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)
Waiting for her.
This was her last chance to bolt.
She straightened her shoulders and met each of their gazes in turn. “I’m ready for my punishment.”
8
Meg couldn’t breathe. She was here. She was doing this. The implications stretched out before her, tangling over each other and leaving only a mess in their wake. Nothing good would come of this in the long term. But she’d been focused on the long term for so damn long. The next step, the end game, the path that would lead her out of the trap she’d been born into. That would help her realize the American Dream.
She almost laughed at the thought. If that dream existed anymore, it came attached with crippling student debt and a Xanax prescription to battle existential dread. None of that mattered, because it was hers and hers alone. It paved the way for her independence and her freedom, and for that she’d make sacrifices too innumerable to count.
None of that mattered in this moment. The future didn’t matter, either, because it didn’t exist for them. If Theo somehow reclaimed his birthright, he would be King of Thalania, and no matter what the stories said, kings didn’t marry poor girls from Michigan who wanted to be accountants.
Strangely enough, that realization freed her up to take the first step and then another, to close the door softly behind her. Both men stared at her as if weighing her declaration against the truth, so she waited. She’d made her choice. She came. She damn well wouldn’t repeat herself.
Theo moved first. He didn’t ask her if she was sure. He’d made the lines pretty damn clear before she ever walked into this room. He walked to circle her, trailing a single finger along the line of her shoulders, lifting her dark hair to sift his hands through it. “Very nice, princess.” He stopped behind her and pressed himself to her back. “Don’t you think she looks nice, Galen?”
Galen typed something on his tablet and set it aside. “She looks like trouble.”
“Because that’s exactly what she is.”
They talked about her as if she wasn’t even there. She hated it. She loved it. Meg licked her lips, unable to contain a shiver at the feeling of Theo’s breath ghosting down her neck. She heard his grin in his voice. “You know the rules, Meg.”
No point in pretending otherwise. “I say stop, it all stops.”
“Yes.” He kissed her just under her ear, a spot he seemed to gravitate toward. Theo maneuvered her until she stood at the foot of the bed, framed by those massive iron spirals. He snapped his fingers at Galen. “The ties.”
“The ties?”
Galen reached into the nightstand and tossed two sets of cuffs to the foot of the bed. Meg stared at them, at what they represented, something hot and ugly squeezing her chest. “You have bondage gear in your nightstand.”
“Galen likes to be prepared.” Theo reached around her to pick up one, his big hands moving over it with the ease of long familiarity.
They’d done this before.
Of course they’d done this before.
She didn’t think they were coming to her virgins—she certainly was no innocent before they met—but somehow being faced with bondage gear that they must have used on some other woman, maybe in this very room. The ugly feeling inside her gained teeth and claws.
And then Galen was in front of her, clasping her chin tight enough that little sparks of pain flickered along her skin. “Where did you go?”
“I’m right here.” The words came out wrong, sharp and cutting. He looked over her shoulder and she smacked his wrist. “Stop that. I’m not some wild thing to be handled, and talking about me like I’m not there, like I’m just some toy that’s interchangeable with any other—”
“Interchangeable?” Theo murmured in her ear. “Do you really think that?”
Galen’s frown cleared, leaving something almost smug in its wake. “Your princess is jealous, Theo.” He sat back on his heels on the mattress, towering over both of them. “For all your eavesdropping, you don’t listen very well. We’ve never been in this house before today.” He watched her look at the cuffs again and gave a cutting smile. “Theo is very particular about what goes into his bedroom.”
“I—”
He grabbed the other cuff and held it in front of her face. Soft fabric lined the inside of her where it would clasp a wrist or ankle, shielding sensitive skin from the bite of leather. Galen turned it so she could see the leather itself. It was so new, it shone in the low light, not a single crease marking it as used.
Oh.
Shame withered her jealousy, and she couldn’t quite make herself hold his gaze. Theo tucked a single finger under her chin, lifting her face to Galen. He murmured against her ear. “No one has been in this house since it was renovated.” He snapped one cuff around her wrist and Galen tightened it. “No one has slept in these rooms.” They repeated the process with her other wrist. “No one has fucked on this bed, or in the shower, or in the tub.” Galen reached up and snagged a metal tether she hadn’t seen woven in with the iron bedpost. He adjusted the length and attached her left cuff to it, and then did the same with the right.