Page 62 of Trouble

“Yeah,” I yawned—and then frowned when I remembered the still-wet sleeping bag that Liam had washed in the river this morning. It wouldn’t be dry for probably a few days. “But… what are we going to do about the sleeping bag? Did you bring anyblankets?”

He shrugged and got to his feet to stretch. “Nah, we’ll justshare.”

I blinked. “Share? All three of us? Inonesleepingbag?”

“Sure,” his twin said, a small smile lurking in the corner of his mouth at my obvious hesitation. “It’ll be nice andsnug.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but quickly shut it again. I was the reason we only had one sleeping bag right now, and what was the alternative? Someone sleep on the baretarp.

“You might want to ditch the T-shirt,” the first twin suggested as he got out of his own pants and shrugged his top over his head. “It’s gonna get warm betweenus.”

“Why doIhave to be in the middle?” I grumbled, but I was too exhausted to put up much of a fight. It wasn’t like they hadn’t both seen me topless before, anyway. Heck, I’d even let Louis hug me while we’d both been completely naked earlier because there’d been nothing sexual in it. He’d just offered me comfort, and I’d been grateful forit.

“Because you’re much nicer to hug than Louis,” Liam said with a teasing quirk of his eyebrow, confirming my suspicion of who waswho.

Louis snorted from the sleeping bag, where he’d already gotten comfortable. He opened the zipper and pulled back the top part, inviting mein.

I slid out of my pants and, hesitating for only a moment, pulled my T-shirt off as well. To both twins’ credit, I didn’t catch them staring like they had the first time I’d been bathing in theriver.

Louis wrapped his arms around me as soon as I was laying down, enveloping me in warmth. His arms brushed against the underside of my breasts, and despite how incredibly unsexy I felt, it still sent a small twinge of the non-crampy variety through my abdomen. Up until now, my conscious closeness with either man had been very limited, but there was something undeniably intimate in snuggling up like this. Knowing he was awake while our bodies were intertwined, without much fabric between us for modesty. Flashes of the many times I’d been naked with one of them before, in my flat when I’d had no hesitations over being intimate, helpfully sprung to the forefront of mymind.

It didn’t get any better when Liam slid into the sleeping bag and pressed his entire, gloriously hard body against myfront.

“Comfy?” he asked me with a wink when I flushed at being sandwiched between the identically sexy men I’d been so attracted to since first sight. Thankfully, my cramps kicked in before my body got too carried away, effectively quelling any and all desires for anything other thansleep.

Instead of answering, I nuzzled my face in against his collarbone and closed my eyes. It didn’t take long before I was fast asleep, wrapped up in strong arms and the comforting scent of burning wood, fresh air, andman.

* * *

It tooktwo days for the sleeping bag to dry, which meant two days of going to sleep and waking up completely entangled with both twins. They’d stopped arguing, even going so far to have small conversations now and then, but it was still obvious that there was some point of contention between them. The only place they seemed to shed it completely was when we were squeezed together at night. It was as if that time was sacred somehow, our one time of the day where we all pushed every stress and aggravation aside to just be. There was something about being embraced by them so intimately that helped calm both my cramping body and uneasy mind, and I found that for those hours, it was easy to forget how they’d tricked me and what they trulywere.

Once the other sleeping bag dried, I silently mourned the loss of our nighttime cuddling, but I needn’t have. Come evening, Louis moved the fresh sleeping bag across the tarp and opened the side up on both of them, allowing them both to hold me like they had for the past few days—just with a bit more breathing room. We didn’t talk about it, but deep down, I knew we all needed this smallsanctuary.

Days turned into weeks, and our lives in the mountain bothy became routine. The twins fished daily to stretch our supply of canned goods, but otherwise, there wasn’t much to do than wait for it to become Sunday. For one hour on Sunday night, one of the twins would turn on the old-fashioned phone they’d brought, and we would all wait in vain for it toring.

All that spare time gave me a lot of time to worry about what my parents were doing—if they’d declared me missing, if I’d been officially fired from my job yet… and what I’d do once everything got back to normal. If it ever would. For every day that passed, my resolve to not ask questions about what had brought us here withered away a little more. I might not have wanted to get involved with any mafia-related business, but the longer we were hiding out in the Welsh mountains, the more obvious it became that I was already in the deep end, whether I liked it ornot.

So on the third Sunday, after Liam came back from fishing further upriver, I finallycaved.

“We need to talk,” I told them as he walked into the stone hut we’d called home for three weeks now. It was a rainy day, so both Louis and I had stayed inside for most of it, tending the fire and watching the gray blanket of misery out the opendoorway.

“Sure. What about?” Liam threw the fish in the empty pot next to the fire and proceeded to strip down so he could towel off. He’d been soaked through while fishing, and his red hair was plastered to his forehead and making small rivulets of water splash down his face andback.

“Everything,” I said, doing my best not to look at his perfect arse as he stepped out of his jeans. When I finally forced myself to look away, I saw Louis looking at me with a knowing smirk, and flushed predictably. Thankfully, he didn’t call me out on myperving.

“Starting with why we’ve been hiding out from your dad, of all people, for the better part of a month. I want to knoweverything.”

“Are you sure?” Louis glanced at his twin before he looked back atme.

“Yeah, I’m sure. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that this isn’t just some nightmare that’ll go away if I just pretend like it’s not real for long enough. So I think I have to know—don’t you?” I sighed, steeling myself. “Please. I need to heareverything.”

“All right.” Liam, now with a towel wrapped around his waist, sat down on the tarp opposite me, a few feet from Louis. “Our father, William Steel, has ruled London’s underworld for years. Our brothers and us… we grew up in it. About three years ago, our brother Isaac went to jail for what we thought was a drug deal gone wrong. It was unusual, because our Family has a lot of pull. He wasn’t supposed to get locked up, but he did. For twenty-five years, no parole. Has refused visitors eversince.”

“Some time after that, our eldest brother Jeremy was sent to America to solidify business ties over there. Or so we were told. No one heard from him. Fast forward a bit, and Blaine and Marcus, our two remaining brothers, come across proof that our father’s behind it. He double-crossed Isaac to get him locked up, and… he killed Jeremy.” Louis shook his head, as if the memory of their father’s betrayal caused him physical pain. I couldn’t blamehim.

“We’ve been working with Blaine to try and find a way to get rid of our father once and for all,” Liam continued. “None of us are safe while he’s still around. But doing so isn’t exactly easy, especially because if he goes down while Isaac is still in jail, Isaac will rot his life away in there. The alliance with Perkinson was meant to give us the firepower we needed, but we still needed a way to saveIsaac.”

“And then the prick went and flipped on us,” Louis finished, disgust in his voice. “If we make it out of here alive, I’ll kill himmyself.”

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