Taken By the Pack

3

RENEE’S POV

I might have to corrupt you even before our wedding day, the strange, echoey voice said, radiating through my brain, almost as if it was coming from within me rather than outside of me. It didn’t matter how much I looked around, all I could see was darkness. There wasn’t anyone with me. You won’t be able to refuse me soon. When you’re my wife, I can have you wherever and whenever I want. Even if I have to take you by force. Force, force, force. Even if I have to take you by force. Wherever and whenever I want.

It had been the same way for the last three days, ever since Diego said those horrible words to me. They had been circling through my brain, coming out mostly at night when I was trying to sleep, when I couldn’t push them away anymore. They were a nightmare, haunting me, and I couldn’t shake them off however hard I tried. I guess because I was absolutely terrified that was going to be my life once I said “I do” to Diego.

Would he really follow through on that? Would he actually force himself on me like he’d threatened? Or were they just words he was spouting off? I wanted to think it was just an idle threat, but there was something about the way Diego dragged me around in my own home and pressed me hard against the wall that had me really afraid he wouldn’t think twice about treating me like that all over again. I despised the idea of him having access to me to be able to do that every single day. It was horrible. I didn’t want to lose my virginity that way.

My tossing and turning got me so caught up in the bed sheets that eventually I snapped my eyes open and gave up on trying to sleep. I was sticky with sweat and panting breathlessly, like I’d been running a marathon rather than just trying to get some rest. Honestly, it was starting to get ridiculous. I was going to end up so tired that someone was going to have to drag me down the aisle because I would be too exhausted to walk. Not a good look. Not a great way for our families, or the businesses, to merge at all.

“What am I going to do?” I moaned as I pushed myself up in to a sitting position. I rested my hand on my forehead, trying to push the ache away. A headache wasn’t going to help me work out my next step.

On one hand, I had to believe my father had my best interests at heart. Even if this marriage was for his business, I knew he wouldn’t shove me into something traumatic and life ruining. I was his youngest child and only daughter, which meant something. He might not have always put my happiness first, or I would have been in art school already, but he did his best to do what he thought was right for me. He had to see something in Diego that I struggled to. Perhaps my instincts would turn out to be right, and it would eventually be revealed that the true Diego was kindhearted and sweet.

But of course, I was always going to be worried about that darkness within him. Now that I’d seen a glimpse of it, it was always going to trouble me.

I grabbed my cell phone off the night stand, wondering who I could talk to about this. If I was going to be truly honest with myself, there was no one. No close friends, not anymore. I’d drifted apart from the people who envied me in high school when I went off to college, and my college friends had busy lives all over the world now. I pushed a lot of them away when I was struggling with heartbreak, which wasn’t smart. The people I did associate with these days definitely didn’t quite run in the same circles as Diego Vanderbilt. He was permanently in the fast lane with many women and lots of drugs on offer. I wouldn’t ever be seen dead at that sort of party. It just wasn’t me. But then who could I turn to for advice when it came to my upcoming marriage? How was I ever going to get a glimpse of the real him?

I slid out of bed and padded across my bedroom to sit in my favorite spot in this entire building: my bedroom window seat. I didn’t love it for the view, although I had to admit New York City did look amazing all lit up at night. No, I loved it because it was a place where I would really be alone and gather my thoughts. If there was ever a time I needed to get my head together, it was right here, right now. If my head continued to spin like this, there was no telling what would happen to me.

“This is not the life I want.” I could admit that to myself in the middle of the night by my window. “This has never been the life that I want.”

I banged my head lightly against the window a couple of times as a distraction so I wouldn’t let the tears fall. If I started to cry, there was a chance I would never stop. Blotchy red eyes as I spoke my vows was just about as embarrassing as having to be dragged down the aisle because I was too tired. It was just so challenging not to imagine myself on that beach painting, or in Paris at art school, or anywhere but here. Anywhere else in the freaking world other than here, about to marry him.

Bleep, bleep.

It was almost a relief to hear my phone notifying me of a text message. Although not because I wanted to have anyone contact me at this time of night, but just because it was a distraction from the tears that were threatening to come. I sniffed and rubbed at my eyes before grabbing my phone to see who it was. If it was Diego, I was a little worried my head might explode.

It was Stark. A name that made me feel all squishy and weird inside. All of the guys made me feel a little odd actually, and I didn’t really understand why. Well, for three of them anyway. The fourth… I didn’t want to think about Toby. Not right now.

