The Beast (Wicked Villains 4)

Gaeton shoves to his feet. With me still on my knees, the difference in our sizes is so pronounced, I might as well be kneeling at the base of a mountain. He seems to realize the same thing and stops short as if he’s afraid he’ll trample me with one wrong step. “I didn’t agree to anything.”

“But you will.” Beast still hasn’t moved. “You want to know the answer as much as I do.” The answer on who I’d choose. I’d like to know that answer, too. If making a choice between these men was so easy, I would have done it years ago and saved us all the heartache.

Gaeton doesn’t deny it. “There has to be a better way.”

Beast shrugs. “We’ve participated in scenes together over the last year. Consider the next two weeks one long scene.”

They’ve participated in scenes together? The jealousy wrapped around my heart digs its thorns in deeper. It’s not even necessarily the fact that they fucked other people—or were intimate, since I know enough about kink to know that it doesn’t necessarily mean sex. It’s that they let others experience parts of themselves that they always held back from me. I got the sweet, vanilla sex. The making love. The term makes me cringe.

Gaeton looks down at me, his dark eyes stormy. “You aren’t doing this because you want us—either of us. You’re doing this because of your family. Out of loyalty.”

I open my mouth, but Beast beats me there. “No lies, Isabelle.” His growling voice turns my name into a threat and a promise.

I clasp my hands in my lap so neither of them will see me shake. “It doesn’t matter why I’m doing this.”

“It might not matter to him.” Gaeton shoves his hands into his pockets and glowers. “It sure as fuck matters to me.”

My throat tries to close. I wish I could go back in time and change things, but I tried to change things on my own and look where that left me. Alone. Free, but at what cost? I swallow hard. “I want you. I want both of you. That never changed, even if everything else did.” When he doesn’t move, I force myself to continue. “But yes, the reason for this timing is because of my sisters.” Gaeton looks away and I rush on. “The second you left, the Sea Witch started pressing our borders. I don’t know if we can hold without you.”

“Ursa won’t risk a full-on attack.”

I wish I had his confidence. I give a bitter laugh. “Not a month ago, she wouldn’t. My sister might have been my father’s right hand for a decade, but to everyone in Carver City, she’s untried. Muriel gives them pause, but the fact that Cordelia lost both of you so quickly after my father’s death?” There it is again, that horrible knowledge in the base of my chest. The loss that I don’t think I’ll ever recover from.

My father wasn’t a good man. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But he loved me and my sisters to distraction. He protected us and cherished us and was a good father in every way that counted.

“I miss him, too.” Gaeton reaches down and runs a gentle finger across my cheekbone. I’m horrified to see it come away wet. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. He turns back to Beast and sucks his finger into his mouth. A challenge, but the other man simply waits. Finally, Gaeton nods. “I accept. Two weeks. We exchange topping her. You don’t get to top me.”

Wait—what?

I’m still wrapping my head around the implications behind that statement when Beast answers. “Deal, though that’s open to negotiation on a case-by-case basis.” He turns his attention on me. “Condoms or no? Your choice, princess.”

This conversation makes my thoughts churn and dip. He’s moving too fast. “I’m on birth control.” I have been since I was sixteen and my oldest sister dragged me in to get the prescription. I swallow past a suddenly dry throat. “I’m, uh … I’ve been tested recently.”

“So have I.” Beast looks over. “Gaeton?”

The big man crosses his arms over his chest. “Me, too.” His dark brows lower. “You don’t have to agree to this, Isabelle. The rest, yes, but not this.”

I’m not agreeing to no condoms because I feel like I have to. I want to. And no matter how tangled the history between us, how much hurt we’ve heaped on each other over the length of our respective relationships, I trust these two men. I can’t help but trust them. “It’s what I want.”

“So be it.” Beast nods. “Pick a safe word, Isabelle.”

I blink. “Now?”

Beast gives a slow smile that feels more like a threat than an expression of joy. “Did you think we’d agree to the muzzles without a token of your sincerity? Prove you mean what you say tonight and we come back to the territory at the end of the two weeks.”