I’m still in Brian’s bed after having sex with him a few hours ago. This is wrong, no matter how right it feels.
“Wh—what are you doing here?” I stutter into the darkness.
“I can’t stay away,” he whispers. He buries his face into the soft place between my neck and my naked shoulder, peppering my skin with kisses. His mouth trails over to my chest, and he kisses both of my breasts without pulling my nipple into his mouth. I want it—I want him to suck, hard—but he needs my permission first. He needs me to kiss back, to wrap my arms around him, to show him this is okay.
It’s not okay.
It’s wrong.
But then his deft fingers travel a path along my body like they’ve done before, and tingles explode in my chest and permeate my bloodstream. My nerves come alive, my blood heats, my stomach drops.
I want this.
His lips move back to my neck and then to my lips, and I fear I’m not strong enough to push him away. I’ve done it one too many times, and I can’t do it again.
I need to ask him why he’s here. I need to know if he had something to do with the call Brian took in the middle of the night. I need to know if he’s for real, if his feelings for me are genuine, or if this is just some big competition between brothers and I’m the ultimate prize.
But I don’t ask any of those questions because Mark Ashton is on top of me and only one singular thought is in my mind. Need. His lips are on my skin and his hand trails slowly along my thigh just like that night that flashes incessantly through my mind.
Every cell in my body aches for him. It has since our one night.
I arch my back, pushing my pelvis toward him as I wrap my arms around his middle, and he grunts over me.
“Is this okay?” he whispers. “I need this to be okay.”
I don’t answer with words.
Instead, I cover his mouth with mine and reach for the hem of his shirt.
* * *
Find out Reese’s next move in Only Ever You (A Little Like Destiny Book 2). Click here to continue reading.
TAKEN
NATASHA KNIGHT
About This Book
I’m one of four Willow daughters.
He’s the first-born son of the Scafoni family. And we have history.
For generations, the Scafoni family have demanded a sacrifice of us. A virgin daughter to atone for sins so old, we don’t even remember what they are anymore.
But when you have as much money as they do, you don’t play by the rules. You make them.
And Sebastian Scafoni makes all the rules.
The moment I saw him, I knew he would choose me. Even though the mark on my sheath declared me unclean. Even though my beautiful sisters stood beside me, offered to him, he still chose me.
He made me his.
And then he set out to break me.
Prologue
HELENA
I’m the oldest of the Willow quadruplets. Four girls. Always girls. Every single quadruplet birth, generation after generation, it’s always girls.
This generation’s crop yielded the usual, but instead of four perfect, beautiful dolls, there were three.
And me.
And today, our twenty-first birthday, is the day of harvesting.
That’s the Scafoni family’s choice of words, not ours. At least not mine. My parents seem much more comfortable with it than my sisters and I do, though.
Harvesting is always on the twenty-first birthday of the quads. I don’t know if it’s written in stone somewhere or what, but it’s what I know and what has been on the back of my mind since I learned our history five years ago.
There’s an expression: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Well, that’s bullshit, because we Willows know well our past and look at us now.
The same blocks that have been used for centuries standing in the old library, their surfaces softened by the feet of every other Willow Girl who stood on the same stumps of wood, and all I can think when I see them, the four lined up like they are, is how archaic this is, how fucking unreal. How they can’t do this to us.
Yet, here we are.
And they are doing this to us.
But it’s not us, really.
My shift is marked.
I’m unclean.
So it’s really my sisters.
Sometimes I’m not sure who I hate more, my own family for allowing this insanity generation after generation, or the Scafoni monsters for demanding the sacrifice.
“It’s time,” my father says. His voice is grave.
He’s aged these last few months. I wonder if that’s remorse because it certainly isn’t backbone.
I heard he and my mother argue once, exactly once, and then it was over.
He simply accepted it.
Accepted that tonight, his daughters will be made to stand on those horrible blocks while a Scafoni bastard looks us over, prods and pokes us, maybe checks our teeth like you would a horse, before making his choice. Before taking one of my sisters as his for the next three years of her life.
I’m not naive enough to be unsure what that will mean exactly. Maybe my sisters are, but not me.
“Up on the block. Now, Helena.”
I look at my sisters who already stand so meekly on their appointed stumps. They’re all paler than usual tonight and I swear I can hear their hearts pounding in fear of what’s to come.
When I don’t move right away, my father painfully takes my arm and lifts me up onto my block and all I can think, the one thing that gives me the slightest hope, is that if Sebastian Scafoni chooses me, I will find some way to end this. I won’t condemn my daughters to this fate. My nieces. My granddaughters.
But he won’t choose me, and I think that’s why my parents are angrier than usual with me.
See, I’m the ugly duckling. At least I’d be considered ugly standing next to my sisters.
And the fact that I’m unclean—not a virgin—means I won’t be taken.
The Scafoni bastard will choose one of their precious golden daughters instead.
Golden, to my dark. Golden—quite literally. Sparkling almost, my sisters.
