Animal Instincts (Gilded Knights Series Book 3)

by Emilia Finn

  “He’s coming this weekend,” she protests amid gentle, quiet tears. “Two more days.”

  “And in two more days, I’ll still want you. I’ll hunger for you. I’ll beg for you. And when you choose the guy who doesn’t cherish you, I’ll bleed for you.”

  “You only want me because I’m unavailable,” she whimpers. “I’m a toy you were told no to.”

  “I want you because you look stunning even in doilies,” I push back. “I want you because you’re not at all intimidated by me, and better yet, you have absolutely no inclination to titter and giggle when I’m around. You don’t care to impress me.” I make my way forward. Slowly. One step at a time. “You say you’re scared,” I lift my unsteady hands, “but you don’t notice the way I tremble for you. The way I shake from the fear of losing you.”

  “Beckett, stop.”

  “You say you’re scared,” I press on, “but you’re the only one of the two of us with nothing to lose. You’ll go to your man on Saturday, since it’s what you know. It’s comfortable. He’ll ask you to marry him, because anyone with half a brain would. And you’ll say yes because, like we’ve already covered… comfortable.”

  “He is not asking me to marry him.”

  “Isn’t he?” I stop in front of her, our toes touching, our breath mingling. “I would.”

  Tabby’s eyes shoot wide with horror. “What?”

  “Especially after time apart.” I wrap my hands around her arms and bring her closer. Taller. “Though I’d make damn sure we didn’t spend so long apart. I would never in a million years watch you pack up a shared apartment and move to a new town without me.”

  “It was all part of the plan,” she whispers. This time, when a tear spills over and slides along her cheek, she leaves it alone. Lets it make its trek uninhibited. “We had a plan. He had a job here, I had a job interview. He would finish up, and since I was already organized—”

  “You would come ahead.” I nod and drag her closer. I taste her breath on my tongue. Her fear. Her terror. “Because you’re you,” I murmur. “Because you’re organized and too kind. Because you’re determined to smooth life for every person you know except yourself.”

  “I can’t do this, Beckett.” Tabby turns her face when I pull her closer. Just two inches apart. One inch. She turns her cheek so my lips touch there instead of her mouth. “I won’t cheat on my boyfriend. I won’t toss my dignity aside just to be another of your conquests.”

  My heart aches. Splintering and painful. “You want to.” I buzz my lips over her cheekbone. “You want so badly to give in and feel for a minute. You wish you could dive into this, guilt-free.”

  My temper flares when the phone I tossed on the bed earlier vibrates with a call. It could be Tabby’s sister. It could be one of a hundred people. But my instincts scream that it’s her fucking boyfriend. Calling to check up on his possession.

  Not calling to soothe her soul or profess actual love.

  Tabby hears the vibration just as clearly as I do. Her body tenses, and on her next breath, she shudders and cries.

  “I’ll take the call.” I slide my thumb along her cheek to collect falling tears. “I’ll tell him. Then I’ll make it so you’re free. No guilt. No cheating.” I drag the heel of my palm along her cheek and collect more tears. “I’ll make it better so you don’t have to feel the ache in your stomach.”

  “I’m not going to break up with my boyfriend for you, Beckett. You’re taking a dream I had the other night and twisting it into something it’s not.”

  With that, she breaks away from my hands and snatches her phone up before it rings out. Tabby studies the screen for a moment, closes her eyes, then accepts the call and brings the device to her ear.

  “Hey, Mark.”

  Anger courses through my blood. Rage. But that rage is wrapped in hurt and a bone-deep fear that maybe Tabby won’t choose us. She’s a creature of habit. Of safety. And mediocrity with him is a surer deal to her than the risk of something great with me.

  “Just finished dinner,” Tabby mutters into the phone. “Almost time for bed.”

  I could speak up. Say something wildly inappropriate. I could be the reason they fight, and with any luck, that fight will lead to a breakup.

  She’s so close… The call is happening right now. I could have everything I want, all with a simple word or two. A sentence or two.

  But I can’t, my heart and brain insist. I can’t hurt her in my quest to have her.

