I just have to laugh, then, even though, by the sounds of it, Tara is not a happy camper right now. It must be fate, I send.
Girl, don’t even joke about that. Seriously, you owe me.
I’m dying of curiosity about exactly what is going on with Tara and her unexpected twins, but it doesn’t sound like now is a good time to press for details. I’ll take you to lunch, I offer.
She shoots back, I will take you up on that the second I have a moment’s free time, which may be never.
Now my mind is imagining all sorts of possibilities, most of which make me smile, but I’m also a little concerned. Tara, hon, are you okay? Beyond the omg twins part?
The answer is too long in coming. I’m not in any physical danger, if that’s what you mean.
I’m torn between laughter and worry. That’s not enough, I send. Tell me something that lets me know you’re really all right.
Another pause, and then, This is Deke. Tara’s busy right now. And then nothing.
Well, I never! I send another message but no response comes, so I message Megan, just to keep her in the loop.
She answers right away with an OMG!
I know, right? I send. Should we go check on her?
Sounds like she’s got a bossy alpha male problem, in which case our butting in would not go over well.
I bite my lip. Yeah, but …
Let’s give her a few hours at least. If we haven’t heard from her, we’ll reassess. I’ll talk to the guys and see what they say.
That seems reasonable. Tara is a big girl, after all, and she could have sent some kind of coded distress signal in the time she had. She’s probably fine.
But I can’t wait to find out what’s going on.
The rest of the day seems to drag. I clean more of the apartment just for something to do, read my book, watch a movie. None of it satisfies.
In the evening, the twins message me with light chitchat of the “how was your day” variety. I’m ridiculously glad to hear from them, even for a few minutes, but when they don’t ask if I have plans, or invite themselves over, I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed.
Actually, I know exactly how I feel, but I’m not willing to admit it to myself.
Of course we have to lead our own lives. That’s healthy … but what if it’s more than that? The sudden thought that they could be spending time with other women, making other conquests, and I’m just their three-way fuckbuddy, is like acid flooding my soul.
We’ve never made each other any promises. I have no right to make demands on them, nor they on me. If they intend to date other people, well, I can do that too.
Talk about hollow victories.
34
Do What We Need To
Lucas
I don’t like giving Zoe space.
I’ve grown used to having her near. Her scent, the sound of her laughter, the way she moves … all of it has gotten deep under my skin. A day that doesn’t include her no longer feels complete.
The idea that she might use even a temporary distance from us to shake us off, try to treat us like her fuck fantasy, a two-night stand and nothing more … it doesn’t sit well.
Not at all.
Every instinct I have says we should keep on like we’re still guarding her. That a day shouldn’t go by when we’re not in her space. In her bed. In her.
But she’s just been through an ordeal, and much as it galls me, we haven’t got the right — yet — to demand space in her life. So we’ve agreed, Alex and I, to give her the weekend on her own. Two whole days without having to see our faces.
I hate it.
Judging by his mood this wintry Sunday morning, Alex does too. We’re in the gym at our complex, and I’m spotting him while he lifts. He looks like he wants to chew up the weights and the bar and spit them out.
After his third grim-faced set, he sits up to take a break. I hand him his water. “Want to check on her?” I ask.
He freezes with the bottle in midair, then takes a sip and lowers it. “We agreed to give her some time.”
“We agreed we should. But neither of us really wants to.”
“So we should stalk her instead?”
“Just a little bit,” I say, and he cracks a reluctant smile. “Make sure everything’s okay.”
“Make sure she’s not moving on, you mean.”
“That.” I don’t mind admitting it. “She may need recovery time, but we don’t want to give her the impression that we’re going away, that she’s a free agent. Not without giving us the chance to make our case.”
After Friday night, we both know she’s more than casual. That a night here and there, if she even wanted that kind of arrangement, isn’t nearly enough. And thanks to Megan and the Easton brothers, we know it can work.
Maybe all she wanted was to check something off her bucket list, but we want more. We want the real thing. And we’re going to show her how good it can be.
“All right.” Alex rises from the bench and is halfway to the door before I can move. He looks over his shoulder at me. “What are you waiting for?”
Shaking my head with a smile, I follow him. Once we make our minds up, we don’t mess around. We need to make sure Zoe’s on the same page before she starts getting ideas.
The security system we installed in her home is still active. So is the one at her work, for that matter. The threat might be neutralized — for now — but I feel better knowing that we can keep an eye on things. Whoever’s on duty in the control room switches off the camera if anything of a personal nature starts happening, but other than that they’re still going.
By the time Alex and I get showered and changed and eat breakfast, it’s late morning. We drive to our headquarters downtown and go straight to the control room. Jeff’s on duty. Checking the monitors is boring, so the guys switch off that job.
“No sign of anything suspicious?” I ask him as we move up beside him and scan Zoe’s monitors.
“No. Your girl was online, and then she was on the phone, and now it looks like she’s going out.” Sure enough, Zoe emerges from the back of her apartment just then, in a skirt and top that remind me of her outfit the night we met her, at the MMA match.
