Page 5

Eden

Dominants aren’t always right.

No matter how pretty they look when they pretend.

Maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about slowly getting bled dry by tithes we can’t pay to people who don’t even deserve the dirt off my shoe.

I sink into Lucky, stinging over Beau’s words and how acutely they echo my own fears. Accepting my weight, Lucky presses me into his chest, and I settle into the nook of his neck. Just for a moment. He’s damp with a light sheen of sweat, but he smells perfect. Like the wood fire and pine and home .

“Forget him. He’s not even a proper cowboy, you know. Doesn’t know how to ride off into the sunset or anything,” he whispers into my hair.

I huff a laugh, though my chest aches heavily as I try to pack away the worries we can’t do anything about. Not right now. “Oh? How about you? Will you take me there?”

He considers that. “Well, maybe not on a horse. But I bet I could work out some sort of slingshot situation.”

That startles an actual snort out of me, which makes him wink, dimples teasing both his cheeks. The ever-present worry that’s been shadowing his eyes since we left Cyanide vanishes in a happy poof . I give him a light shove, but my hand lingers on his chest.

“Much as it pains me to interrupt your rousing seduction, Lucien, I’ve found one of Eden’s misplaced meals.”

Jasper’s wry tone is like a pebble sinking through a quiet pond.

There’s gentle affection in his dark eyes as he watches us—and a touch of quiet longing that he isn’t even trying to hide anymore.

But concern paints somber lines beside his mouth, and my ‘misplaced meal’ is in his hands, my pack open at his feet.

With a sigh, I resign myself to wasting more resources.

I didn’t lie. I truly haven’t been missing the extra food; I know what I can survive well enough on, and it’s much less than their generous rations.

Watching Beau, watching all of them this week, it’s become painfully obvious that they don’t understand it—we are burning through our stores far, far too quickly.

I’m cursing myself for being surprised. Why should they understand? They’ve had more than they need for so long. It makes me itch with the need to hunt and trap and grow. I’ve been in such a fog for weeks, sinking into their assurances and authority like they had all the answers to every question.

But they don’t.

I’ve been lax, and this isn’t how I survive.

This isn’t how any of us survive.

Still, I’m woefully outnumbered. Lucky and Jasper have both been on my case about eating more, and now even Dom has pulled himself from his viscous silence to demand the same.

And I can’t ignore any more orders from Dom, I just can’t. Not now. Not yet.

I settle on the ground in front of the fire, and it’s not until I notice how motionless Jasper has fallen that I realize I sat by his feet. Orange light glows over the empty seat on the log beside him.

He recovers smoothly, handing me the tiny ration pack, but color slashes his high cheekbones.

Lucky drops obnoxiously between his legs a moment later, forcing Jasper to widen them. I’m confronted with his warm, firm thigh, very much in my space. Lucky’s eyes laugh at me over the bridge, and Jasper buries his hand in the back of his blond hair.

I pull out a strip of jerky and tentatively lean into Jasper’s leg, watching as he tugs Lucky’s head back. “Rediscover your manners, beautiful boy.”

The shiver that wracks his body is delicate, entrancing. They move so seamlessly together: they could have done this a hundred times or more. The jerky is tacky and bland, but they have a flavor I need to taste.

“Sorry,” Lucky says, not sounding sorry in the slightest. His smile becomes roguish. “Mind if I spend some time between your thighs, oh lord and master?”

“So mouthy.” Jasper’s gaze slides to mine, assessing. “We’ve been telling you to eat all week.”

He doesn’t sound reproachful, only curious, but my cheeks still sting.

I examine the jerky. “You made some... suggestions. I took them under advisement.”

“ Suggestions ?” Lucky crosses his arms over Jasper’s thigh, leaning over with an incredulous laugh. “Beautiful, I will force-feed you like a baby woodpecker if I have to.”

Jasper regards me as he toys absently with Lucky’s hair, and I avoid his gaze.

“You need us to order you to do it, is that it? Want me to drop my voice a few decibels? Eat gravel for breakfast and turn my arms into tree trunks?” The quirk of Lucky’s lips becomes sly, and he leans confidingly over Jasper’s knee. “Would it help if you called me sir , too?”

“You—” I gasp.

That was an accident !

The sting in my cheeks becomes a burn, and I stick my middle finger up at Lucky. Right up at him. I’ve only flipped off two things in my entire life. My “last notice” gas bill and now my officially-least-favorite boyfriend.

Jayk would be proud.

Long fingers twist shiveringly through my hair an instant before my head is wrenched back.

On his other side, Lucky receives the same treatment.

