Darius took a threatening step toward me. “Oh, it made a hell of a lot of difference. To find out you—”
Lucan coughed emphatically, cutting off his brother. “Anthea,” he said evenly, “what exactly did you and Holly talk about? Where did you go when you left this room? What were you doing when she found you?”
I dragged in a breath, on the verge of spinning on my heel and stalking out the door without answering. Who the fuck were they to treat this like some kind of interrogation? But the calm in Lucan’s voice and the hint of strain underneath it held me in place.
He sounded like he really wanted to know. Like he didn’t think he already did.
Even if Holly hadn’t told them about our conversation in full, hadn’t they figured out by now that I knew what they’d done?
Fuck it. If they wanted me to rub their faces in it, why the hell not?
“I didn’t go anywhere,” I said, putting all my concentration into keeping my voice steady. “I was going to wash up and get a change of clothes”—I’d even been thinking I’d whip up a nice breakfast for the guys so we could have a cozy morning together, all giddy after the affection I thought they’d wrapped me up in—“but Holly saw me coming out of your apartment. I guess it wasn’t that hard to figure out what’d happened.”
Darius had frozen. He stared at me as if I’d said something ridiculous. “She talked to you… right outside the door?” He gestured toward it.
I scowled at him. “Yes. Well, she saw me after a few steps and then motioned me over to the top of the stairs, since she couldn’t have known if you’d overhear her. And she told me everythingIneeded to know.”
Had Lucan paled? His next question came out even more obviously strained. “And what was that?”
“What do you think? How she’d overheard the three of you joking and making bets with each other on how quickly you could convince me to sleep with you, what you could get me to do with each of you, how you’d decide which of you ‘won.’” Acid dripped from my voice. “Maybe whoever managed to fuck me the most before I went home. Maybe if you could convince me to go without protection. Shit like that, laughing the whole time. But she thought it really was just an awful joke until she saw me and realized you’d actually gone through with it, and she was worried that it’d be even worse if she didn’t step in then.”
Darius’s face had gone blotchy, both sallow and flushed. “What?” he said hoarsely. “Why the fuck didn’t you say anything to us?”
He really had to ask that?
“What would I have said?” I spat. “‘Thanks for having such a good time at my expense, but I’m not actually a sex doll’? I didn’t ever want to see you again. I grabbed my stuff and got a cab to the train station. You obviously didn’t care that much. You all had my number; you knew where I lived. If you’d been at all concerned, you could have reached out, but I never heard a peep.”
As the last words fell from my mouth, I had to stiffen my back to stop myself from sagging. I felt totally drained, even more exhausted than before my basement nap. I did turn then, reaching for the door, but Darius crossed the space between us in a few swift steps and grabbed my arm.
I smacked at him, all patience gone. “Let go of me! You got what you wanted then, and you got me to go over it all again now—you should be perfectly satisfied. Can’t you leave me alone for five fucking seconds?”
“No,” he said, his voice ragged. “No, we can’t. Because that’s not what Holly told us, Anthea. And it wasn’t—none of it was true.”