Vicious: A Dark Bully Reverse Harem Romance (Beautiful Tyrants Book 3)

by Vanessa Winters

  “I can’t wait to get back to the cabin and crack open that first bottle of whiskey,” Michael said.

  “Hopefully sans the poison this time,” Adam chuckled sarcastically.

  “Yes, definitely without the poison.”

  I looked out the window as we pulled away and my stomach churned a little bit. I felt good about everything that we were doing, so it wasn’t nerves. In fact, this was the most at ease that I had felt in months. Hopefully it wasn’t a bout of carsickness, but thankfully Asheville wasn’t that long of a drive.

  “You okay?” Michael asked as he sat beside me.

  Rob was driving this time, with Adam in the passenger seat, and Michael and I in the back. Michael reached his hand over to hold mine against my lap.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired, I think,” I said as I looked out the window and watched the tree line blur by as we drove.

  I rested my head against his shoulder and dozed off for a little bit. When I opened my eyes again, I felt too nauseous to ignore. I sat up straight and tried to calm my stomach by looking straight ahead in the car instead of at the moving horizon outside of the window.

  “Lisette,” Michael said with concern. “You look really pale. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  I looked up and saw Rob staring back at me through the rearview mirror. Adam turned around in his seat to look back at me too. All three of them wore the same look of concern on their faces.

  “Yeah, actually I don’t feel so well,” I said.

  “Rob, pull over,” Michael said. “I’ll get some cold water from the cooler in the trunk.”

  When the car pulled the side of the road, Michael got out to grab me some water, but it wasn’t in time to calm my stomach. I got straight out of the car and stumbled over to the side of the road and threw up. Michael immediately came over to me and held my hair until I had finished, and then handed me a cold bottle of water. I stood up and felt dizzy and weak. The cold water felt good as it ran down the inside of my rough throat. Michael rubbed my back as I stood outside for a minute and leaned up against the car. Adam and Rob got out to stretch their legs and check on me.

  “I’m not sure what came over me,” I said. “I feel better now; it just kind of hit me like a wave.”

  After that, I was fine for the rest of the ride to Asheville.

  19

  The sickness kept coming in waves, even days after we arrived in Asheville. Some days I would feel fine, and others I would wretch my guts out. The guys decided to stick around and not go looking for their own places until I felt better, so that they could be around to comfort me while I was feeling ill. It was crappy timing to have fallen sick. This was supposed to be our time to enjoy together before the guys headed out on their own paths. Rob was still working on his cycle, which he was having shipped up to the mountains in a couple of weeks, and he was even thinking about maybe opening up a shop to restore and customize old motorcycles since he had enjoyed working on it so much and seemed to have a knack for it. Adam had decided that he was going to start freelancing. He always had an artistic talent and now, nestled here in the mountains, it would be the perfect time for him to explore that passion and maybe craft a living out of it. There was more excitement and contentment for a new start, than there was any animosity left between the guys. I was just bummed that on most of the nights, I didn’t feel well enough to join them for a glass (or several) of whiskey by the bonfire. It was nice though, to see them all acting like friends again and watching them laugh and talk into the late hours by the crackling fire.

  It wasn’t until about a week into being back in Asheville, that I realized it.

  With everything that we had gone through back in Charlotte, it was just so good to feel relaxed and free, that even being sick hadn’t caused me any reason to worry. Until, that is, I realized how late I was. My period had always arrived like clockwork. I’d never, ever been late before. I hadn’t been paying any attention to my cycle at all. But then, when I reached for the pack of birth control that I was usually pretty good about remembering to take; I saw that I had already swallowed all of the green placebo pills and was starting back up on the white ones again. The only problem was—my period had never come.

  Suddenly I started to panic, as I put together the sickness with the late (or missing) period. As scared as I was about the possibility of being pregnant, I was still too scared to tell the guys. I would just wait it out and see what happened. Eventually, the sickness would either stop, or not.

  Eventually, I would either get my period, or not.

  But the more that I tried to ignore the possibility of it, the more worried I became. Until finally, I couldn’t stand not knowing anymore.

  “Hey, can we take a trip into town to go to the drugstore?” I asked as we all sat around the table eating the amazing venison stew that Adam had made. Who knew he was such a great cook?

  “Of course,” Michael answered. “You want me to just run and pick up whatever it is that you need so that you can stay here and relax?”

  “No thanks,” I said as I tried to sound casual about it. “I just feel like browsing around a store a little bit.”

  “The drugstore probably isn’t the most exciting store to browse,” Rob chuckled.

  “Yeah, probably not,” I said with a small and completely fake laugh. “But I need a few things from there too.”

  “Want to go tomorrow?” Michael asked.

  I nodded as I put another heaping scoop of stew into my mouth.

  That night, since I was feeling better, I was able to join the guys out by the bonfire. When the whiskey started getting poured, I wanted some—badly. But the lingering thought of possibly being pregnant kept me from taking a glass.

  “Are you feeling sick again?” Rob asked when he saw that I wasn’t taking a drink.

