7
ROBERT
Goldie’s ankles are hurt. She hasn’t realized because the adrenaline is still coursing through her veins. Her panic smells like sour cherries. I lift the fabric of her loose pants while she stands frozen on the spot.
The anxiety radiating from her is like a sonic boom in my head. Inside, I’m riled up enough to split my skin, but I fight to control myself.
I glance up into her pretty blue eyes, finding them wide and scared. If I hadn’t already dealt with the reason for her fear, I’d be hunting him down right now. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
She blinks, confused, then seems to come back into herself. “Behind the counter.”
I rise, looming over her once again, searching out the supplies I need. My skin feels like it’s vibrating from our proximity. My lips are restless, wanting to claim hers. My hands itch to touch her in all her softest, sweetest places .
This is nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
Hunter’s words spin in a loop in my head.
She’s our destiny.
He’s right—these things can’t be disputed—but now she’s here, handling her is where we’re clashing. She’s nothing like I thought she’d be, and everything I could possibly want. Goldie’s a gift I’m too scared to unwrap because what’s underneath the pretty paper is more exciting than I ever imagined.
I kneel before her and roll up her pants so I’m free to work. She lets out a shuddering breath as though my gentle touch is affecting her. Seeing her cuts and bruises fills me with rage. We should have been there to protect her. We arrived too late.
It won’t happen again.
I take some antiseptic on a cotton pad and gently clean away the dried blood and mud. Goldie winces but mostly stays still. Her ankles are dainty, the bones frail beneath her skin, so different from my own brawny hands. I could easily span her calves with my fingers to restrain her. The thought sends a thrill through me, but I bite my lip. The girl’s wounded, and I’m having depraved thoughts.
After the antiseptic, I find Band-Aids to cover the worst gashes. When I’m almost done, I look up to see her watching me with her pretty pink lips parted and soft golden curls resting like a halo around her face. She’s an angel, and I’m a devil—a beast who’s struggling to control himself.
With the last Band-Aid in place, I don’t have a reason to stay at her feet, but I can’t bring myself to rise. Not yet. I rest my hand gently against her skin, and the thrum of her blood beneath my hand is like a lullaby .
“Thank you,” she whispers.
Her body calls me like the charmer’s music to a mesmerized snake. I want to lick her skin, taste the salt of her sweat, find the sweetness between her thighs, and drink it up. I want to open her like the pages of a book and get lost in all her stories.
She’s a drug. Intoxicating. Everything.
“Robert?”
Her questioning tone jolts me from my reverence.
“Yes.” I rise, immediately stepping back to put a few feet between us.
Her eyes appear as glazed as mine feel, the usually clear blue of them swamped with wide, dark pupils.
“The cuts will heal just fine.” I sound like I’ve swallowed gravel.
“Okay.” She lifts her mug to her lips and gulps noisily. My throat closes to the width of a matchstick.
“So, did you lock the room?”
Her question comes out of nowhere, and I grimace before I have a chance to moderate my expression.
“Your new lock worked perfectly.”
Goldie’s shoulders droop. “I… I wish you didn’t feel like you had to.” She fiddles with a curl while I shift my feet.
I shouldn’t be uncomfortable talking about this, but I am. It’s been a part of who I am that has felt wrong for so long. “But you still think I’m a freak.” I shake my head, but I don’t look away. The frisson of electricity between us is like a bolt of lightning.
“NO.” The word spills from her with anger. “No, I don’t. Not at all.”
“You’re just saying that. Being polite. ”
Goldie’s attention drifts to the corner of the store as though she’s chewing over what to say next.
If she’s truly our destiny, then what’s behind the locked door shouldn’t be off-putting to her. We should be made for each other in all ways. That’s what being fated means. But believing a woman like Goldie, so sweet and innocent looking, could ever want the fantasies that haunt me and my brothers seems too much to hope for. She closes her eyes momentarily. When she opens them, she focuses on me, tensing her jaw. “When you called me to change your locks… I was fantasizing.”
I suck in a noisy breath at just the thought.
