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

by Vanessa Winters

  “All the more reason that we should face it together,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I should have told you as soon as I started to worry about it.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I know you were scared. Just promise me, again, that you won’t keep things from me, okay? Not even things that you’re scared to tell me.”

  “Okay,” I said as he wrapped his arms around me. “I promise.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now, can you explain to me what this thing even means?”

  Michael held up the test and we both looked at it.

  “Isn’t it supposed to have a line or something in that little, white square?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is. I don’t really know what it means. I read the directions and I think there’s either something wrong with the test, or maybe there’s something wrong with me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “We’ll go get another test. I’m sure a second one will give you a result.”

  “Right now?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Why not? Don’t you want to know for sure?”

  I nodded my head. I really did want to know for sure.

  “What about Rob and Adam?” I asked.

  “Well, we need to tell them,” he said.

  I was surprised at his answer. I expected him to want to keep this just between the two of us, at least until we knew for sure. If I wasn’t pregnant, which I still was sure that I wasn’t; there was no reason to alarm the other two guys too. Michael saw the look of hesitation on my face.

  “Every single time we try to keep something from each other, it always ends up blowing up in our faces and making a bigger problem that it originally was. This is your decision, but I think that you should tell them,” he said.

  He was right. I nodded again and he held my hand as we started to walk out of the bathroom.

  And on our way out, I threw the test back into the trash can.

  20

  The reaction of the other two guys was not as calm and collected as Michael’s had been, which was surprising since Michael was usually the one who overreacted and flew off the handle the most.

  “We aren’t leaving now,” Adam said.

  “I didn’t think you were leaving yet anyway,” I said, confused about why that would be the first thing that he would say.

  “We weren’t, but now we definitely aren’t leaving. Not until we find out if you’re actually pregnant or not. We can’t leave if you’re pregnant, Lisette. We don’t know whose baby it is.”

  “You’re talking as if you’re already sure,” Michael said. “We don’t even know if she’s pregnant yet.”

  “Let’s go,” I said as I grabbed my jacket. “Let’s go back to the store and get another test. All of us.”

  When we got back from the store and I took the second test into the bathroom, there was a palpable tension in the air. I felt as if the fate of the world was hanging in the balance, just waiting for me to pee on a stick. I completed the test and left it on the top of the sink as I walked back out to sit with the other guys and wait. There wasn’t any sense in hiding out in the bathroom again, and staring at it certainly wouldn’t change the result or make it work any faster.

  All three of them looked at me expectantly when I came out and sat down with them on the side of the bed.

  “What are we going to do if you’re pregnant?” Rob asked.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, none of us were really planning to have a baby I don’t think. Are you going to keep it?” he asked.

  I hadn’t really thought about that yet. I had been too consumed with worrying about whether or not I actually was pregnant and how much it would change my life, to even think about what I would do past the point of finding out. But when I thought about it, the answer was clear. I loved the guys, all of them. And no matter what a baby would do to change my life, I couldn’t really think about not keeping it if I was pregnant. All I could think about was that beautiful night in the garden and how anything that came out of that night was bound to be something good, and not something bad.

  “Yes,” I answered. “What do you guys think of that?”

  “We’re here for you, Lisette,” Adam said. “No matter what.”

  I smiled as all three of them wrapped their arms around me and hugged me into a tight embrace.

  “The better question is how do we figure out whose baby it is if you are pregnant?” he asked.

  “There are tests for that too,” Rob said.

  “Yeah, but I think you have to be at least a couple of months pregnant before those work,” I said.

  “Well, then we’ll wait a couple of months,” Adam said. “Like I said, none of us are going anywhere.”

  When the time was up, I went into the bathroom alone to look at the test. Michael asked if I wanted him to come with me, but I needed a minute to look at the results by myself first. I went in, took yet another deep breath, and flipped the test over to see the result—negative.

  Oh thank god.

  I walked out of the bathroom with the test in my hand and a smile on my face.

  “It’s negative,” I said happily.

  All of the guys smiled, and a wave of relief washed over everyone in the room. It wasn’t like having a baby would have been the worst thing in the world; it just wasn’t time for that yet.

  “See?” Rob said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Adam smacked him on the shoulder.

  “Oh please,” Adam said as he rolled his eyes at Rob. “You were just as worried as we all were.”

  “I’m sorry, guys,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare everyone. I will be much more careful about taking my pill from now on.”

  Adam huffed.

  “Well, I guess that really only affects Michael and not us now, doesn’t it?” he said. He was still unhappy with the arrangement, but I felt like it was starting to sink in a bit better with everyone.

  Michael looked the most relieved of all, but he also looked pretty rattled still. He had that kind of look that happens when a big tragedy is averted, and afterwards you allow yourself to process the fight or flight response that you had been ignoring while going though whatever the ordeal was.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he assured me with a smile that I could spot as a fake from a thousand miles away.