  “A little,” I lied. “But not too bad. I think I’ll just take it easy for another day or so, just to be safe.”

  “Good idea,” Rob smiled. “Never hurts to go easy on the body.”

  I sat and stared into the flames of the bonfire and was mesmerized by the popping embers as I got lost in my thoughts. I couldn’t be pregnant. I hadn’t even thought about having a baby, especially not anytime soon. I wasn’t ready. I felt like I had just finally found myself, and I needed time to focus on who it was that I wanted to be now that I had let go of the life that I had been trying to live for my mother. I needed time for myself, and time with Michael. I needed time to enjoy what we were becoming together and to think about what I wanted for a change, instead of what I didn’t want. I couldn’t be pregnant now. And to make matters even more complicated, how would I even know who the father was? After that erotic night in the garden, where I made love to all three of the guys; there was no way to tell who would have been the one to impregnate me.

  At the store the next morning, it was a challenge to meander my way through the aisles and pretend like I was trying to choose between brands of tampons, while really sliding a pregnancy test in-between the things in my hands and getting the cashier to ring them up before the guys managed to catch a glimpse of things. When we got back to the cabin, I went to the bathroom to unpack and put away all of the toiletries that I had bought, carefully tucking the pregnancy test behind a pile of other things in the cabinet. I paused for a moment, thinking about taking the test right away, but then I walked back out and tried to take my mind off of it. That test was a last resort. I would give it a few more days, or at least until my nerves couldn’t stand it anymore. That was my plan anyway; it didn’t last long. By mid-afternoon, my nerves were shaking with anticipation and I found myself sporadically pacing the cabin for no reason. The guys were busy outside, building a greenhouse. It was Michael’s idea and both Adam and Rob got behind it. It would be a reminder of our precious, albeit turbulent time on the rooftop of the aquarium, and also a very useful and sustainable resource to use for growing our own food. Now was the perfect time for me to take the test. No one was around, and the guys w
ouldn’t even have to know anything about it.

  When I got into the bathroom, I pulled the test out and sucked in a deep breath to mentally prepare myself. It was highly unlikely that I was actually pregnant. I rarely missed a birth control pill in the morning, so I was mostly covered. I tried to remember if I had taken the pill the day of the intimate garden interlude with the guys, and I was pretty sure that I had. I knew that it worked best when you made sure to take it every day at the same time, but still; I had to be mostly still protected against pregnancy. I had been under a lot of stress lately, which could totally explain why my period was late. That was a completely normal and reasonable explanation. But the more that I tried to talk myself into knowing that I wasn’t pregnant, the more panicked I became that I was.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said to myself in a quiet, scolding voice as I looked at my worried face in the mirror. “Take the damn test and get an answer for god sake.”

  Waiting the few minutes that it took for the results to appear was torture. I didn’t look at it at all. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and then organized the soaps in the cabinet, just so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at it prematurely. When the time was up, I pushed all of my panic aside and flipped over the test defiantly to look at the result.

  “What?” I whispered.

  The result, which should have shown either one line or two, was nothing more than a wide blurry splotch in the tiny square window. What the hell did that mean? I pulled the box out of the trash and yanked the direction pamphlet from it. I skimmed over all of the useless information and disclaimers until I found the part about “reading results”.

  According to the instructions, my test results were “inconclusive”.

  The pamphlet listed over a dozen reasons about why the test results could be skewed; everything ranging from it being too early in a pregnancy, to a defective test. I should have gotten two. I threw all of it away and left the bathroom feeling even more frustrated than I had before. All I wanted was an answer. It was too soon to go back to the store without raising suspicion, so I would have to wait a few more days unless I wanted to deal with the reactions of the guys, which I definitely did not. In my haste and aggravation over the unclear test, I didn’t even think to cover it up in the trash can.

  I walked out to join the guys outside and wanted to take my mind off the test. They had already started to build the structure of the greenhouse and it was really nice to see them all working together. As much as I was looking forward to being alone in the cabin with Michael, I was also going to really miss Adam and Rob, and the way that it felt when all three of them were acting like the best of friends, and like my own little protective pack of wolves. A small part of me wanted us all to stay together forever, making love when we wanted to, and laughing by the fireside every night. But a larger part of me wanted to start building a life with Michael; just Michael. There was something powerfully intimate about having one, single, other soul that your soul was drawn to. It was difficult to put into words, but it was something that I bet most people never found in their lifetimes. Even after all the shit I’d had to go through, I still considered myself to be luckier than most, especially now that my life was finally starting to begin over again in the way that I wanted it to. Well, at least I hoped that it would, assuming that I wasn’t pregnant.

  That would put an immediate damper on things.

  “Hey,” Michael smiled when he saw me walk out.

  “Hey,” I smiled back. “This is incredible. You guys already have the frame started. How in the world did you get it up so fast?”

  “Teamwork,” Rob grinned.

  I laughed thinking about all of the arguing that probably happened while they were building it before I had walked out. At least at the moment, they were all smiling.

