Page 18 of Piece Us Together
Wells sighs. “I just don’t want to come over in the middle of the night to find you on the floor broken into pieces again. I don’t want to ever have to see you hurting like that. It took you a week to pull yourself out of that dark headspace after shit blew up with Maison’s little brother, and now you want to roll the dice with these two?”
“Dom drop happens,” I growl, frustrated that he’d use that against me. “Don’t treat me like I can’t be a dom anymore because I fell apart after a scene. Fuck you.”
“Hey, you know me way too fucking well to think that’s what I’m saying. Fuckyou, you asshole.” He reaches over, grabbing my forearm and squeezing a little too hard. “I’m trying to look out for you, Hunt. You’ll get hurt. You’ll regret this. And worse, you won’t be able to escape them, either. Travis is one of us now. Carter has become close with Jax and Carlos. If this goes south, you won’t be free of Maison and Nolan, not fully. You’ll have to face that hurt, that regret, and it’s going to fucking suck.”
There’s nothing to say to that—mostly because he’s probably right, and that scares the fuck out of me.
“You need to stop before this gets worse,” he says, his voice suddenly soft. “Right now it’s a fascination. An itch to scratch, maybe. You need to stop before it becomes something else.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. I’m pretty sure I told him about this whole thing because I knew he would pull my head out of my ass and save me from impending heartbreak.
But Maison’s eyes are so damn sad and Nolan’s need is so damn intense, and I can’t walk away from either of them, self-preservation be damned.
If it comes down to me getting hurt or letting Maison and Nolan go, I already know which I’m going to pick. Because it’s already become something else. Something more.
I’ll just have to keep my heart out of it. No falling in love. Just domination and sex.I can do that, can’t I?
“I’m a goddamn idiot,” I tell my friend, raising my eyes to meet his.
Wells sighs deeply. He knows me too well. He knows what that means. He knows I’m not going to stop.
“You’re a goddamn idiot,” he agrees. Then he grabs the bottle of wine, heads into the kitchen, and switches it out for Scotch. “Let’s get you very, very drunk.”
There are moments in life when you can tell you’re making a mistake, but it’s too late to change things. Mid-haircut, when you get a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Deciding to run a yellow only for the light to turn red just before you pass beneath it. Taking that extra piece of pie despite how full you already are, knowing full well that your mom will whoop your ass if you waste it.
Those moments when you’ve leaned just a little too far over the edge to come back. Those moments where you just watch yourself follow through, knowing every second that it’s a mistake.
As I open the door for Nolan and Maison when they arrive for our first night together, that familiar feeling passes over me. A moment. A mistake.
And I can’t for the fucking life of me get myself to care.
“Hello,” I greet them, my eyes taking in the bag slung over Maison’s shoulder. I had given them three rules when we spoke on the phone. They need to arrive stone-cold sober, no lying will be tolerated before, during, or after the scene, and they have to spend the night. In the future, we can do just ninety minutes post-scene before they go home, but for this first time, I don’t feel comfortable with them leaving after. Maison hadn’t even put up a fight. “Was the drive okay?”
They haven’t told me where they live, but I got the impression last time that they don’t live here in town.
Nolan smiles. “It was fine, thank you.”
“Yeah.” Maison adjusts the bag on his shoulder, eyes looking everywhere but at me. “Nice that the roads were clear. Finally stopped snowing.”
“Is this your first winter here?”
They exchange a tense look before Maison answers, “It is.”
“Well, better come to terms with it now—this is nothing. Give it a few more weeks and we’ll be buried in the stuff.”
Nolan brightens. “I can’t wait!”
“Because you’re not expected to shovel,” Maison says with an eye roll that holds little weight considering how fondly he smiles at Nolan after.
“I’ll help shovel!” Nolan argues, his cheeks turning pink. “Why do you think I won’t shovel?”
“I give you and your boys five minutes before you get distracted by the snow and I’m all alone with my shovel and frozen ass.”
Nolan struggles to hold back a smile before giving into it with an eye roll of his own. “Okay, fair. But you’ll have Jake helping. Maybe Ace, if you can drag him away from the computer.”
I try hard not to catalog all the information they’re unintentionally giving me. It’s hard, though. They’re so secretive—and any internet searches I tried on them came up almost frighteningly empty. I’m a little desperate to know more about them.
Unfortunately, Maison clocks me and tenses. “Anyway, the drive was good. Where should I put my bag?”