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“What thefuck!” I drag my hand over my mouth, feeling the indignation grow to fury in the pit of my chest. My balls ache with the lost promise, and I fumble to detangle myself from the silk bedding. “Nothappening. Not fucking happening!”

She looks confused. Join the club, my dick is super confused, too.

“You don’t get to use me,” I say, voice low and seething as I glare at her. “Not after what you did to me.”

“Did toyou?” she blinks, those green eyes becoming clearer, flashing hotly. “You used me like a sex toy for weeks!”

“No.” I snap, towering over the bed. “I fulfilled my obligation. Whatever just happened, it’s because you’re a horny bitch looking to get off.”

She looks crazed, her hair a wild mane of fire as her green eyes bug out. “And, suddenly, you find getting offoffensive?”

“With you?” I release a dark, bitter chuckle, glancing at the time. It’s past six in the morning. Our night is over. “Absolutely.”

I circle the bed, stopping where she’s still sprawled out, mouth fluttering in gawked outrage. It'd be so easy to spread her out, give her what she wants. Give my cock what it wants. Give my brothers whattheywant…

But then she’d win.

“I know you got a taste for our dicks, but let me make something crystal clear. None of us are ever going to fuck you again. I’m your Prince. You obey me and my brothers. You carry our child, and you pray that when he comes out, he’s healthy. That’s it. Nothing more.”

“Fine by me,” she says as I wrench the door open. “As if I’d want to fuck any of you, anyway!”

I slam the door on her enraged squawking, reaching down to press a palm against my hardness.

Verity Sinclaire can have our father. She can have his name. She can have his precious fucking heir. She can have the Purple Palace, East End, and everything that rots here.

But she can’t have us.

8

Verity

I possibly wantto blame Regina and her Barons for what’s happened to my body since seeing them in front of the elevator. That’s where it started—this sudden, throbbing, low-burning want always thrumming through my veins now. I definitely want to blame Lex for sating it, his hard, sure body crashing into mine in that stairwell, the memory nagging at me like a video on repeat. I even want to blame Wicker because he comes in my room every night, shirtless and sculpted and so goddamn arrogant that it’s easy to superimpose him in Lex’s place, imagining him shoving me up against a wall andhandlingme.

But I can’t blame any of them.

It’s thisparasiteinside of me.

I wake up on Thursday morning the same way I have the past three days. Sleepy, warm, comfortable.

Horny.

Soungodly horny that all it takes is the gentle wash of Wicker’s moist exhale against the back of my neck to turn my panties into a soaked mess. Just like yesterday, I lay frozen, blinking sleepy eyes at the cut of weak dawn light straining through the curtains. Wicker Ashby is so many terrible things. He’s a liar. A womanizer. A bully. A spoiled brat with knives for words. For all I know, he’s an actual murderer. This is Forsyth, after all.

But all that knowledge never prepared me for another horrible facet of him.

He’s also a cuddler.

I never know when it happens. We fall asleep on opposite sides of this enormous bed, turned away from one another, and he always ends up on my side, wrapped around me like a sentient shackle.

In the dim light of morning, thoughts still thick with sleep, it’s almost easy to fall into the fantasy. It doesn’t last long, but for a split second, I let my eyes flutter closed and allow myself to pretend it’s real. The warmth of his skin against my back, the breath that flutters my hair, the sleep-twitch of his fingers against my belly. His legs are tangled up in mine, a thigh thrust up against my core, and he smells sweet and masculine. He engulfs me so entirely that the thought of ripping myself away actually seems unpleasant.

None of Wicker’s lies are as awful as this one.

I know he’s awake when the chest against my back goes still. No expanded exhale. No contracted inhale. He freezes, the ensuing silence a palpable dread. I wonder if, in these two seconds where he doesn’t even dare utter a breath, his broad palm rising to my hip, he’s letting himself pretend a little, too.

And then he shoves me off the bed.

“Ah!” The ridge of my brow catches the nightstand as I tumble from the edge, a spike of lightning stabbing through my head. I don’t even feel the landing, too busy clutching my forehead with a long, pained hiss. There’s a moment where my vision swims and I panic, thoughts of concussions and brain damage forcing me to blink furiously.