RG swallowed. The knot in her stomach twisted. They were so connected. Even when not aware of it, they were connected. Would she destroy that? A threesome in the bedroom was one thing, a threesome, a triad, in everyday living? That was something entirely different. Could she make that work? Could they? Or would it all end in tears? The phrase third wheel existed for a reason. Could she handle being the third wheel to Ruckus and Bran?
Could she cope if she destroyed their relationship? Was it fair of her to even thinking about being with them? Now they were back together, was it selfish of her to want to be with them?
Too many questions. Too many unsettling outcomes.
Ruckus nuzzled the back of her shoulder. “Sleep well, gorgeous.”
Her heart smashed into her throat. “You too,” she whispered back.
It took him less than five minutes to fall asleep.
It took her almost that same length of time to extricate herself from between them.
Neither woke, although Ruckus came close. As she inched her way down the mattress, his breathing hitched and quickened for a second, his arm curling closer around her with an action she knew was reflexive.
Finally off the bed, she risked a moment to study them.
It hadn’t taken long for both men to fill the void she’d left between them. Ruckus’s thick thigh draped over Bran’s leaner one, his long-fingered hand flat on Bran’s lower stomach, his forehead almost kissing Bran’s shoulder.
They looked perfect together.
“Be happy,” she whispered, the words barely more than an exhalation of breath, before leaving Bran’s bedroom—and his home—on silent feet.
* * * *
The sound of a phone ringing, somewhere distant, dragged Bran up from the deep embrace of dreamless sleep.
He squinted at the bright light flooding his bedroom. What time—
“Whoever’s calling you can go to hell,” Ruckus mumbled beside him.
Bran looked at him, studied his sleepy face, his closed eyes.
Still here. He’s still here. Back in your bed.
A hot fist of joy clenched Bran’s heart for a split second. He smiled, before twisting on the bed to look for RG.
She wasn’t there.
Maybe she’s making breakfast.
He carefully climbed off the bed, not wanting to disturb Ruckus. He mumbled drowsy sounds that weren’t really words, and grew still with sleep again.
Bran watched him for a moment, his throat thickening with contented elation, and then made his way from the room.
He should have realized he didn’t smell bacon and toast cooking before he made it to the kitchen.
It should have dawned on him there were no sounds of food being prepared, no clink of utensils against bowls as eggs were whisked, no knives striking chopping blocks as tomatoes were chopped, no coffee beans being ground or water being boiled in kettles.
All the wonderful, delicious sounds and smells he associated with Ruckus in the morning…absent.
All that greeted him as he padded into the kitchen on bare feet, his body aching in the most pleasing, perfect way, his mind still fogged with sleep and remembered pleasure, was silence.
Silence, an empty kitchen, and a note on the counter written in what he assumed was RG’s neat handwriting.
Thank you.
xox
RG.
Bran frowned.
Thank you. What did she mean by thank you? Where was she?
Sucking in a deep breath, he crossed the living room to the hall table and picked up his mobile phone.
No text messages from RG. Plenty of other texts though, from various staff at Virt.Real. His PA had sent one at 1 a.m. wondering how the meeting with Ms. Bailey had gone.
Was it successful? she’d texted. Are you celebrating?
A lump filled Bran’s throat. Successful.
Scrolling through until he found RG’s number, he dialed.
It went to voice mail. “What’s going on, RG?” he said after the beep. “Where are you?”
Ending the connection, he stared at his silent phone.
“Not good enough,” he muttered, tapping out a message.
Can I assume you’re just out buying breakfast for us all? Kidding. I’ll make breakfast when you get back and Ruckus wakes up. When ARE you coming back?
He hit send, eyes burning as he waited for the little Delivered indicator to pop up. It did, turning almost straight away into a time stamp for when the message was read.
He waited Christ knew how long for a reply.
It didn’t come.
“Alright,” he muttered, dialing her once more.
Straight to voice mail.
A prickle of heat crept over his skin as he listened to RG’s recorded message.
