When I’ve finally gotten control of my emotions, I get up and walk into the bathroom so I can wash the scent of Archer from my skin. That will be the last time I let any of them touch me.
Chapter 11
Archer
“She has to go.” I slam the games room door with a trembling hand and walk over to the drinks cabinet to pour myself a drink.
Torin and Callum look at me from the couch, in a room that none of us has wanted to admit has become our hiding place.
We like to leave the door partially open now and again, usually when we pretend to laugh as we play pool. We have two spies under this roof, so we spend less time playing pool and more on trying to figure out a way to free ourselves from this cage.
If we have to be miserable, Juniper Harrington gets to be miserable too.
Callum’s nostrils flare, and his eyes turn hungry.
I shake my head, slashing my hand out to stop him before he can speak. “I couldn’t stop myself. Her heat is coming, and I need to knot her. Shehastogo.”
I plunge the room into silence.
“We’ll figure something out,” Callum says.
“What’s there to figure out?” Torin tosses his magazine to the floor and gets to his feet, rolling his neck and wincing when itcracks. “We have a boot on our neck. Fall into line, or we lose everything.”
“How soon?” Callum asks me.
“Her heat?” I shrug. Her scent has been growing stronger. I’ve smelled it before, and can tell what rooms she’s lingered in. “Maybe a few days. A week at a push.”
Knotting is an intimacy.
You don’t give intimacy to a viper that just crawled into your bed or was put there by someone you trust even less than a poisonous snake.
I know what I’m asking of them, but I can’t have her under this roof anymore.
If I knot her, I’ll be driven to do it again, and again.
And fuckingagain.
I pulled myself away from her, walked into the downstairs half-bath, and fucked my fist. But I still smell her. Her scent is in my blood. I could shower for five hours, and it would remain.
“She has to go,” I say again.
I abandon making myself a drink; I’m too wired. A drink won’t help anything but lower my inhibitions and make me do something else I regret.
She’d been talking to the gardener. I’d seen them outside, her face tilted up; the sunlight bouncing off her cheekbones and the tiny tilt to her nose.
I hated myself for thinking she was beautiful. So damn beautiful. But I can’t trust her. None of us can.
The gardener had lust in his eyes.
He was thinking of lifting the skirt of her dress, pushing her down onto her back, and fucking her on that grass. I saw the look in his eyes, and I recognized it. I was thinking the same.
I’d snapped.
We have to get rid of her, but I can’t have someone else touch her or look at her.
But I fucking want her again.
“Archer…” Callum, concerned by the way I’ve started pacing, moves toward me.
