The Living: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Thorns of Rosewood Book 3)

by Cassie James

  “That I am so, so fucking sorry.”

  “And?” he prompts.

  I sit up partway, propping myself up on my elbows. His eyes are still slightly glazed in a post-orgasmic sort of euphoria, and my heart skips a beat at the domineering way he’s smirking down at me.

  “You’re right.” He motions for me to continue. Asshole. “You’re right about everything. I panicked and made a stupid decision on my own instead of just talking to you about it. And you’re right, Jude, this isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

  His smirk becomes a real grin as he drawls out a, “Good girl,” before jumping back onto the bed next to me. He reaches for me but I see the time on the clock next to his bed and reluctantly pull away. I crawl to the side of the bed and push myself up on wobbly, sex-weakened legs. I pad through the room quietly, gathering and donning my scattered clothes as I go. My fingers brush over my ruined silk blouse, and I shoot a glare over my shoulder. But he’s still lying there with that self-satisfied smirk on his face. To be fair, I did owe him after I destroyed his shirt on New Year’s Eve.

  I roll the shirt into a ball and lob it toward the bed, giggling as he grunts dramatically when the silk hits his chest. He takes the shirt, balls it up again, and shoves it under his head like it’s actually going to offer him any support. I shake my head before slipping into his closet, fingers running along the shelves showcasing his watches, cuff links and rolled ties before I make it to the row of button up shirts at the very back of the closet.

  I choose one in a deep plum color and throw it on quickly, shoving the ends into my skirt and rolling the sleeves until they reach my forearms. I wander back toward the front of the closet as I button the top, eyes catching on the shelf of watches again. I’m going to be late if I don’t get moving. I fly from the closet and across the room, crawling toward the center of the bed where Jude’s still lying in all of his naked glory.

  I kiss him deeply, enjoying the feeling of his tongue sweeping languidly over my own before pulling away as another deep shiver wracks through my body. “I need you to take me home. Bren’s supposed to be there sometime between five and five-thirty, and it’s already half past four.”

  “Really?” he asks, and I don’t miss the indigence lacing his tone.

  I smack his chest before leaning in to kiss him again. “Yes, really,” I mumble against his lips. He tries to drag me closer for a deeper kiss, but I roll away from him and scoot off the side of the bed. “You’re not the only one this isn’t over with, Jude. You’re just the first one to call me out on my bullshit.”

  He makes an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, but he gets up and starts to redress. And damn, I know we just exhausted ourselves, but I catch myself wishing we had more time for a second round. Damn hormones.

  19

  Piper

  By the time we finally make it to my house, Brennan is already parked in my drive. His arms cross over his chest as he leans against his Jeep, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth at the realization that I have to somehow make my sex-addled brain work long enough to form a coherent apology. “Yeah, good luck with that,” Jude says with a laugh, and I roll my eyes at him before pushing the door open and swinging my leg out.

  “Hey, Piper?” he asks, and I turn around just to be caught in a kiss that does absolutely nothing to help with my quickly degrading mental state. Jude releases me with a low laugh, and I have to blink a couple of times to clear the haze of lust from my mind before I can even consider climbing the rest of the way from his car. “You can keep that shirt, by the way, but you better not be wearing anything under it the next time I see you in it.”

  I slam the door without answering him. Already I can feel the heat of a blush on my cheeks and neck as I walk toward Brennan. Jude honks his horn, and I jerk around to glare at him after the initial shock wears off. I pull a page straight from Macie’s book and flip him the middle finger when he mimes me and Brennan having sex rather crudely with his hands.

  “He’s such a fucking idiot,” I mumble as I spin back around to face Brennan. His eyebrow is quirked, but he’s still all hard lines and tension, which makes me instantly put my guard back up, too. “I’m sorry you had to wait.”

  “You made up with Jude.” It’s not a question. I run my hand down the back of my neck and turn toward my house, not quite sure how to answer. Brennan huffs, but I hear his heavy footsteps following behind me as I dig in my bag for my house keys. “How’d that happen?”

