Page 93 of Beloved Sacrifice

Rose sat back as Weston stopped the tape. The Walkman sat on the couch between them. Marek sat on the couch opposite, his brows beetled in a frown.

It wasn’t until Marek slipped to one knee in front of her, and Wes reached out and tentatively took her hand, his thumb rubbing over her knuckles, that Rose realized she was crying.

“There were children on the ship?” she asked in a choked voice.

“Treasure. The reason the Bluebird went after it was because they’d intercepted communications that said there was treasure.”

“My God.” The lump in her throat made it hard to swallow. Belatedly, she could feel the cold lines on her cheeks where tears made flesh wet, and the air pumping through the plane’s jets cooled the tracks of them.

Rose reached up and wiped her cheeks, doing it carefully to remove any eyeliner or mascara that had run down her face. To buy time, she’d insisted Tristan take her to several stores until she’d found the “perfect” makeup, telling him it was necessary because she had allergies. Putting on eyeliner made her feel much more in control of the world.

Marek held out his hand, offering it to her. She placed her fingers in his, so each hand was held.

“I can see that this information is hurting you.” Marek offered his other hand to Weston, who looked surprised—and was he blushing? Then Wes placed his hand in Marek’s. Rose stared at their joined hands, and a little thrill ran through her, as if by taking hands they’d completed the circuit, and now an electrical current was running through them.

As if they were three pieces of a single whole that, once together, sparked with life and power.

Rose started breathing deeper, and her body felt heavy. The feeling was both familiar and foreign. Arousal. She was aroused. But it felt bright and delicious, like a mouth full of Champagne. She was used to arousal feeling like a shot of Jaeger—hard and burning.

On reflex, her fingers tightened around theirs. Marek returned the squeeze. Weston hesitated.

“Rose?” Weston asked.

“I…I want this. I want you, both of you.” Stupid useless tears welled in her eyes. She normally never cried but in the last week, she’d cried more than she had in years. “But I can’t.”

“Why not?” Marek’s voice was calm and steady.

“Because I don’t know how to be with someone without BDSM.” Her voice cracked. “And I think if…if either one of you topped me…” How could she explain the anxiety that roiled through her like a bubbling cauldron? “I couldn’t take it.” She let out a hard, bitter laugh. “I could, of course, take it. Put a collar around my neck, tie my hands together, and I’ll do what you say, anything you order me to. And if either of you did that, I wouldn’t be able to…it would kill me.”

Rose shook her head. “No, that’s not the right way to put it. It wouldn’t kill me. It would snuff out the stupid little bit of hope inside me.”

“Hope?” Weston asked.

“Hope. Hope that maybe one day we…” She paused to take a breath. “I always hoped that Caden was right. That someday, he and Tabby and I would get out. We’d be free. And maybe, once we were free, Caden would change. And if he changed, maybe I would have been able to love him.

“If you use me, master me, the way he did, I would start to hate you, and it would kill that little bit of hope.”

“Then we won’t touch you that way,” Marek said softly.

Weston took his hand from hers. “I’m not going to touch you, Brown Eyes. I don’t ever want to hurt you. I’m sorry, so sorry, for the cuffs. I thought it would make you more comfortable.” He shifted away from her, turning so that his blind right side faced her. “I thought that Caden was giving you what you wanted. What you needed. I thought that I had fucked up all those years ago by not acting as your Dom.”

Rose laid the hand he’d held only moments ago against his shoulder. “We can’t change our past.”

“No, we can’t.”

Marek cleared his throat. “But we can make a new future.”

Rose didn’t miss the way he’d said “we.” What they weren’t acknowledging, or talking about, was the fact that they were behaving like a trinity.

Marek climbed to his feet, then went to the couch he’d been sitting on and fiddled with it.

Rose slid her hand down Weston’s arm, until her fingers lay on his wrist. It took a moment, but he turned his hand palm up, offering it to her. She slid her fingers over his, and that warm, bubbly feeling returned.

She must have made a sound, because Weston turned, looking at her. “Rose…”

There was a thunk and they both looked at Marek. He’d folded the couch out to form a bed. It was wider than a twin, but not as big as a double. He stepped back, then motioned for them to rise. They did, stepping toward the back of the plane, where there was four feet of clear space between the end of the couch-bed and the bathroom.

Marek pulled out the other couch. When he was done, there was a wall-to-wall bed.

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