“In my fantasy, I was blindfolded and handcuffed to a bed just like the one in your room while a stranger did the kind of things you like to do.” She doesn’t move, but it seems as though we’re closer, the words she’s spoken drawing us together with a magnetizing force. “I’ve never told anyone about my fantasies before.”
“You shouldn’t be talking like this,” I say gruffly. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my brothers.”
If she knew what we were and what we wanted with her, she’d run for the hills. She’d use all the locks in this shop to barricade herself in. She’d find any means not to succumb to our desires. But she doesn’t know, and until I can make Hunter understand that we need to approach Goldie with care, I’m at a loss for how to proceed.
“Everyone’s a stranger until they’re not,” she says. “I don’t have an ulterior motive. I just want you to understand that you’re not alone in feeling the way you do.”
Feeling like I want to tear her clothes from her body with my hands and my teeth? Feeling like I want to ravage her so she can’t walk for a week? Feeling like I want to mark her skin with pink welts, will her with my cum, and mark her with my scent? Yeah, I can’t imagine she feels any of that.
“Thinking things in your mind is one thing. Doing them is something different. Believe me.” I turn because continuing to look at her while we have this conversation is just too hard. My hand wanders to a sliding lock and I finger it gently, the metal cool against my fingertips. This is what I love. The unyielding feeling of metal, the slide of a lock, the power of wielding control and the submission it enforces.
It’s a twisted kind of messed up that a woman’s total submission is the only way I’m able to keep the animal in me caged. While I’m in control of her, I’m in control of all of my baser urges. I’d never unleash the worst of myself while a woman is powerless.
Goldie rests her coffee cup on the counter gently and moves to stand closer.
“Do you… have you…?” My voice catches, and I can’t bring myself to finish the question. If this part of her is content with fantasy rather than reality, I’ll be crushed. Shutting and locking that door was okay when the woman who was meant for us was still abstract. Finding her and discovering she doesn’t need what I need… what we need… the disappointment would be vast and all-consuming.
“Not because I don’t want to. Because I’ve never found anyone else—”
“And if you did?” I turn to face her, my eyes burning with an intensity that makes Goldie shiver. Everything about me feels dark and coiled, straining to unleash .
This close, Goldie seems tiny even though she’s taller than average and curvy rather than petite. I just feel so loomingly large, so powerful. It’s intoxicating.
“If I did—” She pauses on what feels like the precipice of something momentous. This is more than just a casual what-if conversation. There’s something eager in her expression. “I’d want to try.”
My chest rises and falls, my body needing more oxygen to process what she said.
The blush that spreads across her cheeks is adorable. My hands flex into fists as I try to maintain control. I’m a famished man, presented with a lifetime’s worth of the most appetizing food.
She takes one step back, responding to the frenzied look I’m unable to suppress.
I stare down at my hands and force them to open. I try to compose myself, pushing calm through my rigid body. I’m too close to letting the animal inside me out of his cage.
“You shouldn’t talk like this. You don’t know what you’re saying,” I whisper.
“Maybe,” she tells me. “Maybe I’m a foolish woman with foolish feelings. Or maybe I’m someone just like you. Someone who wants more, who needs more. And maybe that’s okay.”
Her arousal scents the air like the sweetest perfume, so addictive I inhale it until my head spins. Her rapid heartbeat matches the tempo of my own as it beats double-time. Relief surges through me, mixed with a frisson of uncertainty.
Temptation like this is too delicious.
In fairy stories, temptations like these lead in only one direction. Goldilocks couldn’t resist the mystery of the cottage in the woods. She couldn’t stop herself from trying all the porridge and sitting on all the chairs. She ventured into all the beds, forgetting the danger she might be in. She tumbled into temptation like a boulder down a mountainside.
Goldie has no idea what she’s getting herself into, no idea what’s coming.
If she really wants to fulfill this fantasy, I have to tell her something, at least. I can’t let her stumble forward blind.
“It’s not just me,” I say gruffly, and for a moment, she seems confused. “It’s Evan and Hunter, too. My brothers have the same… desires.”
“They like the same things?”
I nod and take a deep breath. “And we come as a package deal.”
“A package deal? Wait. What?”