Love Triangle: Six Books of Torn Desire

by Willow Winters

  “Ready, honey?” he asks, soft. And I know this is the time when I can speak up. Don’t hit me. I don’t want that. I’m not that kind of woman. But if there’s anything last night showed me, it’s that I don’t know what kind of woman I am. Maybe none of us really do until we have two men fighting for us. Maybe there’s a Cleopatra inside each of us.

  “Ready,” I whisper.

  The book makes a whistle sound in the air. It winds something up in my body, something that only springs loose when a flat pain echoes through me. I cry out, more from the surprise than the hurt. A large palm molds itself to my ass, soothing away whatever sting was left.

  Another whistle; another cry.

  It isn’t harder than the jolt of a roller coaster bar against my stomach. It’s not the pain that makes this good; it’s knowing that he’s doing it to me. I’m in this powerless position, because of my lust, because I chose this. Because I chose him.

  His fingers find me again, slick and ready. It only takes the barest twist, the smallest circle around my clit before I’m coming apart, my legs shaking, every muscle clenched. Pleasure saturates my mind like the yellow-orange rays of sunlight at dawn, breaching the horizon.

  The book drops beside me, right in my line of sight. He wants me to see it.

  To imagine the imprint of my ass on the old glossy cover.

  A small tear behind me, a rustle of cloth. I clench harder on the papers in my fists as if they’re rope instead of pointless forms.

  He’s probably good with rope.

  Yes yes yes. He’s so good with it he doesn’t need anything as primitive as fibers and knots. He has me tied down to this counter with pure force of will—not even his own. Mine. It’s my desire that keeps my breasts against the wood, that keeps my ass in the air while he strokes me with callused hands. “One day we’ll have to try a bed,” he says in that voice that pretends to be unaffected. As if I can’t feel his cock throbbing against my thigh.

  “Later,” I manage to say in a voice just as bland. “To spice things up.”

  A bark of laughter echoes through the library, sending a bird from its nest of dictionaries and Dickens, a flurry of feathers through the largest broken window. My gaze follows the path, even when there’s a wide heat pressing between my legs.

  Even when I moan in sudden panic.

  He seemed big when I felt him through his slacks, but I wasn’t specifically worried about size. Nature has its own geometry, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought, but now I’m less sure.

  He pauses, easing a large hand along my lower back. Settling me back down. “Do you need to come again?” he asks.

  The question is so casual, so kind, that I’m struck by my own inexperience. That I could do this in an abandoned library, bent over the counter, with a man who is technically my boss.

  “Maybe,” I say, but the word is high-pitched and uncertain to my own ears.

  A long silence speaks volumes, like the books that surround us, spilling secrets for anyone who pauses to listen. Or anyone bent over a desk, a heavy hand on her lower back, legs shaking.

  “Goddamn,” he whispers, and he sounds just as unsteady as me.

  “Are we still going to have sex? Because if not, I think I should probably be standing for this conversation.” I’m babbling a little. Nervous. Exposed.

  There’s no hurry at all in his movements. He pulls me up and sets my clothes to rights, using hands that don’t tremble and a body that doesn’t shiver every two seconds. Then he pushes me back so smoothly that I barely realize I’m sitting on the counter again. Mostly I’m sure of it because it no longer feels like I’m about to fall down.

  “I don’t want…”

  He studies me with infinite patience, his blond hair ruffled. Did I pull his hair when he knelt in front of me? Or is that a natural disarray that happens when he has almost-sex? His voice is calm and solid as an oak tree when he asks, “Don’t want what?”

  “Don’t want you to protect me. Don’t want you to be the hero and protect my stupid virginity, which is just a social construct, by the way. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Harper.”

  “It’s not something I need to be protected from, like it’s 1580 and I’m a maiden and my virtue has to be guarded by the men in my family.” And I’m so, so tired of being protected by Christopher Bardot. Protected by my father. Protected by these formidable walls I’ve built so I don’t get my heart smashed to bits.

  “Harper. I’m not protecting you.”

  “And it’s not like—oh. You’re not?”

  He laughs, a little rueful. “I’m protecting myself if anything. How do you manage to seem so damned experience when you’re a virgin?”

  I make a face. “What does that even mean, experienced? I have life experience. Having a dick inside isn’t some kind of transcendent experience. Only a man would think so.”

  “Only a virgin would think it doesn’t matter.”

  “Look,” I say, feeling a little manic. Because maybe I had always imagined it would be Christopher. That seems impossibly naive in the light of a broken stained-glass dome. “I wasn’t saving myself for marriage or anything dramatic like that. I just wanted it to be the right place and time. Like an abandoned library, apparently.”

  “Like eight a.m. on a Friday.”

  “Apparently,” I say, trying to sound worldly. “Maybe I’m a morning-sex kind of girl. I’m not usually awake in the mornings, so I never knew that about myself. See, you do learn things in libraries.”

  Sutton picks up the book about Cleopatra and hands it to me. “Come on.”

  “More spankings?”

  “No,” he says, very severe. Very angry about the virginal spankings. “We’re going to the office, where I’m going to show you the damn blueprints.”

