Her Three Liberators [The Hot Millionaires #6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Zara Chase

  “The four of us ought to be able to convince him,” Jonny said. “We’ll let him read all the stuff online about the wonder guy and make his own mind up.”

  “Fine, just so long as he reaches the decision we want him to,” Harry said.

  “If he doesn’t,” Brad mused, “we’ll get our moms onto him.”

  The guys laughed. “That’ll definitely do it.”

  “Your mothers all still love him?” Steffi asked as Coombes brought in the appetisers and Steffi seated herself in the chair Jonny held out for her.

  “They adore him,” Brad answered, pouring more wine for them all. “They’ve all remarried to wealthy men and started second families. Even so, if they got wind of Daniel’s illness, they’d drop everything and rush to his side, regardless of what their new husbands had to say on the matter.”

  “It must be wonderful to be able to engender that sort of devotion,” Steffi said with a wistful sigh.

  Jonny shared a glance with his brothers that said she ought to know.

  As the meal progressed and the conversation centred almost exclusively on Daniel, an air of cautious optimism prevailed. Expectancy put in an appearance as well. Jonny could smell it in the air, but there was sod all he could do about it, other than to keep the chat flowing and ignore it as best he could.

  He could see that Steffi was comfortable all the time they spoke about Daniel. Occasionally, she appeared to remember where she was, and with whom, and withdrew into herself. The dim lighting sent shadows dancing across her hair, turning it alternately into burnished copper and, if she moved her head in a certain direction, flowing amber. She caught him staring at her and stared right back, a question she probably wasn’t aware of posing written in her eyes. Her response went straight to his groin. Geez, at this rate he’d turn into a raving lunatic. He’d never had to work so hard for a woman before.

  He’d never met one who was worth the effort.

  “Did you get anywhere cracking that e-mail address, Harry?” she asked, turning away from Jonny, a faint blush creeping up her cheeks. “No, of course you didn’t,” she said before Harry could answer her, covering her delicious lips with one hand like she’d just said something outrageous. “That was stupid of me. You’ve been working on Daniel’s health issues. Obviously, nothing matters more than that.”

  “There’s nothing else I can do about Daniel until the guy in Texas has taken a look at his records.” He smiled across the table at Steffi. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about your Marius and I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow.”

  “That would be great.”

  Harry blew her a kiss. “Nothing’s too much trouble for you, babe.”

  Coombes cleared the dessert plates and withdrew. The time had come for Steffi to show them just how much grit she actually had.

  “Let’s take brandy in our wing,” Jonny said, standing up and extending a hand toward Steffi.

  * * * *

  This was it. The moment Steffi had been dreading and anticipating all the evening. She could decline their invitation, of course. They wouldn’t push her, but something stronger than her own will refused to let her consider the coward’s way out. Steffi was many things, but a coward she most certainly was not.

  Daniel’s sons had their own wing on the second floor of this massive mansion set aside for their exclusive use and privacy, even though they were here so little. Steffi’s own room was on the second floor as well. She was the only member of staff, apart from Daniel’s nurse, who slept on that level. She’d had many opportunities to venture into the sons’ wing and have a snoop, but she’d never given in to temptation. Now she’d been invited into the lion’s den, and she couldn’t bring herself to refuse, no matter what the outcome.

  Or because of the possibilities that clamoured for attention inside her head, perhaps? Steffi was starting to think the unthinkable, guided by impulses she was unaware she possessed.

  She’d dwelt long and hard on Daniel’s determination that she become better acquainted with his sons and her almost childish fear of being a disappointment to them. Hell, she really needed to get over herself and Daniel was astute enough to realize it. Just because she’d once been branded unadventurous and passive by someone she thought she loved, it didn’t make it true, did it?

