by Susan Hayes
“Be reasonable, son. We’re trying to fix this mess you’ve gotten yourself into, that’s all,” Petr Grekov snapped.
“And what mess is it you feel the need to rescue us from, exactly?” Colin asked as he waded into the fracas and took up position a few feet from Nikolai, sheltering Alayna between them. Not that she looked like she needed protecting. In fact, she looked scarier than a Dragon Warrior in full battle rage as she stared down Petr and Carl. They really had found the perfect woman. Perfect for them, anyway, even if Griz’s family couldn’t see it.
The men were standing in front of the door, with Janice off to one side and Sonja tucked behind them, peeking out from behind her father’s back . Colin couldn’t help but notice that Sonja was staring at Alayna with something close to awe, which was in sharp contrast to her mother’s thin-lipped scowl of disapproval. Petr and Carl looked grim and determined.
Petr sighed, and the expression on his face was one normally saved for explaining to small children why they couldn’t have dessert before dinner. “I would think that would be obvious. It was bad enough that our son chose to pair himself to a man of your lackluster connections, Colin. But at least you have redeemed yourself by years of exemplary service. This woman you’ve chosen to claim is simply not appropriate, not on any level.”
Alayna bristled with anger, her lip curled up in a snarl. “The woman they chose is right here. It might be smart not to insult her.”
Shit. This is going even worse than I expected.
“Alayna is the woman we have chosen. She’s perfect for us, and that’s the end of this conversation. Now, I’m going to repeat your son’s suggestion that you leave. Now.” Colin took a half step forward and stopped as Alayna grabbed his arm.
“They can go, right after I respond to their proposal,” she said and Colin’s heart twisted in his chest. What proposal? What the fuck had he missed?
“Griz?”
“They want Alayna to go back to the badlands. Today. I don’t know how many credits are on the data chip they handed her, but I’m betting it’s a hell of a lot. If she leaves, it’s all hers, and my parents make this whole untidy mess go away.”
“Not fucking happening. Alayna’s ours.”
“If you two don’t shut the hell up and let me speak for myself, I’m gone. Do you hear me?” Alayna yanked on his arm for emphasis and Colin forced himself to stop talking. Not that he wanted to. Fuck, no. He wanted to talk to Alayna. What was going through her head right now? She had to know that he meant what he’d said. If she left, they’d come after her. Credits or not.
“Alayna—” Griz started to speak but she cut him off.
“No, Nik. I mean it. Not one word.” Colin heard Griz growl under his breath, but they both managed to keep silent. Janice started talking the moment silence fell.
“You really should take it and go. It’s the best deal a woman of your status could ever hope for. Better, in fact. You have my word that no one will come after you. You will be free to live your life however you wish, so long as you stay in the badlands and away from my son.”
Alayna was seeing red. She’d never understood the expression before, but right at that moment her vision was actually tinged with a reddish haze that perfectly matched the fiery rage coursing through her veins. She let go of both men and stepped toward Janice, letting her disdain for the three of them and their offer drip from every word she spoke.
“A woman of my status? And just what the fuck is my status, exactly? What is it that has your Alliance panties in such a tight twist? Is it because I don’t have a pedigree that goes back five generations? The fact I was raised by rebels who fight against judgmental, self-righteous bastards like you and your bonded? You don’t know me at all, but you come all this way just to insult me? Whatever your issue is, bitch, you’re just going to have to get over it. You can take back your bribe, I’m not interested.” She dropped the chip on the floor at Janice’s feet and then leaned in so that their faces were only a few inches apart. “As for my status, allow me to clarify it for you. My name is Alayna Grekov-Neilson, the chosen of Nikolai and Colin, and I want you out of my house. Right. Fucking. Now.”
“Control your chosen, or we will,” one of the two older men growled from somewhere nearby.
