Page 5 of Phobia

There was an excited energy permeating through the air as we clambered out of my Jeep, the laughter and hubbub of chatter filling the night. I was lifting my booted foot to the curb when I got hauled into a stiff, trim body, warm lips that betrayed the rest of him fitting against my forehead.

Vince was as warm as a corpse on a good day, but our relationship was unique.

Or as unique as the source of the growl to my left would permit.

“Hands. Off. Now,” Adam commanded, his lilt a combination of Massachusetts and Rhode Island with a sharp edge to it that made my skin prickle and the space between my legs pulsate with a starved ache.

Vince chuckled against me, shoving me gently in Adam’s direction. “Off you go, before he takes my head off for funsies.”

My husband was… um,possessive, to say the very least, but I supposed he had his reasons.

After all, I’d been with Vince.

I paused, ruminating for a moment. And Gabriel.

Slouching into the neckline of my coat, I blew out a sigh. And Maxwell.

Under ordinary circumstances, I might have felt bad about it, but because of those experiences with them, Adam and I were what we were.

Inseparable.

If it hadn’t been for the three of them and their maniacal puppeteering, my husband might not have gotten his head out of his ass, and I might have still been the frightened little rabbit, too afraid to take up space in the world.

To ask for what she wanted, to be brave, and to be a proverbial wolf.

Unstoppable.

So no, I wasn’t ashamed I’d fucked my husband’s best friends, his brothers. I refused to be burdened by my history with them anymore than my guilt of what I’d done to my husband a lifetime ago.

We’d needed to fall apart to come back together again, to break into a dozen pieces so we could fill the cracks between us with gold and create something new, something that was ours. It didn’t matter that the outside world would never understand us, that they would treat it as something lewd and dirty. We didn’t need them to disentangle it because the story was ours and ours alone.

I shored up to Adam’s body, tucking myself under his armpit, wrapping an arm around his waist. “It was just a hug,” I soothed, tracing the stitching on his black-and-white varsity jacket.

“Toyou,” he muttered, his impenetrable hazel stare burning with murder as he regarded Vince. “Not to him.” The mean skull tattooing Adam’s neck shifted with his swallow, his head pitching a little to the right.

Vince held his hands up, offering my husband a guilty look. “True. She was one of my favorite fucks,” he taunted.

Adam bared his teeth, taking a threatening step forward. The lock of my arm around his waist struggled to keep him in place.

“Vincent,” I chastised, shooting him an imploring look over my shoulder. “Cut it out.”

He was such a shit disturber. I knew he was teasing. While Adam had accepted as best as he could what had gone down between his friends and me, he didn’t like the reminder or having it slung back in his face.

We’d had one extensive discussion about it shortly before we’d gotten married and then archived it in the "avoid at all costs" filing cabinet.

Which mostly worked, and I hoped when there came a time when his brothers found partners of their own, that they too could wrap their heads around it.

Maxwell had been determined to pretend what happened between us was nothing more than a terrible fever dream equivalent to him stepping outside of the house wearing H&M over his usual sell-an-organ high-end apparel. Not all of us had older sisters with closets they could shop in.

Gabriel still gave me that lost puppy lovestruck look which made me feel guilty, but I knew at his core, I wasn’t who he was longing for.

And Vince made a point of never wasting a single moment to get under Adam’s skin about it, telling me while examining his short fingernails,“The threat of losing you again to one of us makes the sex better, doesn’t it?”As though this was his form of altruism, and he was doing us a public service.

All this was to say we knew none of them would ever act on it again. That the chapter was permanently sealed shut and encased six feet in the ground in a concrete coffin.

I pushed my nose into Adam’s side, inhaling him. Sandalwood and ginger took the edge off the moment, and I propped my chin against his ribcage, observing his tense profile, his jaw as stiff as granite. “C’mon, grumpy.”

Adam’s glare left Vince’s, scowling down at me. He drew in his naturally hollowed-out cheeks, sandwiching the skin between his molars. The streetlight caught on the hoop fed through his flared right nostril. “I’mnotgrumpy.”