5. Wisteria
Chapter Five
WISTERIA
The icky feeling of sweat trailing down my back wakes me. Daylight shines through the window curtains, and I do the math…I’ve at least slept through the night. Who knows how long I’ve been out. Overwhelming, suffocating heat surrounds me from the front and the back, and I realize I’m in a bed…with two men. Cain McAllister cages me in with his arm, his body pressed against mine.
He abducted me from my job— my former job —and he’s snuggling with me like it never fucking happened. As if we picked back up from six years ago.
His nose is crooked, like someone punched him in the face. I envy whoever got the pleasure of knocking him down a peg. Anger vibrates through me. I never asked to be with these men again. As badly as I want to come home, I can’t . He can’t just pluck me from my life and expect me to go along with it.
A hand grips his bicep. I recognize the black and white flower tattoo peeking out of the long-sleeve navy Henley and spilling onto smooth, tanned skin. Colin. They never strayed too far from each other. Obviously, that hasn’t changed.
Colin was always the reasonable one. Calm and controlled, whereas Cain was a creature of pure chaos. Maybe Colin can talk some sense into him and convince him to let me go.
Colin and I kept tabs on you. We knew you’d need to return home eventually.
Maybe Cain misspoke. I can’t imagine Colin being okay with this, or wanting to take me home knowing what waits there for me if I return. He may have casted me aside, but he’s still a decent person with a conscience.
I roll over slowly and shimmy my way out from under the blankets, pausing to make sure my two kidnappers remain undisturbed before scooching to the end of the bed. They’re still snoring softly when I slip into the bathroom. After I shut the door, I sit on the closed toilet seat, lamenting my life choices as I try to figure out how I ended up in this clusterfuck.
Aunt Norma and I were ordered to leave six years ago. No trial. No choice. Father Mannix may have changed his mind, but I highly doubt it. He’s a man firm in his principles. He was like a father to me, and he still banished me from Harvest Farms. Somehow the three men who used to be my everything—who wanted nothing to do with me and never responded to my letters—found me. They want to bring me back home, when they know it’s as good as a death sentence.
I jump as the door opens, and Colin’s tall, imposing figure fills the doorway. His black hair reaches his shoulders now. The dimples on his cleanly shaven face stand out as he smirks at me. His self-satisfied grin tells me everything I need to know; he’s in on this with Cain.
He rips away my privacy with his assessing stare, as if he’s taking me apart piece by piece. I don’t like the layer of me he’s exposing, or how he makes me feel.
Colin Garcia. He used to be my rock—in our hardest times, we found strength in each other. He always made me feel safe. Seen. Then he ditched me like a bad habit. He didn’t want anything to do with me for years, so why is he so intent on staring at me now?
I refuse to speak first and turn my head to ignore him. He walks in, crouching down in front of me before he brushes his fingertips over my cheek. I turn into the gesture, momentarily forgetting myself.
Then I remember.
This isn’t the man who snuck into my room to visit me almost every night. He isn’t the knight in shining armor who protected me and made me feel safe. He isn’t the same man he used to be when he took my virginity on a picnic blanket in the woods, under a full moon. He’s the man who didn’t respond to my letters. He led me on and let me down.
“Wisteria, look at me.” His voice and proximity made me quiver once upon a time. Now my body is unsure how to respond.
“Wisteria Jean,” he commands, his timber low as he takes my chin and turns my head. He grips my jaw so I can’t move. “I said look at me. I want to see those violet eyes glaring back at me.”
My core clenches at his confidence. The way he seems to own this conversation despite the wrong way it all came to be is oddly attractive. And the feeling of his rough, calloused hands on my skin sends shivers of desire through me.
Colin awoke a fucked up beast in me back on the farm, and no man has ever been able to tame it since.
“That’s a good girl,” he praises me in a deep, decadent tone. Lust burns inside me like a house on fire, and I hate myself for responding to him this way, after he hurt me. “You’re my smart, beautiful girl, just like old times.”
Hearing him refer to the way things were instantly douses cold water on whatever desire I had. He senses the change, switching his tone to a gentler one.
“Say something, Wisteria.”
