Page 19 of Dukes of Peril

But no, I fucked that up, too.

I punch in the code for the security system and walk in the foyer. The house is quiet. Remy is hopefully still asleep. I feel like we’ll have a few hours before we get the signal from Maddox.Ifwe get it. Fuck knows what we do if he can’t get Lionel to cooperate. There’s no way he’d negotiate with one of us.

I slide the keys into my pocket and walk into the kitchen, heading to the cabinet for a glass. A rustle across the room draws my attention. I peer around the corner and catch a covert peek at Lavinia and my brother on the couch. She has her elbow propped on the arm, eyes fixed on an open book, while he lounges beside her, shirtless and in his boxers, scrolling on his phone.

I can’t help but notice his hand on her thigh.

The hem of Nick’s oversized T-shirt is stretched out over her knee. From where I stand, I can see the white of her panties underneath. Seeing them like this, calm and casual with one another, is a shock to the system. Lavinia and Nick, who just weeks ago couldn’t even be in the same room.

Nick’s hand glides up and down her leg, pushing at the hem with every pass. Lavinia ignores him, focused on her book. I’m frozen, watching the two of them, trying to figure out how they went from wanting to murder one another to this? How do you get to this?

Do I need to decapitate someone? Hound her relentlessly?

Fuck, maybe Remy was right.

Maybe Nick has the answers.

Nick’s hand vanishes under her shirt, and she shifts, thigh dropping. My instinct is to leave, put myself out of my misery, but I stay, watching the two of them, trying to untangle this mystery.

She didn’t say no, back when I asked if she was still my girl, but she also didn’t say yes.

Nick leans in, kissing her neck, fingers vanishing between her legs. Lavinia continues to ignore him, but I see the flush on her cheeks, the way she doesn’t fight back, the subtle rise and fall of her chest. I know her well enough now to understand that reading is an escape for her, something she uses to fade away into another world, life, thought. But right now, it’s not working.

Her eyes aren’t even tracking across the page.

She’s not even trying.

And Nick is in full pursuit, sucking the lobe of her ear, dragging his teeth down her jaw. He pulls his hand out from beneath her shirt, fingers slick, and slowly slides them between his lips, sucking the taste of her off. The action works, and she looks up for the first time. I wait for her to recoil, to be grossed out, but she tilts her head to the side, hair falling over her shoulder, and kisses him.

My cock, already pressing at the seam of my jeans, threatens to rip through.

This… this is what I don’t understand. What women want, what turns them on? Why didn’t that piss her off? Why does it work for him now, but not before? I’ve watched Remy eat her out. Hell,I’veeaten her out. I’ve watched this woman manipulate the three of us into a hand job competition. And I’ve taken it too far, used her trust and broken it.

But I just don’t get her.

With her tongue in his mouth, Nick reaches out and deftly closes the book. He tosses it aside with one hand while dragging her into his lap with the other. He looks up at her, eyes clear, mouth red, and he’s excited in every sense of the word, tongue poking into the corner of his self-satisfied smirk. She lifts her shirt over her head, giving me a full view of her slim back, the skin pale from so many years in captivity, but she’s more sturdy now from our weeks of training.

His hands cup her tits, kneading them together. The arch of her back gives my brother all the access he needs to drop his face between her tits. He mouths them like a man deprived, hungry and desperate.

I wince, the pain in my pants is so intense that I know I need to be careful. I’m better at controlling myself now—she helped me with that—but I’ve still got a hair-trigger, and apparently watching my brother fuck my girl–twice now–is what will set it off.

Nick’s hands splay across her back, and she lifts up on her knees, bracing herself with a hand on his shoulder. The two of them fumble with their clothes, panting loud enough that even across the expanse of the room, I can hear the little hitches of her inhales, the gruffness of his exhales. But even as he pulls out his cock, my brother’s movements are sure, confident. I mean, I see the urgency in his eyes, the tension in his neck. He’s holding back, letting her set the pace. I guess he knows his Little Bird and how fucking easy it’ll be to scare her off.

But she’s not scared. Not when he yanks the crotch of her panties aside, or when he threads his fingers in her hair, dragging her mouth to his so that he’s kissing her right when she takes him in. There’s not a trace of visible worry or tension while she rides him. Nick is domineering, he always is, but this is different.

Why is it so different?

There’s the size obviously. But there’s other stuff. Patience. Communication. She falls open for him like a flower, not wound up so tightly that she could shatter.

And he talks to her.

I can’t hear all the words. Most are mumbled right into her mouth or muffled against her skin. But I do catch some. The low inflection of a drawn out, “Fuck,” the hissed rise of, “... tight,” the rumbled, “Ride me so good,” and eventually a string of expletives that indicate he’s about to come.

I look away before that happens, a crushing wave of jealousy rolling over me, and if it was just that one emotion, I could handle it. But add it to the ache in my balls and the guilt I have for hurting her, and it’s just…

It’s too goddamn much.

I don’t see them, but I hear it when they come, her first, my brother second, the room filled with nothing but their strained fricatives and panting breaths. I stand there for too long, hands clenched into fists, emotion welling in my chest. I hear them clean up, speaking softly, and a few minutes later my brother leaves the room.

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