“Are you my friend now or his?” I snap, which really isn’t fair. The only reason Reba ever met Grey was because of me, because she is and was my only real friend. Well, her and Grey and the goddamn dog. My men are my men, but they are not my friends, not yet anyway. Eventually, I’m sure, but it’s much easier to cultivate lust and need than it is true friendship. The sex can even get in the way sometimes.
“Gidge, I am always here for you. I always have your best interests at heart.” Reba sounds choked up, and that’s when I’m reminded that she’s still seventeen. She hasn’t clicked over into being eighteen, and she’s going through worse than most people do in their entire lives.
“I know that,” I reply, raking my fingers through my hair and cringing when they get caught on several snarls. My curls are raging today, as if they’re pissed off that I dared pin them into place for the wedding. I must look insane, especially when paired with the split lip and swollen eye.
Some wedding night for me and Beast, eh? I can’t even quite remember which part of the night I was even in his bed, which part was spent holding Grainger’s hand as he flatlined, or which part was spent kissing three other men.
We are both owed some deliverance for this shit.
I look over at him, leaned up against the edge of the counter, huge arms crossed over his chest. He’s wearing jeans and nothing else. No shoes, no shirt, please let me service … I blink away the silliness and groan, folding my arms on the table and leaning my forehead against them.
“I know that, Reba,” I repeat as her hand strokes down my back.
“Let me get some detangler and a hairbrush,” she remarks after a moment, and I don’t protest as I hear the sound of her chair legs scraping across the old linoleum floors, the softness of her receding footsteps.
“How many people did you end up losing?” Grey asks absently, and I lift my head up to glare at him before Beast gets the chance to react. He won’t appreciate these sorts of prying questions. Having spent months locked up with this boy, I know it for what it is: a hint.
He’s pushing me toward something.
We stare at each other, and I’m reminded of the way the sunlight used to slant through the stained-glass windows of our luxurious prison and light up his pretty hair with jewel tones.
I glance over at Beast, and he frowns. The expression is far darker than it would be on another person. He isn’t going to answer my question in front of Grey, but I need to know.
“If we’re going to make some sort of truce, we need to be equals,” I state firmly, splaying my fingertips on the surface of the table as Grey’s lips twist to the side in a trenchant smile. “The mafia lost forty-some people during the wedding; if we haven’t lost at least that many, then we won’t get either group to work with us.”
“You’re so sharp-witted, Gidge,” Grey says appreciatively, lifting his mug to his lips as Beast steps forward, putting his own hands on the tabletop. I close my eyes at the sensations that spike through me at his nearness.
Turning my head, I take him in, the bandages on his muscular arms, the cuts on his face that add to, rather than detract from, his rugged beauty. There’s a bit of blond stubble on his jaw that wasn’t there the day of the wedding, marking the passage of time.
Oh, I like this, I think, reaching up a hand to brush my knuckles against that rough hair and shivering. The effect is amplified when those blue eyes swing over to mine. Beast captures my hand in one of his and brings it to his lips for a kiss, making my body tremble in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with my fatigue or pain.
This is all heat.
It’s the burn of a broken promise, that’s what it is.
We were supposed to have a wedding night. Instead, we had to deal with a violent coup.
Our bodies are aching for what should’ve been.
I inhale deeply, taking in that old books and Earl Grey tea smell that clings to Beast as stubbornly as the musky scent of male. I see now it’s because he’s been living at Gram’s, storing his clothes in a chest in the library. He sleeps in there, too. There’s a cot there that I figured was just for guys on guard duty or something. I didn’t know until recently that Sin, Beast, and Grainger all lived there.
How sad.
They’ve been living in a graveyard. And they certainly wouldn’t have been allowed under any circumstances to bring women back there. Not to say they weren’t fucking groupies or whatever—the thought makes me rage in a way that I don’t care to examine right now—but they never had anyone to warm their actual beds, to go home to at night, to curl up against.
