Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 79938 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79938 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Meg stared. “What are you doing?”
Galen disappeared through the doorway, but his shadow darkened the wall just out of sight. Theo turned to face her. “You know what lies on the other side of punishment. If that’s something you want, we’ll be in the last bedroom at the end of the hallway.” He paused, blue eyes stripping her bare, laying all her sins on the table between them. Theo shrugged. “If that’s not something you want, then this ends here.”
“Ends?” She swallowed past her suddenly dry throat. Surely, he wasn’t saying what she thought he was saying.
“We’ll keep you safe, Meg. The money stays where it’s at, no strings attached. This?” He motioned to encompass both of them and Galen. “This is a separate thing. If you want it—us—then you have to make that call. No coercion. No seducing you out of your senses. You come into this with eyes wide open.”
“Theo…” She didn’t know what to say. It had been so easy before, when she didn’t know the extent of who he and Galen were, and later when she was so furious she told herself it didn’t matter anyways. Choosing this now meant something, and she couldn’t lie to herself and say it didn’t. “What if I change my mind?”
He didn’t look away. “Then you change your mind. I’m not demanding you sign a lifetime contract, princess. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. My life isn’t my own.”
It belonged to Thalania.
That right there should be enough to warn her off. She couldn’t have Theo in any permanent way, and Meg knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she couldn’t have Galen without Theo. He offered her something temporary, and if she couldn’t accept that, then she had no business going up to that room.
“Think about it. Be sure.” He turned without another word and walked away, Galen falling in half a step behind him.
Meg should clean the wine glasses and go up to the room where they’d left her bags. Not the one at the end of the hallway, though she remembered that room well enough from their quick rush to clear the house. The obvious master bedroom in a mansion full of suites, the walk-in closet bigger than her entire apartment back home, the massive jacuzzi tub and even larger tiled shower with no fewer than five shower heads.
And the bed.
That bed was large enough to fit five people, situated on a massive wrought iron frame, each corner spiraling up as if attempting to kiss the arched ceiling. That bed was made for fucking.
There is the punishment to consider…
The warning lacked any weight, though. Meg drank her wine slowly, letting the truth settle over her. There had never been any decision to be made. Her destination was decided the second she chose to come with Theo and Galen. Facing that, acknowledging that, burned. If she had nothing else, she had her pride, and her pride demanded she ignore Theo’s offer and go to bed alone. Better to lay there and imagine all the dirty things they could be doing than submit to a punishment like she was a naughty child.
But was it really better?
No.
Last spring, she’d thought she’d only have one night with Galen and Theo and so she’d soaked up every minute with them, a starving woman at a feast she’d never be able to consume in a lifetime. This truth they chased—the one both were so sure would set Theo back on the throne—might have a conclusion in a day, a week, a month. Or it might stretch out for the next nine months as the clock ticked down to Edward Fitzcharles’s coronation.
Either way, was she really prepared to deprive them all of something they wanted for the sake of her pride?
Meg finished her wine. She washed all three of their glasses and set them in the drying rack. She walked upstairs and into her room and took the quickest shower of her life, not even pausing to enjoy the mosaic art tiled into the shower walls. After the briefest of considerations, she pulled on a short silk robe hanging on the back of the door. She might be doing this, but she wasn’t willing to show up naked as an offering.
Taking a deep breath, she padded down the hallway to the door Theo had indicated. She raised her hand to knock and then reconsidered. Meg twisted the handle and walked in.
Galen sat propped against the headboard, a tablet in his hand, wearing nothing but a pair of faded jeans. She spent a precious second visually tracing the scars that crisscrossed his chest. He glanced up and went still. “Theo.” Theo stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. He didn’t say anything, both of them seemed to be waiting for something.