Beretta looks out over the land, where row after row of orange trees cover every inch of the dirt seen from this angle, and then toward the off-white house tucked about twenty feet from the garage we’re parked in front of.

The screens on the windows are faded from the sun, the security gate rusted at the edges. There’s some sort of tractor and on its opposite side, another identical house.

He shakes his head.

“Nope. It’s not my home.” He looks to his friends, then back to me.

A shadow covers his eyes, and he glances away, so I allow myself to drop farther against the wicker chair and admit what I’m thinking, as he did.

Only to myself, because saying it out loud will come off as crying rich girl syndrome, where nothing is ever enough, and always wanting more is the norm.

I don’t want more, though, what I’m getting is plenty enough.

Still... I feel the same.

My house is not my home; it’s temporary.

The difference is, I won’t grow to find mine.

I’ll be placed inside it.

“Can I ask a question?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Ransom and Beretta look to each other, and Arsen chuckles, laying back on the mats with his arms folded behind his head.

“What’s with the whole ‘close your eyes’ thing?” I pick up my watered-down smoothie, stick my straw between my teeth and wait.

And wait.

The boys don’t say a word, just meet one another’s gazes from where they sit on the mats for a shared, unspoken secret.

My brows lift. “Seriously?”

Beretta clears his throat, cuts a quick glance toward Arsen, and then rolls from his ass onto all fours. He crawls across the mat to where I’m now sitting on the open tailgate of the broken-down truck turned couch/bed.

He looks so ridiculous that I’m laughing before he’s even made it a foot closer.

“Why do we ask you to close your eyes...” His hands find my ankles and he uncrosses them, and nudges my legs open a little.

I fall back, catching myself with my hands. I’m on the verge of growing uneasy, but the others begin to laugh as he slips between my thighs, and somehow, my nerves are lulled.

He’s not touching me, but he’s damn close.

“We tell you to close your eyes...” Beretta lets his body fall flush with mine, his hazel eyes testing me with a tantalizing gleam. “Because everything is amped in the dark. Your want, your need, your... willingness. In the dark, you can be whoever you want to be. No fear. No judgment.”

My left brow quirks high, and he chuckles, rolling off of me and sitting beside me.

I push up. “So, it’s all about sex?”

All three of their heads snap my way and I laugh.

“What? I’m curious.”