Chapter 56
FIFTY-SIX
NEVE
Iglance at my phone and clench my teeth as I sit with Faust in the living room, fire flickering warm heat over us, his hand parked on my hip.
There’s a spread of food on the glossy black coffee table; turkey and sweet potato chili, sour cream in a white serving bowl, grated cheese, a bottle of wine, and a stack of black plates and iron-dark silverware, all waiting for Sylvan’s presence before we eat.
Faust cooked all evening, and the sun has slipped down and bowed out, night looming beyond the windowpanes of Castle Darling.
My heart is thudding fast and hard in my chest and I read the text once more, just to be sure I’m not overreacting.
This is what happens when you start to give pieces of your heart away. You care more about two boys than you do a murder investigation which apparently involves your own brother.
Cyn
Tasia was bragging she had a drink last night with Sylvan. Who knows if she’s just talking shit, but you might want to check your boy.
Last night Cynthia and I stayed at Darkmouth because the boys had late-night practice. It’s a bye week this week, and it’s been seven days since Sylvan clocked a boy on the ice for saying he wanted to fuck me.
If I thought last night was bad, me and Cynthia both sleeping together in the living room on a pile of blankets and pillows, jumping at every creak we heard in the night despite the fact Blackwell’s has a security alarm now and Faust personally paid to change the locks on our apartment, it’s nothing compared to how I feel now.
Fucking annoyed.
“You know Tasia will do anything to make you feel like this,” Faust says softly behind me.
I turn to him and feel my temper threaten to burst through the ice I tried to trap it under all these years. “What about Sylvan? How will he make me feel?”
Faust stares at him in silence for long seconds, the fire crackling at our side, the scent of this haunted house and Faust’s cologne snaking through my nose, bringing to life my emotions.
“How does he make you feel?” he asks quietly.
“Why are you okay with sharing me with him?” The question I’ve been burning to ask. They’re jealous, territorial, but somehow this thing between the three of us has morphed and transformed and now I’m theirs, but it feels unanchored. Unhinged, somehow.
Faust’s eyes darken. It’s not just an expression; one heartbeat they’re deep brown, the next, he narrows his eyes and the irises seem black.
“You think I’m okay with it?” he asks quietly. The softness with which he speaks always makes him seem like the lesser threat. That’s how I know he’s the bigger one.
“You do it, don’t you?”
“It’s like stabbing ourselves in the back each time we share you, but the thing is, we’re masochists. Haven’t you figured that out by now? Besides…” He exhales slow. “The truth is, he’s mine too.”
My chest squeezes with his words, but it makes me think of something else.
Something I was too caught up in them to even wonder about.
“Have you two… without me?” We haven’t slept together yet.
They seem to be edging me or maybe guarding themselves.
Since their first introduction to me was running from a man whose best friend I fucked, I don’t really fault them for it.
But don’t they have needs? Even my own hand isn’t really cutting it anymore.
Faust doesn’t look away. “Once,” he whispers, and this time, I feel like the one with the knife in my spine.
“When?” I have to ask. I need to know.
“In the locker room, baby girl.” That comes from Sylvan. Amused.
My heart skips a beat as I look over my shoulder. He’s looming in the doorway; dark pants, a gray sweater that nearly matches the ice of his eyes, his coat is off, but he has those red leather gloves on. He tilts his head.
“Are you jealous?” he whispers, and I know what he wants the answer to be.
He thrives on it. Maybe it makes him feel loved.
I know, because my own emotions echo his. But I don’t want to give in. What happens when someone gives themselves to another completely?
They become nothing more than a shadow of their true selves, giving the power to others to suck upon their soul.
“Where were you last night?” I hate myself for asking the question, but it’s too late now.
A dimple curves in his handsome face. “Ah, so you are,” he says. “Jealous.”
My face burns.
Faust is quiet, but I know he’s watching every inch of our exchange.
“Tell me where the fuck you were.”
The smile falls away from Sylvan’s face. He pushes from the doorway and takes one step closer. “Do you think you have any claim on my time? Do you think I owe you an explanation?”
I’m standing before I realize it. “You don’t want to play this game with me.”
Another step closer.
Everything spins inside my mind.
Why did I choose them over my brother? Why did I lie for Sylvan, about Will? Why did I think I could trust either of them with my secrets, let alone my heart?
“Do you think you can tell me what to do, who to see or not see, how to behave, baby girl?” Despite the nickname, his words are glacial.