I glance at them as my father attaches the iron shackle to my ankle. He doesn’t do this to any of them. They’ll do as they’re told, even as their gazes bounce from the closed twelve-foot doors to me and back again and again and again.
But I have no protection to offer. Not tonight. Not on this one.
The backs of my eyes burn with tears I refuse to shed.
“How can you do this? How can you allow it?” I ask for the hundredth time. I’m talking to my mother while my father clasps the restraints on my wrists, making sure I won’t attack the monsters.
“Better gag her, too.”
It’s my mother’s response to my question and, a moment later, my father does as he’s told and ensures my silence.
I hate my mother more, I think. She’s a Willow quadruplet. She witnessed a harvesting herself. Witnessed the result of this cruel tradition.
Tradition.
A tradition of kidnapping.
Of breaking.
Of destroying.
I look to my sisters again. Three almost carbon copies of each other, with long blonde hair curling around their shoulders, flowing down their backs, their blue eyes wide with fear.
Well, except in Julia’s case.
She’s different than the others. She’s more…eager. But I don’t think she has a clue what they’ll do to her.
Me, no one would guess I came from the same batch.
Opposite their gold, my hair is so dark a black, it appears almost blue, with one single, wide streak of silver to relieve the stark shade, a flaw I was born with. And contrasting their cornflower-blue eyes, mine are a midnight sky; there too, the only relief the silver specks that dot them.
They look like my mother. Like perfect dolls.
I look like my great-aunt, also named Helena, down to the silver streak I refuse
to dye. She’s in her nineties now. I wonder if they had to lock her in her room and steal her wheelchair, so she wouldn’t interfere in the ceremony.
Aunt Helena was the chosen girl of her generation. She knows what’s in store for us better than anyone.
“They’re coming,” my mother says.
She has super hearing, I swear, but then, a moment later, I hear them too.
A door slams beyond the library, and the draft blows out a dozen of the thousand candles that light the huge room.
A maid rushes to relight them. No electricity. Tradition, I guess.
If I were Sebastian Scafoni, I’d want to get a good look at the prize I’d be fucking for the next year. And I have no doubt there will be fucking, because what else can break a girl so completely but taking that of all things?
And it’s not just the one year. No. We’re given for three years. One year for each brother. Oldest to youngest. It used to be four, but now, it’s three.
I would pinch my arm to be sure I’m really standing here, that I’m not dreaming, but my hands are bound behind my back, and I can’t.
This can’t be fucking real. It can’t be legal.
And yet here we are, the four of us, naked beneath our translucent, rotting sheaths—I swear I smell the decay on them—standing on our designated blocks, teetering on them. I guess the Willows of the past had smaller feet. And I admit, as I hear their heavy, confident footfalls approaching the ancient wooden doors of the library, I am afraid.
I’m fucking terrified.
Chapter One
SEBASTIAN
Ethan and Gregory flank me as we make our way through this godforsaken house in the middle of a fucking cornfield in the middle of fucking nowhere, USA. Why in hell anyone chooses to live here is beyond me. I just hope the girl isn’t a fucking dimwit. A year is a long time.
Ethan is whispering something in Gregory’s ear. Gregory is even quieter than usual.
I glance back at them, and I know Greg’s quiet misleads people into thinking he’s the safe one, but he’s not. He’s the most sadistic, if you ask me. I mean, if there are degrees. Can sadism be measured in degrees?
“We decide together,” Ethan says to me. He’s repeated this mantra for the last forty-eight hours.
“I decide, little brother.” He’s twenty-five, three years my junior. Gregory is twenty-four.
“She’s all of ours,” he says, sounding like a fucking toddler who doesn’t get his way.
“No,” I clarify, and I’m trying to be patient because really, I can’t blame Ethan for being the way he is. “She’s mine.”
“She’s only yours first.”
“Give it a rest, Ethan,” I say.
“Sebastian.” My stepmother’s heels click over the hardwood. “Don’t fight with your brother. You know I don’t like to see that.” She goes to Ethan, touches his cheek. “You’ll all have your turn with the Willow whore. They’re resilient.”
Her loathing of the Willow women is so obvious, a part of me wishes the chosen girl luck because she’ll need it to walk out of the Scafoni home when her three years are up. It’ll take someone with a spine of steel to survive my stepmother, never mind my brothers and me.
“Why do you hate them, Lucinda?” I ask, enjoying my power over her.
Truth be told, she probably hates me as much as the Willows, but it doesn’t matter. I may not be her biological son, but I am master of the Scafoni family. My father is dead, I am the eldest, and I have no intention of letting anyone rule me or usurp my place, especially not Lucinda.
“They’re whores, Sebastian. There to serve a purpose. Remember that instead of turning on your brothers. Family first. Never forget it.”
“You don’t have to remind me of that, Lucinda. I just wish I understood your hatred of them. I mean, what are they to you? You’re not a Scafoni by blood, after all.”
This irritates the fuck out of her, and that fact makes me grin.
The library doors open, saving her from having to answer.
A thousand candles burn inside, casting a warm glow over the large room. I’m not sure which scent is stronger, that of old books, of melting wax or fear.
