Page 7 of Craving Consequences

VAN

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There are about ten million other reasons I would have believed before that one.

She could have told me Lauren was dead. That she’d robbed a bank and was on the run. Pregnant. Hell, she could have burned City Hall to the ground and framed Everly. Literally any of those would have made more sense than this.

Bron ... and Lauren?

Absolutely not.

There isn’t a reality in the universe where that would ever happen. The words don’t even compute. They just hang in the air, ugly and unnatural. A grotesque limb severed from a body that no one knows what to do with.

“Bron?” I prompt just in case my hearing failed me.

Maybe there is another Bron. A secret Bron.

A slightly less repugnant Bron. A Bron Lauren doesn’t despise because she loathes that idiot with a visceral and ancient hatred born from the soul.

That kind of venom isn’t performative. It’s primal.

That girl would have set herself on fire before ever letting him touch her.

Except, apparently, she had .

Everly gives a shaky nod. “I saw them. I watched them on my kitchen counter. I couldn’t look away.

I couldn’t...” She breaks off with another disparaging rock of her head.

“I thought it was a mistake. I couldn’t understand how she could .

.. Lauren wouldn’t, I kept thinking. She’s my sister.

She wouldn’t betray me like that. Then..

.” she hiccups around another sob, “I ran. I got into my car and...”

Something ugly coils in my chest. It’s hot and bitter, an oily sensation of disgust. A raw revulsion that makes me sick at the thought of Everly catching two people she should have trusted committing an act so vile behind her back.

I glance at Lachlan just in case I missed something, but he’s still holding her. Cradling her like she’s breakable. His expression in the muffled light is stunned, but protective.

“You’re sure it was Lauren?” he asks quietly into her temple.

Part of me is relieved I’m not the only one struggling to believe it. The other part is boiling. Rage bubbles hot beneath my skin.

Everly nods, voice ragged. “I didn’t believe it either, but I saw her ... them. It was so clear.” She pulls back just enough to peer into our faces. “Is it me? Did I do something to deserve this? Is it my fault?”

“No!” Lachlan and I both snap in unison.

“This is not your fault,” I try to assure her .

“I tried so hard to get Bron to want me,” she cries, not hearing me.

“I did everything to get him to take me to bed but it only made him angry. He said I was acting like a whore, but he couldn’t even be bothered to take her somewhere else.

They used my house.” She pauses as a thought occurs to her. “Did they do it in my bed?”

The thought of my little girl fucking anyone never mind a piece of shit like Bron Shaw fills me with loathing. It fuels the need to find the asshole and bury him alive. Not just for touching Lauren but for hurting Everly.

“Don’t think about that,” I tell her, shaking my own thoughts away.

“I just want someone to pick me for once. I’m tired of being alone.”

Every broken hiccup carves into my soul, a brutal reminder that my daughter did this. Caused Everly this pain. That I am also to blame by association.

“You’re not alone, baby,” I try to assure.

Rather than comfort, my words seem to only increase her pain. “I am. I didn’t just lose them. I lost you.”

“You can never lose us,” Lachlan promises, and I nod, but she’s shaking her head.

“You don’t understand.” She wipes at her face, at the tears and mascara streaking her cheeks. “Without them, I can’t keep you. I can’t ... I will only hurt you.”

Lovingly, Lachlan sweeps a lock of hair off her cheek to tuck behind her ear. “What are you talking about, sweetheart?”

She heaves a defeated sigh I definitely don’t like.

“That you’re right. I have to let you go.

” No. Definitely don’t like the sound of that, but she’s still talking.

“I have to.” She rubs the heel of her hand between her eyes hard enough to make me wince.

“It’s going to hurt so much, but I have to protect you. ”

“Hey,” I reach over and lightly capture her chin. I force her to look at me. “What are you talking about?”

Rather than answer, she licks her lips and captures my hand. She holds it to her chest while staring straight into my soul.

“Will you take me to bed? Just for tonight?” She tilts her face to meet Lachlan’s gaze. “If it’s all I can have of you...? Just one night?”

Still perched in Lachlan’s lap, she releases my fingers. Hers lift to the back of my head and I’m pulled to her. To her lips. To the kisses she presses into my cheeks. My nose. My mouth.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” she promises, lips ghosting across my cheek. My chin. Hovering over my mouth. “Please.”

My throat works around something jagged, a sound or a sob or a fucking growl I don’t even know. She smells like want and war, and I’m losing every ounce of reason I ever had.