“You made a man bleed on the ice for joking about fucking me.” I lift my chin. “What will you do to him when I actually let him?”
Faust snarls my name, but it’s Sylvan who reaches me. He edges around the coffee table and presses his palm in the center of my chest. My ass hits the couch and he leans over me, one hand planted above my head as he cages me in.
The scent of him is intoxicating. It’s dark and dangerous and all the things I won’t stay away from.
His pupils are blown, nearly obliterating the white edge of his eyes.
He caresses my chin, tipping my head up, and the gentleness of the touch has me on edge.
“Do you think you can dictate whom I can and can’t fuck?” he asks me, his lips hovering over my own. He glances down to my mouth, then back up. “Do you think you can control me, Neve?”
My pulse pounds a rhythm in my head. All of my retorts, the ways I want to cut him down, pay him back, they seem to die on my tongue.
Faust’s presence is heavy despite his silence.
I want to know what he’s thinking. I want to look at him to help me, and I loathe that.
I’m not good at accepting help, and I’ve never really needed to try.
Taking gifts from Nolan was one thing; I’m his sister, he offered them on a silver platter, and after all the shit he put in my head growing up, maybe some part of me felt it was his way of assuaging the guilt.
But this, wanting Faust to protect me, it makes me feel weak.
Sylvan nudges his nose to mine, his cold lips ghosting over my own.
“Answer me.” It’s a demand.
I want to refuse to give in at all. He turns his head and bites at my jaw. “Answer me.” He repeats it against my skin, then skims his lips lower, over my neck. I tilt my head back, allowing him access, and I feel Faust’s fingers on my shoulder, kneading me.
The sensations are overwhelming.
The thoughts in my head maybe more so.
“Do you think you own me?” Sylvan whispers along my throat when I don’t reply.
Heat burns on my core.
I widen my thighs and my sleep shorts ride up. His knee plants on the couch, then he shifts forward, and it’s between my legs.
I groan, eyes closed, as he circles his knee against me. It’s not enough, but it feels so good.
“Do you think I belong to you?” he asks, licking a line up the column of my throat. My neck is bare. I’m exposed to both of them in so many ways beyond the physical.
Sylvan’s hand comes up under my shirt, and he palms my breast as he circles his knee, my nipple hardening at his touch.
“Because I do,” he says, right before he bites my throat and sucks my skin into his mouth with his teeth.
I moan, unable to stop myself, the war in my chest abating, warmth spreading straight through to my heart.
He wraps an arm around my waist, twists his body so he’s lying on the couch, and pulls me on top of him, all in one seemingly effortless move.
His lips crash onto mine as I straddle him, dry fucking him as another moan comes from my tongue, unfurling onto his.
He grabs my throat and lifts my chin, and I stare down at him as we pause, his chest rising and falling as hard as mine. Behind me, I feel Faust shift on the couch.
“I belong to you,” Sylvan says, staring up at me.
“I’m entirely yours. I didn’t do shit with anyone last night.
I spent the hours after practice worrying about you.
Letting you sleep without me. Without him.
And if you’re mad he made me come without you, love, we can have rules.
We can do whatever we want, the three of us.
You can have anything, so long as it’s only from us. ”
I push against his hold on my throat and bite his bottom lip as he chokes me. I don’t care. I sink my teeth in hard, so deep he gasps and I taste iron as his hold loosens around my neck.
“Don’t ever fuck with me like that again,” I snarl against his mouth.
Behind me, Faust runs his hand over my ass, easily sweeping aside the loose material of my shorts and slapping my bare skin.
I yelp into Sylvan's mouth, and he reaches behind me, tugging the fabric aside to give Faust better access.
Then he lifts his hips, and it’s Faust’s hands that come beneath me, unbuttoning and pulling down Sylvan’s pants and his black boxer shorts in one swift motion. Sylvan kicks them the rest of the way off and I stare down at Sylvan’s thick, hard cock.
Fuck.
“But if I’m not touching any other girl, you better make it worth it.”
I narrow my eyes, suck in my cheeks, then spit on his cock. Faust’s hand strokes it, rubbing the spit in, and the sight of it makes me ache.
Then Faust jerks my hair back with his other hand, arching my neck so I’m staring into his dark eyes upside down.
“Ride his cock for me, North,” he says softly. “And bend over while you do. I want to stretch you wide.”