2. Roman
ROMAN
She doesn't look back.
Ivy walks toward the house with her shoulders squared, her spine rigid, her head high despite the fact that her hands won't stop trembling.
I can see it even from here—the slight shake in her fingers where they hang at her sides.
She's trying to control it. Trying to pretend she didn't just crack herself open in front of us.
Virgin.
The word sits in my chest like a brand.
Knox moves beside me, his breathing measured but not quite steady. West's on my other side, silent as always, but his stillness has a quality to it now—coiled, waiting. We don't speak. We don't need to. We've worked together long enough that words stopped being necessary years ago.
I've known since the wedding.
Not that she was a virgin—though that explains more than it should—but that I wanted her.
That all three of us wanted her. Knox saw her first, watched her walk into the venue in that pale green dress with her hair pulled back, and went completely still.
He didn't say anything. Didn't have to. I saw his face.
Then I saw her, and something in my gut twisted hard enough to leave a mark.
West clocked it too. He stood by the bar for twenty minutes just watching her move through the crowd, tracking her with the kind of focus he usually reserves for surveillance work.
We didn't discuss it. What would we have said? "Our new stepsister makes me want to put my hands on her"? The senator's daughter. Untouchable. Off-limits by every measure that mattered.
I spent three months keeping my distance, staying professional, treating her like the liability she was supposed to be.
Then she said "virgin" and something in me locked into place.
The guys at her college call her frigid.
She's twenty-one years old and nobody's ever touched her.
Nobody's ever had her. The thought doesn't make me gentle—it makes me possessive in a way I don't bother dressing up.
She's ours now. Not theirs. Not some college boy's who doesn't know what the hell he'd be walking away from.
Ours.
A month. Thirty days locked in this house with her. Just the four of us.
Even a saint would break. And I've never been remotely close to one.
Ivy reaches the door and her hand lands on the handle. She pauses there, silhouetted against the light from inside, and for half a second I think she might turn around. Might try one more time to negotiate her way out of this.
She doesn't.
The door opens. She steps through. Gone.
But not gone. Just down the hall.
Knox exhales slowly. "Well."
"Yeah," I say.
West doesn't add anything. He doesn't need to. We all just stood there and watched our control slip, watched the line we'd been holding dissolve the second she opened her mouth.
She's small. Maybe five-four in shoes. A full foot shorter than me. Long dark hair that catches the light when she moves, green eyes that go sharp when she's cornered, a frame so petite I could wrap one hand around her wrist and my fingers would overlap.
She was furious walking back to the house—shoulders tight, hands in fists—but fury doesn't hide the way her body moved. The sway of her hips. The curve of her waist under that shirt.
She has no idea what she just did to us.
The house swallows us. Ivy's footsteps echo down the hall toward her room, fast and uneven, and then a door closes with a solid thunk that might as well be a gunshot.
We end up in the living room because that's where we always end up.
Knox pours himself two fingers of whiskey from the bar cart, doesn't offer us any because he already knows the answer.
West drops into the chair by the window, back to the wall out of habit, and tips his head back against the leather.
I take the couch. Sit forward with my elbows on my knees, hands clasped. My body's still wound tight from the gate—from the way she stood there in the dark and said the one thing that could've made this worse. Or better. I haven't decided yet.
"She smelled like vanilla," Knox says.
I glance at him. He's staring into his glass like it holds answers.
"And something else. Something sweet." He takes a sip, slow. "Got close enough to tell when she tried to bolt past me."
West shifts. His eyes open and land on Knox, then on me. "She was shaking."
"She was pissed," I correct.
"She was both."
Fair point.
Knox sets his glass down and leans back against the bar. "So we doing this?"
"She's the senator's daughter," West says.
"She's also an adult who just told us every guy at her school thinks she's frigid." Knox's mouth curves, not quite a smile. "Pretty sure Daddy doesn't factor into her decision-making process right now."
I don't answer immediately. I'm thinking about the way her breath hitched when I got close. The way her pupils blew wide before she caught herself. She can say whatever she wants with her mouth—her body already told me everything I need to know.
"Yeah," I say finally. "We're doing this."
West nods once. Knox grins.
"Thought so."
Silence settles over us, but it's not empty. It's full of the same thing that's been sitting in this house since the moment Ivy walked through the door three months ago—want, and the effort it takes to keep it leashed.
