“Okay, sweetheart?”
I hummed again and slipped into the warm embrace of sleep.
I woke in a bed, cool sheets twisted around my naked torso. I couldn’t recall how I got there, except that I was alone and in a world of pain.
My ass hurt. A lot. My vagina wasn’t doing much better. I considered maybe I’d done too much too soon, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret any of it. I definitely needed a hot bath, maybe a bag of cold peas, but those things could wait while I tried to figure out where I was.
It was an average sized room with blank, white walls and a solitary window over the bed. There were no photos, no knickknacks, not even a sock on the floor to make it appear lived in. Everything was neatly stowed away, except an alarm clock on the nightstand next to the double bed. A dresser was shoved into the corner at the foot of the bed, next to a shut closet door. Otherwise, the space appeared uninhabited.
Lonely.
It wasn’t the sort of place a normal person would consider homey. It was a prison. Yet, without a single clue, I knew it belonged to Nero. His dark, musky scent lingered on the pillow and lay tucked beneath the sheets.
Unable to remain there, I pushed up, wincing as all my muscles screamed in protest. They throbbed as I slipped off the mattress and fashioned a dress from the sheets. My thighs panged with every step in the direction of the door, but it was my sore and brutalized crotch that made every step unbearable.
I definitely needed a bath.
Gritting my jaw, I pushed into the hallway. I recalled the bathroom being on my right. A secondary door stood on my left. I guessed Davien’s room. A smaller, thinner door sat straight ahead, a basic linen closet. But the thing that caught my interest was the lack of anything personal throughout the entire apartment. Like Nero’s room, the walls were all bare. The only things in the corridor were our shoes piled next to the door. The sitting room held a sofa and an armchair in dull, brown, yellow, and orange tones, and a coffee table and a TV. All lived in and worn, but somehow uncared for. All I could think was maybe they’d only just moved in, or they just didn’t care. I would have bet my money on the latter. Neither Nero or Davien seemed like the sort who really needed much. They seemed content to simply be, to exist. I didn’t mind it. I didn’t need much, but I also liked light and colors. I wouldn’t be able to live in such darkness.
Low murmurs guided me in the direction of the living room. The dim, yellow glow spilling into the hallway was the only light in the apartment. I found Nero and Davien seated on the sofa, a cash box open in front of them on the coffee table and wads of bills bundled together by rubber bands stacked neatly along the surface. Davien had a binder open across his thighs, a pen poised over the page while Nero counted each bundle and tucked them back in the metal box.
I took a moment to appreciate how absolutely gorgeous they were, how impossibly breathtaking sitting in the semi darkness, dark heads bent close. Neither wore a top and the full display of muscles under taut, smooth skin had my stomach doing a little flip.
“Hey,” I whispered when neither noticed me in the doorway.
Both heads jerked up. Their matching expressions of surprise was nothing to the gun suddenly leveled at my chest.
I would have soiled myself if I wasn’t afraid of making any sudden movements. A choked sound escaped against my consent, a weak hiccup of air lodging in my chest. I half expected it to startle Nero. I half expected the gun to go off and put an end to my existence.
But Nero muttered a curse and quickly dropped his arm. The weapon was stuffed into the space between his thigh and the sofa’s armrest, not exactly out of sight, but no longer in his grasp or aimed at me.
“Christ, Mia, I’m sorry. We don’t normally have people here.”
That seemed to be an understatement. How many people were that fast pulling a gun? Where had he even pulled it from? I knew it hadn’t been in his hand a second ago. It had practically materialized out of thin air.
“Come here, baby.”
Davien dropped his pen into the folds of the binder and closed it inside. The book was set aside, freeing his hands to motion me over.
I went on unsteady limbs. My heart drummed beneath the hands fisted in the folds of the sheets over my chest, holding the fabric in place. My aches and pains were a thing of the past as the numbness in my toes spread upwards. It was a wonder when I reached them without my legs giving out under me.
Davien took hold of my hips and gently tugged me into his lap. I tried not to wince at the contact of my tender bottom against his thighs.
“How are you feeling?”
“I won’t be pooping right for a few days, but I’m okay,” I lied, unable to tear my gaze away from the piece of steel glinting in the dull light only a few feet away.
“Hey.” Davien tucked a finger beneath my chin and gently nudged my face to his, breaking my stare, but not before I caught Nero stow the gun into the back waistband of his sweats. “Don’t worry about that,” he said firmly. “You okay?”
I drew in a breath and fought to steady my nerves. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Are you sore?” Nero asked, pulling my attention to him, his beautiful, naked torso and the hard muscles across his chest and arms. “We don’t have any fancy salts or anything, but I can draw you a bath.”
“I am. A lot. But I think I’m okay until I get home. Thank you.”
“Did we hurt you?” Davien asked, fingers rigid on my lower back. “Fuck. Was I too rough?”
Despite the cold sensation left behind from having a gun leveled at my heart, I laughed. “This is on me. I got overexcited. I probably should have waited a little longer in between losing each virginity. But I can’t help myself with you guys. Having you both like that has been a fantasy of mine since…” I trailed off, trying to give a timeline without mentioning the Halloween party.
As if reading my thoughts, Davien arched an eyebrow and asked, “The Halloween party?”
I stilled in his arms. My eyes widened at the sly grin twisting around his mouth.
“What?”
The tips of his fingers lazily traced the bumps of my spine, following them from nape to tailbone with deliberate amusement.
“Oli Sutherland’s Halloween party. You were wearing that red dress.”
I knew exactly what I’d been wearing that night, but the fact that he remembered both thrilled and terrified me. “I don’t…”
He ignored my stammering to brush his lips along the bare curve of my shoulder. “I have to know, it’s been driving me crazy, but how did you get into the room?”
My heart was drumming with violent force in my chest. I was sure it could be heard for miles. My wide eyed gaze darted to Nero, semi relieved to find equal confusion on his face. I spared Davien a fleeting glance I couldn’t maintain without my cheeks growing hot and my eyes burning.
“I don’t know—”
Davien’s long fingers captured my chin and forced my eyes to his. “No lying, remember?”
“What’s going on?” Nero interjected. “What are you talking about?”
Davien never released me from his fiery gaze, not even when answering his friend. “Our little Mia is the Cinderella from that night.”
I couldn’t break the hold Davien had on me but I sensed the moment the realization hit Nero. I could practically feel him go rigid.