My eyes narrow. “We still have a tracker on her car?” It’s a standard security measure in cases like hers.
“Yup,” Jeff confirms.
Alex and I exchange a look that needs no words. “Pull it up,” I tell Jeff, and he brings up a map of the city, her location a pulsing icon. On the other monitor, Zoe goes out the door — without engaging the alarm system — and gets in her car.
I rub my temple and Alex mutters something under his breath. Our girl is really not security conscious. We’re going to have to talk to her about that, too.
A short while later, the map shows that she’s parked downtown, not far from where we are. “Switching to the tracker in her purse,” Jeff says, punching some buttons on the console. “And … she’s in the Ethiopian restaurant.”
“Thanks, Jeff.”
“Good luck,” he says as we head for the door, and I’m not sure if he’s giving us a hard time or not. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ll do what we need to where Zoe’s concerned.
35
Favorite Pastime
Lucas
Since the restaurant is only a couple of blocks away, we walk there. “I can’t believe this,” Alex says. “After Friday …” he breaks off.
“She could be meeting a girlfriend,” I say, though neither of us believes that. “Anyway, it’s partly our fault. We should have told her straight out, yesterday morning, that we wanted more.”
“Fuck giving her space,” Alex mutters. “No more of that.”
“We talk to her,” I warn him. “Let’s not push her into a corner. We know how that’ll go.”
“Right. Talk.” Alex sounds like I feel — like it’d be much better to skip the words and use our bodies to demonstrate how we feel. But didn’t we do that on Friday?
If she needs wo
rds, we’ll find them.
We hit the restaurant and push through the door. She’s easy to spot — halfway down on the right-hand side, in a little two-person booth. Her back is to us and some smarmy guy in a suit is grinning at her.
Red clouds my vision. Despite everything I’ve just said, all I want to do is put my fist through that guy’s face. “Down, boy,” Alex murmurs. “Let’s not get arrested.”
I take a deep breath and let it out. “You lead.” He can defuse the situation without hurting anyone. I think.
Without another word, Alex saunters down the aisle between the right-hand booths and the tables in the open central section. He stops right beside Zoe. “Darling,” he says when she looks up at him, startled, and then he pulls her to her feet and into his arms and kisses her in a way that cannot be mistaken for anything remotely platonic.
The look on the guy’s face puts me in a better mood immediately. “Hi,” I say, coming around to stand between him and Alex, who still has Zoe locked in a clinch. The guy’s mouth is open and he looks back and forth between me and my brother without saying a word. “You should probably go.”
Zoe’s date looks as though he’s going to say something, but then his face falls and he pushes out of the booth. Smart man. I take his seat while Alex breaks off the kiss, nudges Zoe back into her side of the booth, and squeezes in next to her.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she says, sounding halfway between stunned and angry.
“The better question would be, What the hell are you doing?” I counter. Her gaze drops to the table, and the sign of guilt makes me want to scold her. Don’t attack, I remind myself.
But I really need to know what she’s thinking. “Well?” I say, keeping my voice soft, non-accusatory.
She sighs. “You know how sometimes your imagination is your worst enemy?”
“Yeah?”
“I kept imagining the two of you out with other women. So I set up a date just to make myself feel better. I wasn’t — we weren’t—”
She hadn’t been planning to sleep with him, which makes me feel better. So does knowing that she’s jealous of our imaginary dates. “There are no other women.”
Her head comes up then, and her eyes dart back and forth between us. “We’re not seeing anyone else,” Alex adds. “And neither are you.”
Of course putting it that way gets a reaction. Her arms cross and her jaw firms. “Just like that?”
I kick my brother under the table. “What Alex means is that we want things to be exclusive with you. Just the three of us, no one else. On either side.”
That deflates her anger, but she’s not convinced. “You really think —”
“We want to try,” I say. “That’s the only way to find out. Right?” She still looks doubtful; I reach across the table and take her hand. “Talk to us.”
She shrugs. “Just worried.”
“You said that before.” Never mind the stereotype of women always wanting to talk; it’s like pulling teeth with Zoe. “Worried about what?”
Another jerky shrug. “We’re not them.” Megan and her men, she means.
“We don’t need to be them,” Alex says. “We need to be us.” He nudges her with his shoulder, and it sends her swaying toward the wall, almost colliding with it. “Sorry.”
I give her hand a squeeze. “We can’t promise we won’t make mistakes. But we’ll never deliberately hurt you.”
“I know that.” The way she says it makes me suspect that getting hurt is exactly what she’s worried about. She’s afraid it won’t work out. It’s not like her to be protecting herself this way; that’s not the woman we’ve come to know.
“Come on,” I say. “You only live once.” That gets me a wry smile. “What have you got to lose?”
She meets my eyes then, and there’s something in them that’s so huge it stops my heart for half a beat. Until she hides it and says briskly, “You’re right. We can at least give it a try.”
I look at Alex, and his eyes narrow slightly. He didn’t miss the undertones either. Well, we’ll just have to cross those bridges — whatever they are — when we get to them.