Over her head, Lachlan hasn’t moved. He’s studying her in that quiet way of his before glancing at me. Our eyes meet again through the darkness and I know he’s as lost as I am in this quicksand.

I groan, low and tortured. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

Her teeth sink into my bottom lip in a gentle nip that crashes all the way down to my cock. Her grin is mischievous when she tips her face back to peer up at me.

“I want to be your toy.”

Her voice is a whisper, but it detonates in my chest like a bomb. My grip tightens in her hair, and I press my forehead to hers, panting, barely holding it together.

She has no fucking clue what she’s offering.

“How do you even know what that is?” I bite out, tasting blood in my mouth and realizing I’d torn a chunk out of my cheek.

Her smile is so fucking cute. So damningly seductive. “I read really, really dirty books that Jefferson would not approve of.”

“Van...” Lachlan warns. “We ... we need to fucking...”

He doesn’t even bother finishing so I’m trapped in limbo with no idea what to do. I blame him when my mouth opens, and my brain destroys what’s left of my control.

“Just my toy, Evie?”

“Van...” Lachlan’s hiss is a warning and a plea but fuck him. He was no help. He’s not even trying .

Everly gives a slight shake of her head before turning her lips to the other man’s chin. To his lips.

“Both. I can take it. I know I can.”

Lachlan was right. I should have stopped while I was ahead. I should have kept my mouth shut because what the hell am I supposed to do now?

A ragged curse tears from my throat as the madness consumes me. As it pulls me into the void that has me fisting all that beautiful hair and claiming her.

I take her mouth in a clash of lips and twisting tongues. Everly whimpers against me and I swear to God it sounds like freedom. Like surrender as she melts in my arms.

My hand slides to her throat to feel her. To feel her pulse stutter for me. To anchor her here with me. My heart pounds so loud it drowns everything else out.

When she takes the hand at her throat and drags it down to the wide parting of her thighs, I jerk back. I look down at her, wrecked and willing and perfect, and stuffing my hand where it belongs.

“Please make me cum again, Mr. Weaver.”

I look past her to Lachlan who is staring at her smooth, exposed lips lit by the lights of the dashboard. I want nothing more than to oblige but ... I’m not going to hell alone.

“It’s Van, and I think it’s Lachlan’s turn to feel how wet and soft your little cunt is. ”

I expect annoyance, outrage, but the hard flare of my friend’s nostrils are needy and ravenous. It’s the face of a man barely containing himself.

Being a good friend, I pull her out of his hold. I drag her to my end of the bench and tuck her sideways across my lap.

“Open wide, baby. Let him use your pretty pussy.”

Everly doesn’t hesitate. Even clumsy, she reclines the best she can in the small space with her torso half across my thighs and her knees folded to her chest, offering herself to the man with the rigid features.

I leave him to take his own actions as I bare her tits. Spill the firm globes to the night. They’re for me. For me to palm and tease. To trigger her little whimpers and the wiggles of her hips.

“If you won’t, I will, Lach,” I warn, reaching down to rub a single finger between her lips. Down her clit. “You can watch me stretch her tight little cunt.” Slide it into her wet hole to the last knuckle.

“Van!” she gasps, back arching.

I pump. “Count how many fingers I can fit before she begs me to stop.”

To make my point, I pull out just enough to insert two fingers, spreading her hole. The pressure has Everly’s back arching off the seat. Has her crying out my name .

“Can’t help thinking what a perfect toy she’d make tied up in my bed with her legs like this. I’d spend days breeding her. I’d let you use her. We could just pass her back and forth.”

My hand is slapped away before I can finish my fantasy. Lachlan’s head is bent over Everly’s mound, tongue lapping greedily. Lips sucking. One finger impales her.

“Mr. Shaw!” she screams, back bowing practically in half and he eats her sweet pussy. As he tongues her switch and has her fisting his hair.

“Lachlan, Everly,” he growls, nipping at her clit with his teeth. “I’m tongue fucking you in the middle of the goddamn highway. You’ll say my name.”

Everly’s head bobs on my lap. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s right.” He arcs the flat surface of his tongue up from hole to clit in a focused sweep. “I want you to say it when you cum in my mouth.”

Everly makes a sound I’m assuming is affirmation, but he’s dancing up and around her nub, circling the swollen peak before pushing downward to her center. All the while, his eyes are fixed on her face, hard and defiant as she grinds her hips into his face.