Chapter 52
fifty-two
brIAR
True to his word, Rhys doesn’t leave my side until I practically force him to.
We share breakfast with Dane, all three of us lying on my bed while they bicker over how to approach a new group of smugglers they’ve been tracking through South America.
At some point, Dane plunks an actual atlas into Rhys’s lap and pulls my feet into his.
He then proceeds to hand me a platter of French toast and watches with a fanatical gleam in his eye until I start to eat.
Rhys seems just as preoccupied, glancing at my plate and purring in approval after every few bites. When they’re both satisfied that I won’t waste away, they start dissecting their latest plans.
I’m surprised when they openly discuss the entire operation—and stunned when Rhys tucks me into his side to show me a map, tracing the poachers’ expected route. Asking with complete sincerity, “What do you think, viper?”
Like… what?!
After they sketch out a general plan, both alphas somehow end up huddled around me, their chests rumbling while I rub Rhys’s nape and Dane’s wide, muscled back.
Their touch starvation must be getting better, though, because cuddling turns into omega tug-of-war pretty damn quick.
Which ends with me lying against Dane while Rhys devours every drop of arousal between my thighs until I think I’ll pass out.
I might’ve, actually, because I wake to Dane nuzzling my face and telling me he’s going to work out. Rhys stays, lounging beside me with one of the dark romance books I bought from the crumbling bookshop.
We both hear Cillian’s car pull into the garage. Rhys quirks a smirk when my scent shifts, brightening with uncontrollable eagerness.
I shouldn’t want to see the pack alpha as badly as I do. For Christ’s sake, he was just in here last night. Sleeping with a solid arm hooked around my waist and his face buried against the fingertip bruises his stepbrother left on my neck.
But I guess all the mystical shit they say about mates and pack leaders is real, because some piece of my Omega has been holding her breath since I woke to his businesslike good-morning text. Hearing he’s home is a huge relief, somehow. Like we can finally exhale.
My mind races, wondering what he might have in store for me. I remember Fiona’s tittered warnings about his bedroom all too well. And, really, apart from my heat-spike, we haven’t really been together…
I can’t deny the thrill of anticipation that swoops through me, remembering the night he had me dance for him. How his eyes felt, cataloging every inch of my form, absorbing each twirl and point.
Will he want to watch again?
Will he actually try to take me this time?
My perfume rises. Rhys keeps reading out loud, his mouth kicking higher on one side. The chapter bleeds into another. We hear Cillian stride into his office and close the door… but he doesn’t come back out.
I try not to be agitated, suppressing the urge to squirm. Rhys turns a page, chuckling at me. I smack his chest, but he plucks my wrist up, brushing a soft kiss along my pulse.
“Save your energy, viper.” He smirks. “Trust me.”
Another tease, hinting at some depraved desire Cillian has? My heart races along with my mind, conjuring all sorts of scenarios. Each making me wetter than the one before.
Chains. Cuffs. Leather straps. Clamps…
Maybe Rhys and I have been reading too much.
When Coggins arrives a moment later, pushing a dinner cart, my stomach sinks. The attendant winces as he gestures at the covered meal. “Mr. Blackwood sends his apologies, Madame.”
The butler slinks off. My shoulders hunch, a pout hiding the true depths of my dejection. He doesn’t want to eat with me? Or maybe he doesn’t have time?
Rhys clears his throat. I turn toward him, arrested by his beauty for a moment. It knocks every rational thought out of my head, seeing him in a pair of black sweats and nothing else, an elbow balanced on his bent knee, his pale skin covered in my own scratch marks and his hair in disarray.
The square black frames around his eyes only heighten the effect, highlighting his tattoos and the sideways glance he slides toward me. His silver-blond brows arch.
“You’d never let me get away with that,” he comments, nodding at the lonely dinner cart. “You gonna let him?”
And he’s right, goddamn it.
The night Rhys rejected me, I didn’t curl into a ball and cry. I went looking for his sorry ass and taught him a lesson.
Briar Rose Blackwood doesn’t sit around waiting.
Rhys still has the scar to prove it.
I flash him a smile, kissing his cheek before bouncing up. “Of course not.”
My beautiful alpha grins, his light eyes warming as he tilts his chin at my closet. “Something red,” he says. “If you’re thinking torture.”
Wives don’t knock, right?
We’re going with that.
I barge into the study without warning, drawing a deep breath to give my “husband” a piece of my mind—before exhaling in a deflated rush.
Oh.
He’s working?
Cillian looks up from the papers spread across his desk. His gaze rolls over the dark red robe I put over a matching teddy from my wardrobe, much too calm and controlled for my liking.
But I have his scent now, so I sense exactly how much I affect him.
Rich, masculine spice and smoke fill the room in a powerful rush. Weakening my knees and tweaking the damp, needy flesh between my thighs. I do everything I can to ignore the dizzy whirl scrambling my thoughts, dropping my hands to my hips as I come to a halt in the center of his Persian rug.
“Hello,” he drawls, turning back to his work. “How are you this evening, Mrs. Blackwood?”
“Are you serious?” I hiss. “How am I this evening?!”
Cillian’s brow furrows, still not looking up. “Frustrated, I see. I wonder why.”
This bastard.
“Oh, cut the shit!” I explode. “You know I’ve been waiting for you all day. For weeks, actually, come to think of it! All this time and you never even tried to come on to me or take me into your kinky bedroom?!”
He nearly smirks that time, still shuffling paperwork. “Do you want to go into my bedroom?”
I narrow my eyes. “Don’t play innocent. Fiona told me you have all sorts of stuff in there, so I know you must have had women around at some point. What, you just didn’t want a virgin? Is that why you let your packmates deflower me even though you knew we were mates?!”
He scratches out a note on one of his pages, frowning. Using that maddeningly even tone. “My tastes hardly seemed appropriate. For your first time.”
A white-hot thread of anticipation coils around my lungs, forcing me to pant around it. I glare, hoping he’ll interpret my heaving shoulders as rage. “So you thought you’d let them break me in?”
His wry grin knocks me back a step. Cillian smiles so rarely. It’s like catching the sun through the clouds after days of rain—or maybe forgetting there was a sun, until it finally peeks through the veil of gray.
“No.” His head shakes. The humor fades as quickly as it appeared. Soul-deep intensity cracks through his gaze as he bores it into mine. “I thought I’d let you make a choice for yourself. Since you’ve never had any.”
A roaring sort of quiet envelops my insides, silencing all the outrage and exhilaration.
He was never avoiding me? He was… giving me a choice? Is that what he’s done tonight, too?
Cillian stands, rounding his desk with his trademark blend of power and elegance. My husband slips his hands into his pockets as he leans against the polished wood and tilts his head, considering me.
“I can find you and chase you and marry you,” he husks. “Bring you into our home, our pack. Give you this house, your nest, the world. But at some point, Briar, you’re going to have to choose me back. And come to me on your own terms. That’s what I’ve been waiting for.”
I remember being confused by his agreement not to touch me without permission. When we signed our original contract, I thought for sure he planned to go back on his word immediately. But now…
Did he really put that in there to give me a sense of security? And he’s abided by it, even during my heat-spike. All so I could have a choice?
It… makes sense. He might not have given me a say about our wedding, but everything else has been my decision. Whether I wanted to help them with their scheme for an heir. Who I fucked and when. What I did to fill my days and nights.
He even let me choose if I was going to put that tutu on and dance for him.
And now this. Tonight.
Cillian isn’t in here because he doesn’t want me.
He’s in here because he wants to be sure I want him.
My husband’s glossy black brows arch. “Is that why you’re here, Briar?” he asks. “Have you made your choice?”