he pulls out his knife again, not even at me.

The lack of acknowledgement stings after we spent the whole day together yesterday—especially after Jasper—but I force myself to push the feeling down. I know Jayk had fun working with me.

Okay, “fun” might be a stretch. But he tolerated me yesterday.

And that was nice.

“The angel or the monster, no?” Jasper strolls into the dining room with a disdainful look at the still-swinging door, controlling it with a neat catch and closing it with pointed, deliberate care. Which Jaykob ignores.

There’s not a hint of our earlier conversation on his face . . . except that tiredness. That seems like it’s there to stay. His dark gaze slides over me, coolly appraising, and he nods at Beau before moving to fix himself a drink.

“I— Yes. Exactly,” I stutter. My pulse trips over itself, but I try not to seem too affected by him.

It would help if he lost that damnable cream sweater though. It emphasizes his shoulders, the Stygian darkness of his hair.

It’s too inviting for how closed off he is.

The scrape of Dom’s chair as he sits draws my attention. He gives me an impatient look. “I’m not demonizing anyone. I don’t like hypocrites. If you enjoy something, say so. You feel something, feel it. People who put a stranglehold on their lives because they’re too afraid to actually do what they want are pathetic. And frustrating to be around.”

“Now ain’t that the funniest thing, partner—I agree with you completely,” Beau says in a sugar-sweet tone, and Dom gives him a sharp glare.

Beau squeezes my upper arms, then tugs at my hand until we’re seated next to each other. Dom is on my other side at the head of the table. I mull over Dom’s words, cut by how aptly, how neatly, they slap a label on me. As though being polite and doing as I’m told is somehow a failing, when they’ve made it clear that I’m living here at their mercy. Irritation pricks me.

One day I’m going to tell him to fuck off, and I’m not going to be able to stop myself.

And it might be soon, because my patience for just about everything is wearing thin right now.

I’m about to respond—politely, I think—when Jaykob snorts. The sound startles me. The last two times we were all together, he hardly engaged with the others at all.