Page 110 of Entangled

He nods his head to the enormous oak—the one looming massively, painfully obvious just an inch from where I’d been walking. That suppressed little smirk twitches his lips again. “Tree.”

My cheeksburn.

“My eyes,” I say weakly.Eden, you’re officially an obvious, oblivious disaster. “Bad eyesight. Terrible.”

That smile becomes dry and too knowing.

“Sure, your eyes.” He leans in closer. Half an inch more and we’d be kissing. “Here’s some old Army advice—it helps if you watch where you’re going.”

Is he saying words? I’m sure there are words. Embarrassing ones. It’s just... his eyes are molten. My brain stalls as I shiver, melting a little, caught up in memories of riverbanks and bright, stinging spanks.

Dom cocks one brow at me. He releases my shirt and steps around me, continuing on like he didn’t just sexy grenade my brain.

Cringing, I hurry up beside him again. “Why are you walking with me, anyway? Don’t you need to plan?”

With Heather.

I look around for her and find her gritting her teeth as Aaron walks beside her, telling her something with a pompous wave of his hands. She catches my eye and shoots me a pained look. Then her gaze flicks to Dom, then back to me, and her brow lifts slightly.

Biting my lip, I look away.

“Plans are done. We deliberately tripped one of the motion cameras—Beau should have seen the notification.” He nods at Sloane as she walks past. “Besides, we’refriends.” He gives me a dry look under sinfully dark lashes. “Friends walk together.”

My cheeks heat. Just one friend casually walking into a tree while staring at another friend.

Bristling, I mutter, “Well you haven’t been terriblyfriendlysince our last conversation. I wasn’t sure we still were.”

Not that he’s been unfriendly. He’s just been... busy.

With Heather.

“I’m ready for a pillow fight when you are,” he says, utterly deadpan, and this time I’m the one who has to fight back a reluctant smile. Then he shrugs. “And you can blame your boyfriend for the rest. He throws you over his shoulder every time I get close.”

There’s more than a thread of irritation in his voice, and I examine him closer. “Is that why you sent him ahead to Bristlebrook this morning?”

“That would be an abuse of my authority,” Dom says mildly.

“And you wouldn’t do that, of course.”

“Send a soldier on ahead so I could spend time with his girl?”

I press a hand to my stomach and nod faintly.

“I wouldn’t do all that just for a friend,” he says, and his brow kicks up as he gives me a long look. My body reacts much too viscerally to the light flirting. Just as my cheeks start to heat, he seems to sober a bit. “Do you have a plan for that?”

At my questioning look, he shakes his head. “Jayk doesn’t play well with others. He knows the score with Beau?”

I stare at him, then stare at the ground, stepping over a gnarled, fallen branch as I collect my thoughts. Of all the things I was worried about having to confront while I was at Bristlebrook—Heather and Dom falling back in love, someone discovering I let our prisoners escape, Lucky leaving me for Jasper, Luckynotleaving me and always pining for more—Beau and Jaykob not being okay with us was not on my list.

“I told him. How I feel, I mean. About”—everyone—“about Beau. He knows.”

I did tell him, I know I did, though I was kind of bliss-drunk at the time. Did he agree? I can’t remember. He certainly didn’t argue.

But he has been terribly possessive the last few days...

“I’m not choosing,” I say defensively, Heather’s words from last night ringing in my ears. “They both want me, and I want them. We’ll figure it out. I can do this.”

“Sure, you’re nailing it.” Dom looks, too casually, over at Jasper, who is walking beside us, serious and silent as he has been since our argument last night. “Sharing is easy, don’t let me tell you different.”

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