Page 221 of Caelum

When we approached the bed, I knew the sheets had been changed, because if I’d been sleeping in them for as long as he said I had, then they’d stink, but they didn’t. These smelled like fresh sea air, and they enticed my senses as much as the man lying on the bed with his feet crossed at the ankles.

Samuel staggered to a halt as he stared at his brother. “What are you doing here?”

“Eren said her Hell Hound was out to party.” Reed shot me a narrow-eyed glance that made me burn even brighter as the animal inside him responded to the one inside me.

Goodness, I felt like I was being torn in so many ways. Reed was Chosen but not Claimed, and Samuel was neither. But how could I do both at the same time?

Was that even possible?

What I’d done with Frazer had felt so right, so pure and beautiful, but with Samuel and Reed both in need…

Samuel settled me on the bed with a care he hadn’t shown back in the bathroom when he’d carried me in a fireman’s lift out into this room. I twisted to face the male sitting on the bed, then turned and watched as Samuel began to strip off his sopping wet clothes.

Neither looked ill at ease at the prospect of Samuel suddenly wearing no clothes in front of another man, and even though arousal unfurled inside me, the need to Choose and Claim burning hotly in my veins, discomfort and embarrassment began to creep in.

Doubt too.

“H-How…?”

Reed cocked a brow at me. “Do you trust us to keep you safe when we get off this yacht?”

The question astonished me. “Of course.” And I did. There wasn’t a second’s hesitation in my answer, and I sensed both men’s innate satisfaction with that.

“Well then, trust us here too,” he said, his tone as simple as the words, and though they put me at ease, there was more to this than just trust.

I blinked at him, and I wasn’t sure where it came from, wasn’t sure because I’d never have thought the question was even remotely possible, since people didn’tdothings like this, did they? “Have you done something like this before?”

Reed and Samuel shot each other a look I knew meant the answer was yes. They’d been together,naked, and with another woman.

The Eve that was rational and slightly innocent was faintly perplexed and, I had to admit, curious. I’d had sex now. Outside the bonds of marriage, but within the confines of a union that, to my mind, was even more holy than that of marriage. How couldn’t it be? Someone, somewhere, had deigned to put me with Frazer, as well as the other men. Not just for the safekeeping of my body, but my heart too.

But there was a different Eve at play in this moment.

An Eve who had been stirred when Samuel had urged me to awaken in the shower. The eighth soul, the one Eren had called djinn, was in control, but the Hell Hound was awake and raging at the confines of my being.

That particular beast?

She did not appreciate the knowledge that she was not the first to be in such an intimate environment with Reed and Samuel at the same time.

My hands curled into fists, and I stared at first Reed, and then Samuel until the latter hissed. He strode over to me, grabbed my hand, and hissed again at the sight of the blood on my palms—my nails had dug through the flesh and I hadn’t even noticed. He raised my arm, sniffed at my blood,then his tongue flickered out. The pair of us shuddered the second he touched me, and I clenched my eyes closed as the Hell Hound’s outrage began to simmer down.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to maintain this rage or allow them to do to me what they’d done to someone else.

Was nothing sacred?

The thought had my eyes fluttering open, and I grated out, “You’ll touch no other female.”

“We wouldn’t want to,” Reed stated immediately. “We’re your Chosen.”

“Speak for yourself,” Samuel retorted, though his hand still clasped mine. They were the wrong words to utter.

In the blink of an eye, I surged upward and shoved him away from me. He fell back, straight down onto the rug beside the bed with a startled ‘oomph.’ The second he was flat on his back, I was on him, with my legs straddling his nakedness, my bare body atop his, and my hands at his shoulders as I pinned him down. My strength came from the creature that spewed these toxic emotions deep inside me. The blood from my palms stained his flesh, painting him in it, and the ruby red smears were a delicious counterpart to his skin. He was more tanned than me, but still pale too.

As I stared down at him, my Hell Hound bristled with outrage but also, desire. He was beautiful. If a man could be that. His hair was dark and thick but shorn close to his head on the sides. The top was longer, scruffier, and against his paler skin, he looked all the darker and more delicious for it. His jaw was solid, his cheekbones high. His top lip was ragged thanks to a scar that skewed the Cupid’s bow, but I wanted to trace that scar with my tongue so badly that I felt my body clench with the need I was barely withholding. His eyes glittered up at me like shining onyx, and his nose, with two kinks in it from several breaks, wasn’t as patrician as say Stefan’s or Frazer’s, but it didn’t detract from his attractiveness.

Samuel looked like a fighter. A nasty scrapper that would fight dirty to win.

The thought shouldn’t have inspired anything other than disgust in me, but if anything, I shuddered with want.

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