“RG,” he said after the tone. “What’s going on?”
His phone beeped with an incoming message as he lowered it from the side of his head.
Heart banging hard in his chest, he read it.
Business as usual. My people will be in contact with your people soon. RG.
Bran blinked. That was it?
Sure, he tapped into his phone. But when are you coming back here? To us?
Again, the read timestamp popped up immediately after the delivery indicator.
I’m not
A sledgehammer smashed into Bran’s gut. He stared at her reply, that prickling heat scoring over him.
Why not? he typed back.
A few seconds passed, long and suffocating seconds, during which the typing icon tortured him from the screen.
It’s time for you two to get on with what you started before I ever came along, baby. ☺ Continue to be perfect, okay?
What the—
“Where’s RG?”
Bran jumped at Ruckus’s sleep-scratchy question behind him.
He spun, knuckles aching as he gripped his phone, his stare locking on Ruckus.
Halfway across the living room, Ruckus stopped. He scanned the room with a slow, steady look and then met Bran’s gaze. “She’s gone, hasn’t she? Done a runner.”
Bran nodded.
Ruckus closed his eyes, slumping. “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.”
The bleak acceptance in his voice tore at Bran. He didn’t know what to do. Go to the man? Take him in his arms? Wait for Ruckus to move?
He didn’t know RG personally. He wanted to. What he knew of her appealed to him on a level more than just sexual. He knew her business moves, her gamer moves, but personally? He was clueless. Which, given what the three of them had done last night, seemed ridiculous.
Last night, as they had lain in his bed waiting for Ruckus to return from the bathroom, a sense of perfect connection with her had filled him. As drowsy as he’d been, he’d found himself thinking how incredible her voice was, how wonderful it would be to hear it every night before he fell asleep.
He wasn’t in love with her, but he could be. The last thing he remembered before sleep claimed him had been the heady notion of the three of them together in every sense of the word for the rest of their lives; an unconventional future for three far-from-conventional people who had joined in the most raw and truthful of ways.
And now she was gone and it felt like something had been cut from his soul.
Did he dare tell Ruckus she’d left because of them? Because of their past?
“Well.” Ruckus’s low growl scraped at the living room’s silence. “I’m going to have a shower.”
Bran blinked. “You’re what?”
“Having a shower. Want to join me?”
The lump in Bran’s throat turned fat and hot. “So that’s it? The woman you love has gone, left us, left you, and you’re going to have a shower?”
“Yep. What else do you want me to do?”
“Go after her, you fucking wanker.”
Ruckus’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.
Bran stared at him, stunned not just at the man, but at his own behavior.
“Why?” Ruckus regar
ded Bran with an unreadable expression.
An incredulous snort vibrated low in Bran’s chest. “Because she’s fucking amazing. Not just to fuck, but in every damn way. Because she made you finally pull your head out of your fucking arse and see there are people in this world who actually like you, love you, despite how broken you think you are. Because she brought you back to me when she could have had you for herself.”
A muscle ticked in Ruckus’s jaw. “I’m back here, Brannum. With you. There’s no fucking way I’m ever walking away from you again. Ever. I never should have in the first place.”
“Yeah, about that. Why did you walk away? Why did you cut me from your life?”
Bran’s gut churned. His head roared. He’d never talked to Rick this way. Was it because it wasn’t his ex standing in front of him, but the man he now knew as Ruckus? Or was it the thought of losing something amazing? Something he’d tasted, experienced for a fleeting moment?
“You fell in love with me, Brannum.” That muscle in Ruckus’s jaw twitched again. “I told you not to do that.”
Anger shot through Bran, an icy jolt stabbing straight into his chest. “So because I wasn’t a good little submissive, you left?”
Ruckus flicked Bran’s groin a look. It occurred to Bran they were both still naked. “There’s nothing little about you. And you were a very good submissive.”
“Now’s not the time for your patented Richard Tyrell humour, Ruckus.”