  He changed the subject off of himself and back onto me.

  “So should you go to a doctor to find out why your body is off-schedule then?” he asked with genuine concern.

  “No, I think it’ll be okay,” I said. “I’ve been under so much stress lately, and haven’t gotten any sleep, and have barely been eating right. I think everything has just thrown my body for a bit of a loop, but I’m sure it will straighten itself out soon.”

  Sure enough, it did. Less than a week later, I got my period.

  With that scare averted, I thought that things would quickly get back to normal. Adam and Rob started looking for apartments in Asheville that were pretty near to the cabin, and the greenhouse was getting all finished up before they made plans to move out. But Michael still seemed to be acting strangely and I didn’t know why.

  Maybe the thought of having a baby and then ending up not being up pregnant at all, disappointed him.

  Although it sure didn’t seem like it was something he had even considered wanting yet, and if I knew Michael; I knew that he wanted all the alone time with just the two of us that he could possibly get. It didn’t make sense to think that he might have been let down. There must have been something else that was bothering him. I tried to ignore it for a while, but it just kept getting more and more obvious, as if there was a giant wedge between us. He wasn’t really touching me or being intimate with me at all; not even a hand on my thigh or a kiss on my cheek. When I came up behind him in the kitchen and wrapped my arms around to the front of his waist, he quickly found something that he needed to “
go and do”.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  “Hey, what’s going on with you?” I asked when I found him outside in the greenhouse alone.

  He looked like he was lost in thought as he worked on some of the finishing touches to the interior.

  “Nothing, just finishing up in here. It’s really looking good, don’t you think?” he asked as if he was completely clueless as to what I was actually asking him about.

  He knew what I had meant with my question. He was just trying to avoid answering me again.

  “Yeah, it’s really pretty,” I said with an appreciative smile for all the work he had done on the greenhouse. “But you know that’s not what I meant. You’ve been acting differently—more distant, and I want to know why. Are you upset about something?”

  Michael quickly brushed my question off again.

  “Not at all,” he said casually. “There’s nothing for me to be upset about. Hey, do you want to go into town today and get some plants to start off with in your greenhouse?”

  I wasn’t going to let him keep averting an answer.

  “Michael,” I said as I sat down beside him on the carpet of living grass that he had somehow managed to put inside here like he said he would. “We promised each other that we would be open and honest, remember?”

  He sighed and the weight of his heavy eyelids almost made his eyes close shut as he did.

  “Please tell me,” I continued. “You’ve barely touched me in weeks now and I can tell that something is wrong. If you don’t tell me, then I’m going to assume that it’s me that you’re upset with since I can’t think of anything else that it could possibly be.”

  “No,” he said as he shook his head. “It’s not you, Lisette—it’s me.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said as I looked at his troubled face.

  Michael turned to look at me and I was surprised by what I saw in his eyes. It seemed like he was sad, or scared, or both.

  “That pregnancy scare really freaked me out,” he said.

  “It freaked us all out,” I said. “See, this is why I didn’t want to tell any of you until I was sure about it.”

  “No, I’m still glad that you told me. I never want you to feel like you have to go through anything alone. You and I are in everything together now, and that is the way that it needs to stay.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. He was right; we needed to stay tight.

  “But I just can’t chance that happening again,” he said.

  “What happening?” I asked.

  “I can’t take the chance on getting you pregnant. I can’t be a dad,” Michael said with a shake in his voice.

  “Ever?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure about ever, but I know that I can’t be one now, or anytime soon. Lisette, my childhood was so awful; my parents were so bad. I’m terrified of becoming a parent myself.”

  “Michael,” I said calmly as I reached out to take his hand against his lap. “We were all scared when the possibility was there, but that doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t have been able to figure it out along the way.”

  “No,” he said abruptly. “It can’t happen.”

  “Okay,” I said carefully. I could see that he was very serious about this. It was fear that I had seen in his eyes, and it was a deep and very real fear.

  “I’ll be extra careful,” I reassured him. “I’ll make sure that I take that pill religiously at the same time every day.”

  “That pill isn’t always a hundred percent effective,” he said.

  “Is this why you haven’t been touching me or kissing me at all?” I asked. I could feel my forehead wrinkling as my eyebrows raised. “We can’t go through life together with you now afraid to come near me in any sort of intimate way. The birth control pill is like nearly perfectly effective and I promise that I will set a daily alarm from now on and make sure to take it without fail, okay? There’s nothing to worry about now.”

  I reached out and held the side of his face with my palm. I had seen Michael in many situations before, but honestly, he looked more shaken up than any other time. I knew that he had a shitty childhood, and that his parents were downright awful; but that couldn’t be what was making him this upset. It was as if he was terrified of absolutely nothing.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Just make sure you don’t forget to take it okay?”

