by Selena Scott
“Good,” Tre said immediately, vehemently. “He needs to know that you’ve moved on and that he should, too.”
“Oh, he’s definitely moved on.” There was a slow honesty in her tone that Tre very much hoped wasn’t sadness. “Trust me.”
“Caroline, trust me, he hasn’t moved on. I really don’t think it would be possible to move on from you.”
She smiled. “Sweet.” Her hand tightened against his for a second. “Untrue, but sweet.”
He opened his mouth to argue with her but she talked over him.
“The thing is, Tre. Was that I was kind of thinking we could kill two birds with one stone?”
“Which two birds?” he asked carefully.
“Well.” Finally, finally, she looked up at him and held his gaze with hers. “You need company so you don’t get taken by the demon. And I kind of need… someone to take my mind off of Peter?”
White noise bloomed in Tre’s ears. It rose to a high pitch before falling back. He spoke incredibly slowly. “Are you, ah, asking me to be your rebound?”
“Rebound! Yes! That’s the perfect word for it. Just something to get me back on my feet.”
Now that she was finally looking at him, Tre was wishing that she would put those honey eyes on something else for a minute. He was sure that the color at his neck had spread to his cheeks. He was hot and itchy. He felt like he was on a dark stage with a blindingly bright spotlight on him. He wished that guy with the big hook would yank him offstage.
“Ah.” He cleared his throat. “You mean you want somebody to flirt with and cuddle with?”
“Yes,” she nodded resolutely.
His stomach settled a little bit.
“And to have sex with,” she added.
His stomach tightened back up into a world of knots. “Wow. I’m not sure what to say.”
Apparently realizing that that wasn’t an out and out ‘no’, Caroline rose up to sit cross-legged on the bed, her hair spilling everywhere and her face soft and pink from the warmth of the bed. “I think it would be good for both of us.” Her eyes dropped and she played with the ends of her hair. “I mean, I’d do my best to make it good for you.”
He swallowed a groan. He’d been valiantly attempting to put a stopper in the mental images bottle, but she blew the cork right out with that one. Tre was immediately flooded with images of Caroline trying hard to make it good for him. Her soft hands on him, those plush lips, her serious eyes, her innocent sincerity. Christ.
Realizing his hand was sweating, Tre unlaced their fingers. “You’re saying that you want to sleep with me?” His voice was low.
“I really like sex,” she insisted, both hands playing with a lock of hair now. “I always have. And you already know things weren’t good with Peter for the last few years. So, it’s been few and far between for me for a long time. And you’re so handsome and I like your tattoos and you’re always sweet to me. Plus, I like the way you move and smell and I just thought…”
Tre couldn’t keep this particular groan inside. He lowered his forehead to his raised knees and just breathed for a minute.
Don’t be a bastard. Don’t be a bastard. DON’T be a bastard.
Tre knew it would make him a bastard to rise up and press her back on the bed. To wrap her legs around his waist and take handfuls of her gorgeously big ass in his hands. For two months she’d been perfectly off limits. So firmly out of his league that he’d barely even fantasized about her, barely even sneaked peeks. But now, here she was, offering herself up on a platter. And Tre was hungry. He hadn’t slept with someone in the two months they’d been on this adventure and not for about three weeks from before that. Which was definitely a dry patch for him. He wasn’t an animal, but he enjoyed getting laid.
And here was this undeniably gorgeous creature playing with her hair and looking at him with clear amber eyes and really filling out those pajama shorts.
If he’d thought for one second that she was truly asking for what she’d just asked him for, he would probably already have his face buried between her legs. But he’d had the extreme honor and privilege of becoming Caroline Clifton’s friend over the last weeks. There was no way she actually wanted a fuck buddy. Even if she thought she did. She was bruised up from her divorce, sure, and she’d said before she was looking for casual. But somewhere, deep in her heart, Caroline was a romantic. She wanted what Celia and Thea had. She wanted life-changing love.
