CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MIRA

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Daniel kisses me long and deep before handing me off to his brother. His focus is sharp and possessive, never wavering as I straddle Christian and hook my arms around his middle. Neither of us have a jacket so it’s my breasts mashed into his brother’s back and my nearly naked pussy wide around his hips.

Daniel looks on the verge of dragging me back into the truck for another round. His lips are thin, his jaw set. But it’s that glint, that animalistic gleam behind his eyes that sends shivers through me.

“Say bye, Daddy,” Christian taunts, but I meet Daniel’s hungry stare with a private, little smirk.

“Bye, Daddy.”

Daniel’s nostrils flare and my stomach explodes with a million butterflies. He says nothing, but the heat coming off him, the hunger says everything as Christian pulls out of the parking spot and roars off with me clinging to his back.

At the first set of lights, I tap his shoulder to get his attention. His head turns and I have to yell to be heard over the rumble.

“Can we stop at the pharmacy?”

He gives me a thumbs up.

The pharmacy sits in a cul-de-sac trapped between a small café on the right and a fancy chocolate shop on the left. It’s not as cute or aesthetically pleasing as Jefferson, but there’s an authentic-ness that makes me like it better.

Christian stops the bike in a designated parking area and kills the engine. I quickly slide off and fumble with the snap of my helmet.

His fingers replace mine and they give with a quiet click. He’s still wearing his and something about the mask and the tattoos and the black outfit with the scuffed boots makes me think of my book, the one he’d been reading the night before. The one he’d been wondering if I liked.

Well, I like this look. I like the way he looms over me and how much bigger he is, and how easily he can catch me, overpower me. Make me do hot and terrible things...

“Now, what is happening in that head of yours, little girl?” he drawls. “Oh no, you don’t.” he captures my chin in his strong hand and keeps me in place when I start to turn away. “You can’t look at a guy like that and run, not unless you want him to chase you.”

He reaches up with his free hand and unclips his helmet. It’s pulled off his head and I’m left having to face him.

It’s a struggle not to blush. To maintain eye contact. By nature, I’ve never been good with being bold. I have moments, little spurts of adrenaline mainly with Daniel and only because I’m so comfortable with him. He’s seen me at my worst. No shower or change of clothes for a week bad. He’s had to force feed me food when the thought of eating exhausted me.

Christian ... unnerves me. He’s too honest, too ... blunt. He knows what to say to both fluster and arouse me and piss me off and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with him.

Fuck, obviously.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

“Hey, come back.”

I quickly suck in a breath and drop my gaze. “I’m sorry.”

His thumb brushes my cheek, so much like the way Daniel does when he’s trying to comfort me that my chin jerks up.

He offers me a lopsided grin. “Don’t be. It’s cute the way you vanish in your head sometimes. Makes me curious.”

I have to swallow a few times to get the word out. “Curious?”

For the first time since I met him, Christian hesitates. His dark eyes shift away to somewhere over my head. His fingers drum on the shiny plastic of his helmet.

“What you’re thinking.” He takes my helmet and his and tucks them into the bike’s compartment. “They don’t always seem innocent, and it makes me curious.”

“What did you think when you read my book last night?”

He shuts the lid and faces me. “That I knew you had a filthy side behind all that sweet innocence.”

I stare up at the devastatingly gorgeous man watching me and it strikes me that he’s not wrong. It wasn’t the books that corrupted me. I’ve always been curious. I used to want to try new things with Kalen, but he’d just get fidgety and uncomfortable. Sophie used to tell me Kalen was too boring for me, and I should find someone my speed, and I thought she was saying that because they never got along.

Kalen and Sophie were water and oil. Everything was a fight. Everything ended with them screaming at each other. I was always in the middle, begging them to get along.

I guess they did. They somehow found common ground. According to Sophie, after I caught them in my bed, in my dad’s apartment, they’d found that balance six months ago but didn’t know how to tell me.

Fucking in my bed was apparently the only solution.

“Sweetheart?”

I suck in a breath, startled by the gentle brush of Christian’s finger against my cheek.

“Sorry. I got lost.”

“I see that. You okay?”

I peer up at his concerned expression. I study the tiny furrow between his eyes and the question staring back at me.

“Yeah.” I offer him a smile I don’t think he buys.