  “I promise I won’t,” I said.

  I reached over to hug him and when I felt his arms wrap back around me, I let go of an exhale that I had been holding in throughout much of that conversation. I would keep my promise and I wouldn’t give him any reason to doubt me or worry further.

  Then, maybe someday far off in the future, if we ever decided that we wanted to have a baby, things would be better then and he would be more comfortable with the idea.

  For now though, I was putting all thoughts of this ordeal behind me so that we could move on.

  21

  Tensions seemed to ease up that night after Michael and I had spoken in the greenhouse.

  He seemed to be more relaxed and I was ready to close the distance that I had felt between us. Rob and Adam could see it too, and they seemed to be content hanging out in the cabin for the night while I spent an evening by the bonfire alone with Michael. We sat together, cozied up on the furs with filled wine glasses in our hands and a roaring fire that seemed to reach up past the tips of the trees on the horizon.

  “We needed this,” I said.

  Michael took a sip of his wine and pulled me closer against his chest as his arm wrapped around my shoulder and his fingers came down to rest on the top of my breast.

  “I agree,” he said with a smile. “We really did. I’m not going to wake up to find you gone again this time though, right?”

  “No,” I said, unsure whether to laugh at his tease or be swallowed up with remorse again.

  He picked up on the hesitation in my voice.

  “I was just kidding,” he said as he pulled me even closer still and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t feel bad. I shouldn’t have said that; I’m sorry. I was just trying to be funny and it failed gloriously.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s fine. Honestly, if we didn’t joke around about some of this stuff, we would probably all go crazy.”

  “There is one thing that is making me go crazy, though,” he said.

  “What is it?” I asked as I turned to face him.

  I didn’t want there to be anything else that could possibly ruin this perfect night. I just wanted one night where we could be together and reconnect after the pregnancy scare. But then, Michael leaned his face toward mine and when his mouth touched my lips, I melted.

  I had missed him—this part of him—so badly.

  His tongue slid inside my open mouth and I felt his hand lift the wine glass from my fingers before he set it on the ground beside us. I turned my body to face him as he came down over top of me, and I ran my fingers through his wild hair as my legs wrapped around his waist.

  And when he lifted his head up for a moment, he grinned at me.

  “This,” he said as he ran his hand up the side of my torso beneath my shirt. “This is what I have missed.”

  I smiled and it felt like everything was right with the world again. I wanted another wonderful and passionate night under the stars with just the two of us again as happiness and arousal swirled around us in a palpable torrent that rode the mountain breeze. Only this time, after we made love by the crackling fire, we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  I would stay tangled up with Michael and wake up to look into his eyes in the morning.

  This was my chance to erase the memory of leaving from my mind and to replace it with the memory of a wonderful night of lovemaking that ran right over into the morning. And I was determined as hell to overwrite that memory. Looking back on it made me sick, and I didn’t want anything we did as a couple to ever trigger that memory again. All I wanted was for us to focus on the good. For us to hav
e good things to enjoy that overwrote the bad that we had all dredged through just to come out only partially scathed on the other end.

  It was time for us to turn over new leaves, so to speak.

  He gazed into my eyes as I laid there, enjoying the feeling of him against me. Michael was the only one that could cloak me with his body and make me feel safe, and I wasn’t sure why. His presence and his demeanor and his voice hit me differently than the other guys, and I had no idea why.

  I had no idea why any of them affected me the way they did.

  But, I loved it all the same.

  “You know you wanna,” he said with a grin.

  I giggled as I reached for his shirt. “Hold your arms up.”

  He quickly flipped me over, causing me to straddle his lap, before he shot his arms into the air. We both laughed and enjoyed ourselves as I slipped it over his head, and when I looked down I saw that, somehow, he had already undone my pants.

  “Uh huh. And when did that happen?” I asked.

  Michael took his shirt from my hands and wrapped it around my waist, pulling me closer against him. “You really should pay more attention when I’m on top of you, you know.”

  I dipped my lips down and breathed the air he afforded me. “Or, maybe you could simply explore all you want. How about them apples?”

  His lips crashed against mine, answering my question as he discarded his shirt. We rolled over once more, my back planted against the ground again as my legs spread to accommodate his presence. His lips fell against my neck, teasing and sucking, while his teeth raked over my pulse point. And as I locked my legs around him, we both rolled around and undressed one another until there wasn’t an ounce of fabric blocking his body from mine.

  Just how I liked it.

  He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand and reached between our bodies with his other. I waited for the pressure. For the filling feeling of having him so close to me. But instead, his fingers parted my pussy lips and found that pulsing bud that his body always seemed to tickle at the exact right moment.