  She’d been watching all three brothers carefully during the course of dinner and they didn’t appear to find her dull or disappointing—quite the reverse, in fact. She felt a frisson of excitement ripple through her each time she recalled how Jonny’s dark eyes had regarded her with such reckless sensuality. Harry’s egregious smile had heated the air between them and Brad’s sinfully tempting invitation, delivered through his eyes without the need for words, had definitely caused her to wonder if there was any foundation in her deep-seated hang-ups.

  She glanced at Jonny’s outstretched hand, then at the other two, both watching her with anticipatory expressions. What the hell! She stood up without touching Jonny, knowing it would cause havoc with her insides if she did. Her pussy was already leaking like a tap and her nipples were so hard that the abrasiveness of her bra rubbing against them was painful.

  The brothers closed round her like a protection squad as they headed for the stairs. Jonny was on one side, a tall, lithe, decadent god. Harry, a calculating sophisticate who moved as gracefully as a panther, was in danger of giving geeks a good name. She could still feel the hard imprint of Brad’s muscular body against hers when she’d kissed him earlier. He walked directly behind her and she wondered if his thoughts mirrored her own.

  No one spoke, nor did they attempt to touch her, appearing to realize that it wouldn’t take much for her to have a change of heart. As Jonny opened the door to the wing and ushered her inside, a thought struck her. Daniel had got it all wrong. Presumably, she was supposed to choose between them, but that would be impossible. In little more than a day, she’d already gotten to appreciate their different strengths, their basic integrity, their sense of fun, the way they looked out for one another.

  Steffi had never had anyone to protect her interests, not really. That was the downside of being an only child—an only child whose parents were taken from her way before their time. These three gave her glimpses of what she’d missed out on. Damn it, she was jealous. Worse, her pussy was now flooded as anticipation heated the air between them. This was plain embarrassing!

  Steffi stepped into a spacious, comfortably furnished sitting room that screamed male preserve. Something told her that few, if any, women had been in there before her, and she couldn’t help feeling the compliment. A long corridor led to closed doors—their bedrooms, presumably—and there was a deck with a great view over the paddocks.

  “Welcome to the private domain of the Malone brothers,” Harry said with a theatrical bow that made her laugh.

  “Have a chair.”

  She was surprised but grateful when Jonny guided her to a single-seat recliner. Harry and Jonny sat themselves directly across from her on a settee while Brad produced brandy for them all. Steffi took hers from him and swirled the amber liquid round its glass, keeping her eyes focused on it as she wondered what was supposed to happen now. The atmosphere was brittle, charged with expectation, and she herself was rigid with tension. The brothers, by contrast, seemed totally at their ease. Jonny was slouched in the corner of the settee, one booted foot resting on his opposite thigh. A very taut, toned thigh, she was willing to bet, wondering when she’d taken to speculating about male body parts. Harry sat with his legs splayed, revealing a commendably sized bulge in the front of his pants. Hell, she was at it again! Brad sat on the other side of Harry, but Steffi refused to study his chosen pose, worried where it might lead.

  “It’s not so bad, is it?” Jonny asked softly after a prolonged silence.

  Steffi pretended ignorance. “What isn’t?”

  “Placing yourself in our hands,” Brad said. “They’re very capable hands, in case you were wondering.”

  Steffi tossed her head. The
y really were insufferably arrogant. “I wasn’t,” she said.

  Harry winked at her. “Liar!” he said.

  Jonny offered her a challenging smile that set her pulse racing. “Why don’t you tell us about it…about him?”

  This time Steffi didn’t bother to play dumb, but could she do it? She’d never told anyone all the lurid details of her affair with Sam. It was too personal, too humiliating. The American shrinks would say it wasn’t healthy to bottle it all up, but what did they know? Her gaze roved over the three handsome faces watching her in a quiet way that seemed to suck the air out of the room. Their expressions were sympathetic as opposed to derisory. They really did seem to care enough about her to want to know. It wasn’t possible to fake that sort of concern, which is what decided it for her.