But he doesn’t push. He pockets his keys, and his free hand captures mine.

We head off in the direction of the pharmacy. Christian follows. He stays reasonably close by while I have them pull up a refill from a different province. He doesn’t ask questions when I quietly ask the pharmacist how quickly the pill will work because Daniel is still coming out of me and there had been so much semen.

I used to want a family. A big one with four or five kids, but that means more people to infect with the curse. People who would absolutely destroy me if I lost. It would be a tragedy I know I will never get over.

I grab a box of morning after pills to cover the seven days until the birth control kicks in, pay for my items and turn to find Christian watching me with a little frown.

“What?”

His answer is too quick. Dismissive, “Nothing.”

We step back out into the mid-afternoon sun, and I face him.

“Are you judging me?”

Christian’s frown deepens. “No!” He steps aside to let a woman pushing a stroller pass. “I just thought you guys would want kids.”

I stare at him, baffled by the sheer audacity of his assumption. “Because I’m a woman and inherently obligated to want children?”

He blinks at me like I’m crazy. “Because Daniel has always wanted kids.”

I say nothing. I can’t.

In the year I’ve known Daniel, he’s never mentioned kids. Granted, I never asked and never brought the topic up, but we talked about everything. We stayed up until the sun rose talking about every random thought that passed our minds. He spent almost every night for two months in my bed, holding me, telling me stories after I woke up from a nightmare and couldn’t go back to bed.

But of course Daniel would want a family. He would make such an amazing Dad.

“I can’t have kids,” I tell Christian quietly. “I mean, I probably can, but...” I fidget with the paper bag in my hand. “People I love tend to die and a baby ... if I lose...”

His fingers are gentle, capturing my chin and tipping my face up. He lightly brushes my cheek with the back of his knuckles. His eyes are soft, understanding.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, sweetheart.”

I shake my head, needing him to understand. “I would love a baby...” I sneak a tongue across my dry lips. “But it would kill me if I...”

Christian kisses me.

It’s not hard or sexual. It’s barely more than the simple motions of two lips sharing a secret. It’s gentle and warm, and it lulls me to forget the pain in my chest for those few precious minutes.

When he anchors an arm around my middle and pulls me the rest of the way against his chest, I let him. I melt into him. I accept his distraction, his hand in my hair. His breath on my skin.

His breathing is as uneven as mine when he finally pulls back. His eyes are dark pools of desire that sends a flood of warmth through me.

“I want ice cream,” he murmurs, and it’s so random, so normal that I laugh.

“Ice cream sounds nice.”

He runs my pills to the bike while I wait under the cool shade of the pharmacy awning. I watch him stalk across the street with those long, powerful legs encased in black denim, tattoos on full display. He moves the way he pleasures — with purpose and animalistic magmatism. I’m not the only one to notice. Several women nearby turn their heads to watch him.

Christian isn’t mine. He never can be. I’m working on accepting that, but for a moment, just a tiny flicker of weakness, I pretend he could be. I imagine being able to keep him, to have him with me and Daniel at our apartment. To cook dinner with him at night, wake up with him in the morning. To cuddle on the couch ... and other things.

The sad part is, it’s not hard to imagine. It’s all so clear in my head. So tempting. I can easily see the three of us together. Building a home. I could without trying fall for both brothers. I could let them into my heart, let them take root in my soul and become my whole world just to watch them die.

But it’s more than that. Earlier proved that I’m not a good or fair person. I want Daniel and Christian all to myself.

Only myself.

Only me.

But they have to share me with each other. Only each other, but still. How can I expect them to only want me when I want both?

Damn it.

Christian jogs back to me, a dark coil hanging over his brow. Eyes fixed on me and only me, despite the small cluster of gorgeous women six feet away, sipping their lattes and watching him from the café patio.

He flashes me a wicked smirk that curls my toes in my slippers. My stomach flips dangerously right before I’m caught in the arm he hooks around my middle and yanked up against his chest.

“Kiss me, brat.”

I do, because, fuck, this man is killing me. I rake my fingers into his silky hair and drag his mouth to mine. His hands close into my ass. Oblivious or uncaring of the attention we’re getting.

“Christian.”

My tormentor lifts his head and peers into my face with eyes the deepest shade of night. “I’m getting so fucking addicted to you, Mira. You should run while I might still let you.”