I scrolled through the text message rapidly, noting who would be watching me on what days. Notably, Lucky was going to accompany me to the art show in five days. That was an important day for me, and it was good to know that I would have the stocky, muscular man with shoulder length dark hair, mysterious grey eyes, and earrings in both ears with me. Not that I was paranoid like my father, but I was happy to have someone with obvious power and strength on my side, looking out for me. I would much rather have one-on-one time with him than Toby again. Not that I was thinking about Toby.

God damn it, now I was thinking about Toby and the memories were flooding my brain. I couldn’t stop them no matter how hard I tried.

“We don’t want to let the past complicate things now,” he said to me once we were alone in the library after the initial “get to know you” meeting, during which time I didn’t really get to know anything about any of them. “This is my job, and I don’t want to mess it up.”

Of course I agreed. What else was I going to do? Although I had to admit I was a little surprised my father let him through the front door at all. He probably didn’t even remember my college heartbreak. It was just a blip on his radar, rather than a traumatic experience that had done nothing but plague him ever since. I didn’t want to make an unnecessary fuss anyway. Plus, it wasn’t a good idea for me to punish Toby for the past when it wasn’t him who broke my heart. It was his twin brother, Trey.

Even thinking Trey’s name reminded me of the hole in my heart that he left behind. I really was hurt by him, and embarrassed as well. Humiliated that I could be so tricked, so stupid. I was pretty sure everyone else in dorm knew about Trey’s affair. I was the only one who was blissfully unaware. Until I walked in on him with another girl, ruining all of my daydreams about him and our future, and forcing me to accept that my father’s doubts about us were right.

It was definitely going to be hard for me to be around Toby since he looked so much like Trey. He might not be anything like his brother personality wise, I didn’t know. But those red-brown eyes. They were going to haunt me while he was here. I was going to have to deal with the hole in my heart or it was going to split apart. Not a state I wanted to be in when I married Diego.

My love life was a disaster, and it wasn’t going to get any better. Maybe I was just one of those people who just wasn’t lucky in that department. I’d been given a privileged life because of my father’s money, so I couldn’t have it all. I couldn’t have happiness as well. I couldn’t have the sort of happily ever after fairy-tale romance that I read about in books. I had to be okay with what I did and didn’t have.

I couldn’t think about romance anymore. I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, and I sure as hell couldn’t sit here thinking about Trey and Diego, making myself even more depressed. I needed to work these emotions out somehow, and truth be told, I only knew one way to stop them from overwhelming me. Sure, Dad had told me not to paint for a while now so I could focus on the wedding, but if I didn’t, I was going to lose my mind. I figured it better to paint in the middle of the night when no one was here to catch me, than let my mind continue to wander in this negative direction. It even made me feel better just to slide off my seat and walk over to my closet to find my art supplies. My canvases, my paints, my brushes…oh, I loved my brushes. There was something so calming about holding one. It was probably the only time in life when I truly felt like myself. Like I was an open and well-rounded person with no painful judgements weighing me down and no one needing me to be anything other than what I was.

I wished I could have music playing in the background. I always felt like I painted better with music on, but I didn’t want to risk waking anyone else up, so I painted in silence. I tried whatever I could to really express myself and get my emotions out on the canvas, but somehow it wasn’t quite happening. It didn’t feel right. Something was seriously missing. What the hell was missing?

All of a sudden, I was hit by a stroke of genius. Something I’d read about in an artist’s magazine recently. A technique to encourage creativity and honesty on the canvas. It wasn’t something I would normally be very comfortable with, but this wasn’t exactly a normal situation. I was alone, in my bedroom, so painting naked wasn’t something anyone else would ever know about. And I was intrigued to see if it would work, I couldn’t deny that. This seemed like the absolute perfect time to try it as well, because if I wasn’t mistaken, the sun was just about to start creeping up, bursting into the sky for a brand new day. It had been a long time since I had been lucky enough to paint a sunrise, and there was something I loved about it. It might be the perfect way for me to work through everything surging through my body.

Even though I was alone, I was oddly nervous as I undressed, just because it was a little weird, but there was also something that already felt liberating about it. The breeze rushed over my skin as I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. Yeah, this was good, this was going to help me a lot. As I stepped up to the canvas, I could already feel the inspiration surging through me. With the combination of this new primal version of myself and the beautiful sunrise, I was ready to go.

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