  “Work.”

  It’s a relief that he’s focusing on work instead of sex.

  And a terrible disappointment.

  I think out of any man in the world, Sutton Mayfair is the only one who could make me forget about Christopher Bardot. For even two seconds, forget about the man I’ve been in love with since I was fifteen years old. It’s an allure to someone who’s been trapped for so long. A shiny key dangled in front of someone who’s been behind bars.

  “You have a lot of work to do if you’re going to convince the historical society to let us raze this place down.”

  “You’re not razing anything,” I say, pushing off the counter and pointing a finger at his chest. “And don’t look smug. I’m still turned on, but I’m choosing to ignore that for now and focus on the fact that this library is going to be restored.”

  “Libraries don’t make money,” he reminds me, his voice gentle.

  Chapter Ten

  GOING OUT OF BUSINESS

  I’m on the phone with Avery that afternoon, having seen enough architectural diagrams of a modern monstrosity to last me a lifetime. It would be a beautiful mall, one I’d love to shop in if it were located anywhere else in the city.

  “What about a bookstore?” I ask, sketching out a Cleopatra reading a book with that Mona Lisa smile on her face. Why can’t she look any other way but sultry?

  “Oh, that would be cool,” Avery says, because she’s that kind of friend. Supportive, even when you have dumb ideas. “Aren’t bookstores going out of business, though?”

  “There’s really no way a bookstore can earn back what they put into it, not even if they sell a thousand books a day. Besides, it wouldn’t be the same.”

  “The same as what?”

  “This library… I wish you could see it. You’d just die. And probably find some out-of-print book about Helen of Troy to make you have an orgasm right on the spot.”

  “Mmmm,” she says, sounding a little orgasmic at the idea. “What if you create a little museum section in the mall, where it shows some of the old books?”

  “So people can put down their slushies and pretzels on the glass case?”

  “I don’t understand why they
even bought a library.”

  “For the location. And a total lack of respect for old books. They think the mall is going to be some kind of commercial revival for the west side.”

  She’s quiet for long enough that I know she’s holding out on me.

  “Spill.”

  “Maybe it really would be good for the city,” she says in a rush. “The books aren’t doing anyone any good collecting dust. An influx of cash from the rich side of the city might be exactly what the west side needs.”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Gabriel.”

  “And you still have the books,” she says. “You could sell them and use the money to create a new library. A smaller library that has books and a computer lab.”

  “Way too much time with Gabriel. Now you’re practical and boring.”

  “I forgot to mention you’re on speakerphone.”

  A smile takes over no matter how hard I fight it. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. But I’m sorry in that way where I said something true and I’m only sorry you heard it. You’re rubbing off on her.”

  “That’s my favorite thing to do with her,” he says, his voice far from the phone.

  It makes me laugh, which is what I needed.

  Gabriel is a good man, even if he did buy my best friend’s virginity as revenge. These things happen. The important thing is that he loves her. She only has to blink at something and he’ll pour his fortune into buying it for her. I’m almost certain they won’t end in tragedy, but you never really know with love.

  That’s why I’m better off without it.

  Chapter Eleven

  THIEVES CLUB

  The Den is a place owned by a criminal and bastard, so naturally it’s spilling over with patrons when I show up at ten p.m. They wear suits and party dresses, laughter and drinks flowing freely when I step into the foyer. The crowd here is younger and more playful than the gala, but just as rich. Just as powerful in their own corner of the city.

  From across the room I see Hugo with his head bent, speaking to Christopher and another man with a shaved head and muscles like whoa. I’ve never met the third man before. He stands and approaches the bar area, so I sidle up to him.

  “Hi,” I say, dropping my rose-gold clutch on the mirrored surface.

  He looks at me sideways. “Who are you?”

  There’s a natural command in his voice, the kind that can only come from having been in charge of men for a long stretch of his life. Military? It’s in the way he holds himself. “A friend of Beatrix Cartwright. And Avery James.”

  His eyes are a darker blue than Sutton, more midnight than ocean. “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “You’re the artist. The one Sutton talks about.”

  “He talks about me?” My voice comes out high-pitched, because I don’t know whether he talks about what happened in the hallway or what happened bent over on the counter. Either way my cheeks burn hot in the company of this stranger. He’s wearing a wedding band and he doesn’t seem the least interested in me sexually, which only makes it more embarrassing somehow.

  “You’re going to save the library.”

  “Oh,” I say, relieved. “I’m not sure how, but that’s the plan.”

  “Christopher’s going to lose his shit. It was his idea to raze the whole thing down. I think that’s the only way he knows how to make something successful.”

  Is that what he’s trying to do with me, tear me down to my roots, to the muscle and bone, to build me into a woman he might actually trust? “That is weirdly insightful, stranger. Almost like you know Christopher really well, but I don’t know you.”

  The corner of his mouth twitches. “Blue Eastman.”

  “Your name is Blue.”

  “Yes.”

  “Like it says that on your birth certificate. Blue like the color.”

  He laughs a little rusty, like he’s not used to doing it. “That’s right.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t really move on. Was Green in the running? If you had been born with green eyes, would you be named Green?”