  “No.” Tabby sniffles and makes her way to the corner of the room. She turns so her back presses to the wall, then she lowers into a crouch and leans so she herself is the chair. “There are fields of grass out here, so my allergies are acting up.” She sniffles again and avoids meeting my eyes. “How was your day? I miss you.”

  I can’t listen to this. I can’t bear witness to the show she puts on. My pain has absolutely nothing to do with seeing her talk to another man, and everything to do with the farce she presents him with. She shrivels under her own lies. She loses color the longer she speaks to him.

  She knows she’s choosing wrong; she’s choosing a lifetime of dull routine over the passion she feels when she looks at me.

  She’s choosing wrong. And there ain’t a damn thing I can do about it.

  Shaking my head, I go to the door and ignore the way Tabby’s eyes unwillingly jump to my movement. I swing the door wide, and for just a moment, our gazes meet.

  She continues to cry, continues to uh-huh and mm-hm for the man telling her some bullshit story. Tears torrent onto her cheeks, her jaw quivers, and when I step through the doorway, her shoulders droop and she drops to her butt, too weak to hold herself up.

  “Um. Yep,” her voice cracks as she answers her boyfriend’s question. “I’ll have a shower soon, then get to bed. I’m exhausted,” she chokes out.

  I close the door with a soft snick and turn to head through the home and outside, but I’m stopped when Samara waits against the opposite wall, in the same position she was in when we last passed through. Her hair is still scraggly and messy. Her dress, still ugly as sin. Her entire countenance remains as it was at dinner. But now, she lets a soft grin creep along her face as I slowly come closer.

  “How much of that did you hear?” I stop by the girl and press my back to the wall so we’re matching stances. “On a scale of nothing to everything?”

  “I heard that you’re in love,” she answers, too serious for her age. “I heard that you want her to love you back. And I heard her tell you no.”

  “Well…” My stomach swirls and aches. “That was about the gist of it.”

  “Why’d you walk out?”

  I look to the closed door and swallow down the pain that attempts to lodge in my throat. She’s in that room right now, alone with him. He may be on the phone, and not in the flesh. But at this point, there doesn’t seem to be a difference. “She’s talking to someone on the phone.”

  “In the middle of that argument?” she asks. “That’s rude.”

  I shrug and push away from the wall. I can still hear Tabby. Not her every word, but I hear her voice. Her tone. And I don’t want to be here to witness it. “I’m gonna go for a walk, okay? So—”

  “Great idea.” She pushes off the wall too. “Can I come?”

  “No.” I drop my hands into my pockets and let my head fall. “I wanna go on my own.”

  “Mr. Rosa?” Samara asks before I can escape the hall. “Can I tell you something?”

  I stop at the doorway between hall and kitchen. The area is already cleaned, pots put away, plates washed and stacked, water glasses wiped and de-smudged. Turning back, I meet the girl’s dark eyes. “What?”

  “I also heard that she loves you back.” Samara’s voice comes softer as she makes her way along the hall. “I heard that she’s scared, but she’s doing her best not to mess it all up.” For a moment, her eyes go around me, in search of her overly protective parents. Finding the coast is clear, she brings her gaze back up. “I heard
love. From you, and from her. Now you just have to wait and see what happens.”

  Now I just have to wait and see what happens.

  Awesome.

  With a small nod—in acknowledgment, and in thanks—I head into the kitchen and push out the door we walked through for the first time only a few hours ago.

  Somehow, I’ve found myself on a work trip, in a bed-and-breakfast with a woman I ache for, no way to leave, a murder family who may or may not sell our kidneys by morning, and right now, Tabby is on the phone with the guy I strongly suspect is days away from asking her to marry him.

  My life is just fucking peachy.

  16

  Tabby

  Heartache

  Beckett is gone for hours. For several of them. Several severals.

  If we were in a hotel in the city tonight, I would assume he’s found the bar and perhaps some female companionship to help him get over the feelings he claims to have.

