It was no wonder she was guarded around me. And if I was a better man, I probably would have backed the fuck off. Stopped chasing her, hounding her, obsessing over her and trying to win her back around. Because she deserved better than me. Better than all of us really. In fact, the one clearest reason for that was blindingly obvious: we’d bound her to us in every way we could imagine, through the vow, blood, death but that only proved the worst things about us. No one wanted to love the monster who caged them. But we were all far too selfish to set her free.
In fact, I knew that if I could find another way to bind her to me, I’d do it in a heartbeat. And another. And another. I’d chain her to this life with us and make sure she never got away.
But that wasn’t something I could do easily.
I sat on the couch in The Temple, my jaw grinding as Saint cursed the entire world and their mother. In fact, he cursed the cats, the dogs and even the motherfucking fleas. But it did no good.
Tatum was currently in the library, enjoying her study time with Mila. She had strict instructions not to go anywhere else, not even on a bathroom break until one of us came to pick her up later. We weren’t taking any chances with her safety now. Not while some creep went around campus stalking her, watching her, watching us.
“You need to start keeping your fucking blinds closed at night,” Monroe snarled, tossing the heap of photographs down in the centre of the coffee table so that they spread across it, giving us a snapshot of moments which we’d all shared with our girl. He looked at them every damn time he came over here, like he thought he’d suddenly spot some clue in them that we’d missed before. Or maybe he secretly liked looking at them. Tatum did look fucking edible in every damn one. But knowing they’d been taken by a creep kinda took the shine off of any appreciation I might have had for them. Plus the look in Monroe’s eyes as he flipped through them wasn’t lust, it was unbridled rage, so fucking forceful that it was easy to see why he was one of us.
The one on top was the one of me and Kyan going to town on her at once. In the very armchair he was currently sitting in no less. And he didn’t look pleased to have seen that. Not pleased at all.
“Are you angry about the stalker or about us doing that with her?” I asked curiously and Kyan released a dark laugh.
“You’re all old enough to do whatever the fuck you want,” Monroe snarled, not answering.
“There’s no point getting your panties in a twist over it, Nash,” Kyan goaded, reaching out to pick up the photograph of him eating her out on the beach the night Monroe had been initiated.
With the paint on both of their skin and the crowns on their heads, they looked like a pair of mythical creatures. The king and queen of sex, going at it in the open like they just couldn’t wait for the amount of time it would take to move inside before devouring each other. And I guessed at least that half of the story was the truth.
“That one is your fault,” Monroe snarled, jabbing a finger towards the picture in Kyan’s hand. “Why the fuck did you have to do that shit out in the open like that?”
Kyan laughed tauntingly, flipping the picture around to show all of us. “Because I was a dying man, starving for something to eat. And she was a feast too fucking delicious to turn down. And you’d better believe that she was more than happy to let me devour her. A single look at her face in this picture could tell you that.”
“Well, next time, keep it in your fucking pants and save it for behind closed doors. Or better yet, just keep your fucking hands off of her,” Monroe growled.
“You wanna know what she tastes like?” Kyan asked and the look in his eyes said he was hungry for a fight. He wanted Monroe to jump at him, wanted the therapy of violence to take the edge off of whatever demons he was currently battling.
He had his shirt off as he sat on the couch beside me and it was pretty hard to miss the angry cigarette burn on his upper chest.
Tatum had been tending to it twice daily, checking it for signs of infection and administering some burn cream. I wondered if she knew he wouldn’t look after it himself? Or that aside from me and Saint, he’d never really had anyone to look after him at all?
Whenever she cornered him and applied the cream, he took the opportunity to goad her, telling her that he’d heal up faster if she sucked his dick twice a day. Or refusing to move from his position on the couch and dragging her down to straddle his lap while she worked and offered to let her ride him properly if she begged. She cussed him out, delicately applied the cream to his burn and then walked away while tossing a few choice insults back at him.
I wondered if she’d ever caught sight of the way he watched her when she walked away from him. Or of the way his brow crumpled when she left a room. Hell, I didn’t even really know what to make of it myself. Sure, I’d shared her with him that time, or tried to at least. But that was about sex not…anything else. At least I didn’t think so. What if he
