Page 24 of Flesh & Divinity

His grip tightens. “Don’t do it again.”

“Make me.”

The sound he makes is dark, immediate and takes me with him in one motion. Lifting me from the chair, he sits me on the edge of the table with a force that scatters the cup and sends the firelight lurching. I don’t protest. I wrap my legs around him by instinct and feel him settle between my thighs. The look in his eyes through the glass makes every remaining rational thought I have dissolve completely.

Daddy’s hands find my back from across the table.

Boyfriend brackets me on the left.

The three of them surround me the way they always do, deliberate, a wall of heat and intention that leaves no room for anything outside the four of us, and this time, when I stop fighting it, it is not because I am too far gone to care.

It is because I choose to.

A dream is a wish you make with your heart. Forgive me, Father. I’m starting to wonder if this island is exactly where I was always going to end up.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

GUS

She almost went over the bluff.

I am still not entirely rational about it.

I watch her from across the table, flushed, breathing unsteady, her back now against the table with Duke’s hands braced on either side of her hips and Jaq’s mouth working up the side of her throat. The glass of his mask catches the firelight as he moves, and I try to locate the version of myself that existed before this woman stumbled onto our island. The version that was clean, furious and certain.

She nearly drowned herself trying to escape us.

That should mean something clean and simple. That she is a flight risk, that the collar needs tightening, that we were right not to trust her. Instead all I can think about is the sound she made when Jaq’s arm caught her on that bluff. The way she pressed her face into his chest like she had no other option and chose the least bad one.

Us.

She chose us.

Not willingly.

Not without fighting every second of it. But she pressed her face into my brother’s chest in the dark and let him hold her. Then she said fine, in that tone of a woman who has just surrendered something real. I am standing here, watching the three of them and trying to decide what the hell to do about it.

Jaq looks up from her throat and meets my eyes through the glass of his mask.

I move around the table to them.

She tracks me coming the way she always does, with that particular alertness that never fully drops, even now, even with Jaq’s hands in her hair and Duke’s hips now pinning her to the table. Her pale blue eyes find mine through the dim light and I watch her breathe and decide, because she is always deciding, always three moves deep into whatever game is currently in play.

“You’re still thinking,” I say.

“Always,” she says.

I take her chin between my fingers and tip her face up toward me. The glass of my mask catches the firelight and throws it back across her features. The sight of her rumpled, undone, her lips parted and her eyes dark and still so fucking defiant moves through me like a current I am done trying to resist.

“Stop,” I say.

“Make me,” she says, and it is the same thing she said to Jaq ten minutes ago. The smile that curves her mouth tells me she knows exactly what she’s doing.

I grip her throat instead of answering her and feel her pulse jump beneath my palm.

“You want to run,” I say. “I know that. You’ll always want to run.” I feel Duke shift at her side and Jaq go still in her hair, both of them listening. “But tonight you came back from that bluff, you sat at my table and you asked me for something true.” I hold her gaze. “That means something, Cinder Soot. Don’t insult it by pretending otherwise.”

The defiance in her eyes shifts.