“I’m not sure we’re on the same page here, love.”
She wilted before his very eyes like a tulip with hot water tossed over top of it. “Oh. You don’t want to sleep with me.”
He puffed out a humorless, painful laugh. “That’s not the problem.” Tre scraped a hand over the back of his neck and his coppery hair. He pushed at his eyes under his glasses and then leaned back on his hands, letting his head fall back to look up at the ceiling. He found it was much easier to talk to the drywall than to her. “Caroline, you’re probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen up close.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she laughed. “What about Thea?”
Tre couldn’t even call up Thea’s face in his mind at that particular moment. “We’re not talking about her. We’re talking about you. You’re vivacious and fun and sweet and smart and so unbelievably sexy, love.”
“So, you find me beautiful but I’m not your type?”
He thought of all of her preppy little outfits, her simple jewelry and perfect hair. She looked absolutely nothing like the tough little honeys he usually slept with. But her attractiveness went far beyond the confines of personal style. This had nothing to do with the label on the pocket of her PJs.
“No, that’s not it.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He lifted his head and her eyes quickly skittered away from the tattoos on his chest that she’d obviously just been eyeing. That made things both easier and harder for him. He really, really didn’t want to say what he was about to say. He knew it was going to change her perception of him. And she thought so highly of him. He really loved it. She made him feel like he was twelve feet tall. But, he had to tell her. He figured it was the only way to get this idea out of her head. “I don’t sleep with women I know.”
Her eyes widened in surprise and she went very, very still. “You mean you only sleep with strangers?”
He nodded, watching her face carefully.
“But…” she bit her plush bottom lip. “After you sleep with them, you know them and they aren’t strangers anymore, so….”
“So, I don’t usually sleep with a woman more than once,” he filled in the rest of the blank. He figured he might as well just go whole hog and get the damn thing out in the open. “Sex isn’t about intimacy for me. Or connection. And it definitely isn’t about love. I just like to have a good time, is all.”
She was looking at him like she didn’t know him and he hated it.
“You don’t believe in love?” she asked softly, her head cocked to one side and her long, gorgeous hair just dusting over the top of the blanket.
He shrugged. “It’s not a part of my life, Caroline. I don’t think it ever will be. I’m not capable of it.”
She looked like he’d just told her that he liked to club baby seals. “Tre—”
“No, Caroline, trust me. I’ve thought about this a lot. There are some men, like Jack and Jean Luc, who were born with the ability to love. And there are some men, like me, who weren’t. I care about you so much, as a friend. And I’m super fucking attracted to you. But we can’t sleep together. I would just hurt you. And I respect you too much to do that.”
“Oh. Okay.” She shrugged a little. She slid off the bed and came to stand in front of him. He could tell that she was hurt and confused. Disappointment in himself was a stiflingly hot blanket flopped over him. He hated feeling like this. This was why he had these rules! So he wouldn’t be the bad guy all the time. He got to his feet.
She straightened her shoulders and looked hi
m in the eye. “Wanna play cards until everybody else wakes up?”
They had a gin tournament going on that had lasted weeks and weeks. She was as good as he was and neither of them could pull ahead. Tre’s lungs opened up and he almost gasped for the fresh cold air of relief. She didn’t hate him. She was giving him the opportunity to stay friends. She was the best.
“Definitely. I’m just gonna get some clothes on and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
She nodded, went to step around him and paused. Her arms, soft and warm and tight, snagged around his chest and squeezed. Her cheek pressed into his mat of coppery chest hair. Her long chestnut hair tickled every inch of his skin on the way down.
He waited a beat and then clasped his arms around her shoulders. Held her tight.
He watched her go, a peculiar heaviness settling in his gut.
CHAPTER FOUR
Caroline kept herself busy over the next few days. It felt good to be busy. So much of her time spent married to Peter had been aimlessly idle. But here, there was so much to do and she was eager to do it.