I spy the first white sheath, and as much as I like to tell myself this is nothing more than a family obligation, a thrill runs through me.
I’m excited to claim my Willow Girl.
Lucinda falls back, as is her place.
I step forward and turn to my right, where Mr. and Mrs. Willow, the proud parents of this generation’s crop, stand with ghostly faces. I nod my greeting. I am civil, at least.
I take in the room, still avoiding the girls on their blocks, saving them for last, appreciating the ancient library—the only thing old about this house, the rest having been rebuilt ten years ago, and it was done cheaply too. I hate cheap. But I guess by then, the money from the previous reaping was running out.
Based old sketches, this house was once a grand estate, before the fire that ravaged it years ago. But the library is the most important room, the one kept up to par, as per the contract. And it’s the only one I care about.
Beautiful old wooden beams overhead keep the roof from collapsing on our heads, and arched windows reflect the scene within. I wonder how bright it is during the day. If you can see particles of dust a thousand years old disturbed when ghosts rummage through the old tomes, searching for a way out of this nightmare for their girls.
I harden at the thought, and for a moment, I understand Lucinda’s hatred. The Willows aren’t the only ones cursed to repeat this ancient, insane tradition.
A candle flickers.
I wonder if the dead Willow Girls of generations past stand witness to tonight’s harvesting.
It’s with this thought in mind that I let my gaze come to rest on the spectacle before me.
Four girls.
Four beauties, because the Willow’s only breed beauties.
Three dolls, perfect with their golden hair and enormous blue eyes. One…well…I cock my head to the side at the sight of her. This one is bound, her arms stretched behind her. A gag covers her mouth.
And on the belly of her shift, there’s a streak of red.
Pig’s blood.
I decide to save her for last.
I move to the first, let my gaze slide over her. She drops hers to the floor, where it should have been all along. I sweep her from head to toe and back. The sheath doesn’t offer much cover, but that’s the point. They are to be laid out for my perusal. For me to take my pick.
Because I am fortunate enough to be born a Scafoni and they unfortunate enough to be born a Willow.
This one is pretty enough. Perfect, actually. But I move on to her sister.
Another doll-like girl.
She doesn’t drop her gaze to her feet but keeps it just beyond me. It’s high time the Willows were reminded of their place.
This one has something different in her eyes. She’s coquettish, almost. And she’s making eyes at my brother. From the look of her, I’m surprised she’s not the one with the blood marking on her sheath.
With her, I’ll be bored. And she won’t survive a single month, much less three years.
Sadly, there are no trade-ins. Once the choice is made, it is made, and if the girl dies before her time is completed, well, our loss, I guess.
It’s unfair, really.
I step to my left, to the next block, the next girl.
Just like her sisters.
I’m too anxious to reach the last one to spend any time on this one because perfection like this, it doesn’t interest me. I need more than physical beauty.
Where is the fun in breaking a girl when she doesn’t have a spine to break? Where is the game in walking a meek little lamb to the slaughter?
I’d prefer a cat, wild and feral, with sharp teeth and a sharper tongue.
With this thought in mind, I step to the last Willow Girl.
She isn’t a doll. Not like her sisters, at least. Beautiful, still, but t
his one, there’s something about her, a darkness to her. Rebellion burning inside her.
Or maybe it’s just arrogance.
It makes one corner of my mouth curve upward.
This one is no lamb. I see it in the icy midnight eyes that greet me, and I realize why she’s bound and gagged. She’d lunge at me if she could, and the thought makes my dick hard.
I walk a circle around her and confirm that her wrists are bound in leather restraints at her lower back. Not only that, but she’s shackled to the block. I guess they weren’t taking any chances.
When I face her again, she doesn’t shy away, this girl, but holds my gaze. And right now, I want nothing more than to punish her for it.
She’s different than the others. I decide to call them the dolls. This one, her dark hair is so black it’s almost blue. It falls straight and heavy down her back, long enough to wind around my hand, thick enough to withstand my fist.
I step to her, and even standing on the block, she has to turn her head up to keep my gaze, but she does.
“Switch on the lights,” I command.
I want to see the bounty. Fuck tradition.
The room is drenched in bright light on my order, and Ethan is quick to step toward me.
“Not her. Take any other one but her.” It’s irritating, the sound of his voice. Like a fucking fly that keeps buzzing at my ear.
I don’t acknowledge him or his comment. He needs to learn his place sometime.
My eyes are locked on the girl. She stands watching, defiant.
Petite, almost. Maybe 5’4” off the block, I’d guess. A good foot shorter than me. She’s naked beneath the sheath, as instructed. I look down at the dark pink points of her nipples, cold beneath my inspection, pressing against the centuries-old cloth.
I study her, keep her gaze as I gather the sheath in my hand and stretch it, holding the marked spot out.
“I’m sorry,” her mother says.
I turn to the woman. She lowers her gaze, and her husband steps forward, then bows his head in apology.
Love Triangle: Six Books of Torn Desire Page 65