Page 18 of Seven Sons (Gypsy Brothers)

“What’s wrong with you?” Jase demands.

I hate storms. I fucking hate them with a passion. When I was a little girl, I used to go and hide under my bedcovers and wait for the fury of Mother Nature to pass.

Sometimes, when we were younger, Jase used to hide with me.

“Nothing,” I say. “I don’t like storms is all.”

Jase eyes me curiously, flicking his eyes up and down me. In that moment, I wonder if he is going to guess who I am eventually. He is clever and shrewd, and I am probably only a few careless remarks away from raising his suspicion.

“They make my hair frizz,” I add, trying to think of other reasons why people might hate storms. “I have to use my hair straightener, like, three times a day when it’s this humid.”

Jase looks at me like one might look at a cockroach squashed on the bottom of their shoe. I shrivel inside under the power of his ambivalence.

You used to love me once.

I can’t think of those things right now. Maybe not ever.

Dornan pulls me towards him and plants his hands firmly on my ass cheeks.

“Gonna miss you, baby girl,” he says, sucking hard at my neck so that I gasp. He’s a grown man giving me a fucking hickey. Marking me as his.

I pull his face to meet mine and kiss him deeply, an I want to fuck you kiss that he must feel all the way to the tips of his toes. He shudders slightly, pulling me towards him, and I feel his hardness against the itch of my fresh ink and tentatively covered scars.

“Do you have to leave?” I ask sweetly, after we break apart. “We only just started having fun.”

“Ugh!” Dornan groans. “You’re killing me, princess. I gotta run. The boys are waiting for me. I’ll see you in a day or two.”

I nod, trying to appear sad, and I yelp as he slaps my ass again.

“Watch her,” he says, stabbing Jase’s chest with his finger. “I’m out.”

He leaves without looking back, and I relax immediately.

“Happy that he’s gone?” Jase asks darkly.

I had forgotten that he was there for a moment. Christ. I really need to keep my wits about me.

“I’m hungry,” I explain. “All the man wants to do is fuck, and I haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday.”

He gives me a look so withering, it takes all of my will not to break down and tell him who I really am. I didn’t anticipate having to be in the same room as him, let alone be babysat by him. Being judged like a common whore by him.

Jase strides over to the open window that separates the kitchen from the dining room. “Hey, Carol, you there?” he asks, in a voice more like a teddy bear’s than the asshole tone he’s been using with me.

Before I can think, a woman pops her head around the corner of the kitchen doorway, smiling.

“Hey, Jase,” she says, ruffling his hair. I swallow hard and look for an escape that doesn’t exist.

“Sammi here missed breakfast. Do you think we could grab some cereal or something from the pantry?”

Carol wipes her hands on a dishrag and smiles, looking straight at me. I freeze like a deer in headlights.

She is only forty but looks closer to fifty, a life of excess and violence written in each deep line that draws out from underneath her huge green eyes. Her dark blonde hair sits atop her head in a messy French bun, peppered with fine slivers of grey.

“Hello, Sammi,” Carol says, extending her hand. “You must be new here. I can fix you anything – eggs? Toast?”

“Cereal is fine,” I squeak as I shake my mother’s hand.

Ten

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