“Are you really prepared to let her hook up with some asshole at a party, just to make a point,” Clay asks.

“What point am I making?” I ask, annoyed that two weeks ago they were all telling me I needed to let her go and now they’re telling me to get her back again. “She doesn’t want me, you all agreed that I needed to leave her alone. What the fuck do you expect me to do?” I think a part of me thinks I should feel bad for lying to them, but I need them on board once she does come back to me. I can’t have them telling me I have to give her up every time she gets pissed at me or them. It feels like I’m almost playing with them as much as I am her, but they forced me to set her free. If they hadn’t, she wouldn’t be at this party right now, she’d be bouncing on my cock, locked in her gilded cage.

“She wants you,” Hunter tells me quietly. “She was worried and unsure the first couple of weeks, but this week she’s been angry. Starling wants your attention, that’s why she’s been provoking you, although I’m not sure you’ve even noticed, you’ve been so determined not to pay any attention to her.”

“You guys just need to fuck it out or something, I’m getting sick of seeing my sister’s ass,” Evan laughs.

Inside I’m smirking, but on the outside I keep my expression neutral and shrug. “I’m not sure, I think maybe we missed our chance. Mom and Dad have mentioned how advantageous an alliance with the Eadberht Corporation would be. They have a daughter, she’s just turned eighteen, if I’d never met Starling I’d probably already be engaged by now, so…” I trail off deliberately. Of course it’s all utter bullshit, the Eadberht’s do have a daughter, but even though they only knew Starling for a short time, my mom and dad are still fully intending to have her for a daughter-in-law; they’d never suggest I sacrificed love for a political marriage.

“No,” Hunter growls in his quiet, purposeful way. “You’d make that poor girl miserable because it will only ever be Starling for you. You fucked up with her, I think if maybe you’d have acted like a normal seventeen-year-old when you first met and not some megalomaniac millionaire, she would have liked you for you. You pushed too hard and she ran, then you fucked up again bringing her here the way you did. But she wants you, maybe not the way you want her yet, but if she was completely lost to you, she would have left and she didn’t, she stayed. This is your chance, don’t give her a reason to run again.”

Hunter is usually quiet, so when he has something to say, we listen. Of course I already know everything he just spelled out so eloquently, but it’s nice to know he’s exactly where I want him to be, which is firmly on team make Starling fall in love with me.