The hand I wasn’t holding slipped up to cup my face. She wore heels and I wore boots that weren’t mine. But the heels gave her enough height that I didn’t have to bend and she didn’t have to stand on tiptoe. Our lips met carefully and softly, sweetly almost, and it was a surprise. I was using her to make my reluctant husband jealous and she’d leveraged my entire future to keep herself alive. Gentleness would have been the last thing I expected. And, truthfully, I didn’t think I wanted it. I wanted rough and wild and nearly violent. I wanted to use and be used.
I wanted power and control and for someone, one of us, any of us, to feel something. The gentleness reminded me that I was human. That she was human. That our bodies were fragile and the night had had terrible trauma.
I gasped, my lips opening against hers.
“Shhh,” she whispered like she knew exactly what I was thinking. She stepped closer, pulling my body against hers. Her hand against my cheek slid to my neck and held me there. Our kiss went from tentative—from a show I was putting on for my dispassionate husband—to something I needed. Connection in a world that had been turned upside down.
I dropped her hand and grabbed her hips, pulling her to me. Holding her tight and close. Kissing her with more passion than I thought I felt. But the hum that had settled between my legs had exploded in my body. And I wanted Eden. I wanted Ronan. I wanted everything. I broke the kiss and turned to look at him. Eden kissed her way down my neck, pulling open my flannel shirt one button at a time. My lips were swollen and my eyes were heavy.
She licked the top of my breast and I groaned, never looking away from his eyes.
I wore no bra, and when Eden opened my shirt enough, she pulled my nipple into her mouth. My head fell back and my eyes wanted to close but I didn’t let them. I watched him, watching us. The way his eyes went from cold and distant to fiery. To intense.
He shifted, uncrossing his legs and stretching them out wide, and I knew he was getting hard. Watching us. Eden’s hands cupped my breasts, her thumbs stroking my nipples.
“Ronan,” I breathed. Eden turned to face him and I couldn’t see us, but I could see his reaction to us. He was not unmoved. But he didn’t get up. He only watched. The disappointment I felt was so sharp. So keen it took me a second to get my breath.
I craved him. Needed him. The only way any of this made sense was if he was touching me. If he was wanting me like I wanted him. But he did not move. He did not say a word and I wondered, suddenly, if this was the only way left for me to have him. He wouldn’t touch me. But he would watch someone else do it.
“She’s beautiful,” Eden said.
“She is,” he said, his dark voice filling the cabin, and my knees went loose.
“So soft. Fragile.” Eden’s hands spanned my waist, her fingers edging towards the buttons of my pants.
“She’s tougher than she looks,” Ronan said, and it was as close to a compliment as I’d heard from him.
“She kisses like a virgin,” Eden said and I scowled.
“She practically is,” Ronan said. “She should be.”
“Should we pretend she is?” Eden asked, walking around my body, turning me to face him. She cupped my breasts, teased my nipples with feather-light touches that made me crazy. I whimpered in my throat. “A virgin on her wedding night, sacrificed to two terrible people who shouldn’t be touching her soft, sacred body?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t want to pretend that. I was done being sacred.
“Good. Virginity is overrated,” Eden said, like an expert. Her fingers on my nipples were suddenly rough.
“Fuck,” I breathed, resting my head against her shoulder, everything spinning in the best possible way.
“Tell me what she likes,” Eden asked him as she touched me. “Tell me how to touch her. Make it good for her. For her wedding night.”
Ronan was silent. And my body still hummed and I was strangely grateful to Eden for the way it seemed she had read my mind. The way she’d tried to pull him in because she knew that was what I needed. But he wasn’t playing along, which honestly, I should have known. My eyes closed, blocking him out, because this connection through Eden didn’t feel like enough. This connection felt like loss. “Over her jeans,” he said, his voice like gravel, and I gasped from the relief. “Touch her through her jeans. She likes it hard. A little rough.”
I kept my eyes closed as my heart pounded in my throat. Eden skipped the button and the zipper and instead she slid her fingers right along the seam, pushing them hard against me until I gasped. Until my knees really did buckle. “Wait,” I breathed, grabbing on to her wrist.