“It would be the last thing you’d ever do,” Nikolai snarled back. Alayna glanced over to see that her men had moved to protect her. They stood shoulder to shoulder, standing between herself and Nik’s fathers, an impenetrable wall of muscle and will. After years of working alone, it was strange to have someone watching her back. Strange, but wonderful. Knowing she was well guarded, Alayna straightened to her full height and glanced over at Sonja, giving the younger woman a glimmer of a smile.
“You are welcome here any time, Sonja. But please, leave your parents at home next time.” With that she turned her back on the still silent Janice and joined Nik and Colin. She placed a hand on each of their shoulders as she reclaimed her place between her men. They were definitely hers now. They had to be, because she’d just torched the one chance she had to go back to her former life.
She looked up at Nik, then at Colin, but neither of them would look at her. All their attention was on Nikolai’s fathers, who had not yet moved. For a moment she wondered if a full-on brawl was about to erupt, but then the two older men turned to Janice and Sonja.
“We’re going now.” Petr informed Janice, who simply nodded in mute agreement. To Alayna’s eyes the woman looked a decade older than when she’d arrived. It gave her a brief surge of satisfaction knowing that she had managed to rattle that judgmental bitch.
As unsettled as Janice seemed, she did manage to remember to pick up the credit chip off the floor before rising and taking Petr’s arm. The three left without another word, with Sonja following behind them, doing her best to hide the grin that kept twitching at the corners of her mouth. Sonja managed to wink at them as she left, trailing after her defeated parents.
Colin slammed and locked the door the moment they passed through it, not even bothering to make sure that they got into their transpo and left. Silence filled the house, and for a moment Alayna wondered if she had done something wrong.
“Holy fuck! I leave you two alone for a few hours and look what happens. What the hell was that? How’d they even know about Alayna? What makes them think they have the right to come and interfere in our lives?” Colin was so angry his words came out in a torrent, and he punctuated his last question by slamming his fist into the wall by the door.
“You know what they’re like. That’s why I try not to see them. They think that money and connections means that they aren’t held to the same rules as the rest of us. If they ever come near Alayna again, I’ll kill them.” Nikolai was pacing, his hands clenching and unclenching as he gestured and snarled in aggravation. Alayna stayed quiet. Her own rage was slowly cooling, to be replaced by a sense of quiet contentment and something much stronger. Something she wasn’t ready to name yet.
Nik stopped his pacing and spun around to look straight at her. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? I’m the one who invited them in. I knew they needed to speak their piece, but I had no idea they’d be that fucking obnoxious. At least your sister’s a decent human being. She clued me in to their general plan while we were upstairs.”
“So you knew they were going to bribe you, and you let them? If it had been enough credits, would you have left us?” Colin asked, his handsome features still twisted by the anger inside him.
“No, I didn’t know they were going to try bribery. Sonja merely suggested that the owners of G-Mex Robotics might actually have enough money and influence to bend the law and let me leave, if that’s what I wanted.” She shot Nik an annoyed look. “If you’re going to be sorry about anything, you might want to apologize for not mentioning your parents are fucking tycoons!”
Nik lifted his gaze to meet hers, and she was stunned by the doubt that showed in the dark depths of his eyes. “Is that why you decided to s
tay? Because you think I’m rich?”
Her men were idiots. They had to be. It was the only explanation for the words coming out of their mouths. “Don’t be stupid. What do I need with more money? You two have already bought me more things than I have owned in my entire life.”
“So why did you decide to stay, princess?”
“Right now I’m asking myself that very same question. Is there any chance you two are going to stop acting like complete jackasses anytime soon?”
“We are not acting like jackasses, we’re just a little confused.” Colin stopped pacing and pointed to the floor in front of him. “Get your ass over here and explain why you’re not already halfway to the badlands.”
“Have you lost your fucking mind? I’m staying right where I am, thank you,” Alayna said with a shake of her head. If they thought that her decision to stay was suddenly going to be a meek, obedient little chosen, they needed a psych eval, stat.
“That wasn’t a request, princess.” Colin arched an imperious brow and tapped his foot.