  But we’re not at an upscale hotel with a bar and other people. We’re on a damn farm. So now my worries extend toward Beckett perhaps having fallen into the pond. Or he’s trapped under a tractor; nevermind the fact that to be stuck, someone has to be driving the damn thing. Or perhaps he’s crushed between a five-hundred-pound bull and the wall of the bull’s enclosure.

  Or, and most likely of all, he’s visiting the pregnant horse.

  All the while, I lay in bed, squeeze my eyes closed, and pray for respite from this day.

  It’s been a flaming pile of shit, one after the other, since I woke up. An argument with Mark, an argument with Beckett. Finding that our accommodation is owned and operated by crazies. The broken truck. The dinner from hell. Beckett’s news—that my dream wasn’t a dream at all—and then Beckett’s feelings, tossed all over our room like confetti from a cannon.

  He doesn’t mean what he says. If he did, if he truly believed and meant what he said, then my heart wouldn’t ache so much. My mind wouldn’t spin so fast. My anxiety wouldn’t leave me damn near paralyzed.

  Hell, if he believed what he says, then he wouldn’t have left me alone inside the murder house for hours on end. For all he knows, I’ve been hacked to death and made into a pie. Cooked on the stove. Prepared for tomorrow night’s dinner.

  As though the universe wants to prove me wrong, in the almost silence of midnight, the door opens behind me, but because of how quiet the world is around us, the undoing of the latch is like a gunshot in the dark.

  I jump beneath my blankets, but my brain locks onto the sound of Beckett’s breathing. His shoes sliding on the floor. His softer-than-sound throat-clearing.

  It’s not Mother or Father, come to collect me for baking. It’s only Beckett. The guy who probably won’t murder me in my sleep.

  But the relief I feel is fleeting. Because now Beckett is in the same room as me, come to sleep while I sleep. Come to confuse me a little more, to torment me and make me question the relationship I’m in.

  He claims feelings, but if that were true, then he’d care about my happiness. And happiness, to me, means not being caught in the love triangle from hell.

  I remain lying still, my breath coming evenly, my eyes most of the way closed, and my hands still.

  I see nothing. No light from the hallway, and no Beckett, since I’m facing away from the door. But then he shuffles around the room. His footsteps are light, his breath almost silent. But I know him now. I know his every nuance.

  My heart speeds when he comes around to my side of the bed.

  Well, the bed is narrow, so technically the whole thing is ‘my side’. But when he comes into view on the side I’m facing, my stomach dips and my throat turns dry.

  He’s still in the same clothes he wore to dinner. The tie has been tugged loose, the top few shirt buttons undone. He rolled his sleeves up at some point since I last saw him. And though his hair is shaggy and messy, he still somehow makes it look intentional and alluring in the moonlight.

  That’s the true problem here, right? He’s used to women telling him yes. He’s used to blind obedience. And here I am, the plain secretary, telling him no.

  He doesn’t want me. He only wants his winning streak back.

  I remain still, silent, and watch as Beckett changes in front of me. He obviously assumes I’m asleep, because he stops by his bags and drops his pants. He shows off a pair of black boxer shorts and socks. He doesn’t strip either of those off, but he tugs at his tie and grunts when it doesn’t release as easily as he’d hoped.

  His eyes come back to mine. Over and over and over. But I lie in the shadows, cuddled beneath warm blankets, and pray my squint is enough to make him believe I’m out.

  “You awake, Tabby?” Beckett’s voice is almost silent, but in this room, in my chest, it feels like a shout.

  I remain quiet. Asleep.

  “No?” Shrugging into a fresh shirt, Beckett wanders in my direction and crouches down barely a foot away.

  He smells like home, like sex, like something I could cuddle into daily and grow addicted to. My heart thunders because of his proximity, my stomach swirls, and though I’m squinting, my eyes try to force themselves open.

  “I guess it’s a good thing you’re asleep,” he sighs. “Saves you from the awkwardness of having a man you don’t like in your space.”

  My heart aches at the pain in his voice. At what I could swear is genuine anguish.

