big screen television and a marathon of Property Brothers. Or maybe Fixer Upper. Anything. Even focusing on my house on the cliffs seemed too distant to achieve. While I consumed the saffron rice and curried chicken Fin had returned with, he’d gone down to fetch the bags of clothes he’d bought me.
The first two outfits barely qualified as clothes, unless I planned to be the main attraction as a stripper in Vegas, right down to the floss and feathers. The fact that Rogue rolled his eyes at the second outfit made me actually consider it for thirty seconds.
The third and fourth were moderately better, but both were dresses. Cute.
Not my thing.
I preferred clothes I could move in and wouldn’t likely tangle around my legs. Also, call me quirky, but I also liked dressing myself. The whole ‘guys put a woman in what they want to see her in’ thing just squicked me out. I wasn’t a possession or a prize. I dressed for exactly one person.
Me.
“No,” I said again and again in between bites as he held them up. The way he deflated with each rejection almost made me feel bad for him. Almost. If we weren’t in a dusty library that smelled of old books, woodsmoke, and age, I might have. But we were, and they had zero intention of letting me leave.
The minute I said something about going to pick out my own stuff, Fin told me to give him a list and he’d get it exact.
The fact that all three had been right on me when I went out into the sun earlier suggested I’d merely upgraded one prison for another. Color me not shocked.
Down to the last outfit, I studied it musingly. Not bad. Tight leather pants, a black camisole top, and a leather jacket to throw over the top.
“Sold,” I told him. “For now, I’ll wear that.”
He looked so earnestly crestfallen that Maddox chuckled. “You’ve disappointed him. He truly thought you’d like the peasant dresses he bought.”
“You mean the itty bitty ‘look at my ass’ dresses that would work for a striptease if I didn’t want to have to take anything off?”
Rogue smirked and Fin scowled. “They weren’t that bad.”
“No,” Rogue said blandly, lifting a mug of ale he’d been drinking slowly while I ate my weight in curry. The food was amazing, the flavors intense and sharp on my tongue. “They were much worse. She’s not a prostitute.”
Maddox and Fin both wheeled on him, and I hid my own smile. “No,” Maddox snarled. “She isn’t, and those clothes didn’t suggest otherwise. A lot of women wear them these days.”
With a shrug, Rogue said, “She’s not a lot of women, and clearly she doesn’t think much of the outfits.”
Fin opened his mouth to argue, then seemed to think better of it. Finally, he glanced at me.
“If you don’t want me going to stores, do you get the internet in this backwater of time and space, or is that still a few centuries off?”
The corners of Fin’s lips twitched. “Make me a list. I have your sizes.” Or he could just go get my own things. “I would,” he continued. “Get your own things, that is, but they were collected when you were sent to Nightmare Penitentiary. I have no idea where they are.”
With the way my luck had been going? Probably burned.
Food finished, I rose and slid my feet out of Rogue’s boots. The fact that I’d worn the ginormous things even after we’d retreated inside meant nothing. It was a bit like having clown feet. If clowns had sexy, large feet that matched their rather well-endowed physics. Hard to miss the latter anyway. The minute I started moving, I had their attention.
“Before I get dressed, is there going to be draining going on tonight?” I put a hand on my hip because I really wanted real clothes on, but I wasn’t an idiot. If they started on me, I was gonna end up riding all of them again.
Hey, if you couldn’t be honest with yourself, who could you be honest with? As it was, Fin studied me.
“It is my turn,” he said softly.
“And you need it,” Maddox added, but the flash of heat in his suddenly slitted eyes had nothing to do with me feeding.
For some reason, I expected both answers from them. Yes, they wanted to help. They’d made that abundantly clear. But they were both rather fond of my body, and they’d made no pretense of wanting their hands on me.