Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (16 page)

“You look…beautiful,” Prentice rasped.

“Thank you.”

“What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be in the house with your new husband, dancing and smashing wedding cake in each other’s faces?”

“He’s dancing with Rebel. I wasn’t much in the mood to dance.” She stepped up into the wooden enclosure, running her hand over the latticework sides. “Are you okay?”

Prentice smirked. “Not really.”

Lucy laughed. Prentice had never been anything but honest to a fault since she’d known him, even when honesty proved painfully rude.

She hazarded a step closer, felt like she was moving toward a dangerous predator. She could practically feel the heat and tension coming off of his body, feral and all the more alluring because it scared her.

Lucy knew she should have turned and gone back to the house, until she remembered what awaited her there. A celebration of the nuptials she didn’t believe in and a man she couldn’t stop herself from caring about no matter how unwise caring about him seemed.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

It was as if he had reached inside her head and read her thoughts, or reached inside her heart and knew her feelings.

“I don’t belong in there.” She felt the truth of those words as soon as they left her mouth. Despite being a lifelong resident of Elk Creek, she had never really felt like she belonged in the town. After Rance’s death, she had felt like even more of an outsider.

Prentice was a kindred spirit, but then so too was Ki—both men polished, strange outsiders attracted to her against their better judgment like moths to the flame.

Before she knew it, she was standing before Prentice, leaning her head back to look him in the eyes. She didn’t have to lean back as much as she had to when she faced off with Ki, but that didn’t make her feel any safer. Rather, she felt unsteady and vulnerable.

Prentice reached out to her almost grudgingly, his hand hovering near her face as if he was fighting against the desire to touch her. Finally, his desire must have won out and he rested his palm on her cheek.

Lucy closed her eyes with a sigh upon contact, the callused warmth of his hand sending tingles throughout her entire body, but especially shooting liquid heat through her pussy. She fidgeted, shifting her weight from one leg to the other to try to ease the swelling and throbbing between the apex of her thighs.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Prentice asked and his voice was much closer than she expected it to be.

When she opened her eyes, she saw his intense brandy gaze staring at her, no more than an inch from her face. “No, and I probably should go.”

“Not yet.” He slid his hand around to the nape of her neck and drew her closer as he bent his head. He pressed his lips against hers, firm and insistent.

Lucy automatically parted her lips beneath his, knowing she was making a mistake as his tongue instantly thrust inside and stroked hers. She moaned, a mixture of ambivalence and passion pouring through her before she tried to pull back.

Prentice, however, wouldn’t let her go. He advanced, pressing her against the side of the gazebo, his hips grinding into hers as he fisted his hands in her hair.

She felt his uncertainty blend with hers and knew that one of them needed to put a stop to what was happening before it went any farther. She felt too weak for her to be that one.

Prentice jerked back, taking a ragged breath as he pressed his forehead against hers. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Are you okay?”

He laughed, and it was a bitter sound, strangely comforting, because it steadied Lucy in Prentice’s personality. “Not in the least, but that’s not your problem.”

“Of course it’s my problem.” She felt wholly responsible for the lapse. She, after all, had come out to the gazebo and invaded his solitude. She reached out to put her hand on his face and he caught her wrist.

“Don’t.”

“Prentice…”

“This was a bad idea.”

She couldn’t argue with him though she wanted to.

“You just got married. Your husband could walk out here at any moment and find us together.” He searched her face and when she didn’t say anything he asked, “Is that what you want, Lucy?”

“No, of course not.” She wanted to be a good wife for as long as her marriage lasted. She wanted to be in a normal relationship then realized she didn’t really know what a “normal” relationship was or what was so attractive about “normal.” Maia, Thayne, and Cade certainly weren’t involved in a “normal” relationship and they couldn’t have been happier. She couldn’t forget Lily, Wyatt, and Dakota, who weren’t in a “normal” relationship either and seemed just as happy as Maia, Thayne, and Cade.

That’s because none of them allow anyone who doesn’t matter to influence their decisions or tell them how to feel and how to love.

Could she ever be that courageous or defiant?

Lucy freed her wrist from Prentice’s loose grip and took his hand in hers. He let her hold his hand, but just barely. She could feel him trying to pull away—physically, emotionally.

“This entire situation with you and your husband is just plain…weird. And I have to tell you, I’m getting some unusual mixed messages from the both of you. I really don’t know what to make of you or him.”

“What to make of us?” Confusion overwhelmed her and it didn’t help that he was still standing close enough that she could feel the heat of his hard cock through his trousers and her gown. The thought that just a few thin layers of clothing kept her from feeling his naked hot flesh flush against hers didn’t help matters.

“Maybe coming to stay with you two wasn’t such a good idea,” Prentice murmured, almost as if to himself, but Lucy heard and the thought of him leaving her alone with Ki threw her into a mite of a panic.

“Did Ki say something to you last night?”

Prentice laughed again and that mocking sound twisted her insides, but not as much as his next words. “You’re a newlywed, Lucy, and you need space and time to be alone with your husband. It’s as simple as that.”

“Please don’t go. I…I don’t think I can do this without you.”

Prentice grimaced. “Did he do something to you? Has he…hurt you?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. In fact he’s been mostly a perfect gentleman with me.”

Prentice mumbled something and Lucy could have sworn she heard,
“I wish I could say the same thing.”

