The team gets back late, so the house is already dark and quiet when I climb the stairs to my room. It’s been a shitty away game trip, a worthless stretch of time that included twiddling my thumbs and spending too long stewing in my own thoughts. My skin feels stretched too tight, and even though I spent most of the trip itching to get back, the second I reach the familiar hallway, something heavy settles in the base of my spine like a burden.
The first thing I do is check Story’s doorknob. To my shock, it’s actually unlocked, although it may not have mattered. I’ve been pissed for twenty-four-hours, filled with visions of me giving this fucking doorknob a nice snap, violating the locked-door rule once and for all. Now maybe I don’t have to.
I resent the way my chest goes light finding this, as if she’s gifted me something precious and shiny: admittance. I don’t have time to dwell on the things I’m going to do once I’m inside, because the feeling doesn’t last long.
Her bed is empty.
I know from the tracker she’s home, but it’s not great at pinpointing her location inside the house. I toss my bag in my room and head to the third floor, listening carefully for signs of life. What I get is the sound of voices floating from Tristian’s room. I tap the door with my sore knuckles, but don’t give him a chance to respond before pushing it open. He’s lying back on the bed, shirtless. His lower body is covered by a sheet, a laptop resting on his thighs, and it doesn’t matter that he closes it the instant he spots me. The sounds of the video he’s watching are unmistakable. I may have watched it a couple times myself, closed up in my room, hand flying over my dick as I watched Rath pounding into Story. Unlike Tristian, I watch it muted. The sounds of the pit make my dick soft.
He lifts his chin in greeting, seeming unbothered by the interruption. “You’re back.”
“Yeah. It was a long trip.” I rub the back of my neck and wince at the pain in my fist.
If he notices, he doesn’t mention it, but adds, “Especially when you’re side-lined.” I’ve only got one question, and he already knows what it is. “She’s in his room. Went in a few hours ago. I’m pretty sure they made up.” He gives me a long look. “Loudly. And acrobatically, if the mattress squeaks are to be believed.”
Ah, so that explains the video. I guess now Tristian is the only one who hasn’t fucked Story since the new rules. All of our balls are aching, but she’s really iced him out by turning off all the cameras. Still, I’m surprised. “Really?”
“They weren’t exactly subtle about it.” He shrugs, but I can tell from the tightness around his mouth—not to mention the bulge beneath his sheets—that he’s rankled. “It could have been a psycho rage-fuck, you know how they are, but…” he pauses for dramatic effect, “afterward, he was playing the piano.”
Huh. That is news. “Well, good. His incessant moping was fucking with the vibe of the whole house. He needed to get back in the saddle.”
Tristian smirks. “If by ‘saddle’ you mean ‘pussy’, then consider the mission accomplished.”
I ignore that and leave him to his porn. Crossing the hall, I pause outside the room, pressing my ear to Rath’s door. I made a deal with Story that I wouldn’t violate a locked door or enter her room without invitation, but make no mistake about it, that shit does not apply to Rath’s. No sounds come from the other side of the door, and I carefully turn the knob.
From the threshold, I’m shocked to find the room spotless, cleaned to levels I haven’t seen since we moved in. Everything is tidy. Records on the shelves, instruments on their racks, the usual piles of sheet music sorted and organized. And for once, the room doesn’t smell like a corpse is rotting under a pile of dirty clothes and blunt roaches. At first, I wonder if it’s Story’s doing, but this is something that would have taken at least a whole day, possibly two. I’d consider that maybe Ms. Crane did it. Only Rath isn’t lying dead in a shallow grave out back, so I assume not.
As surprised as I am to see the tidiness of the room, that’s not what draws me deeper inside. It’s the two of them in the bed.
Story is naked, her bare ass facing the door. A flash of heat—the anger I’ve been carrying since she shut me out of the conversation with Simon—surges. One minute, I was there and involved, the next, the screen was black. I thought about it on the bus, in the locker room, and on the ride home. That kind of shit doesn’t play. I’m a Lord. Her Lord, despite what these new rules say.
Isn’t shutting me out of her room enough?