Knox breaks it first. "The threats."
My brain shifts gears. Work. Right. We're supposed to be focused on work.
"Some of the details are too specific," I say. "Routines. Schedules. Small things an outsider wouldn't know."
West sits forward slightly. "Inside job?"
"Maybe. Or someone who's been watching close enough to notice patterns."
"Could be staff," Knox offers. "Chef. Housekeeper. Driver. Someone who's around enough to see things."
"Or it could be someone feeding information to a third party." I scrub a hand over my face, force myself to focus. "We'll start pulling background checks tomorrow. Cross-reference anyone who's had access in the last six months."
"Security footage?" West asks.
"Already reviewing it. Nothing obvious yet, but I'm not ruling it out."
Knox picks up his glass again, swirls the amber liquid. "Senator's got enemies. Could be Voss's camp trying to rattle him before the primary."
"Could be."
We let it sit there. It's not a conversation we can finish tonight, and all three of us know it. Tomorrow we'll dig deeper. Tonight?—
Tonight, my attention is down the hall.
I'm thinking about her. About the way she said "frigid and boring" like she believed it. About the way she swallowed and her throat moved in a way that made me want to put my mouth there. About the way her body leaned toward me even when her words were pushing me away.
She'll come back.
I don't wonder if. Just when.
Knox must be thinking the same thing because he glances toward the hallway, then back at me. "How long you think she'll last?"
"Not long."
West makes a low sound that might be agreement.
We wait.
The door opens twenty minutes later.
I hear it before I see her—the soft click of the latch, the whisper of bare feet on hardwood. Knox straightens. West's eyes open. I don't move.
Then she appears.
Ivy stands in the doorway wearing nothing but a thin silk nightgown that stops mid-thigh. The fabric clings to her in a way that makes my jaw tighten, pale green like the dress she wore at the wedding, and it's so damn thin I can see the outline of her body underneath.
Her hair's down now, falling over her shoulders in dark waves. Her feet are bare. Her hands are at her sides but her fingers keep curling and uncurling like she's fighting the urge to cross her arms.
She's nervous. But her chin's up.
She made her choice.
I stand slowly. Her eyes track the movement, widen slightly when I take a step toward her. I don't close the distance all the way. Not yet.
"Are you sure?"
Her throat works. She lifts her chin higher. "I changed my mind and I'm here. Don't make me regret my decision."
A smile pulls at my mouth. Can't help it. She's standing in my living room in a nightgown so thin it might as well not exist, and she's still trying to set terms.
"Never," I say.
Then I cross the room and kiss her.
She makes a sound—small, surprised—and then her mouth opens under mine and everything else goes quiet.
She tastes like toothpaste and something sweet, and the first touch of her tongue against mine sends heat straight to my cock.
I've wanted this for three months. Wanted her.
I've been patient. Controlled. The kiss is where control starts to slip.
Not all at once. Just the first crack.
I slide my hand into her hair, tilt her head back, and deepen the kiss. She's so much smaller than me that I have to bend down to reach her properly, and the height difference does something to me—makes me want to cage her in, pin her, keep her exactly where I can reach her.
Her hands land on my chest. Not pushing. Holding on.
I break the kiss long enough to look at her. Her lips are swollen, her breathing uneven, her eyes glassy and dark.
"You've never done this before," I say.
"No."
"Then I'll show you."
I lift her. She gasps, arms wrapping around my neck instinctively, and I carry her to the couch.
The leather's cool under her when I lay her down, and she blinks up at me with those green eyes and I have to take a second to just look at her. Dark hair fanned out. Nightgown rucked up around her thighs. Breathing hard.
Mine.
"Roman—"
"I've got you."
I kneel between her legs and slide my hands up her thighs, pushing the silk higher. She shivers. Her hands twist in the fabric beneath her.
"Relax," I tell her.
"I'm trying."
"Try harder."
That gets a breathless laugh out of her, and some of the tension in her body eases. Good. I want her loose. Want her open.
I hook my fingers under the waistband of her underwear and pull them down slowly. She lifts her hips to help, and the small motion makes something in my chest tighten. She's helping. She wants this.
I drop the underwear on the floor and spread her legs wider.
"Roman—"
"Look at me."