  “Probably.” He pauses, accepting a beer that the bartender sends his way. “Do you want anything? Sutton will be annoyed at me that I bought you a drink.”

  “An old-fashioned,” I tell the bartender, a pretty young woman with strawberry-blonde curls and twinkling eyes. “And I’m paying for it.”

  Blue takes a sip of beer and then considers the amber liquid. “My father had brown eyes. Black hair. My mother had dark skin and even darker hair.”

  “Babies have blue eyes,” I whisper.

  “Not in my family. At least that’s what my dad said, for all that he didn’t know shit about genetics either. So he named me Blue to punish my mother, to always remind her that he knew.”

  “Wow. Did she actually…?”

  “Until the day she died, she maintained that she had never cheated. Which either makes her a dedicated liar or very bad chooser of husbands.”

  Love is a terrible monster. It seduces you like a siren, pulling you closer even though you know you’re going to be smashed to bits against the rocks.

  “I’m sorry.” What a terrible way to grow up, knowing that every time your parents looked at you, they were thinking about an indiscretion that may never have happened. Finding the proof in your appearance. “No wonder you left and joined the army.”

  “That obvious?”

  “Pretty much. But what I don’t know is how you know Christopher. He’s not exactly the hoorah, my-biceps-are-bigger-than-yours type. I say that with complete respect, because your biceps are definitely bigger than mine. And also everyone else’s.”

  “We’re… friends,” he says, the word almost foreign on his lips.

  “I didn’t know he had friends.” Except for Sutton, though I wouldn’t have used the word friends. They’re business partners, sure. Enemies maybe.

  Blue nods toward the group of armchairs in the corner where Hugo and Sutton are still talking. “The four of us. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we sort of ironically, but not ironically, call ourselves the Thieves Club.”

  “Is it because you steal jewelry at galas? I’m not judging. Anyone would consider it. There’s a ridiculous amount of diamonds in a single room.”

  “It’s something Hugo said a long time ago. That every dollar earned was a dollar we took from someone else. Whether we returned a service for that money is beside the point. The amount of money in the world is finite.”

  There’s a rush of air, and then Christopher is on the other side of me, having appeared like some kind of magician. The breath whooshes out of me for a solid five seconds, and when I breathe back in a gulp, the air comes flavored with him—crisp and dark and always so damned comforting when I shouldn’t be comforted by him.

  “Until the government prints more,” he says, the educated economist inside him sounding like Daddy, which unnerves me and comforts me even more. Goddamn it.

  Blue tips his glass of beer in greeting. “Though if we took those freshly minted dollars, we really would be the Thieves Club.”

  “We’ll call that plan B,” I say, accepting my old-fashioned from the bartender with a murmured thanks. “The gala seems like an easier mark, really.”

  Christopher is faster than me, sliding a twenty across the mirrored counter before I can pull money out of my clutch. It makes me scowl at him, because it’s an extension of the way he tries to control me—handing out and withholding money according to his own code.

  “I’m not grateful,” I tell him, taking a gulp of the drink.

  “I don’t expect you to be,” he murmurs. “But you don’t need to think about stealing. You’re one of the richest women in the country.”

  Blue seems to have evaporated, probably returning to the group of armchairs in the corner. I can’t seem to take my gaze away from Christopher’s dark eyes to check. There’s something different about him tonight, but I can’t figure out what.

  He looks a little less forbidding.
>
  “A lot of good that does me,” I say.

  “If you help us push this project through you’ll get the money you want.”

  I look down at my drink. Now I understand why men do this, the broody, staring-at-alcohol thing. It’s a moral dilemma, because if I push the project through, I’ll help Mom. But I’ll also destroy something beautiful in the library.

  “Sutton told me,” Christopher says, reading my mood correctly. “You’re your father’s daughter. You know there’s no way to make money back on a library.”

  “Maybe it can be like the Den. You could serve alcohol at the counter while you check out books. And people could discuss philosophy and sex like a modern-day French salon.”

  “It works for the Den because Damon Scott runs it. It’s basically headquarters for his criminal enterprises. Laundering money and selling weapons isn’t in our business plan.”

  “He doesn’t sell weapons,” the bartender says.

  Christopher gives her a small smile. “You would know.”

  She smiles back with a nod that makes her look like royalty. “I like the idea of selling alcohol at a library. I’d buy a glass of wine to sit with a book, but I’m not sure it will make the kind of money you’re looking for.”

  “This is Penny,” Christopher says, giving enough weight to the name that I should know who she is. “She’s with Damon Scott. Though I haven’t seen her behind the bar before tonight.”

  “I’m trying my hand at mixing drinks.”

  “You’re good at it,” I say with a rueful glance at my empty glass.

  She laughs, a tinkling sound. “Thank you. Anyway, it’s a good place to eavesdrop on people. That’s probably why Damon started a bar in the first place. He sells information.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re looking to get into the information business?” I ask Christopher hopefully, even though I wouldn’t like him half as much if he did. He operates on his own code of honor, which is warped and broken but comes from a good place.