A ragged sigh burst from Ruckus. He scraped his nails over his bare scalp. “You didn’t need my baggage, Bran.”
“Fuck your baggage.”
Ruckus recoiled. Good.
“That was not your decision to make,” Bran went on. Christ, when had he been this angry? “It was mine. So you’re secretive. A broken mess. Who isn’t? Jesus, I’ve got more screwed-up father issues than you’d ever hope to understand. Why do you think I’ve spent so much of my life living in a game? Pretending to be an invincible, untouchable warrior in a make-believe world? But guess what? Part of your appeal is that you’re a secretive, broken mess. If you weren’t, you’d be too perfect, and too perfect is boring.
“If I wanted a boring life partner, I’d go out with one of the numerous beige men and women my mother and sister constantly try to set me up with. I don’t. Because I don’t want them. I want you. Mysterious, damaged, dominating, in-love-with-a-woman you. And as it turns out—thanks to you—I now want that woman as well. I want us, Ruckus. The three of us. I’ll fucking fight for it if I need to. I’ll fucking go out there and find RG and drag her back here and tie you each to a chair and make you both fucking see this thing we’ve discovered last night, this amazing, incredible, powerful thing is too important, too real to let go.”
He stopped and glared at Ruckus, chest heaving, breath ragged.
Ruckus raised an eyebrow. “Are you finished?”
“Fuck you, R—”
Ruckus destroyed the distance between them, fisted his hand in the hair at the back of Bran’s head and silenced him with a long, hard kiss. “Okay,” he whispered when he pulled his lips from Bran’s. He moved his hand to Bran’s jaw, his touch gentle.
Bran swallowed. “Okay what?”
“Okay, let’s spend the rest of our lives together. Okay, let’s go get RG.”
A wave of relief crashed through Bran and he closed his eyes for a heartbeat. “And bring her back here where she belongs,” he said, looking at Ruckus again.
Ruckus chuckled. “You know her place is bigger than yours, right? Much bigger?”
Bran smiled. “Again, I say fuck you, Ruckus.”
“Later.” Ruckus flashed him a grin. “Let’s go get our girl back first.”
Chapter 8
Ruckus should have known she wouldn’t make things easy. When she made up her mind to do something, RG never did it in half measure.
He couldn’t find her. She didn’t answer his calls or texts. She wasn’t at home. Her security system—a system he’d set up for her and maintained—revealed she hadn’t been to her home in the six days since she’d left him and Bran asleep in Bran’s bed.
She hadn’t returned to her office at the repurposed warehouse that was the base of her gaming business. Her personal assistant, an outrageously camp young man of unquestionable loyalty, refused to divulge where she was.
“Business as usual,” he’d told Ruckus when Ruckus confronted him at her office on the second day. “She said to take a chill pill and enjoy your new HEA.”
Ruckus had scowled. “HEA?”
Her PA had rolled his eyes, lips curling. “Happy ever after.”
“There can’t be a fucking HEA,” Ruckus had growled, turning away from the man, fists clenched, “without the contrary pain in the arse.”
Six days without contact. Without knowing where she was, what she was doing.
No, that was wrong. He knew what she was doing. Actively avoiding him and Bran.
He should have stopped looking for her then, let her calm down and think. He didn’t. Neither did Bran.
Bran had tried to contact her via their professional relationship.
Tried and failed.
Anything pertaining to Virt.Real as the sole distributor of Hell’s Harbour 2 had been taken over by RG’s second-in-charge.
Bran informed Ruckus—as they lay in bed on the third night of RG going AWOL—that her second-in-charge was incredibly smart, talented, professional, and loyal to a fault. “He won’t tell me a thing. And all the emails I’m sending to RG, whether from my personal address or my Virt.Real one, are coming back with an auto-response.”
Ruckus, absentmindedly drawing small circles on Bran’s shoulder with his fingertips, had sighed. “What’s the auto-response message say?”