Thea, grateful to be home, spent most of her time with her animals, and doing tasks around her land. Celia took the helm on meals. Martine was training with the boys, helping them hone their shifting skills. Which left Caroline to tend to Arturo.
Honestly, she didn’t mind. She knew that Arturo wasn’t exactly a good guy. But something told her that he wasn’t as evil as the rest of them made him out to be. He was so handsome and he made her laugh every now and then. She sensed that there was a hugely guarded part of himself that he kept hidden away, and that kept her on her toes. She didn’t exactly trust him, but she wasn’t scared to be alone with him either.
He was loads better than he’d been when he’d first regained consciousness. His fever had gone down and he’d gotten a lot of his strength back. But he was frequently incapacitated with pains in his gut that were so severe, he’d fall limp back onto the bed, sweaty and delirious. Caroline was glad that she could be there with him, offer him some comfort through all of that.
She did worry, however, that she was using Arturo just a little bit. His illness provided her the perfect excuse for getting her mind off of Tre.
It had really bummed her out when he’d said no to her sex idea. First of all, she really was worried about him being alone every night in the back of the house. That was exactly how Jean Luc almost got himself drowned not two weeks ago. She wanted someone there with him. And she’d wanted that someone to be her.
After her phone call with Peter, she hadn’t gone back online. Flirting and texting had come to seem extremely pointless to her. These men were all hundreds of miles away. At least. Which was why she’d originally turned her eye to Tre. He was single and extremely local. And, as she’d realized a long time ago, he was very attractive. His skin was always so warm and inviting. His coppery red hair and stubble always made him seem extra warm, like the coals at the bottom of a long-kindled fire.
She liked his glasses and that he didn’t seem to care about fashion. She loved the colorful spray of tattoos over more than half his body, most of all the green leaves that crept up the side of his neck and seemed to beat with life from the pulse in his throat. But most of all she loved how sweet he was. Kind and calm. He never seemed to be irritated with her. He was always making a joke or chuckling about something.
She just liked him.
Caroline sighed deeply as she tinkered around Arturo’s room, folding some bedclothes and re-shelving some of the books that someone had piled up on the desk.
“What’s wrong, angel?” Arturo’s deep voice asked from behind her. His dark eyes tracked her from one end of the room to the other. A small smile on his face wiped clean the second she turned around.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just disappointed about something. It’s stupid, really.” Caroline tossed her hair back over her shoulders and came to sit in the chair beside his bed.
Arturo hauled himself up to sitting, wincing at the deep tug of pain in his chest and gut. He hadn’t told them yet that this wasn’t the kind of pain a man could heal from. “You can tell me.”
She eyed him for a second, her lips pursed out and her eyes squinted, and Arturo held his gasp inside. Sometimes this Caroline creature reminded him so much of Amelia he could barely look at her. Not in looks; Amelia had been small and black-haired. But in demeanor. They both had that wide-eyed appreciation for the good things in the world. It was almost like they weren’t physically capable of seeing the bad things unless they were forced to.
Having Caroline around felt strangely like both the balm for a wound and like the wound itself. She was soothing and painful in the same breath.
“Do you think I’m attractive?” she eventually asked him.
In the hallway outside, Tre froze solid, one hand on the wall to steady himself. Had she just asked Arturo…
Arturo’s low laugh turned Tre’s blood to ice. “Of course, angel. You’re a very beautiful woman.”
Caroline was quiet for a minute. “Arturo, are you human?”
It was a legitimate question considering that Martine wasn’t technically human. She was a different kind of being. A born demon hunter, her lifetime spanned centuries, her feelings and desires different than a mortal’s.
“Yes and no,” Arturo answered carefully. “I was born a man. But I’ve become something different over the centuries.”
“But you… operate the same way as a man does?”
What the hell was she asking? Tre wondered frantically. He couldn’t help but get the awful suspicion that she was asking about…
A low chuckle from Arturo sent spiders down Tre’s spine.