For a long moment, I imagine what it’d be like to drag her ass-first to the edge of the bed and drive my dick into her, a long, hard, rough punishment for her defiance. But she’s not alone. She’s nestled into Rath, thigh thrown over his, hand resting loosely against his stomach. He has her tucked firmly into his side, fingers knitted into her hair as they sleep.
I stand over them for a long time, feeling not just the old urges coursing through me, but new ones, too. Seeing her with Rath like this, all sweet and comfortable…
She did that with me, once.
Well, technically twice.
I remember that first time; her curling up against me, all warm, naked skin and soft curves. I remember wondering if it was something I wanted—something I even liked. It wasn’t until later, tired and wounded on a cold cabin floor, that I admitted to myself it was. There’s something about her, so small and vulnerable and trusting, that makes me wish I were in that bed. I thought I was over jealousy when it came to him and Tristian, but it swells within me now. There was a time—so fucking brief that I barely had the chance to enjoy it—when I could come home to her in my bed, all naked and pliant.
I take a reluctant step forward, but Rath’s hand appears, sliding out from beneath the pillow. A sharp, familiar blade glints in the dim light.
So do his narrow, alert eyes.
I hold up my hands, whispering, “It’s me.”
He blinks, chest caving with a long, silent exhale. “Dude,” he mutters. We stare at one another for a long beat, and as he wakes, he recognizes it for what it is—recognizes me for what I am. Story’s in his bed, naked and sleeping. It might be his room, but this is my territory, and he knows it.
He slowly extricates himself from Story’s sleeping body, pushing the pillow against her so she doesn’t miss his heat. He fusses with her like that for a minute, but then stands there, naked, staring down at her like he’s pondering if maybe he should do something else. Like he’s unsure if he should leave. Like he doesn’t want to.
Seeming to shake it off, he stalks toward the bathroom.
The light is so dim that I barely see it, but I grab his arm and hold him back, inspecting the center of his chest. The wound there is fresh, the ‘S’ raised and red and still bleeding a little beneath the sheen of ointment coated on top.
“Did you do that?”
It’s her initial, carved into his chest, just like our initials are carved into hers.
“No,” he answers, glancing over his shoulder at her still form. “She did.”
I look at his face, searching for…something. Embarrassment? Defiance? But there’s nothing like that. He stares baldly back, eyes void of that dull, frenetic hopelessness that’s been driving him around like a zombie for weeks now. “Payback?” I ask, honestly curious. Is this what it takes to get her like this? An eye for an eye? Because goddamn, I’ve only got the two, and that’s not going to be enough.
But Rath just gives me this look, mouth tipped into a loose, crooked, and decidedly post-coital grin. “Not even.”
Well, that’s fucking baffling. “Then why?”
He reaches up to rub the skin above it, a thoughtless gesture. “Territorial pissing. Same reason we like seeing it on her.” He watches me take this in, rolling his eyes at my shocked expression. “I don’t know why you think she’s so different from us. You ever wonder why this whole thing works? Fuck, man, the four of us basically made each other. My advice? Tell her about that tattoo on your arm sometime.” He goes to walk away, but pauses, doubling back. “Or if you want some really freaky sex, you could let her think it’s some other girl’s face for a while. When it comes to you, she never can see what’s right in front of her.”
He disappears into the bathroom, leaving me to process that. A moment later, I hear the shower turn on. Now that Story and I are alone, I fight the urge to climb into bed with her, to replace Rath’s warmth with my own. There are two reasons I don’t, one being that, even though this might be Rath’s room, it’s still breaking the spirit of our agreement. The second is a lot more complicated, but it involves me not being able to trust myself.
I slink away and lounge back on the couch instead, considering that I could sleep here. Rath wouldn’t mind. Chances are they’ll get up to some morning sex, and that could be fun to watch. It’s more action than Tristian’s sorry ass is getting, anyway.
I haven’t considered what to do when she wakes, which is inconvenient, because she does. Rath is still in the shower when she suddenly stirs, likely feeling his empty side of the bed. I don’t move, glued to my spot, watching as she sits up, hair messy. At first, her expression is serene. She’s obviously been well-fucked. But when she sees the empty bed, it morphs to a deep, troubled frown. She spends so long considering Rath’s absence that I almost give myself away to reassure her.
