Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN | TARYN
The sweltering steam hangs heavy, coating my already-dripping skin. I draw the hot air into my lungs, letting the warmth cascade down my throat and soothe my exhausted mind.
The last few days have dragged on. I’m one second away from crashing onto Brennan’s fluffy memory foam bath mat and drifting to sleep right here since it’s nearly one a.m.
One moment, I woke up trapped in the tower, and the next, I was running around with Jess, learning to care for the two children I’m nannying for.
Forced to nanny. But even when I say forced, my tongue is shit at convincing my brain that’s reality.
After learning about what happened five years ago, I feel for Elena and Tristan.
My heart aches for all of them.
It doesn’t make it right to abduct someone, not even a little bit. But they are close, and I’ve never had to ponder the extreme lengths I’d go to for my family because I don’t have what they have. It’s not something I can relate to.
In a way, it’s surviving—watching out for themselves when the two people who were supposed to be there for them aren’t.
Each day I’ve been here feels less and less like I’m trapped against my will.
I have money flooding into my bank account, a beautiful room, a massive house, a stocked fridge, and a pantry I don’t have to pay for.
My dog may not be allowed inside the house, but he’s here and has already settled into the enormous yard.
If I drag him somewhere else or back to that piece of junk I rented after this, I’m sure I’ll get those big, brown, pouty eyes from him that make me reevaluate my choices.
It’s a nannying gig that someone would be idiotic to turn down if they came across it on a typical job-searching site.
But sometimes, the feeling of being confined floods my veins.
I’ve always had the free will to go anywhere.
I’ve never been restrained. And although they aren’t locking me in the room anymore, this property is starting to close in on me.
Jess wasn’t wrong when she said the guys have a full schedule running the company and tending to the orchard. I’ve barely seen them besides at dinner, breakfast, and occasionally when they return to the house for lunch.
Jess and I keep the kids busy enough, and after spending more time with her, I genuinely enjoy her company.
She’s sweet and has a personality I would’ve loved in a sister if my parents had ever decided to have another child.
When we are sitting at the table coloring with Elena while Tristan joins us on his tablet or Switch, it almost feels like we are sisters in a way. Our hair color is similar enough.
“Shit,” I mutter, my eyes darting desperately around Brennan’s matte black bathroom for my clothes.
My skin was itching to shower so badly that it didn’t even cross my mind to grab a pair to change into.
The massive walk-in shower with tan tiles and gold accents is relaxing.
It’s one of the reasons I don’t mind taking an hour-long shower.
I sit on the floor with my arms wrapped around my knees while the water cascades over my head, drifts down my neck, and the ridge of my back like a boulder under a waterfall.
Wrapping the towel tight around my breasts, I tuck it in, gritting my teeth. I have to enter Brennan’s room practically naked.
Please be out of the room.
Gripping the door handle, I repeat the silent prayer in my head, eagerly hoping that he needed to leave the room for a glass of water or to smoke since he’s restricted from doing it in the house.
I exit the bathroom and am hit with a wave of dry, chill air that peppers my damp skin with gooseflesh.
At least, I think it’s the air. Or it could be that I’m wrong. So. Unbelievably. Wrong.
Brennan lounges into his fluffy pillows propped against his headboard.
His bed is impeccable, and so is his muscular frame in only a pair of dark gray joggers hanging low on his hips and a book in his hand.
His pattern tattoos dance across his skin, down his chest, and onto his stomach.
He flips a page, the tendons in his arm rippling below his skin.
Like the bathroom, this room is nearly completely black, with a tan area rug under his king-size bed and a charcoal duvet. Each time I breathe his scent of leather, orange spice, and a hint of smoke, it drips down my throat, covering me from head to toe in tingles.
The light from the lamp flickers across his tan skin. His lack of a farmer’s tan makes me think he works outside without his shirt on. God, what he must look like—
“Are you going to come get in bed with me?” His raspy voice startles me, but his focus stays hooked on the book in his hand.
“Um— What?” I stutter.
He flips the page carelessly. “You’ve been staring at me for over a minute, and you’re standing in a towel. So, if you’re not going to drop it for me and crawl onto my lap, then I suggest you move on before I make a move.”
