by Jessa Kane
Something tugs at my conscience, though. The fear I’ve been living with since the fire. There won’t be any contentment until the man who killed Penny’s father and wants to do the same to her is handled. If that means killing him, so be it. I would do anything to keep my girl safe. The thing is…so would Zeke. Something needs to be done before this motherfucker comes after what’s ours.
Resolved to speak with Zeke after we finish for the night, I go back to working the hose. Twenty minutes pass before another fireman comes to take over and I return to the truck for a drink of water.
That’s when all hell breaks loose. Surround sound ringing of cell phones, fire department pagers going off. Dispatch comes in over the truck radio and I grab it up, listening over the mayhem on the street. And what I hear makes my blood run cold. It’s the code for a fire in progress and it’s…no…
“No. No that can’t be the right address,” I shout into the radio. “Repeat.”
Terror snakes through my blood when the dispatcher says the same numbers, her voice crackling in my ear. I drop the radio and jump off the truck, a shout waiting in my throat, but an ashen Zeke is already running toward the truck, cell phone in hand, along with several other firemen.
“Penny,” he rasps, battling his way into the truck and strapping into the passenger seat. “Please, God, no…”
I block out everything as I climb into the driver’s seat and start the engine. Waiting for our full squad to get in the truck almost kills me, but in reality it only takes twenty or so seconds and then we’re speeding toward Zeke’s apartment building, the siren screaming in my head.
She can’t be hurt. She can’t be gone.
If something happened to Penny, I’ll throw myself into the flames along with her. All I can see is her sweet face as she tells us she loves us from the couch, her green eyes catching the light. She’s the light. She’s everything good. Oh fuck, I can barely drive the truck, the pain in my chest is so severe. At the same time, though, I would kill someone for trying to take the wheel from me. We have to get there. Have to save her. The universe wouldn’t do this to me when life just became worth living.
“It’s the fucking Russian,” Zeke shouts from the passenger seat. “I knew they wouldn’t leave her alone when they didn’t get her the first time.”
Shock hits me square in the stomach. “How do you know the man who killed Penny’s father is Russian?”
Zeke’s brows slash together. “How do you know he’s a man?”
“I spoke to a cop friend.” Concentrating on the conversation is almost impossible when Penny is in danger, but I force myself to focus through the mounting anguish. “Boris Volkov. He has several known locations where he’s been known to lay low, but he moves. Between his multiple properties in Florida, his siblings all over the state, his club up north—a place called Tatiana. But I’ve had no luck yet.”
“Tatiana.” Zeke’s eyes close slowly. “Penny’s aunt mentioned that name to me, but I thought it referred to a woman. I didn’t know what the hell it meant, let alone that it was a location.”
“I would have known if you’d told me. I would have known if you hadn’t gone to see Penny’s aunt without me, goddammit.”
“Same way you went to the cop without me?” Zeke bares his teeth. “Tatiana. That’s the most recent place he’s been. That’s where we’ll find him.”
“Jesus,” I breathe, excruciating pain lancing my solar plexus. “If she’s hurt or worse, it’s because we killed her. This is on us. We both wanted to save her and we did the opposite, both wanting to be the fucking hero. One conversation and we could have found him before now. Before…”
“No.” Zeke pounds the dashboard with his fist, looking as if he’s considering launching himself through the windshield. “Fuck.”
I’ve been telling myself that the importance of sharing Penny with Zeke is about making her happy. About keeping her. It’s about more than that, though. It’s about trust. Not just between Penny and me. Or Penny and Zeke. No, from the beginning Penny has been begging us to understand that all three of us needed a ring of trust that nothing can compromise. No secrets or vitriol or competition between us. Just love. And now the worst thing has happened, because we failed to see why that trust was so necessary.
We’ve endangered the life of the girl we love beyond reason.
It seems like centuries pass before we reach the building and I don’t think, don’t follow procedure, I simply throw myself out of the truck and take the stairs, three at a time. Zeke is right behind me, shouting her name, his voice raw and panicked. It echoes my own.
