Page 190 of Chaos

Through the windshield, I watch my big sister look so very small as she clutches the steering wheel, her white knuckles visible even from a distance. She starts the car, and I almost think she’s going to disappear without another word until she rolls down the window.

When she leans out, the color has returned to her face. She’s smiling again. She’s completely, bafflingly normal as she tells me, “The girl and I are staying at Jackson’s tonight.”

“Okay.”

“So you have the place to yourself.”

“Okay.”

“Please don’t screw your boyfriend on any surfaces my son might touch.”

“Lux.”

“And for future reference,” she adds because… because she hates me, I decide, right before I decide I hate her too, “put a pillow between the headboard and the wall.”

He’s cheating on me.

Right before my very eyes, my brooding, beloved guy is cheating on me.

With my boyfriend.

“Ruin,” I screech as much as one dares to screech at a semi-feral stallion in need of some deeply intrusive therapy. “What are you doing?”

Lifting his head as if it wasn’t just buried in Finn’s neck, Ruin cocks it at me.None of your business, bitch.

Just about resisting the urge to stick my tongue out at a fucking horse, I swing my gaze on Finn instead. “Are you poaching my horse?”

My heart does something so despicably silly when he cracks the widest, prettiest smile. “We’re in love.”

“Fuck off.” Fuck that word. Fuck how it makes me shiver and cower, gaze low and avoidant as I saunter over with a haughty sniff, and another when Ruin trots to my side as if he wasn’t just laying it on thick with the very man he’s tried to maim on multiple occasions. “Did you lobotomize him when I wasn’t looking?”

Finn snickers as he grabs Gaia, who looks about as happy about her rider’s philandering as I am. “I think I still smell like you.”

“Which part of you, exactly, was he smelling?”

“God, you’re so hot when you’re jealous.”

I roll my eyes as I swallow a laugh. Dragging a hand along the ridge of Ruin’s back, I give him a hard pat before twisting my fingers around his mane. But as I prepare to hoist myself up, more than a few well-used muscles pinch uncomfortably. I suckin a sharp breath, snorting an irritated one as I palm my achy lower stomach.

“You okay to ride?”

“Yes.” I shoot Finn a scowl. Asshole. Asking me that like I have a choice—like I could’ve blown my brother off when he called.Sorry, Jackson. Can’t fix fences today. Fucked my boyfriend into oblivion last night. Whoops.“Of course I am.”

“You sure?”

In lieu of a verbal response, I flick up my middle finger.

Shaking his head with a laugh, Finn strides my way. With deft, mechanical movements, those big hands swallow my waist and lift me onto Ruin, one of them straying to guide one of my legs over his back, the other squeezing my thigh. “Maybe you should take a different horse,” he suggests carefully, mouth quirking when Ruin huffs like he understood the suggestion. “One you can saddle.”

I parrot the noise my horse makes. “Can we go already?”

With another shake of his head, Finn drops a kiss to the bare skin of my waist revealed by my tank top riding up before tugging the fabric down, rearranging my flannel too so it offers more protection from the winter chill. “Yes ma’am.

And even though the wide spread of my thighs and the unforgiving press of Ruin beneath me and the strain in my core are all pretty damn unpleasant in my current state, a spark of that pleasure I genuinely thought I’d used up ignites within me as I watch Finn mount Gaia. At the sure way he fists the reins, the commanding cluck of his tongue, at his elegant, strong posture—God, wasn’t it only a couple of months ago that I was making fun of him for that same compliment?

Jesus. I’m losing it. Sexed-up and delirious.

In love, some wicked, meddling voice in the back of my head croons.

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