Page 17 of The Devil's Pair

“I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t tempted, despite what he – what happened to me. I mean – I’m very,verytempted. You two are unbelievably sexy, and I’m curious what it would be like, and I suspect that you guys are great at what you do. But…” She stopped, turned her now-empty glass around and around in her trembling hands. “But I don’t think I can handle sex. Not yet. Not so soon.”

“Babe,” Dux said quietly. “You’d be totally safe with us. We’d go slow and we’d stop the second you said the word.”

“I know all of that,” she said, realizing even as the words came out of her mouth, that shedidactually know. “You guys aren’t the problem here, at all. I am.”

“Well,” Drake said, and now his teasing tone was back. “That isverydisappointing – mostly for you, of course, ‘cause we aredynamite, darlin’ – but of course we understand.”

“Yeah?” she said, now torn between aching desire in her pussy and crashing regret in her chest. “You’re not – not mad?”

“Mad?” Drake said. “No way, no how. If the lady doesn’t consent, then nothing is going to happen, and that’s just the way it is.”

“And do many ladies refuse to consent?” Briley asked, already sure that the answer was ‘no way, no how’. “You guys get turned down a lot?”

“Aw, babe, we don’t kiss and tell. Ornotkiss and tell.” Dux grinned at her, those eyes just holding her whole, and the regret went deeper still; she could now feel it all the way in her stomach. “If you change your mind, you just say the word… we’d be happy to introduce you to a whole new world. But we won’t bring it up to you again, not ever.”

“Ah. Well.” She scrambled to her feet now, desperate to be back in her room and alone, so she could go over every syllable of this astonishing conversation in befuddled privacy. She was already wondering for how long she was going to kick herself and second-guess her decision to say no to this surely-mind-blowing experience. Probably years, if she was being brutally honest. “So… thanks for the drink. We need to be on the road by eight at the latest, so I’ll see you at the van by quarter-to?”

“You sure will,” they said in unison. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she managed, then fled their gorgeous, breath-stealing presence with a few shreds of dignity, and manymanyshreds of confusion. Like, enough shreds to make a full-length winter coat, complete with a scarf dragging behind her a good eight feet.

When she got back to her room, she had a shower and then stared at herself in the foggy mirror for a while, asking if she’d just made a huge mistake. Then she reminded herself that just the day before, she’d been saying that she’d never be able to be vulnerable with a man ever again… and if she couldn’t be that way withoneman, no way that she could be withtwomen.

Notevenmen as smart and understanding and sexy as the two just one room over, with a single wall separating her from those strong, muscular, tattooed bodies. Bodies that she’d stood between just yesterday, with one man pressed against her back and the other cradling her front.

And just like that, there she was again, weeping in Drake and Dux’s arms, feeling safe and cherished. Shefeltthem against her even now, felt their breaths and heartbeats and muscles all around her; sheheardtheir voices murmuring that they had her and it was all over, heard her own sobs as she started to let go of the ugliness of Gideon.

She remembered so keenly that feeling like her world had tilted off its axis, but that she was held steady by their calm strength. They’dneverlet her fall or spin off into they dark, they’d hold her tight and close.

And they’d undoubtedly see to her pleasure before their own, and they’d see to it many, many times. Briley suspected that she wouldn’t just see stars with them – she’d see entire solar systems.

Argh. Stop it. You said no.

“Yeah, you did,” she told the woman in the mirror. “You fucking idiot.”

With that, she snapped off the bathroom light and got into bed, determined to not think forone more secondabout those stolen, secret few moments in the corner of the restaurant. Sheresolved to forget how fragile and protected she’d felt between them, large hands in her hair and on her face, so gentle and careful. She swore that she’d develop amnesia about what it had felt like to be able to let go, and be vulnerable, and borrow the strength that had been so freely, so generously, given to her by those two amazing, drop-dead-sexy men.

She screwed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth, and willed sleep to come.

Of course it did, eventually. But it took a long time.

And before it finally did – before she was able to tumble down into a vivid dream world of rapid breaths and heartbeats, of wild cries and begging need – she realized that shewasn’tgoing to be able to forget any of it.

Not ever.

Her last thought before she dropped off was that she didn’t know if she was happy about that or not.

Chapter Four

The New Blue Dragon Ink

Denver, Colarado

“So.” Zoe Parish leaned back, switched the tattoo gun to her left hand, flexed her right hand and fingers, grabbed her water bottle. “You need a break, Elle?”

“Yes, please,” Elle said. “Maybe some more water?”

“I’ll get it, baby.” Liam ‘Viking’ Callahan got to his feet and dropped a tiny kiss on Elle’s dark head. “You just relax and take a breath, huh?”

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