When we reach the top of the stairs, fear like I’ve never experienced takes hold. The burn is rampant. The smell of gasoline is so strong, it makes my eyes tear, but I step back and kick the door open, shielding my face with the sleeve of my turnout coat. Zeke charges into the smoke shouting Penny’s name and I move in behind him, sprinting for the bedroom.
“Penny!”
“Baby, where are you?”
I throw aside the bedcovers that prove empty and lunge for the closet, throwing it open, but there’s no Penny in sight. I don’t know whether to hope she’s inside the apartment hurt or gone, taken. Jesus, I have no idea what’s worse, but either option makes me bellow into the engulfed apartment.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I shout, ditching the bedroom for the living room—nothing. “Don’t do this to us.”
* * *
Zeke
Nick and I reach the bathroom at the same time and shove through the door together—and there’s Penny on the floor. Not. Moving. The world starts spinning again when our simultaneous roars of utter denial rouse her, but she only moves a little. Her hand lifts and drops. But Nick and I are beside her in an instant. He secures a makeshift mask over her face and I scoop up her limp body, already vowing to kill the man who dared touch her.
Touched what’s ours.
A lump rises in my throat when I see the blood caked in Penny’s hair. “Her head.”
“I see it,” Nick responds, rage and grief warring on his face. “Motherfucker hit her over the head. He was already dead, but now we kill him slowly.”
“Damn right we do.”
The bathtub is still full of water, telling me she never made it to the bath and for some reason, that makes me even angrier. Since the night started, our poor girl has been scared for our safety at the fire, nearly accosted by a group of strange firemen, fucked by two insatiable men without a hint of mercy and now someone has locked her in an enflamed apartment. She needs a vacation.
“Baby, wake up,” I rasp, following the path Nick is clearing out of the apartment. As we move out into the hallway, men rush in with axes and masks, dragging a hose up the stairs. I don’t see any of them. There’s only her. Nick is frantic to hold her, too—I can see it in his eyes every time he turns around to make sure she’s all right. When we have to stop on the landing to let through the rush of firemen, I hand him Penny and he makes a hoarse sound, cradling her to his chest.
“She’s all right,” I bark, unashamed of my jagged tone. “She’s fine. Right?”
“She has to be.” Nick keeps moving, going down the stairs at breakneck speed, Penny still boneless in his arms. “Got to get her outside. Now.”
Cool, clean air fights its way down my lungs when we hit the sidewalk. I run alongside Nick to get Penny to an ambulance, in a sickening déjà vu of a couple weeks prior. I suck in a breath when Nick climbs into the back of the EMS truck, laying her down on a gurney.
“Fuck, she’s so pale.”
“Penny, sweetheart. Please. Look at us.” An EMS worker puts oxygen over her mouth, but Penny flutters her eyes at that exact moment and struggles to sit up. Nick and I sag with relief, him cursing up at the sky, me whispering prayers I didn’t know I had in me. She’s okay. Thank you, God, for making her okay. The EMS worker begins to clean the wound on Penny’s head, revealing a nasty gash, and the need to murder blares at full volume through my system.
“We got to you as soon as we could. Never should have left you alone in the first place.” I take her hand and press it hard to my mouth, my pulse spiking over the icy temperature of her fingers. “You scared the shit out of us,” I whisper in the understatement of…ever, while frantically trying to warm her fingers.
With an unsteady hand, Nick presses the oxygen to Penny’s mouth, just as the doors of the truck close behind us and we leave the scene, heading to the hospital. “Take it. Get the bad shit out of your lungs for us.”
Penny notices Nick’s still-shaking hand and lays her own on top of his, so she’s touching both of us, her eyes full of tears. After allowing the EMS man to secure a bandage over her wound, she slowly removes the oxygen mask, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I thought it was you at the door…”
“Shhh.” Nick gathers her close and I don’t hesitate to cage her in from the other side, pressing kisses to her hair. “You didn’t do a damn thing wrong,” Nick continues, his voice low, capturing her mouth for a tender pull. “We were both working on finding the man who took your father. The man who tried to take you. If we’d worked together, this never would have happened. I’ll never forgive myself.”