Idly, I wonder how they did it. Did he bend her over? Did he curl into her from behind, mid-cuddle? Did he climb over her, between her legs? Did he eat her pussy first, make her come before sliding his dick inside? Was it slow and intense, or was it like Tristian said: a psycho rage-fuck?
She stretches her arms over her head, giving me a perfect view of her tits. She doesn’t see me, barely even looks my way before bending to snag a black hoodie off the floor. With a glance to the bathroom, she shrugs her arms into each sleeve, zipping it as she stands. I wait for her to notice me, to sense me as she so often has, to catch me in the dark doing the one thing she’s forbidden me to do.
It never happens.
Her eyes go to the bathroom door, but she doesn’t follow him inside like I expect her to. Instead, she crosses the room, padding barefoot across the clean hardwoods and stopping in front of the closet door. A moment later, warm yellow light spills from inside. My suspicions pique. The last time she went into my closet, she roofied me, fucked with my stuff, strapped me to the bed, and then fucked me. Sure, that was before. Before our agreements. Before we let her go. Before she chose to return, under her own terms and conditions.
But Rath made a point before.
Sometimes it feels like I barely know her at all.
Impatient and curious, I leave my hiding place and occupy the closet door. She’s down on her knees, poking through a cardboard box on the floor. It’s the Dimitri Rathbone equivalent to a reinforced steel vault. Boy keeps everything in there.
Or he did, when he had something to keep.
I cross my arms over my chest and lean against the doorjamb. “It’s not there.”
She jumps a mile, yelp caught in the back of her throat as she whirls around. She shudders a long exhale when she sees me, eyes dropping closed in relief. “Jesus Christ, big brother. Wear a fucking bell around your neck.” She wraps her arms around her body, looking small in his sweater. “How long have you been in here?”
“Long enough to see the tag you left on Rath’s chest.”
“That’s between us,” she says, her voice still shaky from the surprise. That’s bullshit anyway. What happened in the funhouse was between the three of us. We all carved her up. Why is this any different? She looks me up and down, adding, “Just like anything else that happens in this room.”
Oh yeah, she’s pissed.
Join the club.
Her comment is pointed and I choose to deflect, glancing down at the open box on the floor. “Find what you needed?”
“I was just looking for his weed. He had a headache earlier, so I was going to—” I raise an eyebrow, and she looks back down, frowning as it dawns on her. “Where’s his piano money?”
There’s no way she doesn’t know. “Where do you think?”
She stands a foot away from me, in that oversized hoodie, bare underneath, with that innocent, sexy look on her face that drives me fucking wild. “I didn’t take it if that’s what you think. I know I’m desperate and broke but—”
“Of course you didn’t.” I cut her off, scoffing. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t spend it on you.”
She cocks her head, forehead wrinkling. “What do you mean?”
Guess I’m going to have to spell it out for her. “Why do you think Daniel let you fuck Rath down in the pit instead of Pretty Nick? My dad speaks two languages, little sister: English and money.”
“I—” Her eyes, filling with dread, dart back to the box. “You don’t mean…”
I jerk my chin in a nod. “Rath bought you.”
“No.” Her shoulders deflate, and I’m surprised at the way her expression crumbles.
The memory of yesterday callously makes me want to rub it in. “Daddy didn’t throw you a familiar bone because he cares for you. Rath saved you. Not just by showing up, but by sacrificing everything. Do you have any idea how long he’d been saving that for? Honestly, since before I even knew him.”
She looks up at me, eyes wide and wet. “I didn’t know.”
I manage a dry little laugh. “I’m sure you didn’t. Else you would’ve been in here bouncing on his dick a lot sooner than tonight.”
Her expression does this clean wipe from dismal horror to hard outrage. She scowls at me, the spark of kinetic energy that flows between us jolting back to life. “Why are you acting like such a jerk?”
“Oh, I’m not acting.”
“What, you’re like… mad at me?” When I do nothing but stare blankly in response, her head jolts back in disbelief. “What can you possibly be mad about? I haven’t even seen you all weekend!” I realize too late she’s looking me over. Even sensing how angry I am, she doesn’t hesitate to grab my wrist and pull my hand away from my body, her cool fingers running over my scraped, bruised knuckles. Her face loses some of those harsh lines when she asks, “What happened here?”