  “I know things are crazy,” he murmurs. “I know I’ve made you believe one version of me, only to now ask you to take my word and trust that I’m not a total man-slut. I know you’re in a relationship, and even if I don’t think it’s worth shit…” He pauses for a moment, then continues, “well, you obviously think it’s worth something. I want to respect that. I really do. But I’m finding it difficult to accept that you choose someone else, because if you do that, then that leaves me out here in the cold.”

  He leans forward and presses a feather-light kiss to my brow. “I don’t want just any woman to keep me warm. And I don’t want you to throw caution to the wind and change who you are for me. But I want you to give me a chance. I bet I could make you happy.” He presses a second kiss to my brow and doesn’t notice the tear that slides between my lashes and soaks into the pillowcase. “I’ll make you believe.”

  With that, he pushes up from his crouch and drags a folded blanket from the end of the bed. Grabbing a pillow from the pile I’ve already tossed, Beckett makes himself a bed on the floor beside mine. His breath comes a little heavier as he works. He places the pillow at the same end mine is, close to my bed, so if this were a queen-sized mattress, we’d be spooning.

  Grunting, he drops to his butt and fixes his blanket to cover his long length, then he lies down and groans at the hard floor. He says nothing else. Doesn’t complain that he’s lying on what I’m certain is concrete covered with a thin layer of carpet. And a few minutes after he drops, he breaks the silence with a gentle exhalation.

  “Night, Tabby. I already miss you.”

  17

  Beckett

  Faith

  I wake to the soft sound of rain bouncing against the bed-and-breakfast’s roof. My hips ache from being compressed against the hard floor, and my neck twinges from having a too-hard pillow. But when I crack my eyes open and find I’m facing Tabby, and she’s facing me, my aches disappear and are replaced with a grin.

  She lies on her belly, her cheeks smooshed against her mattress, her lips bowed from the angle she sleeps. A line wrinkles her cheek, and another marks between her brows, as though she’s been frowning all night. But the best part of all is her hand, dangling over the side of the bed, and the soft snore accompanying the gentle sound of rain.

  She’s completely unfiltered.

  Unlike many women sleeping in the same room as a man—whether she likes him or not—she hasn’t woken early and run to the bathroom to fix her hair and makeup.

  The women I know, they’re all the same, and they all think their trickery is believable. I just woke up this
way long ago stopped sounding sincere, and though, of course, I never minded or called these women out on their lies, now that I see Tabby in all her rumpled beauty, I realize that I’ve missed out on something important in my dating life.

  Seeing the real, seeing the flaws, the neuroses, the quirks; they’re important to learning who a person is beneath the shine. The crazy idiosyncrasies make a woman real, and the unique sound of this woman’s snore does things to my stomach that no layer of lip gloss first thing in the morning ever will.

  My past flings served a purpose. They allowed me to be intimate without sharing my soul. They allowed me to learn about myself without being bogged down with learning about them. They allowed me to figure out what I like in bed, and what I like giving.

  It all sounds crass to a bystander’s ears, but those women were a useful tool, because now I lie on the floor, in pain, hungry and dying for a drop of caffeine, but none of that is as prevalent in my mind as my desire for Tabby to wake and smile at me. To show me that she’s here… perhaps against her will, but willing to have a little fun anyway.

  Tabby’s fingers twitch while she sleeps. Her nails, unpainted but tended to, shimmer from the muted light filtering through rain clouds and curtains made of… doilies.

  Daringly, I inch my arm from beneath my blanket and, extending my fingers, I stroke hers gently, feather-soft, and smile when she doesn’t recoil away.

  My lips are dry, my throat parched. But I forget all of that when I feel the warmth of her skin against mine.

  I’m a man used to dropping into bed with women on a first date. I’m not proud of my past, but there it is anyway, a massive lesson for me to learn. But touching a woman’s body, those women’s bodies, is nothing compared to the ability to trace Tabby’s fingers.

  It’s so very innocent. Uncomplicated, but potent. It’s only a touch, but it’s so much more.

  And the moment could be completely destroyed if Tabby opens her eyes and allows her conscience to command us both once more.