He tucks a sooty strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “We didn’t act worthy of you, Penny. That’s going to change.”
“We’re your men. Forever,” I breathe into her ear. “You get a hundred percent of us. And that means we have to work together to make you happy, keep you safe. We’re on the same team from now on.”
Nick drops his forehead to her shoulder. “Team Penny.”
I press a kiss to her temple. “Say you believe us.”
Penny seems to battle a smile. “I might need…oh…forty or fifty years of convincing.” When we growl into relieved kisses of her neck, she laughs, but breaks into a cough that distresses me and Nick. “I love you, Nick and Zeke.”
Two sets of arms close around our girl and hold tight. Hold her like we’ll never let go. And we won’t. “We love you, too, Penny. We’ll never, ever stop.”
EPILOGUE
Penny
One month later
W hen I hear Nick’s heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, I quickly hide the folded newspaper beneath my school books, but my heart is still bouncing and zigzagging off my rib cage, the bold headline impressed on my memory.
Body of Russian Mobster Washes up on Riverbank.
In the month since the second fire that almost took my life, there has only been one night when Nick and Zeke didn’t sleep beside me. They kissed me on the head, made me promise not to open the door…and when they returned home, there was a dark satisfaction in them I should have found alarming.
I didn’t.
My two lovers are obsessed beyond reason with me. It shows in everything they do. The way they escort me to and from class, help me with projects, encourage me. Their obsession is in the two sets of hands that wash me in the bathtub, usually right before those same hands drag me out with lustful intention, positing me how they need me. It’s in the way they never let a day pass without telling me how much they love me, while I’m eating breakfast on one of their laps, sunbathing in the backyard or sketching designs in my notebook.
Here’s the thing…I’m obsessed with them, too. Their honor. The way they’ve become equal partners in the business of me. Penny. Their heroism and yes, yes of course, their bodies. The lovemaking. Their non-stop eagerness to make me a mother. These men have become my life and I know their hearts and minds. So if they avenged me—and my father—with violence, I know they had no choice. And while they never let me feel anything but safe, I can admit to feeling ever more secure now, with Boris Volkov out of the picture.
Sensing Nick standing in the doorway of my bedroom, I remain on my belly poring over my books, but I part my thighs just a little, knowing he can see beneath the plaid skirt I wear just for him. Daddy. One of the men who apparently kills for me, then comes home and checks my homework.
The floor shakes a little as Nick drops to his knees behind me, one rough hand gliding up slowly from my ankle, over my calf, stopping high on my thigh. “What are you working on?”
Dampness is already spreading on the crotch of my panties. “Um…I’m studying for my fashion merchandising final.”
Nick hums low in his throat and flips up my skirt, revealing the frilly, white panties he bought me, leaving them in my drawer without a conversation.
Right alongside the cheetah print thong Zeke bought for me to rile up Nick.
Thinking of my other man, my lips spread into a smile. No longer does the rule exist where both men need to be present to touch me. And life is much sweeter since they developed that trust. Not only in each other, but in me. I’m never going to love one of them more than the other. They both own equal parts of my heart—and that’s how it will always stay.
Since Zeke’s apartment was damaged in the fire, we’ve all moved into Nick’s house, each of us taking our own room, but usually sleeping in the master bedroom together, their heat never failing to give me the best sleep of my life. Of course, Zeke insists on paying half the mortgage—and I plan to contribute one day when I start my own fashion line. They only laugh when I tell them that. But it will happen.
I can be pretty stubborn when I set my mind to it.
“Your date with Zeke is tonight,” Nick says, straddling my bottom with his big, uniformed thighs, not a hint of jealousy lacing his tone. “But you’re going to give Daddy a little attention first.”
