Though I can guarantee no one ever sits Duke down and has a talk with him when he hooks up with a different girl every night. No one ever stages an intervention when Royal wants to come dragging home at four in the morning with a black eye every other week.
“Do you like him?” King presses.
“No.” I draw a long breath through my nose, staving off the tears that want to fall. “I don’t like him. It just happened. Once. Last night. It’s never happened before. I swear.”
“Last night,” King says, narrowing his eyes at our twin brothers. “And where were you when all this was happening?”
“It was a party,” Duke protests. “We weren’t watching every second.”
“You should have been watching,” Daddy thunders, slamming a fist down on the table so hard I nearly jump out of my chair.
“She’s our sister,” King says. “You couldn’t stop thinking with your dick for one minute and check on her?”
“We were with Dolly,” Baron says, as if that explains everything.
Daddy’s face goes even redder, and his voice lowers to a dangerous pitch. “The mayor’s daughter?”
“Before you flip out on us, we got her on our side,” Duke says, holding up a hand. “She told the Darlings to fuck off this morning, and we drove her home and kissed her goodbye like gentlemen. I even got her number. I’m really going to call her, too.”
“Okay,” Daddy says, lowering his head and rubbing between his eyebrows with his thumb. “That better stay the case. I warned you not to get involved with her. Since you went ahead and did it, anyway, you’re going to have to face the consequences of that decision for the next few months.”
Oh, yeah. Daddy’s pissed. He knows how fast Duke goes through girls, and if he’s making him stay with one for a few months, he knows exactly how severe a punishment that is.
I wait for mine, pressing my hands together and squeezing them with my knees to keep them from shaking. Daddy looks at me for a long minute, a calculating look in his eye that makes me feel less than human, like a commodity. I can see the mafia face that terrifies people into bending to his will. The wait is worse than any sentence can be.
“Did you take a shower after being with that boy?” he asks at last.
“What?” I ask, my face warning under the intense stares of all those boys. Those boys who do this all the time, who have done what Devlin did to me to so many girls I know they’ve lost track. I suddenly feel dirtier than I did when Devlin told me I was just a pawn in his game. They all know what I did, what he did to me. They’ll never look at me the same. I’ll never be their sweet little sister again. Now I’m someone who’s had a cock inside her.
“Well, you don’t like him,” King says slowly. “So, you must not have wanted to have sex with him.”
“No,” I start, shaking my head because it wasn’t like that.
“So, he forced you to,” Daddy says.
“No,” I say again, shaking my head harder.
“Well, which one is it?” King asks.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Daddy says. “King’s going to take you to the hospital to get an exam, since I can’t trust these two boneheads to look after you. I’m going to go talk to that policeman while he’s here, and if he doesn’t make an arrest, the twins will take care of that bastard tonight. You’re going to be okay, sweetheart.”
He reaches out and takes my hand, and I don’t see disgust and disappointment in his eyes. I see sympathy, and it’s addictive. For one second, I think about what Veronica would have done, what they want me to do. It would get me what I want. It would ruin the Darlings.
But just considering it sickens me. Knowing I’m the kind of person who thought about it for even a second sickens me even more. I pull my hand back, hide them under the table, pressing my palms down on my thighs.
“He didn’t rape me,” I say. “I wanted to do it, okay?”
They all stare at me, and the sympathy disappears from their eyes. I drop my gaze and swallow hard, unable to look at them.
“You were wasted last night,” Duke says. “We all were.”
“It—it wasn’t last night,” I say, my face heating at having to give any detail to a room full of men when it’s none of their damn business. “It was this morning.”
Baron reaches over and takes my elbow, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I know it’s scary, but we’ll get through this, Crystal. We’ve got your back. You can do this.”
“I don’t want to do this,” I say, yanking away and balling my hands into fists. “Don’t you get it?”
They all stare at me again, obviously not getting it at all.