Chapter 24
RAINA
“My sister,” Kaleb says.
“Kaleb, listen to me. We can explain. We can talk about this,” Alex tries again.
As I look around, I realize it’s kind of hard to explain.
We’re in the Cinnamon Playroom. The bed was made for sex.
The entire room is decorated with decadence in mind.
There are straps on the walls, a leather swing hangs from the ceiling in the eastern corner, and Lord knows I’ve ridden that thing enough times that the guilt and the shame are probably written all over my face.
The guys’ faces, too. This place smells of sex and sin, and Kaleb’s no fool.
“What’s there to talk about?” my brother growls. “You three finally did it, eh? The one thing I warned you against. I told you my sister is off-limits.”
“Kaleb, I wanted it,” I say, trying to cool him down.
He raises a hand to stop me before I get too close. “No, you don’t mean that.”
“Kaleb, listen to me. I wanted this. Alex, Vincent, Max and I… we’ve got something, something different. It’s serious, it’s not just…” I pause and motion at everything around us. “It’s not just this. We’re together.”
“Together,” he scoffs and shakes his head. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. You must be out of your damn mind.”
“Hey, Kaleb, take it easy,” Vincent says, moving closer, his hands up in a peaceful gesture. “Cool your heels, man. It’s not what you think.”
“Raina means everything to us,” Alex adds.
Instead of calming him, Alex’s comment sets Kaleb off. He whirls around, trembling with rage as he beholds his mentor.
“How dare you?” Kaleb says. “How fucking dare you? I know what you’re like, Alex!
I know you three love sharing women, screwing around, dom and sub stuff and all that crap!
And not once did I judge you for it, not once.
But then you had to drag my sister into it.
All the women in the world weren’t enough? You had to ruin Raina, too?”
“They didn’t—”
“Shut up!” Kaleb cuts me off with a snarl. “Just shut up, Raina. I figured you were going through some things after that whole mess with Jeremy, but this? This is beneath you. How could you?”
Max isn’t taking my brother’s reaction well. “Kaleb, you need to take a deep breath and be very careful about what you say next.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Max replies. “Everything your sister did with us was consensual. She’s a grown woman, a free woman, an incredible woman.
And she has the right to do as she pleases, regardless of whatever sanctimonious judgment you have to express on the matter.
And what we have, it’s not just sex, man, it’s a lot deeper. ”
“I’m sure it’s deep with the three of you,” Kaleb snaps. “You destroyed her. Raina…” He pauses and gives me a sour look. “You were a good girl, Raina.”
I’m shaking like a leaf, the pain spreading through my chest as the words roll off his tongue, each stinging me with a venomous shot. It burns and it aches everywhere as I stare at him in disbelief.
“Kaleb…”
“How could you let them do this to you? Turn you into some--””
“Kaleb, stop before I stop you!” Alex intervenes, his voice loud and heavy, his rage pulsating out of him in palpable waves. “Don’t say what you’re about to say, because we both know that’s just the anger talking. It’s not you.”
Kaleb shakes his head and runs his fingers through his hair. He takes several deep breaths to regain some semblance of control over himself. But I feel the anger coming off him, the disillusionment, the shame. Or is that mine?
I shouldn’t feel shame.
None of this is shameful, but Kaleb doesn’t understand that. For a long time before I even came to Haus of Sin, I didn’t understand it either. I felt guilty for wanting Alex, Vincent, and Max, for lusting after them.
“My own sister,” Kaleb sighs, giving me a look of disgust. “The perfect Raina Redford, a whore for my best friends.”
Alex takes a swing. Kaleb moves back and responds with a mean left hook. He catches Alex in the jaw, and I’m pretty sure Alex let him. His reflexes are much sharper than that. My brother isn’t half the fighter that Alex is.
“That was your only freebie,” he tells Kaleb.
“Screw you!” Kaleb shouts and storms out of the Cinnamon Playroom.
The silence he leaves behind weighs heavily on my shoulders. It almost crushes my bones as I shudder and sit on the edge of the bed, my heart broken and my eyes filled with tears.
Vincent and Max sit beside me, flanking me with their bodies and giving me the illusion of comfort. But the truth is, none of us feels right about any of this anymore.
“He doesn’t understand yet,” Alex says. “I should go after him.”
He’s about to leave when Max stops him. “Don’t; he needs time to process.”
“What’s there to understand, really?” I exhale sharply.
“What we have… He’ll never get it. Kaleb has a traditional mindset, and I worked hard most of my life to fit into that pattern, to give him a sense of safety in our little family unit, even when we were struggling through the foster system. My so-called goodness was all he had.”
“So-called?” Max scoffs. “Raina, you’re the kindest woman I’ve ever met. There’s nothing so-called about your goodness. It’s all there, and it has nothing to do with what your body and your heart desire where the three of us are concerned. Kaleb needs to grow the fuck up and accept that.”
“He will, eventually,” Vincent adds.
“That’s little to no comfort to me right now,” I say, tears rolling down my cheeks. “He hates me. He’s ashamed of me. I can’t exactly blame him either.”
Alex curses under his breath. “Someone gave him the address and a prompt to come here,” he says. “How much do you want to bet it was Jeremy?”
“What?” My stomach drops.
Everything happened so fast, I didn’t even have a moment to wonder until now. Alex is right.
“Kaleb said he got an email, saying I was here and that I was in trouble,” I say, remembering my brother’s rushed words shortly after he walked in on us. “Alex, do you really think Jeremy would do something like this?”
“Don’t you?”
I nod slowly. It pains me deeply to admit it. “Yes.”
“He did it on purpose, that fucking weasel,” Vincent growls. “He’s a spiteful, spineless, blackmailing little weasel.”
“Blackmailing?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex cuts in and shakes his head at Vincent and Max. “We’ll handle this.”
“How?”
Max wraps me in his arms and holds me tight. I try to soften in his embrace, but there’s just too much tension. My cheeks are still burning with shame. Nevertheless, I let him hold me, and I hide my face against his warm chest, taking deep breaths to recover a semblance of self-control.
“Kaleb needs time to blow off steam,” Max says.
“He’ll drive back to Portland, he’ll get drunk, he’ll smash a bottle on somebody’s head, worst-case scenario.
Tomorrow, he’ll either wake up with a hangover in a jail cell or back at his place.
He’ll feel terrible, but he’ll keep sulking.
Alex will give him a couple more days before he reaches out. ”
“And then we’ll sit him down and talk to him, man to man,” Alex adds.
“Raina, we’ve got this,” Vincent tells me.
I wholeheartedly wish that were true. I want to believe them.
But a part of me is tangled with doubt. Anger courses through me as I think of Jeremy’s role in all of this.
He won’t stop until he destroys me, for God only knows what reason, even though he’s the one who broke up with me.
I have never met a soul as toxic as his or a heart so evil and spiteful.
He flipped out to the point where he had to drag my brother into it.
And I can’t lose Kaleb.