Beautiful Lies (Breaking Belles #2) - Alta Hensley Page 0,32

need for power and frankly… world domination. Greed oozed from the Oleander rather than heritage. The Order of the Silver Ghost lost its way, and I wanted nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing unless I had to.

But I had to.

My sister needed me to.

And right now, as I entered the cave with Portia in my arms, I knew that she needed me too. Montgomery was right when he said we were a team and had to be in this together in order to make it. I had been a pretty shitty team player up to this point, and I didn’t blame Portia one second for wavering and considering calling it quits. She’d been in this completely alone, and my drunk ass only made things worse.

But fuck it. That was all about to change. I wouldn’t let these men break me, and I sure as hell wouldn’t allow them to break Portia.

My belle would remain unbreakable.

I was happy to see a small stream of water running from the ceiling of the cave to a small pool of water. My memory had served me correctly. The air was cool, but not terribly cold, and I was pretty sure anything was better than being on the hunt in Portia’s eyes.

“You can’t hear the dogs in here,” Portia said as I placed her on her feet. “We won’t hear them coming.”

“It doesn’t matter. We have plenty of time.” I pointed at the water. “Shower off. You stink.” I gave her a wink, a slanted grin and then took the lantern out of her hand and placed it on a flat rock.

“Jerk,” she teased back, but shed my jacket and did exactly that.

It was fair to say that Portia Collins had become my sex partner, fuck buddy, hook up, or whatever you wanted to call it—at least at the Oleander. We fucked because what else did we have to do besides that? Not to mention, I was a man. Call me what you will, but she was gorgeous and there was no way I could resist the urge to bury my cock inside of her every time I woke up to her sleeping in my arms. But watching her stand beneath the water rinsing the mud from her golden hair, I didn’t want to fuck her.

I wanted to hold her.

I wanted to protect her.

I wanted to make promises that no man would ever touch her in any way… except me.

The surprising emotions washing over me were raw. Primal.

The overwhelming need to somehow mark her as mine and mine alone, seemed to suck all the air from within the cave.

Droplets of water glistened on her flesh under the warm light of the lantern, and for the first time this evening, Portia seemed content again. Her strength seemed to return as she allowed any weakness she once had to wash off of her with the mud.

“You mentioned you had sisters,” I said, feeling like I had to say something to break the silence.

She looked my way as she squeezed her hair, pulling the last bits of mud from the tips. “I did?”

“In the cellar.”

“Oh… well, yes. I have sisters.” She went back to washing her hair, no longer looking at me. “What about you? Siblings?”

“I do,” I said, wondering why she seemed to not want to talk about her family, although I didn’t really blame her. I didn’t feel like going all in and discussing Jasmine either. “I have one sister.”

Silence again.

It dawned on me that Portia and I didn’t really talk about much. Definitely nothing of importance. Up to this point, I enjoyed that fact, but for some reason I wanted to know more about her. Maybe it was because I brought her to a special place of mine. The cave had been off limits to girls. It was our bro code, although I was pretty sure my friends would forgive me. But I was sharing a piece of my childhood… or as close to sharing as I truly ever got.

“Do your sisters know you’re doing this? The Initiation?” I asked.

“Does yours?” she countered.

“Yeah,” I said as I found a rock to sit on. “You can’t be brought up as a VanDoren and not know about the Oleander, The Order of the Silver Ghost, and all the other fucked-up crap that comes with it. It’s part of our Southern charm, I guess you could say.”

“Why do you want to be part of the Order if you hate it so much?” she asked as she stepped