  “Richard and I are the same age,” she said, taking a long sip of brandy and pausing to let it burn its way down to her stomach. “I ought to have gone on to university, but I wanted to get straight to work on Uncle Jack’s stud. Richard, on the other hand, shouldn’t have gone on to higher education. He simply wasn’t clever enough, but my uncle insisted. By the time he scraped a miserable degree three years later, I was established as sort-of under manager of the stud.” Steffi shrugged. “I wasn’t worried about what I was called. All I wanted to do was to make myself useful.”

  “And feel like you belonged?” Jonny suggested.

  Steffi opened her eyes wide in astonishment. “How did you know that?”

  “It ain’t rocket science, babe. You lost your parents at a vulnerable age, had no siblings and a cousin who resented you—”

  “Yeah, I guess. Anyway, just as Richard finished at university, our manager retired. Richard thought it would be a shoehorn for him.”

  “But your uncle had the good sense not to give him the job,” Harry said.

  “Precisely. If he had, I’d have walked. Not because I was envious. I had no wish to be manager, but I knew Richard didn’t have the knowledge and skill and would make a mess of it. He reluctantly accepted that view but reckoned he ought to get my job instead.” Steffi shook her head at the memory of the rows, of the vicious things Richard said about her. “My uncle wasn’t having that either and offered him the job of promoting the stud, which was entirely suited to his skills. Not that Richard ever saw it that way. He thought he was the heir apparent and ought to go straight in at the top without getting his hands dirty.”

  “Sounds like a total jerk,” Brad said disdainfully.

  “The new manager was Irish.” Steffi paused. This was the hard part. “He came highly recommended and absolutely knew his stuff, like most Irishmen associated with horses do. He was forty, older than me, but we clicked from day one and I adored him.” There, she’d said it. No one had laughed and the world hadn’t stopped turning. “We got involved personally almost from day one and I was convinced we’d be together forever.”

  “What happened?” Jonny asked gently.

  “I was young, naïve, and stupid, that’s what happened,” she said bitterly. “He got a better offer back in Ireland. I assumed I’d be going with him, but he said his wife wouldn’t like that.”

  “Shit!” Harry and Brad said together.

  “Yeah, like I said, I was stupid.” Steffi rolled her eyes, surprised the tears of self-pity that usually accompanied thoughts of her doomed relationship with Sam hadn’t materialized. Presumably, that was progress. “It didn’t even occur to me that he might be married, and I never once questioned why he made so many trips back to Ireland.”

  “How long were you an item?” Jonny asked.

  “Five years. He left just before Uncle Jack got sick. We had a terrible row about it and he told me that even if he hadn’t been married, he wouldn’t have taken me with him. He made it clear that he’d only taken up with me because I was there, a convenience, and that there had been others locally as well. Besides, in his words, I was unadventurous and passive in bed.”

  “And you believed all that bullshit?” Jonny asked, looking furious.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Steffi forced herself to sound casual. “I never did get what all the fuss was about between the sheets. It didn’t do anything for me, but I didn’t care as long as he enjoyed it.” She looked at each of them in turn. “Don’t you see?” she asked plaintively. “You’re wasting your time with me because I’m frigid.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jonny didn’t know whether to laugh to or thump something. A less likely candidate for frigidity he had yet to meet. She exuded sensuality by the bucket load. The scumbag who’d so destroyed her fragile self-esteem sounded like a real piece of work, and if he was here right now, Jonny wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.

  “Frigid?” Jonny laughed, but not unkindly. “Not a chance.”

  She placed her hands on her hips. “And you’d know more about that than me, I suppose.”

  “We all would,” Harry said. “Just because the scumbag didn’t give you orgasms to write home about, that’s no reason to—”

  Harry stopped talking and gaped at his brothers when Steffi’s blush, and all that it signified, registered with him.

  “Did he ever give you an orgasm?” Jonny asked, frowning.

  “How could he when I’m frigid?”

  “Did he even try?” Brad asked in a murderous tone.

  “Of course he did, but you can’t get blood out of a stone.”