“I just took on the owners of G-Mex Robotics and turned down an obscene amount of money in the process. Do you really think now is the time to try and boss me around?”
“Not really, no. But I had to see if your decision to stay had magically made you more compliant.”
“That is never going to happen.”
“Good answer.”
Nik cleared his throat. “You were magnificent in there, Alayna. When I realized what they were offering you, I wasn’t sure you’d stay. I know you don’t like the fact we claimed you against your will.”
“I didn’t like the fact I had no choice. The law sucks. Your sister has no freedom and a permanent guard to keep her from being claimed while she waits around for your parents to decide who gets to have her, and you two claimed me even when I begged you not to.” Both men moved at the same time, and she found herself caught between two rock-hard bodies.
Nik’s voice rumbled by her ear as he nuzzled her hair, and she could feel the hard length of his cock rubbing against the curve of her ass. “I’ll never regret claiming you. Not for one fucking second. You were made for us.”
“You’re ours, Alayna.” She tipped her head back to meet Colin’s gaze, her panties getting instantly soaked the second she saw the need shimmering in his steel-gray eyes.
“Yes, I am. Someone finally gave me a choice, and apparently I’m crazy, because my choice is to stay here, with you.”
“Say it again,” Nik whispered against her fever-hot flesh. He was slowly kissing his way from her ear down the side of her throat, and every brush of his lips was sending sparks sizzling across her skin.
“Who do you belong to?” Colin’s eyes held her spellbound as she struggled to form the words she knew they both needed to hear.
“You. Both of you. And you two belong to me.” She arched her hips backward, pressing against Nik’s erection at the same time she cupped Colin’s cock, stroking him through the fabric of his uniform. They were both hard as hammered steel, and it inflamed her passions to know that she was the cause.
“Yes, we do,” both men answered at the same time and she felt her heart swell to bursting.
“Then show me,” she said, standing on her tiptoes so she could place a lingering kiss to Colin’s lips.
“With pleasure,” he said before bowing his head to capture her mouth with his. He kissed her slowly, as if she were a dessert to be savored. His tongue stroked over her lower lip and she opened to him, her breath catching in her throat as he growled in approval. Behind her, Nik continued his leisurely exploration of her throat, drawing her hair back as he made his way, inch by inch to the nape of her neck. Shivers chased down her body as he began placing open-mouthed kisses along her spine, drawing tiny circles with the tip of his tongue before moving to a new spot.
Strong hands stroked and fondled her body, every touch kindling a new spark until she felt like her skin was on fire and her blood had turned to molten gold. Her pussy was so wet she could feel the cream trickling down the inside of her thighs.
Nik slid his hand between her thighs, tracing the seam of her pussy. “You’re already so wet you’ve soaked through your panties. I can feel it on my fingers. Is your tight little pussy aching to be filled?”
“Yes,” she moaned her answer into the heated darkness of Colin’s mouth. His body shuddered in response, the rigid line of his cock growing impossibly harder beneath her fingers.
“That’s good, minx. Because now you’ve finally admitted who you belong to, we’re going to make sure you never forget.”
Colin broke their kiss, his fingers tangling in her hair as he tugged her head back so she was looking him in the eyes. “You’re ours, princess. Every sweet, fuckable inch you. If anyone so much as looks sideways at you from now on, we will hurt them. If they touch you, we’ll kill them. And if you ever leave us, we will find you and bring you home.”
There was so much heat in his eyes that her soul was seared and every lingering doubt was reduced to ash. These were her bonded. They would be together for the rest of their lives. That thought resonated throughout her being and left her breathless. “I will never leave you.”
“I think we should take our chosen upstairs and show her how happy we are she’s finally figured out where she belongs,” Nik said.
“And where is that, exactly?” she purred, feeling nearly drunk with arousal.
