Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“You want to share a cigarette with me?”
“No,” Luca says, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into him. “She wants to stay here with me.”
Declan props his head up onto his elbow and looks down at me, running his thumb over my nipple. “Do you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” he says.
Declan pulls on a pair of sweatpants and walks toward the balcony.
“Someone will see you.”
“You worry too much,” he says. “Someone will see a person in the dark on a balcony. No one is going to see me. You just relax and let me worry about stuff like that. You get to rest and be soft now, Teag. Let us take care of you.”
He closes the sliding glass door behind him, and I sink further into Luca’s chest, wrapping my arms around him.
“Don’t be mad at me, Luca.”
“I’m not,” he says. “I love you, Teagan. But if I ever see him, I’m going to kill him for what he’s done to you.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“You mean it’s my fault.”
“No, I”
“But it is, though. All of this is my fault.”
“It’s not,” I tell him. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told you about all of that. I shouldn’t have put that on you, but you’re my best friend, and I”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’m a killer,” I tell him. “He didn’t do that. I was born like this.”
“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you have to, Teag. It doesn’t mean you should. He made you think that you had to and that you didn’t have a place, and you doyou always did. I’ll kill him, Teagan.”
“He’s your brother.”
“He is not my brother,” Luca snaps. “He’s not my family; he’s not even a personyou said that. You’re my family. He fucked with your head he hurt you. He’s fucking with Declan’s head, too.”
“I don’t want to talk about him anymore, Luca, okay? It doesn’t feel good.”
“It’s okay, angel,” he says, kissing my forehead. “We’ll get you better, and then you’ll let me burn it or cut it off of you. You said I could do whatever I wanted to you, remember?”
“Yeah, I did, but”
“You’ll thank me, baby. I’m going to make it all better, okay?”
“Okay, Luca.” I swing my leg over him and squeeze him tighter. Because that’s what we do.
I won’t argue. I know this side of him, and I’m sure finding out you have another brother your family kept a secret from you can’t be anything less than complicated. And when he left me against his will, I loved Sebastian, and he’s not Declan or River or Hazel or Rhetthe’s not family not in the ways that matter to Luca. It’s different.
The rules don’t always matter where love is concerned. I learned that, too.
And if that’s what he needs, maybe I will let him. Later when it doesn’t hurt so much. When it’s not still fresh.
“We’ve got a place picked out, Teag. I think you’re going to like it. It’s not the Mediterranean, but there’s a beach, and it’s pretty like you,” he says, running his fingers through my hair. “Hazel and Riv will like it, too. You’ll be happy, baby.”
He kisses my forehead and closes his eyes.
“I’m already happy,” I tell him, brushing his hair away from his face.
“I’m going to get you guys paddleboards,” he says. “And a life jacket for Riv because she can’t swim.”
“Luca, they’re gone,” I say. “I told you that.”
But he’s already asleep.
I kiss his lips and crawl out from under his arm. Declan is still out on the balcony, smoke billowing from his silhouette.
I grab Declan’s shirt from the floor and pull it over my head, then head to the bathroom. There’s a small lamp still on beside the television that I flip off as I pass. I wash my face and brush my teeth, but, as instructed, I don’t shower. When I come out, Declan is lying across the other side of the bed.
“Teagan, I need to tell you something about Luca,” he says quietly.
“Okay,” I say, lying between the two of them. “What is it?”
“It’s not that bad but he’s having a hard time with the pain pills. I want you to be aware of it because I’m going to need your help with that when we get out of here,” he says. “He was taking too much, and I finally got him to cut back a bit but since we’ve been here, he’s been taking too many again. He says he’s been doing too much, but I don’t think he’s really in that much pain. I think he’s just trying to numb everything else, you know?”
I nod. “Yeah, I know.”
“He feels really guiltyabout everything. About Rhett and Brady leaving you. He misses music. He missed you a lot, too, baby.”
I pull Luca’s arm over my body and lace my fingers between his, kissing the top of his hand and then the other. I’ve missed them. His hands used to wash my hair and hold me at night, and carried me a few times when I couldn’t carry myself. They’re the ones I used to imagine running through my hair in the mornings when he was gone, and I couldn’t get out of bed.
They’re the ones that held me when I cried and wrote me a sad song.
“I missed him, too.” I hope I can help him, too.
“He’ll be okay, Teag,” Declan says. “You will, too. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He leans in and kisses me again, running his hand up my thigh and hitching my leg around his waist while his lips slowly engulf mine. It feels so goodkissing him slowly like this, toying with his lips between my teeth. I push a hand through his hair and bring him closer, kissing him deeper.
We pull apart when a fist pounds against the hotel door three times.
I gasp, and Declan presses a finger to my lips. “It’s okay, kitten. It’ll just be TravisI told him to knock three times like that,” he says.
But he’s whispering. And he’d only be knocking if there was a problem.
“Don’t open it,” I whisper, grabbing his arm. “I’m scared.”
“Just be quiet, okay?”
As he climbs out of bed and moves toward the door, I grab my knife from the nightstand and shake Luca awake. “Luca, wake up! Someone is here!”
“What?” he asks. Then, he hears the knocks on the door for himself. “Oh, shit.”
He climbs out of bed and pulls on his boxers just as Declan reaches the door. “I told you it was just Travis,” he says, looking through the peephole. “He’s standing too fucking close to the door, though. Giant fucking moron.”
But when he opens the door, a man in a gold mask tosses something at Declan and pushes his way into the room.
It was the giant fucking moron’s severed head, and it rolls across the floor until it stops a few inches away from my feet.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.