  “We got called into the lawyer’s office earlier today, and he volunteered to take me home…” I trail off as the door swings open to a blissfully silent house. My breath catches painfully when I remember I’m stuck here for at least another four years. I swallow around the lump in my throat as Brennan steps awkwardly into the house behind me.

  The door swings closed, and I drop my bag in the hall, not really giving a shit about picking it up and carrying it to my room. I slip my shoes off too, leaving them in a haphazard little pile next to the bag and pad toward the living room as Brennan asks, “And?”

  “He made it pretty clear that he wasn’t finished with me.” I swallow back all the memories of how exactly he did that. Brennan follows me as I drop tiredly onto the couch. He sits next to me, but not quite close enough for me to reach out and touch him. “And he helped me realize how much of a flipping asshole I was to leave things like that.”

  “You think?” he asks with a scoff.

  “I just thought you guys deserved more.” My voice is quiet and pitiful, almost embarrassingly so.

  Brennan snaps. “We don’t want anything more! You’re enough, Pi. You were the only one who didn’t think so!” He takes a deep breath, the anger turning back to upset. “I love you, Piper. But you have to get the fuck over yourself and decide if that’s enough for you. I’m not interested in loving someone who’s always looking for a chance to leave.”

  “Brennan…” I finally put into words what’s been plaguing me for so long. “I can’t promise you a future. I could be damaged to the point of needing to be shut down completely. Or I could outlive you all. Either way, there’s no future that ends with us all spending our whole lives together.”

  “That’s seriously what you’re caught up on? Pi, that’s fucking life. No one is guaranteed the days they get. Any one of us could have an accident tomorrow, just like…” He clears his throat, and for a moment I think he’s going to skip over what he almost said. Instead, he faces it head on, braver than me. “Just like your namesake. No one expected her to die. We thought she had a whole life ahead of her. But that’s what it means to be alive, you’ve got to appreciate the time you do have, not focus on what happens when time runs out.”

  Oh god, he’s absolutely right. My very existence is a testament to how life can be cut short and nothing is guaranteed. It’s such a simple concept, but something I so clearly missed in all of my original panic.

  Brennan offers me a sad smile. “We didn’t choose you because it was easy, Piper. We chose you in spite of the fact that it’s so damn hard. It’s not conventional, loving you, but we’d choose having you over not having you—every damn time. And no matter what may come.”

  My head swims with his impassioned words. More than anything, I suddenly have the impulse to show him just how much those words mean to me. I push myself up and half-stumble, half-crawl toward where he’s sitting, throwing myself against him with desperation and a deep yearning to comfort us both. My lips settle over his in a thoughtless frenzy, but I can’t get comfortable in my stooping, twisted position. I settle for jerking my skirt a little higher and straddling his lap, palms pressed flat against his chest, as I pour every emotion—every love-soaked feeling of remorse—I can manage into the kiss.

  His hands fall to my hips as I buck against him. He’s not hard at first, but it doesn’t take much to get him there as I roll my hips in his lap and kiss the fucking hell out of him. His fingers start to skate up under my shirt, and it’s only then that I come to my se
nses and wrench my mouth away from his. I lean back in his lap and look at him with wide eyes.

  “Pi,” he whispers with a strangled groan as he tries to pull me forward again. I shake my head no, and his eyes narrow as his face twists with a dark scowl.

  Almost too late, I realize this probably looks like I’m having second-thoughts again. Guiltily, I tell him what the real problem is. “I had sex with Jude earlier.” Sorry for nearly offering you sloppy seconds, I add silently.

  He’d started to run his hands up my thighs but pauses at my confession. I can practically see the wheels turning in his head as I wait for the disgust that’s sure to come. His hands start to move again before his mouth does, fingers playing with the buttons on the shirt I’m wearing. “Good for you,” he manages to choke out. He tries to tug me forward again.