  The brothers exchanged a prolonged glance. A babe like Steffi hadn’t yet had her sexuality awoken. If they’d thought she was a challenge before, it was nothing to the way they felt about her now. She was theirs! They would show her what she’d been missing all these years, and then some.

  “You been with anyone other than this Sam rat?” Brad wanted to know.

  She shrugged. “A couple of guys before him, but they didn’t do anything for me, either.” She glowered at Jonny, but the gesture lacked teeth. “Anything else you want to know to complete my humiliation?”

  “Yes,” Jonny said quietly, his eyes focused like lasers on her face. “Will you allow us to prove you wrong?”

  “Huh! That arrogance again.” She shook her head. “Sam was universally popular. All the women loved him, including me. If he couldn’t show me what it was all about, what makes you think you can?”

  “Not me,” Jonny said. “Us.”

  She appeared astounded. “What, all three of you?”

  “Scared?” Harry asked, a hint of a challenge in his tone.

  “I just don’t want to waste your time.” She sighed. “I’m a hopeless case.”

  “Are you prepared to shed your inhibitions and do whatever we tell you to?”

  Steffi paused, considering Jonny’s request. At least she hadn’t turned him down flat, which was an encouraging sign.

  “What things?”

  “You don’t get to choose,” Brad told her. “You have to place your complete trust in us.” His voice softened. “You know we’ll never harm you or do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

  She nodded, not taking issue with that statement. “Why not?” She summoned up a brittle smile that didn’t come close to meeting her eyes. “I have a feeling that not many people prove you guys wrong. It might do you good to learn that you don’t actually walk on water.”

  Jonny stood up, reached for her hand, and this time she allowed him to take it. A frisson of awareness shot through his body as his fingers closed about her palm. He suspected from the way her hand jerked in his that she experienced something similar.

  “Still convinced you’re right?” he asked, innocently elevating one brow.

  Her lustreless gaze fuelled his determination. “I know I am,” she said listlessly.

  “Then how come your pussy’s sopping wet?”

  She gasped. “How did you—”

  Jonny chuckled. “I didn’t, not for sure, but you just confirmed it.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  Jonny wrapped an arm round her slim waist and pulled he
r against him. “And your nipples,” he added. “They’re rock hard. Don’t tell me that doesn’t give you a thrill.”

  “Oh, all right then, it feels nice.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Does that fuel your ego enough?”

  “Nice!” Harry roared with laughter. “You do realize that you’ve just terminally insulted my big brother? He doesn’t do anything as mediocre as nice.”

  Steffi shrugged, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips, like she was starting to enjoy herself. Perhaps it had even occurred to her that she was the one in control here. Some of the tension left her body and she relaxed against him.

  “Just telling it like it is,” she said with a sweet smile.

  Jonny growled, dropped his head, and kissed that smile clean off her lips. The moment she started to respond, Jonny broke the kiss, sat down again, and pulled her onto his lap. Harry and Brad were still on the sofa and lifted her legs to rest over their thighs. Brad removed her shoes and massaged the soles of her feet. She closed her eyes and groaned. In the centre, Harry had responsibility for her thighs and ran a hand gently along their inner surface through the fabric of her pants.

  Without the need for words, the guys did what they did best, arousing her without removing her clothes or touching a single erogenous zone. She needed to be totally confident and then take them off herself. It was a big task, but the possibility of failure didn’t cross their minds.

  Brad’s hands worked their way up her calves. Harry’s crept tantalizingly closer to Steffi’s pussy.

  “For someone who’s frigid,” Jonny said, his voice a soft, persuasive purr, “you seem to react positively to being touched.”

  Steffi opened her eyes. “There’re three of you. It makes me feel—”

  “Liberated?” Harry suggested.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Never lie to us,” Jonny said, reaching down to gently tap her thigh. “If we ask you how something feels, don’t think about it first. Just tell us.”

  “Your thighs are damp,” Harry told her. “You’ll wreck your nice pants at this rate.”