Page 18 of Tiger Betrayal

She would’ve pouted but they both had rules to mind. He was being nice by offering to feed her, and she had to be tougher when he told her “no” on vegetables.

He turned off the truck as she eased off of him, and then he got out and helped her down.

And she did the walk of shame across his front yard, sans shoes, sans pants, clad in a thin, oversized white T-shirt that belonged to the almost-stranger she’d just banged in a driveway.

She would try harder to feel guilty tomorrow, but right now she just felt high, sated and naughty, and she didn’t hate any of it.

She’d never felt this powerful before. Not ever.

He gripped her hand in his giant one and led her to the door. And that shirtless man with the body of a demigod opened the door, and he even gestured for her to go in first.

He really was minding the rule.

What a gentleman.

Chapter Seven

Stellan’s duplex caught Laramie off-guard.

She made her way to a trio of pictures hanging in the hallway. Stellan was on the phone, ordering pizza, and the sound of his low voice drifted through the home.

She cocked her head as she studied the picture of three young men on the bank of a river. One was holding a rope swing, and the one on the other side was holding a walking stick. In the middle, the boy looked vaguely familiar. She squinted her eyes and studied him. His eyes were light brown, and his hair was longer, and messy from swimming. The smile was bright and happy. All three boys looked similar, like they were brothers.

That one in the middle though…

She moved to the next photo that was hung in a simple, rustic wood frame. It was an old eight-by-ten of a woman sitting on a couch, leaned over a coffee table, eating a meal in front of the television, and the long-haired boy sitting beside her, arms around her waist as he smiled brightly at the camera. Stellan’s mom? The woman looked detached, and distant, but maybe she was just caught off-guard when the photo had been taken.

The third picture was of a wedding. The three boys had turned to men and were all standing at the front by a preacher. All three were staring down the aisle. All of their eyes were unnaturally bright. Two gold, one frost blue. The groom was smiling, and the second blue-eyed brother looked emotional. The third—Stellan—had a soft look in his eyes, but no smile. He had his hands clasped in front of him.

“Pizza’s ordered,” Stellan said from the mouth of the hallway.

“Are these your brothers?” she asked.

He came to lean against the opposite wall as the photos and looked at them with an unfathomable expression on his face. “Brothers from the before,” he said, pointing to the first picture. “Mom,” he said, pointing at the second. “Brothers now. Dame got married at the end of last year.”

“That’s Dame?” she asked, pointing to the groom.

Stellan nodded. “Then Mars. Then me. Always in that order.”

She didn’t understand that last part. “You mean Dame is the oldest? Mars is the middle?”

“We’re triplets. Hierarchy had to exist after…well…after everything got messed up.”

“Is this your mom?” she asked softly, gesturing to the middle photo.

Stellan’s lips twitched at the corner, and he made a strange sound in his throat. He seemed to tic, uncontrollably, jerking his head to the right three times, and then he asked, “Do you want to see something else?”

“Okay,” she said, taking the hint.

He didn’t want to talk about the woman in the photograph.

He led Laramie to the bedroom at the end of the hallway and pushed open the door. The walls had been painted beige in here, instead of the gray of the rest of the home. The comforter and bedding were different shades of brown, and in the corner of the room was a stick. She studied it. The stick had the same Y-shape at the top as the boy holding one in the first picture. “Is that from the picture with your brothers?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you keep it for a good memory?”

“That picture was taken the day before we died,” he said solemnly, turning toward her. His eyes had cooled, and he stared at her as if daring her to dig deeper into this one.