And toasty warm.
Until Rhett’s rasp of “…said she’s dead” had last night’s horror flashing through my mind.
That bubble of peaceful waking I’d found myself in was slashed as I realized multiple things. One: I was naked in bed with Jace. Two: I’d fucked Jace. Or Jace fucked me. There had been fucking, and it was so damn good that my pussy still ached in all the right places. And the wrong ones. Three: I wanted to fuck him again, but I also hated him. Both points were equally disturbing. Four: Rhett was alive, and that made my heart soar. I’d thank God if I didn’t believe religion was all horseshit. Five: Florence was dead, and that cracked a little slice through my soaring heart. We’d had our issues, but she didn’t deserve to go out like that. It wasn’t fair, and I hated to think it had anything to do with me or the Riccis.
My mental list was cut off when Rhett snarled, “But seriously, what the fuck are you doing in bed with hernaked.” He was trying to be quiet, but his anger rang through. “You hate her, remember? Billie will kill you when she wakes up.”
“She was freezing,” Jace said shortly. “When we got here last night, she was near hypothermic, and I had to get her under hot water to bring her body temperature back up.”
“Dangerous to do that so quickly,” Rhett still sounded pissed off.
Jace shrugged, moving me with him, since his arm was draped over me in the cocoon. “It was quick or dead. I voted for quick, and thankfully, she feels warm and healthy now, so I think it worked okay.” He paused for a beat. “She has a lot of still healing scars.”
Fuck. Fucking fuck.Did he see the burn scars too? They were faded, ropey in places but older and not as obvious, especially in the low light. The newer scars from Giovanni’s thugs were more obvious at this point, still puckered and red. Still hurting me on occasion. Hopefully, those were the only ones he’d noticed.
“You think the scars are from Angelo?” Rhett continued softly. “Because I will fucking kill him. Or have a very good attempt at it, since that Italian dickhead is almost as scary as Grayson.”
Jace didn’t answer for a moment, but his fingers were tracing soft patterns across my arm now, and I tried not to squirm, wanting to hear this conversation. “The Angelo I knew would never hurt Billie. He adored her. I always knew his love for her was as strong as mine, but I was a selfish, spoiled bastard, and I kept trying to claim more of her heart.” His laugh derisive. “Karma sorted that shit out quick, ripping me to fucking pieces.”
“He’s not that Angelo any longer,” Rhett said. “He’s dark now, man. I get that fucking spine tingle, and I don’t like the spine tingle.”
Rhett might not be a killer like Angelo, but he also hadn’t been raised in a white-picket-fence family. I didn’t know his history, but it was fairly obvious that he had terrible shit in his past that he was still running from. Only in his dreams did it catch up to him—those moments of broken sleep, which I’d momentarily soothed. Until I’d been the one adding to his darkness.
I must have moved in my distress because Jace’s body grew tense, and that touch on my arm faded. “She’s awake,” he said without inflection.
Weight landed on my free side as Rhett pulled back the blankets that had been surrounding my face. “Thorn, babe, fucking hell. Are you okay?”
I blinked at the sight of his drawn face, surprised when a genuine smile tilted up his lips before he leaned in and kissed me hard. Some of my panicked thoughts faded under his touch, and I found myself relaxing into the kiss, even as I heard Jace curse and untangle himself from me and the blankets, hauling ass out of bed.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” he bit out, and I managed to catch sight of his perfect, toned, and tanned ass, before he entered the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.
Between that and the taste of Rhett lingering on my tongue, it was no surprise to feel damp heat between my thighs. In other circumstances I’d be squirming and pulling the hot rock star under the sheets with me, but we had a few more pressing items to deal with before any sex could be had. Last night with Jace had been under extenuating circumstances, and it’d probably never happen again…
“Is Gray okay?” I asked him. “Did you see him?”
Rhett kicked off his shoes before he wiggled in under the blankets with me anyway, and I gasped as his colder body came in contact with my very warm one. Another stimulation in my decidedly overstimulated state. “He’s fine. They killed everyone, and now they’re off to figure out who put out the hit on us.”
Angelo and Grayson together. The mental image worked better than I’d have guessed. “Do you think they’ll kill each other?”
Rhett didn’t answer immediately, his hands tracing across my stomach slowly, and I panicked for a second. He didn’t know about the pregnancy. How was he going to react?
“So, yeah, I probably should have mentioned—” I started in a hurry.
“That your pregnancy was a fake,” he said conversationally.
In the low light of the early morning filtering through the blinds, I could see his expression, and he didn’t appear angry. Well, not as angry as I’d have expected.
“You knew?”
A small smirk appeared. “Gray told me before I hauled ass over to you guys. Why did you lie to us?”
“To protect you,” I admitted. “Angelo’s family is very dangerous, and there were eyes and ears everywhere in that fucking house. To ensure none of us were murdered in our sleep, we had to play our parts very well.”
The irony of almost getting murdered anyway wasn’t lost on me. Hence why the belly was gone, never to return again.
“I’d have eventually brought you back into our world, even if the baby was his,” Rhett told me seriously, rolling on his side so that we were facing each other, heads cushioned against the pillows. “It fucked with my head that it wasn’t mine, but I would have loved that fake little rugrat all the same.” My pulse thrummed hard at being back with him like this, and I was desperate to lean forward and kiss him again, play with his lip ring, take all of Rhett. But this was not the time. We had a lot of questions that needed answering first.
“I’m really sorry I lied,” I whispered, voice breaking. “Sorry that I did plan on leaving that night in New York, even if it was only to save you all.”
