“I was thinking about how you tasted like strawberries and champagne when you leaned close.” His grin is wicked now, all charm and heat. “How your hands felt in my hair. How I wanted to strip that costume off you with my teeth and hear you scream my name for real.”
Her breathing goes ragged. “Please?—”
“And when you moved to me,” I pick up the thread, keeping my voice gentler but no less intense, “when you brought my hand toyour face and guided it down your throat, I wanted to memorize every inch of your skin. I wanted to map you with my hands, my mouth, until you forgot your own name.”
“Jesus,” she breathes, and there’s want in her voice now, raw and undeniable.
“And Jace,” Cal’s voice turns darker, more dangerous. “What did you whisper to him, angel? What did you say that made him look ready to commit murder?”
She glances at Jace, who’s been silent through our confessions. He’s coiled tension, barely controlled violence, and when she meets his eyes, something electric passes between them.
“I asked him if I was still his princess,” she admits quietly.
The booth goes dead silent except for the muffled bass from the party beyond.
“And what did he say?” I ask, though I can guess from the way Jace’s hands are clenched into fists.
“He said I was his.” Her voice is barely audible. “He said I belonged to him.”
“Do you?” Jace asks, and there’s something raw in his voice, something that sounds like years of suppressed longing mixed with that protective instinct that defines him.
“I don’t know.” The honesty in her admission cracks something open in my chest. “I don’t know how to belong to anyone. I’ve spent my whole life trying to be independent, trying to prove I don’t need protecting or saving or managing.”
“This isn’t about protection,” Cal says softly, the teasing gone, replaced by something deeper. “This is about three men whohave been half-alive for six years because the woman they love won’t let them love her.”
“Love.” She repeats the word like it’s foreign. “You can’t love me. I’m?—”
“What?” I challenge. “Charlie’s little sister? The Carter princess? The girl who ran away to California?”
“I’m broken,” she whispers, and the confession hits like a punch to the gut. “I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’ve never... I don’t know how to be what you need me to be.”
The vulnerability in her voice, the fear, the self-doubt—it all crashes over me at once. She’s not just talking about inexperience. She’s talking about terror. About feeling inadequate.
“Parker,” Jace says, and his voice is gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “Look at me.”
She does, reluctantly.
“You think we want you to be something you’re not?”
“Don’t you?” Her voice cracks. “Don’t you want someone who knows what she’s doing? Someone who isn’t going to disappoint you?”
“Angel,” Cal breathes, “you could never disappoint us. Ever.”
“You don’t understand?—”
“Then explain it to us,” I say. “Tell us what you’re so afraid of.”
She looks between the three of us, trapped and terrified and beautiful in her vulnerability. “I’ve never been with anyone. Notreally. Not the way you’re talking about. I don’t know how to... I can’t...”
The admission hangs in the air like a confession and a plea all at once.
Wait, what?
I glance at Cal, whose face has gone carefully blank, then at Jace, whose jaw has tightened. We all knew her dating life had been... limited. But never?
Then it hits me. Cal’s surveillance. His systematic interference. Jesus Christ, he was more thorough than I thought.
The possessive satisfaction that rolls through me should probably make me feel like shit, but it doesn’t. If anything, knowing that she’s completely untouched, that no one else has had what we’re asking for... it makes me want her more. Makes the three of us want her more.
