Page 293 of Darling Venom
The words sat at the tip of my tongue. I would never release them. That was Reed’s hill to die on. I cared because I hated the way Nash stared at me sometimes, accusations stabbing me from his eyes.
r /> Snide comments I would never ask him about because I was loyal to Reed, and even talking to Nash felt like picking the wrong side.
“Such a Winthrop, Emery,” Nash once said when I stole capers from Reed’s plate after Betty made Chicken Piccata.
“So good at hiding things.” He caught me sliding extra money into Reed’s stocking. I lied about it being from Dad. “Gideon has you sneaking around for him often?”
“Betrayal. Taste it often?” I’d spit out a rotten peach from the garden. It landed by his foot, a few inches past my target.
I wanted to take a few seconds to study Nash, to process my mortification, to enjoy the aftershocks of my first orgasm, yet all I could feel was Nash’s overwhelming gravitational pull, one more dangerous than that of any other boy I’d ever met.
But Nash Prescott wasn’t a boy.
He was a man.
One who made me feel like the little girl I’d convinced myself I wasn’t.
My arms slipped through the robe. The second the tie wrapped around my waist, my body solidified. My underwear remained lost somewhere, but at least I was covered.
I ignored the sting of his derision, shook my head, and pushed aside the embarrassment. “Did you know?”
The sharp accusation unfazed him. He stretched his arms, drawing my attention to the deep V of his body. I clenched around him. A reflex. My mortified eyes flicked up in time to catch his cocked brow.
“I figured it out when you moaned my brother’s name while coming around my cock.” His eyes dipped down as if to remind me I was still on him.
I scrambled off the bed, pushing the blanket over with the rushed movement. Horrified didn’t even begin to describe how I felt, but it was the plain irritation on his face that almost undid me.
Couldn’t he at least pretend he enjoyed it?
Because I did.
I’d come.
I never came.
I’d spent the past two years filling out my body, my full chest the one thing about me that didn’t scream runway model. Riding Nash made me feel like a goddess. As if my body possessed magic, I controlled my pleasure, and something that had always worried me didn’t need to be anything but bliss.
Yet, I obviously did nothing for Nash. He stared at me like he wanted nothing more than to forget this had ever happened. Like he disgusted himself for screwing somebody so young.
It wasn’t as if either of us intended this to happen, and I didn’t have the guts to ask him why he looked slightly sickened and a hundred percent scornful.
Pulling the sheets had left him bare, but Nash didn’t bother covering himself as he ran a hand through his hair again. Maybe if I were a guy and I was as big as Nash, I wouldn’t cover up either. Still, you’d think he’d at least have the decency.
Then, I remembered there was nothing decent inside this man.
Reed had warned me.
“Careful, Em.” Reed glowered at his brother’s retreating Honda the weekend after the cotillion. “Nash does unforgivable things without bothering to ask for forgiveness.”
I dug my nails into my thigh, hating this cycle of hurt. “Can’t you two talk it out?”
“What would be the point in that? He’s a devious liar. I can’t trust anything he says.”
I’d never been able to reconcile Reed’s version of Nash with the one who saved me too many times to count. Even if three years passed since he flipped a switch, I’d still hoped Nash hadn’t become as bad as Reed accused him of being.
Until tonight.
That hope died a painful death.
