Page 87 of Wild Thorns

I avoid the mirror. What I'd find there scares me more than the pleasure aching between my thighs.

* * *

That night, I lie next to Jasper and feel like the worst person alive.

He's asleep, one arm thrown across my waist, his breathing deep and even. He brought me into his home, his family, his bed, and he trusts me.

And I let his brother pin me to the kitchen floor and make me come with his fingers while I moaned his name. Worse, I'd wanted it. Still want more, even now, with Jasper warm against me. I can still feel the ghost of Callum's hands, the way his eyes watched my face as I fell apart.

What kind of person does this make me?

I stare at the ceiling and catalog my sins. Kissed Eli in the archive. Fell into bed with Jasper. Let Callum finger me on the fucking kitchen floor of the main house.

I can't even pretend it was a moment of weakness. I had every chance to stop it: to say no, to push him away.

I hadn't wanted to.

Three brothers. Three separate moments that felt less like weakness and more like gravity. Like I couldn't have stopped any of it even if I'd tried.

Marcus would have a field day with this. Would use it as proof that I'm exactly what he always said: faithless, fickle, unable to be satisfied.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe there's something fundamentally broken in me, some flaw that makes me incapable of wanting just one person. Some greedy, shameful part of me that takes and takes and doesn't know when to stop.

Jasper shifts in his sleep, pulls me closer. I let him, even though I don't deserve the comfort.

The worst part isn't the guilt. The worst part is that even now, replaying the kitchen in my mind, I don't feel regret. I feel heat. I feel want. I feel the phantom pressure of Callum's fingers and have to press my thighs together against the ache that's still there.

See you at dinner, he'd said; like it was nothing. Like he hadn't just unraveled me completely and walked away whistling.

And tomorrow, oh God, tomorrow I have to face him across the breakfast table. I'll have to see that grin and know exactly what it means. I'll have to look at Eli and remember the archive. I'll have to smile at Jasper and pretend I'm not counting all the ways I've already betrayed him.

I don't sleep for hours. When I finally do, the dreams that came were not peaceful.

When I finally do, I dream of golden eyes and a laugh that echoes through an empty kitchen. I dream of hands, mouths, and the cold press of tile against my back. I dream of Callum's devastating grin, then watch as it slowly disappears. There’s blood, so much blood; on his face, his chest. Someone laughs. My blood turns cold.

“NO” I scream and the shadows whisk me away.

I am standing in the magnolia grove, surrounded by white blossoms that glowed like stars. And there is someone walking toward me through the trees. A woman, old and dark-skinned, with eyes that held centuries.

It has begun, she says.

What does that mean?

Blood calls to blood. Power calls to power. And the darkness you carry... She reaches out, touches my chest, and her fingers burned cold. The darkness is waking up.

I woke with a gasp, Jasper's arms still around me, his heartbeat steady against my back.

But the place where the woman had touched me burned, even in waking.

And when I looked down, I could have sworn I saw shadows moving beneath my skin.

Chapter twenty-four

Loup Garou

The intruder came on a Thursday.