Beautiful Lies (Breaking Belles #2) - Alta Hensley Page 0,50

time, so I would be naked. What else was new? The old men liked eye candy. Shocker.

I was young and scrappy.

They couldn’t fucking brand me twice.

And Sully would protect me.

I glanced over at him and frowned. Things since the LSD hadn’t been great between us. I mean, they hadn’t been especially bad. But not great either. He’d been sleeping a lot. But not inviting me to bed with him. I did a lot of sit-ups and lunges and some of the in-room dance aerobics I remembered from YouTube videos Tanya and I used to do.

In short—we hadn’t had sex since the LSD. After the morning after, I’d been so deflated when he told me the entire night… along with all the things he’d confessed to me, had all been because of the drugs. He’d said it so flippantly, like there was no possibility he could have said those caring, intimate things for any other reason.

I’d had to immediately flee to the bathroom so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes. Because I’d thought—I’d thought—well, I’d been a stupid girl, hoping for stupid, stupid things.

I’d washed my face in cold water, gave myself a scolding in the mirror, but that wasn’t nearly enough. There were still tears leaking uncontrollably out of my eyes, so I’d turned on the shower and took the hottest one I could stand, careful to keep my still stinging brand out of the water as much as I could. Eventually I’d given up and switched to cold water. Cold water in January was punishing but also felt entirely appropriate.

I’d only come back out when I had myself firmly under control.

And Sully had just kept acting like nothing had happened between us at all the night before. Maybe he hadn’t even remembered saying those things. They were all still there in vivid, neon color in my head, but maybe the drug acted differently on everyone.

He’d been effectively ignoring me ever since. Even though I couldn’t help contorting my body and flashing my ass in my tight shorts in his face a bunch during all those sweaty aerobics I was doing.

He just turned the other direction in bed, yanked a pillow over his head, and told me to put in some damn earbuds so he wouldn’t have to listen to Britney Spears and Lady Gaga on blast five hours a day.

Then he thought when I climbed into bed with him at night he could just reach for me?

Uh… that would be a big no, buddy.

He’d just slept the entire day away, completely ignored me, then thought he could get with me because I happened to be a warm body in bed beside his lazy ass?

Nope.

Just because I was in this place didn’t mean I’d never heard of a little thing called self-respect, thank you very much.

But now that we were walking down the stairs towards the unknown, me completely in the buff and him stark naked too, I wanted to reach out and grab his hand.

They’d brought a suit for him like always.

He’d stared me in the eye and tossed it on the ground, stepped on it, and yanked off all his underclothes till he was as naked as me, then nodded towards the door when it was time for us to go.

And I’d fallen a little in love with the bastard.

When we both came into view of the Elders naked as the day we were born, I didn’t miss the raised eyebrows. One man outright glared.

Not that Sully gave a fuck.

He just stood there in the full-naked glory that the good Lord gave him and smirked at all of them.

I started to get a nervous buzz in my tummy, and not the good kind.

There was some sort of… something in the air of the room.

Anticipation.

There was anticipation in the air.

Because while yes, some of the men were looking away from me, more of them were looking my direction. And grinning.

They were not grinning in a nice way.

Now I really wanted to reach out and grab Sully’s hand.

But what would that accomplish? It would be a sign of weakness in front of vultures.

And he couldn’t protect me.

Hadn’t the branding shown me that?

I was here for a reason. Oh God, I was here for a reason. My family needed me. My family needed me.

I repeated it over and over in my head like a mantra as my entire body started to tremble in fear. I wasn’t sure I believed in God, but I prayed for him to protect me