“You belong between us, Alayna. Forever,” Colin answered, finally releasing her hair from his fingers. He had her in his arms a moment later, carrying her effortlessly in a demonstration of strength that made her pussy clench and her heart hammer against her ribs. It was hard for her to remember why she had fought against all this when every cell in her body was crying out for them to touch her. She needed them as much as she needed the air she breathed.
As they headed upstairs a powerful sense of déjà-vu swept over her. Not so long ago, Nik had carried her up these same stairs for what was supposed to have been a single night’s passion. She glanced back over Colin’s shoulder to find Nik grinning up at her, and she knew he was thinking the same thing.
“We’ve come full circle, minx. Only this time, there are no secrets between us.”
She nodded, but her heart was heavy in her chest. There was one more secret she needed to tell them. Alayna could only hope that when she told them the truth about her alter ego, their newfound happiness didn’t wither and die before it had a chance to take root.
***
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Colin walked into her bedroom and strode right past the bed, heading for the bathroom.
“Uh, guys? The bed’s back that way.”
“Yeah, I know. But the shower’s this way, and I have a sudden urge to get you all hot, slick and soapy, princess.”
“Sounds good to me too. First we can get you all clean, and then we are going to do very dirty things to you.”
Colin groaned. “We really need to work on your dirty talking, Griz. If I have to listen to your lame lines for the next seventy or eighty years, I’m going to need therapy.”
“I thought it was cute,” Alayna came to Nik’s defense and paid for it with a swat to the ass as Colin set her down on the tiled floor of the bathroom.
“See? It wasn’t lame.” Nik came in last, stripping his shirt over his head as he went.
“She called you cute. Are you going to stand there and take that from our chosen? We’re her bonded. We’re badass. We’re elites. We’re fucking generals! We are not cute!”
“You’re also adorable when you get all bent out of shape about being called cute,” she said, smirking at the horrified look on Colin’s face.
“Adorable? I don’t fucking think so. Pick another word, please.”
She started shedding clothing and making other suggestions. “How about sexy? Hot? All mine?”
“Better,” Colin said, his eyes glazing over with lust as she wriggled out of her pants and kicked them aside.
Nik stepped in behind her, his large hands gripping the bottom of her shirt and lifting it over her head. Her hair got caught up in the fabric, and by the time she was free, Colin had managed to strip off his clothes as well. He reached over to give one pert nipple a tweak before walking over to the gleaming tile and glass area that Alayna had always thought was oversized for one person. It occurred to her now, as she looked at the configuration of the jets, that it was the perfect size for three.
Nik placed a hand on her hip, drawing her around and into his arms. “What my parents said to you…none of it was true. You’re not a mistake, Alayna. You’re the best decision I’ve ever made.”
“Thank you,” Alayna said as her heart slowly melted under the heat of his gaze. There was lust there, but there was more, too. His smile softened, and for the first time he lost the hard edge that seemed a constant part of his expression.
He ran the calloused pad of his thumb over her lower lip and then leaned down to whisper near her ear. “No, thank you for giving us a chance. I love you, Alayna. I’m going to screw this up sometimes, and I know there are going to be times when we fight as hard as we fuck. Just remember, no matter what, I love you, and I will fight to the death to keep you.”
Alayna’s head was whirling and her heart didn’t feel like it fit in her chest anymore. He loved her? No one loved her. Well, no one but Sam, and he’d never said the words, hadn’t needed to. Years of self-imposed isolation fell away, and she threw herself into Nikolai’s arms, hugging him hard as she kissed him with near frantic need. Without a word he lifted her and she wrapped her legs around his hips, trapping his cock between them as she clung to him so tightly there was no space between their bodies. She didn’t have the words to tell him how much he’d affected her, didn’t even know where to start.
He loved her. Nikolai still couldn’t believe he’d actually said the words. Said them and meant them. She was the only woman who had ever challenged him. From the first night they’d met, she had never once been afraid of his strength or his temper. Alayna had stood up to his family in a way few had ever dared to dream of. She was his warrior goddess, a gift from the universe that he would never stop being thankful for.