Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Hunter looks at me, then at the rings, then back again. “This isn’t a marriage proposal, Stella,” he says, voice low and unhurried. “It’s something better. It’s a promise.”
I watch his fingers—strong, a little battered, yet with the ability to be gentle. He picks up the first ring, holds it out between two fingers. The metal flashes, catching the faintest stray light.
Lachlan shifts closer, his thigh pressing against mine. He shoots a look at Hunter. “Go ahead, my man.”
Hunter clears his throat: “Stella, you’re everything to me. You have turned my life upside down a hundred and eighty degrees, but it’s what I want. It’s what I crave, and I didn’t even know it. Even more, I adore your curves, sweet girl, and I want your pussy and your ass and every other part of you available to me for the rest of my life. That’s what this is.” He slides the ring onto my left ring finger, and it’s cool at first, then a perfect fit. The inscription on the inside burns into my skin: SEMPER FIDELIS. “You belong to me, star girl. And I belong to you.”
He turns to Lachlan. “You’re next.”
Lachlan takes the second ring, his hand trembling slightly. He doesn’t say anything at first, but then takes a deep breath. “I’m in love with you, Stella,” he says. “I didn’t plan it, and I don’t regret it, because life with you completes me. I can’t imagine how I survived before meeting you, and I never want to go back to that lonely existence.” Then, he slips the second ring onto my right ring finger, across from Hunter’s. Inside the band is a string of Latin I can’t read, but I know from his sermons it means something like “All my sins for you.”
They press the third ring into my palm. It’s heavier than I expected. I close my fist around it, the edge biting into the flesh. The engraving here is just a date—today, the day after the world ended and began again.
“What should I do with this third one?” I whisper. “I’m going to wear Hunter’s on my left ring finger, and Lachlan’s on my right. But where does this one go?”
The men exchange a look, and then Lachlan growls. “In your pussy, sweetheart. We want you to have an internal reminder of us at all hours of the day. We’re not saying you have to wear it all the time, but just when you’re feeling naughty. Or when you want to feel our presence, and we’re not there.”
I gasp, cheeks going pink.
“Are you serious?”
Hunter nods, blue eyes flashing.
“And sweetheart, if you like it, we can get you a fourth ring too. To go here,” he rasps, tapping my anus with one big finger. “This part of you is just as sacred, but we thought it’d be going too far on the first pass. But you let us know, and we can get a fourth ring made that matches the other three. That way your ass will be filled with our possession too.”
I gasp because my men are so dirty, and yet I love it. I want to say something. I want to be witty or biting or sexy even, but my chin trembles, and I let out a laugh that’s more a sob, and I press the back of my wrist to my mouth before the tears can break. “You guys are insane,” I whisper.
Hunter leans in, kisses my wrist, then my forehead, then the corner of my mouth. Lachlan does the same, only he lingers longer, his lips grazing the space behind my ear where I’m always most vulnerable.
“We know,” Hunter says. “You’re the only girl worth losing everything for.”
The three of us lie there, cocooned in the warmth of the sheets, the velvet box at our feet. I turn the rings over in my fingers, feeling the grooves, the weight, the message. Outside, the city is either dead asleep or just beginning to wake, but in here, nothing moves except us.
Hunter traces a line down my spine, slow, with just his index finger, as if he’s memorizing the bumps of each vertebra for later. Lachlan presses his mouth to my temple, his breath slow and even.
In my head, I count the heartbeats. I count the candles, the bites, the kisses. I count the rings, one, two, three, and think: This is what love looks like when you stop pretending it isn’t dangerous.
I hold onto the moment, and to them, for as long as I can.
Because tomorrow, the world will burn again. And when it does, I want to remember exactly how this felt: the weight of the promise, cool and eternal, against my skin.
In the new version of my life, mornings begin with the sound of Hunter’s espresso machine, a beast that could probably run an elevator, and the sight of his kitchen island: a single slab of white marble longer than a mattress, surrounded by stools that cost more than most people’s monthly rent. The sun comes in at a slant through the wall of windows, illuminating every flaw in my complexion, every sleep-creased groove in my skin. On mornings like this one, I sit perched on a barstool in one of Hunter’s old T-shirts, hair barely tamed, and stare at my own reflection in the silver of the coffee press while I work down the short list of people in the world who actually matter.