  I push my palms against his chest, bracing myself as he keeps trying to pull me close again. My nails dig gently into his pecs as he groans, clearly upset with my continued resistance. “That doesn’t bother—don’t you think it’s weird?” I ask, hope tinging my voice. The thought that he might want me badly enough to overlook the fact that I’ve just fucked Jude really does something to me. I struggle to keep from squirming in his lap.

  “Weird is a relative term,” he murmurs, and hell, that’s good enough for me.

  I stop resisting, letting him pull me back to his chest as our lips connect with even more need than before. Even after my confession, Brennan seems more turned on, not less. I let my lips fall open for him as his tongue makes a slow loop of my mouth, teasing and tasting me.

  He runs his hands along the tops of my thighs, creating a blazing trail of fire along my skin as he inches close to my panties over and over again. I didn’t even realize my hips were moving against him again until he grabs my hips to stop me. He releases a tense breath that tells me he only stopped me because he wasn’t going to be able to take the motion much longer.

  I reach for the hem of his t-shirt and he lifts his arms so I can pull it over his head. “What’s wrong?” I ask, noticing his eyebrows are knit together after I’ve discarded his shirt to the side of the couch.

  His eyes dip down, lips pressed in a thin line as he looks from my skirt bunched around my upper thighs all the way up to my neck—but then specifically back to the shirt again. I almost reach to touch the bruise on the side of my neck, to hide it from his searching gaze, but I let my hands fall flat instead. There’s no use trying to keep any secrets now.

  He takes a deep breath. “Is this Jude’s shirt?” A hot blush fills my cheeks as I nod. It’s too much for him. The shirt is just a reminder of me fucking Jude, and he doesn’t actually want to be the encore performance. I can feel tears threatening the backs of my eyes as he barks at me to, “Get up.”

  I try to explain, “He ruined my shirt. I didn’t have a—”

  “Get up, Piper. Now.” All the heat I’d been feeling a few moments ago sizzles out. He loosens his grip on the shirt and pushes against my hips until I slide from his lap with my head tucked against my chest and arms around my middle. His voice comes out in a growl when he says, “Take the skirt off.”

  My head snaps back up.

  His eyes are fire, whatever hesitation he was feeling apparently extinguished as he pushes himself to his feet as well. My fingers shake around the zipper, lowering it and pushing the skirt to the floor as Jude’s shirt falls to rest against my thighs. Brennan sucks in another deep breath when I reach up to start unbuttoning the shirt and shakes his head no at me. “Panties.”

  I’m frozen in place.

  “Take your panties off, Pi. I don’t want to ask again.” I suck my bottom lip into my mouth to keep a whimper from escaping.

  I like it rough and I like it bossy, and it looks like today I’m getting a little bit of both. There are serious perks to having multiple boyfriends.

  I push my panties down, kicking them toward the rest of our clothes as Brennan stills and watches with sharp eyes. I reach for him, latching my arms around his neck for just a moment before he jerks me away, pushing my back toward the couch. I tumble backward with a surprised yelp, and a smirk crosses his lips as he drops to his knees in front of me, pushing my knees apart as he goes.

  Well, hell. Maybe Brennan’s going to give me both rough and bossy all by himself. Who would have thought he had it in him?

  Brennan sweeps his fingers along the outside of my thighs as he leans forward to brush his lips against mine. I turn to putty under his touch, melting against the couch as his fingers trail toward my inner thighs, arching my hips from the couch to get closer to his touch. He pushes my hips back against the couch as he tears his mouth away from mine, trailing kisses over the side of my jaw and down my throat until I’m panting breathily beneath his touch.

  He pulls back before he gets anywhere close to the collar of Jude’s shirt, pulling a protesting moan from my lips in the process. He chuckles at me. “Patience is a virtue, Pi,” he chastises as his thumbs make swirling, circular motions on my skin. My hips buck again as he shakes his head at me.

  “When the hell have I ever wanted to be virtuous?” I ask with a coy smile, and he responds by jerking me closer to the side of the couch. I writhe under his touch, the ache low in my belly growing as he commands my body in a way he never quite has before. Every touch is so fucking different from any other time that we’ve been together, and I’m on pins and needles, waiting for each one because I can’t even begin to anticipate what’s coming next.