  “Well it looks amazing,” I said. “I can’t wait to see it when it’s all done.”

  “The fun part will be when you fill it with all of the plants and flowers that you want,” Adam said. “Any idea what kinds of things you want to put in it yet?”

  I envisioned the inside of the greenhouse on the aquarium roof and then the garden on the Lineage campus, and immediately thought of something that I wanted to have.

  “Can we put grass inside of it?” I asked.

  “Grass, like real grass?” Adam said.

  “Yeah, like a carpet of grass in the center of the greenhouse that we could lay down on.”

  Michael snickered and I shot him a look.

  “Not just for that,” I said as I rolled my eyes, keenly aware that he was thinking about lovemaking inside of the greenhouse again. “I mean, yeah, for that too. But also, I want to be able to just lay down and look at the stars or come inside of the greenhouse and read a book or think and have it feel super comfortable and natural.”

  “I’m not entirely sure how to get living grass to stay alive inside of a greenhouse, but if plants can do it then I don’t see any reason why grass can’t do it. So yes, I will make sure that there is a living carpet of grass inside of this greenhouse for you,” Michael said with a confident smile.

  The thought of that made me smile. Not just because I was excited about having the dream greenhouse built to enjoy, but also because I knew that Michael was always so willing to do whatever it was that would make me happy. Instead of enjoying that moment like I wanted to let myself be able to do, the worry of being pregnant immediately crawled into my mind again. If I was pregnant, all of this would be ruined.

  “Everything okay?” Adam asked when he saw the look on my face change. “You still feeling okay?”

  “Yeah, I feel fine,” I smiled as I pushed my anxiety back down again. “I’m just going to really miss you guys when you move out.”

  That wasn’t a lie; I was really going to miss them when they left. It just wasn’t the worry that was at the forefront of my mind right this very minute.

  “We won’t be far,” Adam said. “Trust me, we’ll still always be close enough to come running whenever you call.”

  “Definitely,” Rob chimed in. “You can’t get rid of us that easily.”

  I knew that the last thing he said was geared more toward Michael than it was toward me. But I felt like even he didn’t really want them to go too far; just far enough to remove the intimacy factor, but not far enough that we couldn’t all remain good friends.

  The rest of the day was pleasant and uneventful for the most part. Until Michael found the test in the bathroom trash.

  He didn’t say anything at first. But I could see the change in his demeanor while we were having dinner together. He was quieter than normal, and he watched me closely, as if he were trying to visually examine me for something. I don’t think the other two guys noticed. They were too busy talking about various things and were already on their second or third glass of whiskey. I didn’t even think about the fact that Michael might have seen the test. It was a stupid mistake, but my mind was so overwhelmed with things that it seemed like such a trivial thing at the time to remember.

  “Coming?” Adam asked as he turned to look back at Michael and I sitting at the table, as he and Rob were getting ready to go outside and start up the bonfire again.

  It was a beautiful night outside and this had become a nightly habit that I looked forward to. I got up from the table and started to walk toward the door, but Michael touched my hand and glanced at me with a look that told me he wanted to talk.

  “We’ll be out in a few minutes,” he said.

  Adam shrugged, and then he and Rob walked out the door together, putting an arm around each other’s shoulders as if they were best buddies, or at least drunken ones.

  “We need to talk,” Michael said.

  He held his hand out to me and we got up from the table together. Since I wasn’t expecting Michael to know about the test, it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. And I started to worry about what it was that he needed to discuss with me. The look on his face was serious, and the afternoon had been so nice, that
I knew something must have happened between the time of coming in from the greenhouse and dinner.

  When he led me into the bathroom, and I saw the pregnancy test sitting on the edge of the sink instead of in the trash can where I had put it; anxiety began to wash over me.

  “I can explain,” I started to say before I even had both feet inside of the door.

  I knew that I could explain the reason for taking the test; a late period was a pretty black-and-white answer. But I didn’t have a good explanation for why the test result was skewed, and I certainly didn’t have a good reason for not telling him or the other guys about it in the first place. Which, of course, was the first question that Michael asked me about.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  I felt my heart sink into my stomach. We had promised that we would tell each other everything and that we would always be honest and upfront about things with each other. This should have been no exception. I knew that no matter what answer I gave it wouldn’t be a good one. So, I just went with the truth.

  “I didn’t want to worry you until I knew for sure,” I said truthfully.

  “That’s not a good enough reason,” he said.

  He was right; it wasn’t. But it was the only reason that I had.

  “I know,” I said. “But I just wasn’t sure, and I was scared, and I really don’t think that I’m pregnant. It’s just that I missed my period and so I started to be concerned that it might be a slim possibility.”

  “Those are all reasons that you should have told me,” he said. “You know that I am always here for you, Lisette. I would never be mad at you for something like this, and I want to be here for you to help if there’s something that you’re feeling worried about.”

  “I know that,” I said as tears filled my eyes. “But this is different. We’ve dealt with all sorts of things on the outside of us, and we’ve faced them together. This is on the inside of us. This is something that would change our lives forever and there would be no running away from it.”