My stomach leaps.
Not knowing what else to do to fill the sexual tension, I point upward, knowing my room is above his. Sometimes, I hear his headboard tapping against the wall, and muted sounds come from this room around two or three in the morning.
“I…forgot my clothes in my room.” I fold my arms over my breasts, nervous that his gaze has magic abilities and may somehow whip the towel off my body. “Don’t you get enough action in here already? You seem to do quite well at luring your victims here.”
Something the Lindenvale boys have in common.
Other people may not come in and out of this property besides workers, but they have no issues tempting women into their beds.
No wonder both Cameron and Brennan have their own floors.
Sadly, the floor and walls of the attic are thin.
Unfortunately, even though Jess told me all the other rooms are soundproof, I can still hear…
certain activities that take place in his.
He lowers the book to his lap and cocks his head, evaluating me. “Victim,” he corrects.
My eyes roll. “Well, whoever she is, you two are loud.” I may not catch voices, but I sure as hell can hear the furniture he’s trying to pound into the wall along with whoever is in there with him.
“He.”
My eyes lift to the ceiling in thought. Hmmm.
“Whoever he is,” he repeats. “You know him,” he mentions casually.
I barely know anyone in Cedar Creek besides them, Alaric, who frustratingly turned out to be Colten, the old woman I met on my walk, Crock, and…
My eyes flit to his, and he grins maliciously. “Xavier?” I exhale. “You and him? But you…Uh—”
“Fucked your throat and came all over those gorgeous tits?” His compliment drips down my spine like honey.
I clear my throat. “Yeah.”
“Xavier and I are bisexual.” He places the book on the nightstand, kicking his legs over the bed to stand while I mull it over.
Xavier is the one who drugged me, but now it’s clicking together. What a perfect little scheme they had at the bar.
Assholes.
Brennan approaches me, his smoky and spiced scent hitting me like a wall. The impact hits my knees, releasing a flurry of tingles.
“Tell me, Taryn.” He circles me, pressing his bare chest into my back, his rough fingertips gliding delicately across my collarbone.
The heat from his chest collides with my shoulders.
A pang of shock surges through my body when his breath hits the curve of my neck.
His lips hover over my flushed skin. “Have you ever been with two men before?” His words pour through my ears like venom, petrifying me in place.
Acting thoughtlessly, my neck slopes further, my body craving his lips on my skin. His question hangs like a thick haze, and I shake my head. I still haven’t even been with one man, but the thought of two simultaneously sounds…
Thrilling and terrifying.
Since that night in the orchard, I have had all this sexual tension and curiosity pulling at each ligament in my body.
Brennan and Cameron are the ones who caused it, and now whenever I see them, my bitch of a brain tells me I want more.
That it’s okay to feel this way despite being abducted and held against my will.
It’s messed up, but I’ve never been so turned on.
“We would go slow with you.” His lips barely stroke my neck, and my eyes flutter closed.
Oh, shit. “Ease your body into it. Ease you into fitting both of us.” I swallow.
His fingers travel across my shoulder to the top of my spine.
They dip below the towel, his touch spreading like wildfire as if he could disintegrate the towel still wrapped tightly around me. “We don’t mind sharing,” he whispers.
“You and Xavier?” I murmur, processing his comment.
“Xavier and I. Cameron and I…occasionally.” My legs wobble, and he grips my shoulders to steady me. His dark chuckle is a beautifully haunting sound. “Xavier and I have been looking for someone to be our third for a long time.”
“Why don’t you just force me into it like last time? You seem to take what you want anyway.”
His fingers thread through my hair, the wet strands brushing against my back. “That was your punishment. We won’t take it further than that unless you ask us to.”
Unless I ask them to.
It’s not going to happen, though I’ve fantasized about it more than I like to admit.
He removes his hand from gripping my hair and walks back to the bed, plopping on his mattress. He picks up his book and opens it to the page he was on, refusing to meet my eyes. “Go to bed, Taryn.”
I stand there speechless and, embarrassingly enough, aroused. Turning around, I walk out of his room and open the door to my tower, my feet feeling heavier with each step I ascend.