The pull of the strands at my roots is sharp and hot, but I’m too trained now for it to feel anything but good.

My neck strains in a perfect arch, the grip and angle somehow neater than the way Jayk or Beau arrange me.

Like Jasper is taking his show horse out for dressage and not a dusty, reckless ride.

“Play nice, children,” he scolds, sounding amused. “You’re being rude. Apologize.”

Jasper has us in each hand like unruly puppies, and my eyes meet Lucky’s.

“I’m sorry, Lucky,” I offer, obedient.

I’m rewarded with the slight scrape of Jasper’s nails against my scalp, and my shiver is everywhere.

Lucky laughs softly. He tries to twist away, but Jasper’s grip grows crueler, pinning him against his thigh.

He shoves him down, until Lucky’s face is just inches from mine and entirely at Jasper’s mercy.

We’re so close, all tangled up, and I can see the heat rising in Lucky’s cheeks as he fights and loses.

The fog glazing his eyes as the humor slips away.

“Sorry,” he works out huskily. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Jasper makes a soft, approving sound, deep in his chest. “Good boy.” His eyes are dark burning coals as he adds casually, “Now, kiss and make up.”

I suck in a jagged breath, startled. We’re still in camp. Yes, everyone’s gone to bed, but it’s not private .

Jasper doesn’t seem to care.

My hair screams as he drags Lucky and I toward one another. We’re not show horses, or puppies. We’re his toys, his dolls, and he’s going to make us do whatever he wants. Whatever pleases him.

When I realize that, I melt into his touch. I want to please him. I want him to drag me and take me and use me.

I’ll be Jasper’s doll.

A hot, liquid ache throbs through my abdomen. It squeezes my core. Lucky’s face is pressed closer to mine until our noses brush and my whole vision is overtaken by his heated, glowing blue eyes. Jasper adjusts his grip, angling my head to tilt me under Lucky, right as he pushes Lucky down.

I am liquid now. Slippery and wet.

Lucky’s lips slide over mine, parting in a fan of hot breath.

Jasper’s grip leaves no room to move, to maneuver, so he sinks in like this.

His tongue teases my lips apart, and then Jasper makes a lost, helpless sound and pushes him deeper, holding us so that we can do nothing but explore one another.

Nothing but breathe each other’s breaths and swallow each other’s involuntary sighs and moans.

Lucky licks along the inner rim of my mouth, his beard brushing my skin, and I suck on his tongue until I feel him shake.

And all the while Jasper’s cruel, cruel grip locks us messily together.

He doesn’t lift us for a long time—not until I’m a trembling, hungry mess—and my lips come away bruised and wet with Lucky.

He pulls us away by our hair and my whole scalp, my whole body, burns with vicious fire.

I want those tiny, nasty prickles over every inch of my skin.

I want to feed the sensation, because everything about it is ravenous .

Jasper’s thumb starts making soothing tracks along my hairline behind my ear.

“Very good,” he murmurs thickly.

I dare a glance up at him through my glasses. His eyes are hooded. His lashes, veils. The thin curtain shrouding something darkly, deathly depraved.

I don’t want him to stop with a kiss. I want him to drag my mouth over every inch of Lucky. Over every inch of him .

My gaze drops to Jasper’s lips, and my mind turns over every moment of the night I arrived at Bristlebrook.

Jasper and Beau catapulted me into my first ever non-solo orgasm that night, and the memory is a lusty mist of lips and hands and teeth and delicious embarrassment—and I cannot parcel out what he tasted like .

Which mouth was his and which was Beau’s. Did Jasper even kiss my mouth?

God, I want him to.

God, those lips.

For a moment, the steady path of his thumb staggers.

“Eat your food, Eden,” he says, and I’m so distracted by his cool, beautiful hands and those perfect, bee-stung lips that it takes me a moment to catch up.

It’s what Dom told me to do. My eyes narrow on the tiny self-satisfied tuck of his smile. It’s exactly what Dom told me to do.

It is a cabal.

“Yes, sir ,” I mutter tartly to him and ignore Lucky’s laughing eyes.

The ration pack is twisted between my knotted fingers, and it takes effort to unwind them. Was this all a ploy? Turn me limp and pliant and agreeable to every decision they want to make? Even the unsexy food-centric ones? Even the wrong ones?

I feel them both watching me, and I tear off a strip of jerky. I fight back a scowl. This is a mistake. I pop it in my mouth anyway.

They watch me with the intensity of malnourished guard dogs. The awful sound of my own chewing fills my ears, and I swallow the too-large chunk of the sweaty meat, just to make it stop.

It catches in my throat.