“Good,” I say. “So no more dating anyone but us. And we’re not seeing anyone but you.”
“Okay,” she says in a that’s-settled, let’s-move-on tone. “As long as you’re here, do you like Ethiopian food? I haven’t ordered yet.” The waitress is standing nearby, looking confused by the new faces.
“Let’s get it to go,” I say. “This booth is a little cramped.” And then we can get down to our favorite pastime of having Zoe for dessert.
36
Hood
Zoe
I can’t believe they crashed my date!
Honestly, I was secretly relieved. As soon as I laid eyes on Miles Lewis, I knew he was a dud. Not that he was bad looking … but he wasn’t a Wolf.
So there I was, going through the motions of first-date politeness, wondering if I could manufacture some reason why I had to call it off, when suddenly Alex was right next to me, and then I was in his arms and he was kissing me like I was his long-lost wife whom he hadn’t seen in a decade.
He put more than a little bit of urgency and possessiveness into that kiss. It left me dazed, and then Lucas followed it up by saying they want us to be exclusive. Which took me right back to my fears of falling for them and getting my heart broken.
Still, I know the risk is worth taking. Good thing, too, because ever since that day the Wolf brothers have been monopolizing my time.
They have different duties during the day, and sometimes one or the other of them has to travel for a job. So I’m never sure how Wolfish a given day will be. But not a day has gone by that I haven’t seen one or both of them.
Most days, it’s both. And almost always, they’re at my place rather than me being at one of theirs. I think I know why; it’s their way of saying that I’m with both the twins, equally, and neither of them has a greater claim to my time or attention.
One morning, Lucas asked me if I was emotionally attached to my bed, and I said I was due for a new one, I just hadn’t gotten around to buying it yet. I figured that was a not-so-subtle hint about all of us fitting in there together, so I put bed shopping at the top of my priority list. But when I got home that evening, my old bed was gone and a new, deluxe, extra-huge bed had taken its place.
They even had new bedding for it. “We showed them your old bedding and they said this was the closest thing they had to a match,” Alex explained. “You can get whatever you want if you don’t like it, and keep these as spares.”
I have to admit it’s a little freaky, them doing things like that. But only a little. They’ve gotten so woven into the fabric of my life that it doesn’t seem creepily intrusive for something like that to happen.
And the new bed is awesome. Big enough for all of us and extremely comfortable, and when we fell asleep that night, all tangled up together after breaking it in, I had the biggest smile on my face.
This morning, it’s just me and Lucas. Alex is supposed to be back from a trip today, so I’ll see him later. Last night, Lucas decided it was time to “punish” me for my transgressions … and can I just say hooray? I’ll be naughty for him anytime.
Right now, he’s kissing me goodbye. And kissing me … and kissing me. In a few more seconds I’m going to tear his clothes off and we’ll both be late. Reluctantly, I ease back, just a little. “Work,” I say, before I stick my tongue in his mouth.
He deepens the kiss until I start trying to climb his body, then pulls back. “Work,” he agrees in a hoarse voice. “Dammit.” Patting my ass, he turns to the door. “Don’t forget to arm the system when you leave.”
“Right.” I don’t roll my eyes at him because, fun as it would be to play more punishment games, we don’t have time. And what’s the point of having an expensive security system if I never use it? Plus I know he’s just being sensible.
“See you later,” he says. I wiggle my fingers at
him and he gives me a smile that makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. Part of me is still on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the Wolf brothers to decide they’re tired of me. And that part is still keeping watch on my heart, not letting me lower my guard all the way.
But most of me is pretty darn happy with how things are going. It’s difficult to be worried or anxious when I’m having several orgasms a day.
So I’m humming as I finish getting ready. I tidy up the kitchen and then study the control panel for the security system, making sure it’s set to maximum everything, inside and out. Satisfied, I grab my purse, punch in the code, and go out to my car.
Maybe Alex will be back in time to meet me for lunch, I muse on my way to the boutique. And then I have to decide what to do about dinner. The guys are good about keeping my place stocked with food, and they don’t mind cooking, either. On the nights when I come home to find they’ve taken over meal prep, I really feel spoiled.
But since Alex is returning from his trip, I want to make something special for the two of them. Dessert’s covered; I’m wearing a brand-new set of lingerie for the twins to discover. But dinner? Hmm, maybe chicken pesto pasta —
My car shudders as another vehicle rams into it with a sickening crunch. I struggle to get the steering back under control, but the other car rams me again, forcing me onto the shoulder. That’s when I know this is no accident.
There’s a panic button in my purse. The brothers gave it to me at the same time as they set up the rest of the security, but I’ve never imagined needing it. Now I scrabble in my purse as, from the corner of my eye, I see men rushing my car.
I find the button just as my driver’s side door is beeped open — how the hell did they do that? My frantic fingers press on it, but rough hands undo my seatbelt and yank me from the car, leaving my purse behind.
A hood covers my head and everything goes black.
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