She supposed Professor Hot Lips would call her behavior a sexual rite. The virgin bride being prepared for her wedding bed. The lamb being soothed and massaged before the slaughter. When he said it, he made it sound sensual instead of sadistic. She was creating an offering Trick wouldn’t be able to resist.
If he answered her messages.
Jen closed her eyes, letting the water soothe her. Thinking about Trick’s visits always made her remember her time at the club. Other than three-minute-missionary Scott, her idiot ex, it was the only thing she had to compare this to.
For several months after her breakup she’d thrown herself into the world of kink with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Every munch and gathering, she was there. Every demo, she was the first volunteer. And in her play, she gravitated to couples—not because she wanted a threesome with them necessarily, but because she wanted more.
Trick knew that. Was that how he knew she’d go along with his plan to seduce the professor? Did he think her experience was the perfect training for a third to have?
She hadn’t done it consciously. Back then she’d just needed the extra attention and reassurance…and a few cathartic whacks here and there. She was angry with herself for being fooled for so long and having potentially damaged Jeremy and Tasha’s relationships. Curious and full of unsatisfied desire, she’d ended up worrying her family and, in all honesty, scaring herself. She’d just been sick of being Little Finn. The only girl child of Clan Testosterone.
Growing up surrounded by three older brothers and six hulking male cousins didn’t make life easy. They were all overprotective, oblivious and hypocritical. But it wasn’t intentional, she knew. Just misguided. And they all showered her with so much love and affection she felt too guilty to seriously complain. She wasn’t above sarcasm, but that only made them laugh and did nothing to change their behavior.
Owen’s high school buddies, Tasha and Jeremy, had made life as Little Finn bearable. They’d been her only confidants for the longest time. That was why she’d gone to them when she found out about Scott. Why her heart had really broken over his actions—because they’d been the targets of his spying. They didn’t blame her, though she knew without a doubt it was her fault. If she’d broken up with him the first time she’d wanted to—in the ninth grade—it never would have happened.
Stephen’s twin, Seamus, said it was a good thing, because it had made people admit how they felt about each other. Now Tasha was married to Stephen and pregnant with twins, and Jeremy was planning his wedding to Owen.
Her confidants had officially joined the enemy camp.
She no longer felt entirely comfortable telling either one them about Trick and how much she’d come to crave his attention. She couldn’t tell anyone, which only served to make his visits more exciting.
What did that say about her?
He knew it. Knew all he had to do was smile in that wicked, knowing way, and no matter where she was or what she was doing, she’d be thinking about his hands slipping inside her panties, caressing her as he made dark promises.
She was ready for him to make good on a few of those promises as soon as possible. Specifically his promise of actual sex. He dangled the potential out in front of her like a tasty treat to keep her in his thrall. The positions he wanted to take her in, what drove Declan wild. He told her how much he wanted her and how hard it was to wait, and then he’d make her come and tell her what he wanted her to do in Declan’s next class.
Jen didn’t think the professor noticed, but she always followed Trick’s instructions just in case. Wearing a shirt with buttons that she’d play with and slowly undo throughout the lecture. Making sure she dropped a pencil or a book every day as she walked up the stairs to her seat. Wearing her hair in a bun and then taking it out and running her hands through her hair.
That move had two future psychiatrists vying for her number at the end of the lecture, but she didn’t even get a twitch from the professor. It was giving her a complex.
She stepped out of the shower and toweled and moisturized her body before slipping on her new boy shorts. The lace was uncomfortable on her already sensitive skin, but she’d bought these after seeing Trick’s reaction to the bra she’d still been wearing when she fell asleep studying—apparently the rough, tough investigator had a thing for ripping lace.
After she pulled a sheer chemise over her breasts, her gaze fell on the textbook that was still on her bed. She opened it to look at Declan’s headshot again. Trick said the seduction was just a game, that Declan wanted her to join them. But Trick wasn’t always entirely forthcoming. Which was the polite way of saying he could be full of shit if it meant getting his way.