I shrug, twisting my hand loose. “I punched a wall.”
“Seriously?” She shakes her head, peering up at me with big, puzzled eyes. “Why the hell would you do that? It’s almost like you don’t want to get back on the field.”
I step into the closet, closing the gap between us. I know she finally understands about this red-hot thing boiling under my skin, because she flinches as I bear down on her. She has no choice but to go backwards, tripping on a pair of boots and then stumbling over the box on the floor. Just before she crashes into the wall, I grab her and hold her upright, yanking our faces together.
“I punched the wall, little sister, because the other option was breaking my goddamn laptop.” She blinks in confusion and it rubs me raw, this evidence that she’d done it so unthinkingly. My teeth clench around the explanation. “You shut me out of that conversation the other day—just closed the computer like my voice didn’t even fucking matter.”
“I-uh-what?”
“About the wrestling match,” I bark, holding her like a rag doll in my hands. Narrowing my eyes, I lean in so close our noses nearly touch. “Do you know how many times, how many fucking discussions, I’ve put a stop to because you weren’t there for them? Do you have any fucking idea what it’s taken to sit here on my hands like a coward because I know you couldn’t stand the thought of being cut out? Do you?!” She gapes at me, body slack beneath my hands. “The three of us could have had this guy—whoever the fuck he is—down on his knees, execution style, weeks ago.” There’s a flash of something in her eyes, and it’s too mild to be called fear, but too strong to be mere wariness. “You’re the only reason we’re playing this slow. Because you asked us to. Because anything less would put you at risk. You’re the only thing keeping Tristian from burning this whole fucking place to the ground. You’re the only thing stopping Rath from tearing a warpath through South Side. You’re the one thing,” I hold up a finger, thrusting it right in her face, “standing between me and my dad. But you want to go off, making decisions that affect all of us? I don’t think so.”
She gives me a series of rapid blinks. “I didn’t think it was that important.”
“Everything you do is important,” I growl, shaking her. “This stalker of yours? You’d better believe he watched that night in the pit. He knows when you leave the house, when you get to campus—hell, he probably knows you just fucked Rath.” A gnawing disdain grows within my chest. I don’t like this guy knowing more about her than I do. It makes me wild, crazed, turning my voice into a deadly hiss. “You can lock me out of your room, you can turn off the cameras, you can flaunt your pussy in here with Rath. That’s all fine and fucking dandy. But you will not shut me out of decisions that involve you showing your tits and ass to the entire Royal system.” I fume right into her face, mouth pulling into a sneer. “If you’re that hell-bent on being a whore like your mother, then I’ll go find an ATM right now. Maybe then, you’ll actually—”
I see the strike in her eyes long before it’s made flesh. It’s a spark of fury—the twitch of the vein in her temple—and then, astonishingly, her palm cracking hard against my face.
For a long moment, everything goes white.
“How dare you,” she seethes, face boiling red. “You use your body every day to get ahead, be it out on the field, or over in South Side, muscling your way around, showing off your tattoos, trying to look so big and tough. But you—all three of you—look down your noses the second a woman tries to do it.” Shaking her head, she gives a low, humorless laugh. “God, you’re all unbearable hypocrites.”
I’m rigidly still, the roar in my head too much to contain. I try anyway, desperately struggling to shove it all down, to breathe, to keep my fingers from crushing the bones in her arms—from wrapping around her pale, slender neck. This is the second time she’s struck me. The first time, I worked off my anger jumping in the ring down at the Duke’s gym.
This time, I uncurl my fingers, one by one, rusty knuckles protesting against it. It’s in opposition to every ingrained instinct, but I let her go, dropping her to her feet with a bitten out warning. “Keep testing me like this, Story. One of these times I’m going to decide this agreement of ours is a failure.”
I leave her before I do anything else—before I react to the defiant fire in her eyes, the one that’s daring me to make good on my promise. Maybe Rath is right about that, too. Story is more like us than I want to admit, which doesn’t bode well for her.
No one hurts us more than we hurt ourselves.