“What is there to say? We haven't said anything to each other in years. Nothing has changed.” I get up, and face the door. “You abducted me, and I want to go home immediately.”
Colin grabs my waist as I try to bypass him, plastering me to his chest. I crane my neck to see him. He dips his head to smell my hair, then runs his nose down the curve of my jaw and my neck.
“I can’t return to the farm. You know that.”
Unless I want to die, I’m never to set foot on Harvest Farms grounds. He knows that. Cain knows that.
So why are they so determined to do it anyway?
“Circumstances have changed. You’re coming home,” he declares, as if this is a done deal.
“What are you talking about? Maybe I don’t want to come home,” I lie. He knows it, too. Colin’s always been able to see deep inside me, whether I wanted him to or not.
His hands run leisurely over my ribcage, as if he’s cataloging every inch, then down my hips until they land on my ass. His fingertips dig into my cheeks so hard I know they’ll leave bruises. I should yelp, demand he stop touching me. But I don’t. I just moan, silently begging him to be rougher. I crave his roughness, the way he’d use my body until I was utterly spent.
He backs me into the bathroom counter, lifting me up until I’m sitting on it with him between my legs. His hands white-knuckle the edge of the counter, and his arms bracket me in place. My breathing picks up as my traitorous heart hammers inside my chest. I shouldn’t let myself be so affected by one of the men who broke my heart.
“You can lie and say whatever shit you want, Wisteria Jean, but this–” he says as he puts his hand over my thumping heart, feeling its frantic rhythm, “And this—” he continues as he cups my pussy over the pajama bottoms I’m wearing, “Don’t lie.”
He smiles as he squeezes my sex gently. His traces my seam, and he raises a brow before dipping two fingers under my waistband. Before I can even react, they’re gliding through my wetness, between my pussy lips. Then circling my clit deviously slow.
“This pussy never lies to me,” he rasps as he pushes a finger inside me. “She knows she belongs to me. And so do you.” He kisses me, tangling our tongues together until I have no clue where he ends and I begin. He dominates me with a simple touch. Even though my hands are bunched in his shirt, I’m unable to push him away. This man makes me lose all my common sense. He always has.
“Good Lord, little flower, you drive me insane,” he groans my old nickname as he pulls away from me. “Come back to bed—you look exhausted. We’ll talk over an early Christmas Eve dinner.”
I sigh, coming back to my senses. What am I doing? Why did I let him anywhere near me? I should kick him in the nuts and run, fast and far until I can get help. That way, I can leave this place and start all over somewhere they’ll never find me. But my sense of self-preservation is failing me.
Is it nostalgia? Maybe I trust him, even after all the pain he caused me years ago. Maybe it’s knowing, deep down, that I don’t have a life to return to. I’m alone. Ever since my aunt and I drove past those iron gates, a little voice inside me screamed at me to return home.
“Maybe I want to go back to my house, a place I chose, a life I built without you,” I say in a last-ditch effort to leave.
The comment completely missed its mark. He isn’t hurt at all. Soft laughter spills from his lips, giving me pause.
“You just got fired from your job and can’t pay your bills. Your house—if it can even be called a house—is literally falling apart. You have no food in your home. All you do is cry at night. You didn’t even have a winter coat until I sent you one." He lists all my problems one by one like a shopping list, driving home the failure I’ve become since my aunt died. “Is that the life you want to live? Because I’m not letting you go back. You’re ours to take care of, little flower. ”
His words sink in for a minute, penetrating my whirling, anxious mind. He’s the one who’s been leaving the packages? He’s been watching me? I’m not sure whether to slap him or cry all over him. My body breaks down, deciding on the latter.
Colin holds me, wrapping me in his strong arms, holding me together as I fall apart. After I run out of tears, he takes my hand, leading me back to bed. Cain lays there half awake waiting for us. He yawns, patting the spot next to him in bed. Hesitantly, I climb in under the covers.
“You’ll see, baby girl. Everything is going to be okay,” he promises me.
I’m still furious with both of them, so I don’t respond. They cozy up to me, but instead of fighting them for space, I let them tangle their arms and legs with mine, like insidious vines in a garden. Cain and Colin trap me in bed as I drift off into a deep, dreamless sleep. Something I haven't had in ages.