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“Your cunt wouldn’t be able to handle us both,” Van scoffs. “You can barely take this.”

“I’ll get better. I promise.”

Her desperate pleading has me cutting my teeth into her bottom lip.

“You want us to stretch you, sweetheart?” I provoke. “Get you open wide enough to take us both in your tight little cunt?”

Her eyes practically roll back in her skull as her entire body bends. Her head falls back against Van’s chest and I take advantage of her exposed throat with my teeth. My tongue. I trace the hammering vein. Suck the salt from her skin.

“Do you think you can take it?” I taunt, pinching and twisting her nipple until she wails.

“Please, Mr. Weaver. Don’t stop.”

“Van,” he corrects low in his throat, thrusts quickening. “And answer Lachlan, baby. Can you take it?”

Her head bobs, no words coming from her parted lips. Only a series of incoherent whimpering that pitches in volume when Van meets my eyes, his cold and hot at the same time as he bares his teeth in an almost-challenge and Everly screams.

It’s pain and pleasure. It’s the sweetest agony. The cruelest torture. I imagine Van must have added an extra finger, but he may as well have torn her apart for the way she comes undone in our arms. The way her fingers twist in my top and I have to hold her up when her knees give.

“Please don’t stop,” she pants into my chest. “More.”

“That’s it,” Van drawls. “Such a good girl. Ride my hand, Everly. Show me how good you’ll feel riding my cock.”

I have never hated and loved anything more than this moment.

She’s falling apart between us, my shirt fisted in her trembling hands, her breath a hot, broken thing burning my chest. She’s trembling like she’ll shatter if I let her go. I feel every shudder as if they are mine. Every flutter of her pulse. Every quiver of her thighs squeezing Van’s moving hand. Every desperate grind of her hips.

And all I can do is hold her tighter. Not because I have to, but because if I don’t, I might do something reckless ... like shove Van aside, drop to my knees and clean her mess.

It must have shown on my face because the bastard smirks like he knows he can read my mind. He pushes in deeper, pumps harder, dragging another helpless, breathy whine from Everly. Her body jolts with every thrust of his fingers, caught between pleasure and surrender.

But he doesn’t allow her to submit. He gives her no relief when he waits for that sound, that desperate little cry I know will haunt my dreams before he stops. Leaving her teetering on the edge.

“No...”

Van ignores her. We both do when he’s watching me with smug arrogance. A challenge. A dare to take my turn, to see just how soaked she is. To feel her like he had. To stop being a little bitch.

He raises his fingers, two glistening digits and slips them into his mouth. His tongue curls, slow and obscene, around each, and the sound he makes has my blood rushing south so hard I see red for a second. My molars creak. My grip on Everly’s waist bruises. My self-control frays at the edges.

I could take her. Press her into the nearest wall and bury myself into everything Van just primed. I could ruin her in ways she’s never imagined.

But I don’t. I can’t. I know if I start, I will never stop.

I will never give her back. I’ll rip her away from Bron. I’ll fight him to keep her and that isn’t what a good father is supposed to do.

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” Everly rasps, face wedged in my chest. “I’ve dreamt of belonging somewhere ... to someone. To you...” She lifts her head, eyes dazed and shimmering with unshed emotion. A flush spreads across hercheeks, but she doesn’t look away. “I’m so scared I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”

Her words are a blade and a balm, cutting me open and healing me in the same breath. She’s carving my soul open without even trying and I’m struggling to keep my idiot tongue in check when all it wants to do is confess all my own aches and longings. I am drowning. Suffocating as the words lodge in my throat, begging to tell her I’ve dreamt of this ... of her, too. I’ve imagined a million different ways where I am in her life, being the man she needs. I want to gather her in my arms like something sacred and tell her I’m not going anywhere.

But my throat is tight with all the things I can’t say because I am a coward, and I know I will never heal from the heartbreak come morning if I speak.

CHAPTER THREE

VAN

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Maybe I shouldn’t have done it.