Page 23 of Their Dark Rose

Falk’s bottle-green, violent gaze scared me. Yet the longer he aimed it at me, the more turned on I became. The fear did something to me. Something I wasn’t ready to explore.

He shook his head, taking his place at Mason’s other side. Silently, he crossed his lean arms over his bare chest.

Why couldn’t they be hard right now? Down there? Like the men in my books?

Why couldn’t they stop hating me and finally love me?

“Who was in here, Briar?” Mason insisted.

“Tell us,” Falk growled. “Or I swear to God—”

“No one.” Suddenly, I wanted to be left alone.

The men overwhelmed me. Their attention, that I’d been craving for years, didn’t feel right. When—if—the time came, they should care about me for me. They’d see Briar, not the neglected kid, not the young woman who screamed for them.

Me.

“Are you sure?” Finn’s smirk crawled up his lips. “All you have to do is say the word, and we’ll kill whoever hurt you.”

Disappointed I had to scream for my life to get their attention, I asked tiredly, “Just like that?”

“Take down a man or woman who hurt you?” Finn sucked on his lip ring. “Yeah, little rose. Just like that.”

“Briar Rose, you should know we’d kill anyone who touches you.” Falk scowled.

Or just kill me, I thought.

“Now, either tell us who it was or we’ll go back to fucking sleep already.”

Yeah, they didn’t care about me for me. About my feelings, or how I wished they would look at me without seeing my parents.

They were obligated to keep me safe, that was it.

“No one.” Keeping eye contact with them hurt, so I turned my gaze to the ceiling. “I had a nightmare.”

The only one who showed me a shred of emotion after that was Finn. He moved closer after his two brothers had left.

Without a word, he ruffled my hair and left.

CHAPTER SIX

My hope for privacy was quickly demolished.

By Falk, obviously. Soon after I started daydreaming, he stormed into my room.

When he took a seat at my desk, no hint of a smirk caressed his lips. No apology was given for his and his brothers’ behavior back in the kitchen.

Same as always, he felt no need to explain himself to me. To tell me why, a day before my birthday, he and his brothers had hard-ons when they looked at me. When they pressed themselves to my body.

Nothing like that had ever happened before. I mean, I’d seen Finn hard once, but it had nothing to do with me. He just got back from beating someone up. The man loved his violence.

Same way Falk loved clinging to his silence. It was either that, or bossing me around.

When he opened his laptop, it was somehow a combination of both. He looked me over the screen, disapproval marring his features.

After all, I was supposed to get out of bed. We had a class to start.

The man in the kitchen was long gone. Falk was being Falk again, and I was…me.

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