Priceless (Forbidden Men 8)

Their complete nonchalance was pissing me the ever-loving-fuck off.

“Dammit.” I set my hands on my hips and looked up at the ceiling, wishing I could yell in a house where I didn’t have to worry about waking up any kids. “Will someone please tell me how the hell you all knew what Sarah would be wearing last night?”

“Because Zoey and I helped her pick out the outfit,” Caroline answered logically. “Duh.”

I spun to her, glaring. “You actually helped her? What the hell, Care?”

“Hold up,” Ten broke in, lifting his hands to stop us before he reached for his daughter and snagged her from Caroline’s lap. “Let me just grab my spawn here and get her out of firing range before you two really go at each other.”

As soon as Teagan was safely on his hip, Caroline shot to her feet, glaring back at me. “Yes! We helped her. You two are so destined for each other it’s not even funny. And we’re getting tired of waiting for you to figure it out already, so fine...we intervened.” My scowl made her shy back and more hesitantly add, “Just the tiniest bit.”

A vein in my temple throbbed and my jaw felt as if it might crack any second. “And Sarah just...went along with this?”

My sister’s grin was rueful. “Well...once Colton dragged it out of her that she wanted to get naughty with you, we kind of more like...shanghaied her. Sort of willing, but mostly without any consent. Honestly, by the way she left us yesterday, I didn’t think she’d go through with it.”

My mind raced. Sarah really hadn’t been acting as if she’d been expecting me to show up. She’d tried to get me to leave more than once. But she’d still been wearing the outfit they’d helped her pick out, except it’d been obvious she hadn’t wanted me to see it. Damn, I was so fucking confused.

“I still can’t believe you and she have seriously never had sex,” Noel murmured, still stuck on that issue.

“I told you,” I bit out. “We’re just friends.”

“And Caroline’s my best friend,” Ten said, placing a kiss on the top of Teagan’s head. “But I still fuck her every chance I get.”

Noel and I winced together. “Eww.”

But then Aspen entered the kitchen, carrying a still sleepy-eyed Beau, and Noel snagged her around the waist to draw her to his side. “But he’s right. This is my best friend, right here.” After pressing his mouth to the side of Aspen’s head, he sent me a telling look, arching his eyebrows.

I threw my hands in the air in defeat. “Well congratulations to you. I guess I’m just not as secure in my friendship as you two assholes are.”

Stalking from the kitchen, I started back for my room, deciding I’d just change into some clothes and eat out for lunch.

“Hey, where are you going?” Noel called after me.

“The gym,” I yelled back. Once I filled my empty stomach, I really needed to hit something.

SARAH

I owed my best friend the biggest apology ever.

I’d written him about twenty different texts throughout the day. Hadn’t sent any of them. I knew I needed to speak to him face-to-face, but I was scared.

He’d warned me, over and over, that we couldn’t sleep together, but I’d refused to listen. And I wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to him last night, but I knew it had hurt him.

Hurting him had never been my intention. But in my defense, I hadn’t even known it would be possible.

I still couldn’t believe Brandt had a secret, something he’d never told me, something that haunted him.

That stung. I thought I knew everything, every deep, dark corner of his being. But then I realized the only part of him he’d ever kept from me was his sex life, and this obviously had something to do with that, so...I guess it made sense.

Still. I couldn’t figure out what his secret was. He’d flipped out when he’d gagged me, so the only idea I came up with was he’d choked some poor girl to death with his dick and had to hide the body, and...yeah, that was beyond far-fetched, even for me to believe, so...I was back to being confused.

But still sorry.

I was definitely going to apologize. And bake cookies, which I did first, as a form of apology-procrastination, because I was afraid he wouldn’t forgive me no matter how I apologized.

With a plate full of still-warm chocolate chip drops in the passenger seat, I pulled my SUV to a stop in front of his house late in the afternoon.

He hadn’t called all day, which I was kind of worried about. And he may have asked me for some space, but dang it, I needed to ease his mind and let him know I was done trying to seduce him. His friendship was too important to me to lose him over this. If he could forgive me for pushing him to his limit, I would immediately desist any and all attempts to get kinky.