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I froze. If he had used the same tone of voice he did earlier with Ethan, those words would’ve sounded like an ominous threat. But as he said them now, they sounded like a hidden confession. There was pain beneath them, and something angrier simmering even below that.

I turned around now, and his eyes caught mine. I took a step closer, forcing him to look at me so he knew I wasn’t offering him some bullshit excuse. That even if I didn’t know what was going on in my heart and brain, that I was still being honest with him now, even if to my own ears I sounded insane.

“No,” I said firmly. “No, Deacon, I haven’t been playing you. And I’m not playing Ethan either.”

Now he did flinch, his face going slack with shock as though he hadn’t been expecting that answer. I just left it at that and took my leave, walking resolutely back to my cabin.

26

Ava

Confronting Deacon about his attitude didn’t just make me angry. It had another, rather unexpected side effect.

I marched straight to my bedroom, shut the door behind me, and leaned against it. Nate and Ethan’s concern for the storm cloud over my head was assuaged by the excuse that I simply needed a nap. A nap indeed.

My heart was still beating wildly in my chest. I shut my eyes, trying to get a hold of my wandering thoughts and figure out why I suddenly felt so turned on. The emotional maelstrom I’d just been through had taken me on a wild ride. The guilt and anxiety I’d been feeling had contorted into something else.

I pushed off the door with a frustrated groan, feeling angsty enough to start climbing the walls. I paced around, maybe a tad dramatically, but I was in dire need of blowing off some steam.

I kept seeing Ethan’s angry, hurt expression as he skulked off to the dock, and the deadpan look on Deacon’s face as he demanded to know whether I was messing him around. But—and this was the part of me I feared leaned into the sadistic—the underlying implication of it all was that Deacon and Ethan thought that what I had with them was more than just a one-time thing. There’d be no other reason to have reacted how they did. I knew it meant more to me, too.

And then, because I seemed to be fully embracing my cruelty, my thoughts drifted back to the night in Deacon’s truck and the stormy afternoon on Sentinel Island. Images of my time with both of them flashed through my head, vivid memories that were still tactile on my skin.

Deacon’s breath on my neck.

Ethan’s deceitfully skilled tongue.

The way Deacon’s scarred skin felt under my hands and the way he chose to grind against my thigh when he couldn’t take it anymore.

Ethan’s low moans and the look on his face when he came.

I could feel myself getting wetter with every returning memory. Even more so when my brain decided to splice them together, to try and use sex as the bridge to smooth out the fight I witnessed in the kitchen. Make love, not war and whatnot.

I plopped myself onto the bed, sprawled out and staring at the ceiling above me. But my body was practically humming with unspent energy. I was fast realizing, much to my sense of self-judgment, that everything I’d done until now was simply not enough. I’d enjoyed sleeping with both Deacon and Ethan, and I loved that they were different in how they gave and took their pleasure. But I was left wanting more. I wanted to experience what those differences were like put together, focused on me.

My breathing deepened, and my hand slipped into my pants.

I imagined Ethan’s kindness, his sweet desire to please, and how he used that mouth of his to convey that to my body. I squirmed on the bed, my head flopping back on the pillow.

I thought of Deacon’s fire, his anger translating into those desperate, sloppy thrusts that rocked the truck on its own suspension. I wondered how that would feel with Ethan’s focus on my breasts and neck, what their hands would feel like working my body the same way they worked on renovating my home.

I cried out, my eyes pinching shut as I continued to touch myself and edge towards what I knew was going to be a hard-hitting climax.

But then the visuals changed. Between their shared attention on my body, a new pair of hands found their way across my skin. Calloused, like Deacon’s, but steadier. Not as gentle as Ethan, but just as intentional. More so because the man they belonged to had known me for much longer than the other two.

I imagined a heavy body sliding up mine, a mouth kissing its way across my breasts and then finally meeting my lips with an intensity that had my back arching off the mattress. His mouth moved up to my ear, his familiar voice low and gravelly…

“Is this what you were waiting for, Ava?”

My eyes flew open as the retaliation settled in.

Nate.

That’s who I was picturing.

My hand stalled on my pussy, self-awareness and guilt temporarily freezing the horniness. I was frustrated, desperate to finish. But it was Nate I was thinking about right now. Julia’s big brother, the guy I practically grew up with. It just felt…

I groaned. It just felt right.