“What? Watching?” I questioned, pouring some more coffee in an attempt to temper the growing urge to march back into the room, disregarding Ian’s orders.
“That and just having her with us. We’ve been hiding in the shadows for so long,” he said with a shrug. “It’s fucking surreal to have her close enough to touch, to smell. I want to say I almost forgot what it felt like to have her at our command, but I haven’t. Not one fucking bit.”
“Well, Ian’s command for the most part.” I chuckled, Mare’s challenging expression flashing in front of my eyes. “He’s right; she was always the biggest brat to him but sweet to us.”
“That’s because we’re the sweet ones of the group,” Archer challenged with a sinful grin. “Mare is all about being punished by him then crawling to us to kiss it all better.”
“Ha, sweet isn’t exactly the word I’d use, but yeah, compared to Ian and his need for control, we’re fucking saints.”
“Sinners,” Ian’s voice filled the hall as he walked into the kitchen, “the three of us are sinners, not saints, and you’d be a fool to think otherwise.” I shrugged, knowing that he was right.
“She okay?” I asked after he took his position leaning against the counter. My eyes focused on the wet spot on his shirt just at the side of his chest where she’d cried. Ian swiped at it absently, his lips curling ever so slightly in satisfaction.
“Of course, she is. You know she wouldn’t have waited as long to apologize if she didn’t want to. You heard her little moans just like I did.”
“Yeah, but it’s been a long time since we’ve done something like that. We’ve watched, waited, you saw how she was when we first found her too. She’s not exactly the same girl she was before.” Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they weren’t wholly true. Mare would always be Mare when it came to us.
And she would always be ours.
11
Mare
Ian had long since gone, leaving me to my thoughts after a kiss on my head and instructions to sleep, but my mind swirled, unable to settle. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rid the feeling of their eyes watching me, their hands against my skin. Ian’s spanking brought all sorts of memories that had been buried to the forefront of my mind. Instead of closing my eyes and letting myself drift into slumber, I laid there and thought about the night that I‘d met the three of them.
The bar was loud. Boisterous noise surrounded me as I hung out on the sidelines of the club, nursing the beer my fake ID had gotten me. My friend, Vivian, was a few feet away, giggling up a storm as she curled into a stranger’s chest. I rolled my eyes. After all of her begging and pleading for me to come with her, I was mildly irritated that she was completely ignoring me in favor of a hot guy. Was I surprised, though? Not particularly. I should’ve just kept my ass home.
I tipped the last of my beer back and swallowed, startling when a figure approached my side. I turned, setting the bottle down. A muscular guy with a buzz cut swaggered closer, his entire demeanor fitting the jock vibes he was radiating. Great, I thought. Another leech. Why are college guys such tools? Leaning around me to order, the guy’s arm brushed against my side, and the heat of his torso warmed me.
“Hey man! Another beer for the lady!” he called out, his smirk centering on me.
“Oh, no thanks, I think I’m—” I started, but he waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t you worry, pretty thing. I got this,” he interrupted. Oh, so he was going to be one of those guys. “So tell me, what’s your name, cutie?”
“America,” I said with a sigh as he crowded in closer, putting his hand on my shoulder and kneaded it—what the fuck? Was I a piece of dough? Yeah, it was definitely time to bail. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go check on my friend.”
“Wait a minute,” he snapped, his hand coming around my forearm. “I just want to talk to you. Ain’t no harm in that, right? Come on, cutie. I can make it worth your time.”
“I highly doubt that,” I muttered under my breath. To his face, though, I remained polite. “I really should go—”
His lips dipped into a frown. “Hey, I’m just trying to be nice to you. Maybe you should stop being such a frigid bitch.”
I frowned, reaching over to unhook his fingers from my arm. He tightened his grip immediately, making me wince. “Let. Go.” I pushed at his chest, getting nowhere.
“Not until you apologize to a guy who was just trying to be nice to you,” he snapped, glaring down at me.
I opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind only to stop when someone else stepped up, grabbed the jock by the throat, and yanked him away.
“Hey! What the fuck!” the man yelled, whirling around only to pull up short when he saw the new guy who’d pulled him away from me.
“I believe your lady friend wants you to get lost,” the stranger said. He kept his eyes on the jock and his voice low. Even in the noisy space, there was something about the timbre of his tone that made my insides warm. “Now, I suggest you do just that.”
As if realizing that he was out of his depth and wouldn’t win a fight, the first guy backed off. “Whatever, man. She was a bitch anyway,” the jock grumbled, taking the beer with him and stalking away.
I took in my savior with an interested eye. Hell, maybe this little excursion with Vivian didn’t have to end so poorly after all, I thought. The stranger was tall with lean muscles clothed in a tight black t-shirt and dark jeans. There were no tattoos or other markings that I could see, and his hair was a mop of messy dark brown, almost black, that brushed his forehead and ears. A layer of stubble covered a strong, square jaw. His high cheekbones threw shadows against it, making the lower half of his face seem even darker. When I finally reached his eyes, I realized he was staring at me with the same curiosity I felt for him.
“Thank you,” I said, a grin tilting up the corners of my mouth as he gave me a small smile.
“You’re welcome.”
“Everything all good over here, Ian?” a second man asked, coming up alongside my savior. Ian, I reminded myself, committing his name to memory even as I turned to the second man and looked up and stopped. With a head full of blonde hair and the scruff of a light beard over the lower half of his face, the new man was just as attractive as his friend. “Who do we have here?”
“What happened to coming back to the table…” A new voice trailed off, the third man’s mossy eyes falling on me. “Well, hello there.” More of them. More hot … tall … Jesus, was I dead or dreaming? The third man had a chiseled jawline, far more pristine and cut than the first two, with eyes set the perfect distance apart and a mouth made for sin. Oh, that just wasn’t fair to the rest of the human populace.
“Archer, Jensen, this is…” The man looked at me expectantly, and I realized we hadn’t been introduced.
“America,” I said quickly. “My friends call me Mare.”
Ian’s eyes slid over my face. “Well, Mare, these are my friends, Archer and Jensen,” Ian introduced, nodding to the others.