Page 61 of The Villain's Beast

“I suspected you were sleeping together,” he corrected.

“And you were right. But it is more than that. I love him and I want him to be happy. We agreed that sleeping with other people wouldn’t change the way we felt about each other.”

If anything, fucking other people made it hotter. Made it better.

In our short separation since moving into the houses, I’d chased down other men like it was sport. Mostly to distract myself from the loss, but partly because I really did enjoy getting off. It was a point of contention that I’d failed to get Gideon in bed, but after walking in on him balls deep in Fletcher Sinclair, I understood why. And suddenly, in less than twelve hours, everything had changed.

My goal had never been to topple empires.

I wanted to get out alive and then find a way to be with Daren again.

But being in bed with Daren and Fletcher, then the shower with Daren and Bellamy…it had been some of the hottest sex I’d ever had. Resting comfortably in the understanding Daren was so steadfast in my love we could share each other like that? We could be together, drowning in so much pleasure? It was hard to not feel grateful for the stupid rivalry between Gideon and Fletcher’s families because their posturing had opened up doors for my future that had previously been camouflaged into the walls.

I no longer only wanted to get out of this with Daren by my side. I wanted more of them, and still…

“Why don’t you want to fuck me, Gideon?” I asked, apparently out of nowhere because he choked on his spit before pushing up to his feet.” Everyone else does.”

“I’m not like you,” he said.

“No kidding.”

“I see no value in sharing.”

I scrunched my nose, letting the pad of my glasses slide up and down an itch above my right nostril.

“No one ever made you share your toys as a kid?” I asked.

“I learned very early on to keep the things I wanted to myself.”

The statement felt loaded, and before I could ask him another question, he stalked away from me and climbed the stairs. The door to his attic bedroom slammed shut and I closed my eyes with a sigh. He might not see the value in sharing, but Daren wasn’t the only man I had my sights set on now, so he was going to have to learn.

Chapter 43

Fletcher

My father’s ostentatious black Maybach pulling up in front of the house Sunday afternoon was the absolute last thing I ever wanted to see. My body still ached from fucking Luca and being fucked by Gideon, and there had to be a day when my ability to keep myself composed in front of the man would give out. The angry lashes across my back hurt far more than they had in the morning, and all I wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed for a week.

Maybe with company.

The thought was beyond unsettling, because while I’d spent so long dreaming about what it would be like to finally be taken by Gideon North, those dreams had been nothing compared to reality. I’d built the idea of him up in my head for so long, maybe as punishment for my teenage betrayal, maybe because I was a fool after all. But having sex with him wasn’t much different from sex with other people. The mechanics were the same, though the way Gideon’s body covered mine was entirely unique, the way my nails gouged his flesh was explicitly ours, but overall it had been the emotion that made it different.

I’d never stopped loving him, though I honestly hadn’t ever realized I’d started.

Until our bodies crashed together in the middle of the living room, I’d loved Gideon as a hypothetical, a broad idea, a vague term. Now, I loved him consumingly and dangerously, and I didn’t have time to make heads or tails of that revelation because my father was on the porch, hand on the door knob. He didn’t knock because he never had to. Thorn Hill was just as much his as it was mine, an honor—or a curse—bestowed upon all past presidents. Not that my father ever knocked on any door whether he was welcome or not.

“Take Bellamy to your room,” I said to Daren, but it was too late. They were on the stairs and my father was inside. He was slower than he used to be, but still quick enough to have appraised the entire room and all the people in it. He undoubtedly noticed the way Bellamy’s pointer finger was crooked around Daren’s pinky.

“That won’t be necessary,” my father said, locking the door behind him.

The air left the room, left my lungs. I still had dirt under my nails from the night before, cum in my ass from when Gideon had just fucked me on the couch my father was very likely about to make himself comfortable on. The house could have exploded and collapsed to the ground, and I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“What can I get you to drink, Mr. Sinclair?” Daren asked, clearing his throat and coming back down to the first floor.

“Glad someone in this house remembers their manners,” my father said, sitting on the couch and bending one leg over the other. His pants hiked up toward his calf revealing navy blue monogrammed silk socks, a swirl of roses up the ankle.

Our earlier established plan disintegrated in my head. I was sixteen again, standing in the middle of my dorm room at Rose Hill Prep, phone pressed to my ear while I listened to his detailed instructions about what would happen to Gideon, what would happen to me, if I didn’t break the tie between us for good.

I swayed on my feet, hopefully not enough for him to notice, and then Daren was at my back, literally, with his shoulder digging into the lash marks across my spine to keep me upright. The pain was all I needed to draw me back to the present, like getting tossed out of a black hole where everything goes from quiet and cold to loud and hot. I drew in a sharp breath and answered for my father.