The Marked Men 3-Book Collection: Rule, Jet, Rome - Jay Crownover

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bed’s wet.”

      I just stared at him blankly. “So?”

      “So that means we didn’t use protection. I haven’t had sex without a condom since I was a teenager and an idiot. Geez, no wonder it felt so good.”

      “I’m on the pill.”

      “Why?”

      I made a face and rolled off him. “Because my mother made me. She thought I was hooking up with one or both of you Archer twins long before it ever happened. I’ve just stayed on it because it makes my period less crazy, so we should be fine.”

      He pulled me back to his chest and brushed my hair away from my face. “With my history, you really wanna chance it?”

      I exhaled. “You really know how to ruin a moment, Rule.”

      “Hey, I told you it’s my job to protect you even if that means protecting you from me. We have to have clean health screens to work in the shop, since we work around bodily fluids, needles, and open skin, and my last one was crystal clear. And like I said, I never ever have unsafe sex unless it’s with a high-maintenance blonde with killer green eyes that make me so crazy I forget.”

      I cuddled into the curve of his body and let him wrap his arms around me. The hand that had his name inked across the knuckles ended up resting across my chest and I used my index finger to trace over the bold letters. “I trust you and I think we’re good, so I’m not going to make an issue out of it.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Yeah, because like I said it’s always been you, Rule, even when I really wished it wasn’t.”

      “I’m starting to wish I had paid closer attention.”

      I laced our fingers together. I liked the way they looked all tangled together. His were long and covered in brilliant designs, mine were small and tipped in boring pink polish, but next to each other they were more interesting, more vital. I fell back asleep listening to the steady inhale and exhale of his breath in my ear and thinking that even if I hadn’t been on the pill, having a moment of wild, uninhibited, and totally unprotected sex with him was most definitely worth any of the risks that were involved with that. I could think of worse fates than bringing the next troublesome Archer into the world.

      CHAPTER 11

       Rule

       “The first time I came home and saw you sitting in the kitchen with Remy I remember thinking, what in the hell has he gotten himself into? You were so pale and scared, your eyes were twice as big as normal, and you looked like a little bird that had fallen out of the nest. Remy had always had a soft spot for the neglected so I wasn’t surprised, but I was flabbergasted at how quickly the rest of the family took to you. I always thought it was going to be us Archers against the world forever and then there was you, and it all kind of broke apart and I became even more of the black sheep than I had been. Rome adored you, Mom and Dad just accepted you and Remy as a unit, and I was left out in the cold as usual. I think I just took all those feelings of separation and alienation and transferred them onto you. Remy and I were always two parts of a whole and when you came along that went away to some extent. I think I was jealous that he spent so much time and effort being your hero and not being my brother.”

       “The first time I saw you I was terrified. I had seen you and Remy around school and everyone always talked about the Archer twins like you were some kind of mythical creatures. Remy was so athletic and had all the right friends and the best grades, you were always in trouble, running around with older kids and constantly getting called to the office for skipping class or whatever else you were up to. Remy saved me and brought me home. He made me laugh when nothing in my life seemed remotely funny and he was kind when no one in my life had ever even tried to be nice before. He sat me in the kitchen and told me not to worry when his brothers came home—he would keep them in line. Then you and Rome came barreling through the door. Rome looked at me and shook his head and asked Remy if I was another stray and you, you just looked right at me like I didn’t matter and asked Remy if he wanted to go get pizza. I thought you were beautiful in such a different way from Remy. You guys looked so much alike but you turned your looks into something so interesting I couldn’t look away. I stared at you for a full fifteen minutes and then when you and Rome left you looked at me and said, ‘Geez, Rem, get her a cup of tea or something. She looks like Casper the Friendly Ghost.’ Remy just shook his head and sat down across from me—he knew then, he always knew—and, he told me, ‘Rule is a good guy, Shaw, the best actually. I love him more than anything in the world but he’s also a sixteen-year-old guy and an Archer. Don’t borrow heartache when you can avoid it.’ For years and years he told me over and over that I was being foolish, that I shouldn’t get wound up about you when your priorities were elsewhere. Then about a year before he died he changed his tune. When you moved to Denver together he was suddenly all about me going to DU after school, all about me getting to a point where I could tell you how I felt about you. Suddenly he was Remy the matchmaker. It was weird and then the accident happened and I never got a chance to ask what changed his mind.”

       “Well, I’m glad I know now and I still think you look like Casper.”

       “I’m glad, too, and I don’t mind when you call me Casper. It’s kinda sweet. Besides, when you first started it I thought I was special; none of the other girls ever got a nickname, you just called them sweetie, or babe, or honey.”

       “You are special; you were special then, too. I was just too stupid to see it.”

       “I don’t think I would have been ready for you then.”

       “Are you ready for me now?”

       “Anytime.”

      The hushed conversation gave me a whole new insight into the girl who was starting to mean so much to me. It also brought up a lot of questions that I couldn’t ask my deceased brother. I wanted to know why, if he had known she had a thing for me, he let me and the rest of the family happily believe they were an item for all those years. It seemed deceitful and shady and so not like Remy. I also wanted to know why he hadn’t said anything to me about her. I thought we’d shared everything, and even though I hadn’t been in a place in my early teens to offer Shaw anything, it still seemed odd he hadn’t mentioned how she felt about me so that I might have treaded more carefully around her instead of trampling across her feelings like a herd of buffaloes.

      The quiet conversation took place early in the morning while she was stumbling around my room trying to get ready for school. She only had a limited amount of clothes to pick from and didn’t want to run back to her apartment so I told her to take one of my T-shirts out of the closet. It was fun to watch a hot chick scramble around half-naked and pick through my pretty basic guy wardrobe. She ended up in her leggings and boots and my Black Angels T-shirt, which hung almost to her knees, and suddenly getting up to take her to school seemed a lot more fun. She dodged my grabbing hands with a laugh while trying to pull her hair into a ponytail. This was the kind of interaction I had missed by only engaging in meaningless one-night stands. I liked playing with Shaw, liked having her using my bathroom and being all up in my stuff, and the more I thought about it the more I realized I had missed her in more areas of my life than my bed this last week.

      She pressed a quick kiss to my mouth and told me she was going to make coffee and something for breakfast so I struggled to get up and searched around for my phone to call Mark. I wasn’t going to waste any time trying to put as many roadblocks between Shaw and Davenport as I could. I pulled on a pair of dark jeans and a shirt and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. The phone rang while I brushed my teeth and Mark picked up just as I was spitting into the sink.

      “What’s up, kid?” I was checking out my stubbly face in the mirror and decided since I didn’t have any hair at the moment I was just gonna let it go, maybe try to grow it into a goatee

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