Bran’s chuckle was a mix of exasperation and approval. “I’m off slaying demons for a while, which means I’m totally not available to play. Go live your own adventure. Live it hard. Especially you two. Yeah, you know who you are.”
The response was typical RG. A tight pang of love and admiration had shot through Ruckus, exaggerated by the fact she wasn’t there in the bed with them.
Stubborn pain in the arse.
Now, six days later, his patience had run out.
Standing at the front door of a secluded home in one of Sydney’s most leafy suburbs, he pressed the doorbell and smiled at the CCTV camera pointed straight at his face.
He knew it pointed straight at his face because he’d installed the state-of-the-art security system it was a part of only a few months ago.
“What the hell are you doing here?” came a male voice from a hidden speaker next to the doorbell.
Ruckus smiled wider at the camera. “Need to talk to you about your sister, Mike.”
A few minutes later, Michael Bailey—RG’s older brother and Australia’s most-voted Sexiest Man on Television—opened the door.
“Before you say a word,” Mike said, “I should warn you I’ve just got back from covering the Rugby World Cup, I’ve had bugger-all sleep for the last week and I’m not in the mood for shit.”
Ruckus nodded. “Understood.”
Mike studied him, his expression impossible to read. “What’s on your mind?”
“Do you know where RG is?”
Mike chuckled. Ruckus wasn’t expecting the reaction. “Do you really think I’m going to tell you if I do? Trust me, I hate seeing her so conflicted and I’d do anything I could to take her pain away, but she’s promised she will give me the world’s most painful nipple-cripple if I give her up, so I’m not.”
A hot beat thumped in Ruckus’s temple. Conflicted? About what the three of them had done? Or about what she’d done after?
“And even if she hadn’t threatened me with physical pain…” Mike continued, leaning against the doorjamb with typical nonchalance. Mike was one of the few people Ruckus had come face to face with who never seemed unnerved by the way Ruckus looked. Bran was another. RG, the third. “I still wouldn’t tell you.”
&n
bsp; “Because you don’t want me in her life?”
Surprised filled Mike’s face a second before he laughed. “Are you kidding? You’re the best thing that’s happened to her, Ruckus. As unconventional as you are, you fit her perfectly. I always thought the pair of you would one day ride off into some weird cyber sunset on the back of a dragon—or whatever the hell you ride in Hell’s Harbour—and spend the rest of your lives together.”
Warmth threaded through Ruckus at the image Mike painted. For a second, he saw RG—as she appeared in Hell’s Harbour—holding her hand out…and then Bran took her hand and the warmth unfurling through him grew hotter.
“I’m not telling you,” Mike continued, watching Ruckus closely, “because RG clearly needs time to get it worked out in her head. And figure out how she’s going to move forward, and you should know by now, you don’t rush RG. No one rushes RG, not even me.”
That was true. When it came to making up her mind, RG did it when she was ready, not when anyone else was.
“But I will tell you one thing,” Mike said, his gaze unwavering. “However things pan out, if you hurt her, no amount of tattoos and mysterious background and super security skills will stop me from making you suffer. Not even that scary cousin of yours who I’m ninety-nine percent certain isn’t really a tattoo artist, but some kind of government agent. Do you understand that?”
All Ruckus could do was nod. The fact Mike seemed to know more about Lincoln than most people should have troubled Ruckus, but all he could think about was RG. The very notion of hurting her left him cold. The idea that he might be now, in trying to find her, in trying to change her mind about him and Bran…
He swallowed, his gut churning.
“Now,” Mike straightened from the door, rubbing his palms together, his grin relaxed, “I can invite you in, or you can go back and collect the third member of your party and bring him back here so I can meet him. You and RG riding off on a dragon I’m good with. You and RG and a guy I haven’t met yet? Not so much.”
Ruckus blinked.
Mike laughed. “Bloody hell, mate. I didn’t realize ruffling your feathers could be this much fun.”
“How do you know about Brannum?”
A dangerous glint in Mike’s eyes made Ruckus swallow. “RG told me.”
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