  Brennan surprises me when he hooks my legs over his shoulders, spreading me wide for his hungry gaze. I thread my fingers through his hair as he licks his way from my knee to the inside of my thigh, and I bite down on my lip hard when he skips over the center of me completely, moving right to the opposite thigh and working his way down again. A violent shiver wracks my body when he nibbles at the inside of my thigh.

  “Bren,” I breathe out through barely parted lips as my toes tingle. My head falls back as he kisses and nibbles his way back toward my aching core, pressing almost painfully into the cushions as his tongue makes its first pass. My fingers dig harder into his hair as he expertly moves his tongue against my clit.

  I nearly come up off the fucking couch as I ride a wave of pleasure to the point that I’m pretty sure he’s licked me stupid. He keeps his mouth on me even as he moves his hand to dip a finger inside of me. He teases me there in time with his tongue still working along my clit, and I can’t last long after that. I have to push him away as I start to shake, so overwhelmed that tears start falling over my cheeks as I come too hard to contain them. I can’t believe I’m fucking crying as I orgasm, but there’s just nothing I can do to stop it.

  Brennan smiles down at me with the most self-satisfied look I’ve ever seen as he pushes to his feet. I’m fully prepared to keep going, but he surprises me by dropping down on the couch next to me. He leans his head back and closes his eyes as he takes a few steadying breaths.

  When he opens his eyes again to find me studying him, the first words out of my mouth are, “Does this mean you forgive me?”

  He chuckles as he reaches out to pull me close. “Fucking always,” he says in a soft voice as he runs his hands up the back of Jude’s shirt. The shirt obviously turns him on for some reason, and that seriously turns me on. Yep, Jude is definitely never getting this shirt back.

  20

  Piper

  Tyler turns out to be the holdout.

  He sits with us at lunch, but he keeps his attention on his phone, tuning out our stilted attempts to drag him into conversation. He hangs out by the cars with us before and after school, but he makes a point not to look at me. When I do try to catch him one on one, he makes an excuse and leaves as quickly as he can.

  By Friday, Macie’s ready to drag him out to the parking lot and try to fight him. I appreciate the gesture, for sure, but I remind her for what feels like the hundredth time that I caused the issue, and he doesn’t have to forgive me if it’s something he feels like he
can’t do. My heart fucking shatters at the thought of it, of course, but what else can I do?

  I’m not ready when I finally feel the weight of his stare during Humanities. I haven’t looked up yet to confirm it, but I know I feel him looking at me. I get so distracted by it that when Dr. Charles pauses to ask me a question in the middle of his lecture, I have to admit I’m not paying attention. My face burns as he chastises me before turning the question on another classmate. Macie has the audacity to actually fucking laugh at me, and I turn to glare at her. My eyes easily slip past her to seek Tyler out, and my stomach jolts when our eyes connect. I let my gaze linger for a few seconds before turning back towards the front of the class.

  I can feel him looking at me the whole period, but I don’t make any more eye contact. The last thing I want to do is spook him.

  When it’s time to go, I hesitate before leaving the room ahead of him. Part of me was hoping he’d stop me to talk, but he doesn’t. My shoulders bunch up with tension as I step over the threshold into the hall. A hand brushes over the small of my back. I turn just in time to see Tyler walking the opposite direction. He touched me. He touched me like he couldn’t help himself.

  For a second, I consider following him, but I force myself to turn back and go to my next class. What we need to work out doesn’t need to happen in the middle of a Rosewood hallway.

  It’s Jude who wraps a hand around my arm and pulls me to a stop before I can follow Macie to her car after school. I don’t fight the pull, stopping next to him and shooting a curious glance toward Brennan and Tyler who are standing off to the side chatting and watching us from the corners of their eyes. “She’ll see you on Monday, Wharton!” Jude calls after her when she scoffs her protest.