Page 52 of Tangled Lies

“Really, Jett?”

She wasn't talking loudly, but she was talking just to me.

I nodded.

“I can’t help it, pretty girl. You’re the only one who can control me. I need to get out of here. I’m ready to crawl out of my skin.”

She narrowed her eyes, and I wondered if the whispered rumors around the room were going to have her changing her mind and going back to Ronan. Instead though, she surprised me.

There wasn’t a chair next to me, just an aisle. She sat on my lap with her feet in the empty space, wrapping her arms around my neck. She kept her voice low.

“Is this really what you wanted? Me sitting on you? Or are you just being a prick trying to stir the pot here like Betty Crocker?”

I gasped but wrapped her up in my arms.

“Hand me a spoon baby,” I said.

She smiled at me and even let a surprised little laugh out before she put her fake little face back on. She was beautiful and I hated the way here, or anywhere that her uncle was, seemed to drown the real her. We’d watched her uncle for years. When the Harrington family had been murdered, we’d been just getting our place in the Barone family.

Ronan, fuck. I watched him right now and smiled. He would share her. We’d been watching her, trying to get a glimpse of her for so long it’s fucking shocking that he hadn’t stripped her down and taken her in front of all of us at the poker game. He had a thing for her, even if he wasn’t admitting it. Shit, maybe we all did.

We didn’t let women in. Separating us would be a fate no woman would survive. Poor little Margaux really didn’t know what she’d walked into.

Her hair was so much softer than I had imagined now that I had her up close and all up in my space. I pushed a strand behind her ear as I sniffed it trying to remember whatever her scent was.

She was different tonight; it almost seemed like the real her wasn’t buried too far beneath the surface.

What had changed?

I couldn’t stop the way she made me feel when she turned and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“So, Jett. Now that you have me, tell me. What are we trying to win tonight?”

I glanced back at Ronan. He might kill me or he might not. He watched me as I turned down the line of chairs and I winked.

“What if I said you?”

It seemed delayed, but she slowly smiled at me.

“Worst pickup line ever. What are you really trying to win?”

She could not believe me, but that would be a joke on her.

“You won’t ever be free of us, so you might as well want us, pretty girl,” I said, playing with a soft curl of hair hanging down her back.

I lowered my voice, trying to ensure that even the Thornes behind us couldn’t hear me.

“I’ll consider your threat. Now tell me. What are you bidding on?” she asked again.

Fucking hell. How could I focus on anything but this little creature?

“Oh, pretty Margaux, where have you been my whole life?”

She seemed to study me, no doubt wondering where the jokes ended and the truth started.

“Locked away in my tower waiting for a shitty prince to come find me. Something tells me you aren’t him though, are you?”

I side glanced at Ronan, and even Knox and Talon were invested at this point. My fingers seemed to have a mind of their own as they stroked the bare skin of her leg exposed by that side slit.