“Shouldn’t you be running?” I let my gaze drop to his damp lips. “Don’t men usually run?”

His laugh is deep, dark ... twisted and I almost climax as the sound claws down my spine to pool at my core.

“The only time you’ll get me to run is if you try to get away. Then, I’ll be right behind you.”

Despite the voices in my head warning me not to get attached, I hear the idiot part of me giggle.

He grins, kisses me one last time before drawing back and taking my hand. His long fingers thread through mine.

Ice creams turn into a walk through a neatly marked path in the direction of a park and hike. The sign had been vague. Even Christian hadn’t known what a park and hike was. So, it made sense to follow the slow flow of pedestrians along the winding trail to a rolling expanse of green hills and clustered trees.

Turns out, it’s a park with a hiking trail cutting through. Neither of us is really dressed for the adventure, but we stop at the manmade lake and watch the ducks while finishing our ice creams.

“This is nice,” Christian remarks, watching a family nearby layout a picnic blanket. “Haven’t been to a park in years.”

“Me neither.”

I rub at the goosebumps along my arms and clustering up my thighs. The temperature by the water seems cooler, or maybe it was the ice cream, but I’m not wearing nearly enough, and I regret not grabbing a sweater.

“Cold?”

I wave his concern aside. “I’m fine.”

Ignoring my lie, Christian drags his t-shirt up over his head. He shakes it out once before dragging it down over my head.

In all honesty, the fabric is worn and thin, and the short sleeves don’t do much to keep the cool breeze at bay, but it’s warm from his body and holds the woodsy scent of wilderness and motor grease that I associate with Christian. What more, he’s now topless. A delicious sight of hard, toned muscles displaying an array of beautifully designed artwork I want so badly to explore ... with my tongue.

“Aren’t you cold?” I ask him, shoving my arms through the sleeves.

He shakes his head. “I’ve always tended to run on the hotter side.”

He certainly does that, but I keep the thought to myself.

“Thank you.”

His response is the slip of his arm across the back of the bench. His fingers dance along the edge in a calm sort of motion. He wasn’t wrong about running warm, the heat coming off him almost has me curling into his side. I even scoot closer without crowding him, but he grabs my hip and drags me into him.

“Jesus!” he yelps when my fingers brush his naked side. “You’re freezing.”

Despite the truth behind the statement, I burst out laughing at the sheer horror on his face and deliberately dig my fingers into his ribs.

His immediate discomposure as he squeaks and leaps off the bench has me in tears.

I’m still howling uncontrollably when his hands close around me.

“No ... wait ... wait!” I wheeze, but he has me upside-down over his shoulder fireman style and is marching in some unknown direction I can’t see through the curtain of hair swinging over my face.

“Little brat!” I think I hear him mutter before I’m flipped down into his arms.

It takes the world a second to make sense as I blink at where he’s standing — at the lip of the lake. The realization of what he’s about to do has my arms snapping around his neck.

“Don’t you dare!” I squeal.

He gives me a mocking jerk like he’s about to chuck me in only to laugh when I scream and cling harder to him.

We’re both still grinning and chuckling when our eyes lock. The afternoon light warms his to a light gold that reminds me of a poster I saw once of a desert. They gleam with silent laughter that softens all the hardness in his desires.

It’s remarkable how much he resembles Daniel and not at all. The lips, nose and eyes were definitely the same, but Christian has the face of a poet. I never knew what that meant in books, but I see it in him. There are hard points and deep grooves, rugged, yet soft features where Daniel is all sharp, deep angles that could cut a person.

“Penny for your thoughts, Goldilocks,” he says with a husky drawl that makes my skin tingle.

My gaze inadvertently drops to his mouth, the thin upper, full lower and a reminder of them on mine not that long ago with such sweet care, yet had been merciless this morning at the truck.

Nothing about Christian makes sense. He’s a puzzle that never seems to add up.

“See something you want?”

His eyes draw my attention back up to them and I’m lost in their landscape.

“Yes,” I hear my traitorous mouth whisper.

His grip on me tightens. “Well, what are you going to do about it, sweetheart?”

My lips tingle even before I touch them to his.

“I don’t know,” I murmur before closing the sliver of space.