I turn over and watch his hungry eyes travel down my halfway unbuttoned blouse. Most of my nights are spent at home, but once a week, Nick and Zeke trade off taking me on dates. Nick’s are more traditional, like dinner and a movie, while Zeke usually takes me go kart racing or dancing. Both are perfect to me.
“What kind of attention do you want, Daddy?” I whisper, my eyes curious. “Do you need help to lie on top of me and move all fast again?”
Nick shudders out a breath, his palm scrubbing over the rising bulge behind his fly. “Yes, sweetheart. Daddy needs that all the time.”
“Oh,” I whisper, giving an exaggerated nod. “Okay.”
There’s a chuckle outside my bedroom door and Zeke strolls in, leaning back against my dresser. He licks his lips as he looks the scene over, making a savoring sound deep in his throat. “Warming her up for our date, huh?”
“That’s right.” Nick unzips his pants, his cock falling out onto my raised skirt. “If you’re a good girl and give me what I need, we’ll see about adding an hour to your curfew.”
I take his heavy flesh in my hand and tug it hard and fast, watching Nick’s head fall forward on a strangled groan. “Like this, Daddy?”
“Yes, Penny. Just like that.” Nick’s hand closes around my throat, squeezing just enough to make me gasp. “Has my little girl been practicing?”
This is part of a new fantasy, not real jealousy, and my body thrills with excitement. “N-no.” I turn my head away. “I swear.”
Nick captures my jaw and turns me back to face him. “If you’re going to be a bad girl and let boys touch this pussy…” He rakes his hand down my body, wrenching my panties down past my ankles. “Maybe it’s finally time I take it for myself.”
I fight his hold. He easily pins me and wedges his big hips in between my thighs, but in my struggles, I’ve knocked my books askew and now Nick’s attention is trained on something over my head. I tilt my neck and suck in a breath.
It’s the article.
“Been doing some reading, baby?” Zeke drawls from across the room, pushing off the dresser and coming toward Nick and me. “Anything you want to share with the class?”
Zeke drops into a kneel beside my head and something passes between him and the man holding me down. The men I love with my whole heart and soul are still present, but there’s a dangerous bite to them that’s not usually there. I realize now that it was always below the surface. Waiting.
Without warning, Nick grips his erection,
positions it at my damp entrance and drives into me with a snarl—hard. My scream is still ringing in the air when Zeke rips my blouse wide open, buttons popping off and scattering around the room. His hands mold to my bare breasts, massaging them in work-roughened hands. “Did you doubt that we would end the life of anyone who fucking dared to come near what’s ours?”
Nick pumps inside me with such force, I arch my back on a whimper. “N-no I didn’t doubt it. I just wondered…”
“Wondered what?” Nick rasps, circling his hips. “If we’d finally lost our goddamn minds over you?” His big chest flexes over me, sturdy and immoveable, making me feel feminine, loved and preyed upon all at once. “We have, sweetheart. We did on day one. Every single waking minute, I’m thinking of ways to get deep as fuck in this pussy. God, it’s so tight and sweet.”
Zeke unzips, dragging out his flesh with a moan. “It’s your fault, baby. Every single fuck is better than the last. Every one. And each morning when we drop you off at school, someone else is looking at what we own.” He watches Nick drive into me, stroking his own flesh at the sight. “We don’t like it. And now you know there’s no limit to what we’d do if someone got too close, let alone hurt you.”
“Spread your legs for your keepers and tell us we’re the only ones you’ll ever love. It might calm us down for the night. One. Night. Enough that we won’t want to kill the next man who checks out your gorgeous body.” Nick’s thrusts grow more frenzied, his groans echoing in the room. “Tell us.”
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” I wail, my back dragging up and down the floor with the impact of Nick’s drives. “I never want anyone else. Ever.”
Zeke bends forward and claims my mouth with tongue, lips, teeth. “You’re our home. You’re our life.” His warm breath skates over my face. “Can’t wait for that little belly to swell. Can’t wait for that final claim on you, baby. Fuck.”