He marches over to us and gets in my face, eyes narrowed with anger. “You must think you’re pretty fucking smart, huh?” he snarls.
He’s bigger than me by a lot, taller and bulkier, and he tries to press that advantage while he looms in, but I don’t back down. I was close to kicking his ass last time, before Sloan intervened, and I’m not afraid of him now.
“Excuse me?” I ask, keeping my tone uninterested.
“You fucking sold us out. You gave the Jackals what they needed to fuck us over, and now here you are. A member of the gang like we’re just supposed to accept it. I don’t know why Gavin didn’t fucking kill you when he had the chance.”
“You’ll have to take that up with him,” I reply coolly, moving to step around him.
He doesn’t let me, though. He crowds right back into my space, face going red from how pissed off he is.
“You’re not getting off that easy,” he snaps.
His arm moves, and I half expect him to try to hit me. My body shifts, ready to brace for it, but instead he reaches down and grabs at his junk, hips pressing toward me.
“You better be ready to spend a lot of time on your knees, girl,” he says. “We all know why you didn’t face any consequences for fucking us over—why you got offered a place as a Black Rose instead of being buried in a shallow fucking grave. You must be exceptionally good at sucking cock.” He gestures around the room to the rest of the gang members present with a twisted smirk on his face. “And hell, since you’re one of us now, I guess we can all expect to get our dicks sucked by you. Black Rose whore. Seems like a fitting title.”
I’m in shock for a second, taken so far off guard by his taunt that I can’t even come up with the words to respond. But it’s obvious he doesn’t need any input from me as he keeps ranting.
“Clearly you’ve already sucked all of their dicks,” he says, motioning toward Levi, Rory, and Sloan. “Since they all share you, they can damn well share with the rest of us.”
That’s enough to break me out of my shock, and anger floods me hot and fast. I lunge for him, ready to knock that smirk off his fucking face and jam my knee so far up his crotch he’ll be able to suck his own damned dick.
But before I get very far, Levi and Rory are there, stepping in front of me and grabbing Baldy.
“Say that again, fuckface,” Rory growls. “Go on. Say it.”
“It’ll be the last goddamn thing you ever do,” Levi adds, his tone cold and dangerous.
“That’s fucking enough!” Sloan snaps, his voice cracking like a whip through the tension. It gets everyone’s attention, and Rory and Levi finally back down, their bodies still braced for a fight even as they let Baldy go.
Sloan doesn’t have to say anything else. He grabs my arm and drags me out of the building, and Rory and Levi follow, still grumbling.
Baldy doesn’t make any move to follow, and we get back to the car, climbing in to head back to the house. No one says anything, but that awful tension is back, filling the car as we all look out our separate windows and Sloan focuses on driving.
We get back to the house, car doors slamming as we head in, and we get as far as the living room before it all boils over. The anger that was directed at Baldy is now aimed at Sloan, and Levi rounds on him in a second, getting in his face a little.
“What the fuck, Sloan?” he demands.
“Don’t start,” Sloan says, but it’s not enough to get Levi to back down this time.
“So, what, we just let him talk shit about Mercy now? Call her a whore and act like she’s some kinda—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “He deserved to have his face punched in. Or worse.”
Sloan’s jaw is tight as he gets right back in Levi’s face. “That’s what you want though, isn’t it?” he retorts. “You want to share her, just like he said.”
We’re all caught off guard by that. Somehow, I didn’t expect that to be what Sloan was mad about. Making a scene at the warehouse, sure, but this?
Rory and Levi look just as confused as I am, although they both still look pissed too. Sloan gestures to them, not backing down, his face hard.
“You really think you can do that? Just share her like it’s no big deal? Then fuck her. Together. Right now. Since it’s no big fucking deal.”
12
My heart jumps in my chest when he says those words, as flat and harsh and direct as he ever says anything.
I know he’s just trying to prove a point. Trying to make the other two break down and fight over me or acknowledge that this whole thing will never work. Because how could it, right? They both have feelings for me, and I have feelings for them too. That much is pretty damned obvious.
And Sloan wants them to realize—wants all of us to realize—that the feelings developing between us all can’t progress because they can’t all share me.
I’ve avoided thinking about this too much because it’s so fucking complicated. On top of everything else going on, there’s this too.
It’s terrifying and confusing to be falling for three men at the same time, and to have them falling for me. I’ve denied it for so long, since I wasn’t supposed to have feelings for them at all. When I was actively plotting against them, certain that they’d hate me if they ever found out what I was doing, it was easy to ignore the question of what it all meant and how it might work.
But now that Sloan is calling it out, putting it all out there on the table in his blunt way so none of us can hide from it, it’s a big fucking question.
How is any of this supposed to work? How are we supposed to handle it?
It’s not like I’ve ever been in this sort of situation before, and I’m willing to bet the guys haven’t either. None of us knows how to navigate this territory at all, and there’s a part of me that wonders if it would just be easier to call it quits now before it all gets out of hand.
I’ll never be able to choose between them, and it wouldn’t be fair to whoever didn’t get chosen, so I guess that means the easiest thing to do would be to walk away. But now that we’re all so tangled up in each other’s lives, that seems a lot easier said than done.
It’s a mess, all things considered, and I’m not sure how to proceed or even if there is a way forward.
I glance over at Rory and Levi, trying to see how they feel about this.
They’re both staring at Sloan, and I can tell neither of them are happy. He’s being a dick for throwing it in their faces. In all of our faces, just because he’s upset or whatever.
Rory turns to me after a second or two, and I look back at him, waiting to see what he’s going to say. But then, in true Rory fashion, he doesn’t say anything. He just acts. He reaches out for me and grabs my arm, tugging me toward him sharply.
I stumble closer, surprised but not unwilling. He looks at me, gaze roaming over my face, and then he leans down and captures my lips in a kiss.
It’s not soft or tender or timid either. Rory kisses me like he knows what he wants. He plunges his tongue into my mouth, laying claim to it right there in front of everyone, and all I can do is squeak in surprise and kiss him back, melting against him a little with a surge of heat.