What did he mean by that?

“
Mostly
a perfect gentleman with you? What does that mean?”

Lucy shrugged, not willing to admit that she had been absolutely willing to let Ki take liberties with her that no proper unmarried lady would have. What would Prentice think of her then? Could he think any less of her, considering the circumstances of her and Prentice’s one and only encounter?

She didn’t know she had lowered her face until she felt Prentice’s finger under her chin, gently lifting it.

“Hey, what do you mean you can’t do this alone? What is going on between you two?”

Lucy wished she knew. She wished she knew what was going on between her and Ki and her and Prentice and why she felt inescapably attracted to two men and not just one.

Had Rance’s deviant proclivities rubbed off on her? What did that make Maia, Thayne, and Cade? They didn’t seem deviant to her. They seemed content and in love.

Would it be so wrong for her to be happy and in love with two men when she or they weren’t hurting anyone?

“Nothing’s going on between us…yet.”

“Do you want something to be going on or is this really just a marriage in name only?”

Lucy jerked her face away from him and boldly lifted her chin. “What difference does it make to you?”

Prentice caught her by the biceps, gritting his teeth as he seemed to stop just short of shaking her.

Lucy listened to his breath puffing out of his mouth in short bursts and saw his nostrils flaring as if he was about to do violence. She knew the signs. She had seen them often enough in Rance, in her father. She’d regularly wondered if she had done anything specific to bring their fury raining down on her, but sometimes it just seemed like her simply breathing bothered them. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” she whispered, resorting to the meek role that had kept her as near as she could get to her father’s and Rance’s good sides and alive for years.

“Oh, don’t you dare do that. Don’t back down now.” He did shake her then, but Lucy sensed more frustration than cruelty in his actions, as if he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted from her.

Seemed she couldn’t please any man.

“In case you didn’t notice, Lucy, it makes a difference to me because I care about you. Is that so hard for you to believe or understand?”

The truth was on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say it, because it was hard for her to believe that any man cared about her as more than just a vessel for his spirits.

“Care about me?”

“Don’t sound so shocked. Of course I care about you.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything. Just know that if that swanky bastard does anything to hurt you—”

“You’ll what, Prentice? Do what you did to Rance?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No!” Lucy’s heart squeezed in her chest at the idea of her former lover hurting her new husband. Maybe she didn’t love Ki, but she didn’t want to see harm come to him. He wasn’t like Rance after all. At least she didn’t believe he was.

What appalled her more than the idea that Prentice was willing to hurt Ki for her honor, was the idea that Prentice’s willingness made him that much more attractive to her.

“I don’t want you to do anything except be yourself and…and stay with me. Stay with us.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking, Lucy.”

“I do know. Do you want me to beg?”

A foul curse flew out of Prentice’s mouth that made Lucy’s face feel like she had just pushed it into a furnace.

“I don’t want you to beg,” he said through his teeth.

At his acquiescence, Lucy questioned her reasons for asking and wanting Prentice to stay with her and Ki.

She wanted to believe that she was being noble helping Prentice in his time of need and giving him a place to stay, one far away from Maia, Thayne, and Cade, she might add. These people were her friends, people she had come to care about in the last several months, and Prentice had once tried to kill all of them the way he had killed Rance.

Lucy knew, however, that she was using Prentice as surely as her father or Rance had ever used her to their own ends. She wanted him close to protect her, not anyone else. She needed him to safeguard her virtue, to save her from herself as well as from Ki.

Who, however, was supposed to save her from Prentice and her feelings for
him
?

What the hell was wrong with him? Why hadn’t he fought back, protested more? He should have done something like hit Ki to let him know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t
like
that. Instead he’d stood there in that kitchen like a coy Southern belle and let the other man put his
hands
on him.

Prentice couldn’t help thinking had he had his powers, that scene in the kitchen would have played out a lot differently than it had. He might have killed Ki or at least struck out and seriously maimed him as he had that blond, square-shouldered jock in high school.

He lay on his back in bed now and closed his eyes against the memory of Chad Feehan grabbing him from behind in the shower after everyone had left the locker room.

Prentice had been a sophomore, smaller than most of the boys his age, and he’d known the rules and how low in the pecking order he yet fell.

Unwilling to jeopardize what little status he had accumulated, he made it a habit of waiting until all the other boys took their showers before he even attempted to enter the shower area. The waiting made him late for his chemistry class on a regular basis, but Prentice gladly took the hit to avoid those other jocks that got their rocks off persecuting the smaller and younger boys in gym class.

This particular occasion, Prentice’s timing was off and the instant he realized he wasn’t alone in the locker room, it was too late.

Chad was on him before Prentice knew what was happening, seizing Prentice by the hair and bending one arm up behind his back until Prentice cried out.

He swallowed water, coughing and choking as Chad slammed him against the wall and the shower’s jets powered water down on him.

“I’ve been watching you, Teague. You think you’re special, pretty boy. You think you’re better than everybody else.”

Prentice tried to say something, tried to deny, but every time he opened his mouth to speak, more water flowed in. Rather than drown, he kept his mouth shut and settled for shaking his head back and forth as much as he could.

His cheek hurt from where Chad pressed it into the tile and the pain in his shoulder made him see stars.

Prentice knew he had to get Chad up off of him or the bigger athlete was going to break his arm…or worse.