He kisses with such soul. There’s no other way to explain the wave of everything that follows every motion of his lips. He’s painting his pain and happiness against my mouth. There’s so much of it I’m gasping for air when he frees me.

“Christian.”

His heart is thumping against my side, as wild as mine.

This is not good.

I know I’m not supposed to fall for him, but has Daniel warned him about me?

“Promise me something,” I blurt.

I can see him searching my face, trying to determine my level of seriousness.

“What?” he says at last, and my brain panics.

How presumptuous am I to think he would fall in love with me after two days? It’s wild and horrifying to imagine myself so attractive that he’d simply fall to his knees and beg to stay in my life.

Christian is fucking gorgeous. The kind that dark romance novels are written about. He’s funny and charming, and dirty. He’s also kind and gentle, and sweet. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a line, a football stadium of women back home dying to be with him. Why on earth would he pick me?

He’ll forget me the second he leaves.

“Hey,” he gives me a playful shake, “get out of there.”

I blink and try not to look as broken as I feel inside. “Sorry.” I force a chuckle. “I lost my train of thought. Do you want to walk for a bit?”

He doesn’t believe me. It’s blatant in the narrowing of his eyes, but he sets me down gingerly.

I start around the lake with him next to me. There’s a hole in the hem of his t-shirt and I poke my finger through it.

We avoid the neatly marked paths dotted with parents pushing strollers and walking pets. We stay on the soft grass, bypassing clusters of toddlers and angry geese.

Christian tells me about his job, his apartment, the gray cat that comes to visit him from the apartment above.

“Lord Whiskers is a hostile guest,” he informs me with too much casualness. “I’m pretty sure he’s part of the mob. Demands his protection money in cat treats.”

I’m in fits. My earlier slip is history as he keeps me on the verge of tears.

“Once, he brought backup because I didn’t have treats for him the day before. Didn’t end well.”

“Did they break your kneecaps?” I tease.

“Worse!” His amber eyes snap to mine. “They knocked everything off my table. Staring straight into my eyes as they did it. It was so aggressive.”

I can barely walk, my sides burning.

“Stop! I can’t anymore.”

Christian gives his head a slow shake. “Good because I don’t think you want to hear about the mouse in my bed.”

I howl. “You’re lying!”

Both hands go up in the air. “Swear to God. There was a bloody mouse in my bed when I woke up one morning. A message, clearly.”

Sniffling and wiping my eyes with the hem of his top, I shake my head.

“The whole building lives in constant fear.”

“You can always move,” I point out.

He captures my fingers and threads them with his. Such a simple and smooth gesture I almost don’t notice.

“Lord Whiskers has felines everywhere. I’m not safe anywhere.”

“Oh my God,” I groan, laughing.

“Besides, if I move, it would have to be for a really good reason, good enough to give up my favorite bakery downstairs.”

A group of teenagers bolt out of the wooded area, screaming profanities as they hose each other down with water pistols. One trips trying to shoot another over his shoulder. He smacks into the grass, gun tumbling out of his reach. The others shriek and laugh, and run, leaving him there.

“Assholes!” the boy screams after them, laughing as he pushes to his feet, grabs his weapon and chases after the group.

“Miss those days?” I tease Christian who’s watching after them with a tilt in his lips.

He scoffs. “I’m not much of a runner. Daniel was the athletic one.”

I narrow my eyes. “Let me guess, you were in a band.”

Christian barks a laugh. “I can’t play an instrument either. No, my area of expertise lay behind the gym.”

My eyes widen. “Oh.”

Why didn’t that surprise me? Of course he would be the one fucking girls behind the school.

“That was a judgy gasp. Only thing missing is you clutching your metaphorical pearls.”

I chuckle. “Sorry. It’s just the kids at my school usually just went to the abandoned truck stop outside the city to do that.”

Christian stops walking to face me, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “We smoked weed, little miss judgy.”

My face scorches up to my burning eyeballs. “Oh!”

He closes the two steps between us in one and I’m forced to tilt my head back to peer into his beautiful face.

“What did you think we were doing, Mira?”

I try to drop my gaze but his fingers are around my chin, holding me captive.

“I wasn’t thinking anything...” I let my gaze flick to the side. “The boys are back with the guns!”

Christian turns his head, but I’ve already torn out of his grasp and am bolting into the woods.