I clasp my hands in my lap so neither of them will see me shake. “It doesn’t matter why I’m doing this.”
“It might not matter to him.” Gaeton shoves his hands into his pockets and glowers. “It sure as fuck matters to me.”
My throat tries to close. I wish I could go back in time and change things, but I tried to change things on my own and look where that left me. Alone. Free, but at what cost? I swallow hard. “I want you. I want both of you. That never changed, even if everything else did.” When he doesn’t move, I force myself to continue. “But yes, the reason for this timing is because of my sisters.” Gaeton looks away and I rush on. “The second you left, the Sea Witch started pressing our borders. I don’t know if we can hold without you.”
“Ursa won’t risk a full-on attack.”
I wish I had his confidence. I give a bitter laugh. “Not a month ago, she wouldn’t. My sister might have been my father’s right hand for a decade, but to everyone in Carver City, she’s untried. Muriel gives them pause, but the fact that Cordelia lost both of you so quickly after my father’s death?” There it is again, that horrible knowledge in the base of my chest. The loss that I don’t think I’ll ever recover from.
My father wasn’t a good man. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But he loved me and my sisters to distraction. He protected us and cherished us and was a good father in every way that counted.
“I miss him, too.” Gaeton reaches down and runs a gentle finger across my cheekbone. I’m horrified to see it come away wet. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. He turns back to Beast and sucks his finger into his mouth. A challenge, but the other man simply waits. Finally, Gaeton nods. “I accept. Two weeks. We exchange topping her. You don’t get to top me.”
Wait—what?
I’m still wrapping my head around the implications behind that statement when Beast answers. “Deal, though that’s open to negotiation on a case-by-case basis.” He turns his attention on me. “Condoms or no? Your choice, princess.”
This conversation makes my thoughts churn and dip. He’s moving too fast. “I’m on birth control.” I have been since I was sixteen and my oldest sister dragged me in to get the prescription. I swallow past a suddenly dry throat. “I’m, uh … I’ve been tested recently.”
“So have I.” Beast looks over. “Gaeton?”
The big man crosses his arms over his chest. “Me, too.” His dark brows lower. “You don’t have to agree to this, Isabelle. The rest, yes, but not this.”
I’m not agreeing to no condoms because I feel like I have to. I want to. And no matter how tangled the history between us, how much hurt we’ve heaped on each other over the length of our respective relationships, I trust these two men. I can’t help but trust them. “It’s what I want.”
“So be it.” Beast nods. “Pick a safe word, Isabelle.”
I blink. “Now?”
Beast gives a slow smile that feels more like a threat than an expression of joy. “Did you think we’d agree to the muzzles without a token of your sincerity? Prove you mean what you say tonight and we come back to the territory at the end of the two weeks.”
It’s happening. Good gods, it’s really happening. I stop clenching my hands and press my palms to my bare thighs. There’s no going back now. I have their agreement. All that’s left is to ensure I don’t break the terms.
Ensure I pick one of them to keep forever at the end of this. That I give up any chance at freedom, and accept that no matter how these two weeks end, I lose. I can’t think about any of it too hard. Instead, I focus on the here and now. A safe word. Simple, really. I look down at my hands. “Candlestick.”
“Good.” Beast straightens. “Let’s get started.”
Chapter 3
Gaeton
I don’t want to do this.
I slouch into the chair I recently vacated, still trying to come to terms that Isabelle Belmonte is here and bargaining her body and future away because of some bullshit power struggle her sisters are embarking on. Oh, the power struggles didn’t feel like bullshit when I was working under the Man in Black. They felt vital and world-ending. Now, I’m not so sure. What the hell is it all for? I don’t have answers, and I’m not sure anyone in this room does. Isabelle will say it’s for the continued safety of her family and the people under their protection. Beast? I have no fucking idea what goes on in that man’s head.
Beast stalks around Isabelle like one of the great cats toying with its food. Building anticipation for the strike, enjoying the way she jumps a little every time he moves out of her line of sight.
If I were a better man, I’d call this whole thing off and haul Isabelle out of the Underworld and right back to the safe embrace of her sisters. They might have sent her here to draw us back, but there’s no chance in hell that Cordelia and Sienna approved of us defiling their youngest sister. They’d barely tolerated us before and we treated Isabelle like a queen. I can fault Beast many things, but I can’t fault him that.
“Gaeton.” The snap in his voice is a hook in my stomach, slamming me into the here and now.
I resent the fuck out of it. He’s not my Dom. He’s not even my friend. He’s a man I used to hate and now am forced to tolerate from time to time. I glare. “Maybe you get off on playing with someone who’s just going through the motions, but that’s not my kink. I like consent, you bastard.”
“Mmm.” His deep voice rumbles through the room, seeming to wrap around all of us. “Our little Isabelle wants to be punished. It’s why you came here, isn’t it, princess?”
“Yes,” she breathes. She’s watching him like she’s never seen him before. There’s fear there, yes, but there’s no missing the way her lips part and her eyes go hazy with need. Just like there’s no missing her nipples pressed against the silk of her dress when he pulled her hair.
Or maybe I’m just deluding myself in an attempt to justify taking from her exactly what I want. To fuck her and humiliate her and make her cry from the intoxicating mix of pleasure and pain, her senses so overloaded that she can’t do anything but beg for what I will give her.
Maybe.
“Gaeton still needs convincing.” Beast shakes his head slowly. I can’t help watching him as he gathers her hair and lifts it from her neck. We might have scened together in the past, but it was always beneath another’s guidance, playing support in someone else’s fantasy. I’ve never seen Beast orchestrate his own scene. When he plays, he plays behind closed doors, and Hades’s submissives are too professional to gossip about it afterward.
He twines her hair around his fist, gently but inexorably bending her back so that she’s depending on his strength to keep her off the floor. Her breath comes faster now, her tits shaking a little with each inhale and exhale. Realizing she’s not wearing a bra nearly has me groaning aloud. I clench my fists to keep still, to keep myself apart. I might have agreed to Beast’s bargain, but I don’t trust this. I don’t trust him.