“Um….”
“Don’t worry, I’m not being serious,” she said with a grin. “Can you imagine me dating a Prince? Let alone three or four of them?”
“Hey, why not?” Adam cut in. “You totally could if you wanted. You’re gorgeous. So are you, Laney.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on. Even if we were somehow capable of getting all of the Princes to date us at the same time, I don’t think either of us could stomach it.”
“No shit,” Trina said. “They’re nothing but aggressive assholes who think they’re masters of the universe. I’d probably vomit in my mouth if I had to kiss one of them.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
“God, imagine actually being with a guy like that,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I bet they’re all porn-sick losers. You’d never get any satisfaction from them at all.”
Adam arched a brow. “Porn-sick?”
“You know—the kind of guys who beat off to porn ten times a day and end up with death-grip problems when they finally get a real girl in their bed,” she said. She smiled smugly. “I bet Hunter is like that. By the time he’s twenty-two, he probably won’t even be able to get it up.”
Adam groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Never thought I’d be sitting around discussing my brother’s dick on a Sunday morning—or ever—but here we are.”
“Hey, nothing like incest chatter to shock you awake in the morning,” Trina said, grin widening. “Better than a double shot of espresso.”
“Ew, T!” I said, flicking a balled-up napkin toward her.
Adam fell silent, and I noticed his face had paled all of a sudden. His eyes blinked rapidly, staring into space, and his lips tightened into a thin line.
“Uh… are you okay?” Trina asked, leaning forward. “Did we say something wrong?”
He finally snapped out of his reverie and looked back at us. “No. Sorry. It’s just that something you said before made me think of something else, and now I might have an idea.”
“About incest?”
He rolled his eyes. “No! About our plan to get back at the Princes for what they’ve been doing to Laney,” he said. “It would only work against Hunter, though.”
“So what?” Trina said. “He’s the ringleader anyway, so screw him. He deserves it.”
Adam nodded slowly. “Never thought I’d say this about my own brother, but after all the shit he’s done lately, I have to agree. He deserves to be taken down a peg or two.” He looked pointedly at me. “But it’s up to you, Laney. You’re the one he’s hurting. How bad do you want revenge?”
I looked down at my lap as I mulled it over.
I would never tell my friends about this in a million years, because it was so irrational, but in spite of everything Hunter had done to me—directly or indirectly—I couldn’t shake the giddy feelings of attraction that swarmed me whenever I saw him or thought about him.
I knew it was bad, but try as I might, I couldn’t stop it. He seemed to hold a forbidden allure that I instantly fell captive to whenever he crossed my mind, which was disconcertingly often.
The worst part was how I felt whenever I recalled that night in my dorm, when he broke in and pinned me to my bed. He told me he could hurt me. Kill me.
I knew I was petrified at the time, almost out of my mind with fear, but when I relived the memory now, there was something else within that terror, lurking on the shadowy outer edges.
Something… thrilling.
The thought of Hunter pinning me down and taking complete control of me stole the breath from my lungs, and the memory of his whispered threats caused a pleasant stirring between my legs. It was shameful, disturbing, and utterly wrong.
I kept trying to tell myself that it was a natural reaction; my mind’s way of defending itself from the trauma of the memory by putting a different spin on it and changing it to a less-damaging narrative. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t true. The truth was that some sick part of me actually wanted Hunter in my bed again, holding me down in his powerful grasp, forcing me to submit to his authority.
He was poison, but I was addicted.
That made me hate myself more than I hated him.
I gritted my teeth and looked up at my friends. I needed to snap out of this state. Needed to push Hunter out of my mind before I succumbed to him and started to believe that I deserved the torment.