“Are you asking about my manhood, angel?”
Yeah, that was exactly what Tre had wondered.
“Well. Gosh.”
Tre could practically hear the blush on Caroline’s cheeks.
“I was just curious, I guess?” she finished.
Tre heard dishes clinking around and then a still silence. He knew, without even having to look, that Arturo was touching her. He had reached out a hand to stop her from scurrying away. He was touching her.
“I’m a man in the ways that count, angel. Especially where you’re concerned.”
“What the absolute fuck?” Tre couldn’t help himself. He strode into the bedroom and surveyed the scene. It was exactly as he’d intuited. Caroline stood next to Arturo’s bed, a small pile of dishes in her hands. Arturo’s hand laid on her elbow, stilling her as he leaned halfway out of the bed. His dark eyes were trained on Caroline, seductive and deep, until they snapped to Tre and immediately filled with scorn. “Are you hitting on her?”
His eyes were on Arturo, so he missed the fire that flashed across Caroline’s expression, the momentary flash of pain.
“It’s been known to happen, Tre.” Her voice was soft and though nothing Arturo had done or said had truly shredded her composure, just this one moment with Tre in the room had the dishes quaking slightly.
Tre strode forward and took the burden of the dishes off her hands, but his eyes remained on Arturo. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Arturo, lazily surveying the scene and quickly putting many of the pieces together, leaned back on his hands, releasing Caroline in the process. He looked like a cat on a silk pillow, retracting and extending his claws, flicking his tail. “I’m enjoying the company of a beautiful woman. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I—” That caught Tre up short. What was he doing exactly? “I’m protecting her!”
“Apparently.”
The snide answer had Tre’s back up. He opened his mouth to snarl something back when he finally registered the empty space where Caroline had just been. His mouth popped closed while he turned a circle, scanning the room for her. Realizing that she’d left, he strode out of the room without another word.
Arturo watched him go, a shrewd expression on his face. It was followed by a small, thoughtful smile.
> Tre jogged down one hallway and up a set of stairs. He got to Caroline’s bedroom door just as it was closing.
“Caroline, love,” he grunted as he got a foot in the door to keep her from closing it.
She immediately opened it back up. “Tre! I didn’t mean to close it on your foot.”
Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes were having trouble settling on any one thing, but beyond that, she looked just like herself. Cheery and sweet, neat as a pin. Her chestnut hair waved down her back, her navy slacks were perfectly hemmed above little red flats, a white shirt tucked in. Her small breasts barely pressed against the fabric of her shirt, meanwhile her ass nearly overflowed the confines of her trousers. The overall effect pretty much had sweat popping out on Tre’s forehead. She looked so damn good standing there, backlit by the window across her room.
The thought that perhaps he wasn’t the only one who’d recently admired the way she looked in that outfit had some of the starch rising in Tre again. “I really don’t think you should be getting too friendly with Arturo.”
Her brow immediately knit together, but she didn’t say anything. The woman of a thousand questions didn’t ask a single question.
Tre shifted on his feet, disconcerted by the bright beam of her honey eyes. “It’s just not a good idea,” he said awkwardly. “We don’t know anything about him, including his agenda or what he’s capable of. I wouldn’t want you to get too close to someone who could hurt you.”
Her brow slowly unknit and the expression was replaced by something that looked like just a flash of sadness, but she smoothed that away as well. Soon, she was left with just her regular, wide-eyed Caroline Clifton look. The one that never failed to zip adrenaline through Tre’s veins.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” was all she said. Then her eyes flicked down to Tre’s hands. “Would you mind putting those in the dishwasher? Thanks!”
She leaned forward to buss Tre on the cheek, the way she’d done a hundred times, and then gently closed his door.
Tre looked down in confusion at the dishes he was still holding in his hand. He hadn’t even realized he’d carried them out of Arturo’s room. He looked back up at Caroline’s closed door.