by Shayla Black
“Don’t move,” Marco said to Thorn and Cam. “Or your girlfriend gets it.”
They both froze and sent her stares that reached out to embrace her the way they clearly wanted to with their arms. They loved her. Cam had said it. Thorn hadn’t, but his face shouted that fact now.
It gave her hope, strength. They’d endure whatever. Somehow.
“Come here,” Marco said to her father.
Curtis looked scared out of his mind as he put one foot in front of the other, toward her and the criminal.
Brenna saw Thorn cut a glance to Cam, who gave a barely perceptible nod. They were planning something. No. Oh, god. She didn’t want to die, but the thought of them being hurt…it was like ripping her apart from the inside out. Marco and his men hadn’t come here for her. She didn’t believe they really wanted to kill her. They wouldn’t hesitate if they had to, but she hoped that by stalling, it would give Cam’s peers enough time to figure this out. If Cam and Thorn jumped in…
NO! she mouthed to them. Neither was paying attention.
Chapter Twelve
As one, Thorn leapt on Marco, slamming him back against the oven. Cam dove to the ground, grabbed his gun, and popped off a shot, hitting Marco in the thigh. He grunted and cursed in her ear but his hold on her dissolved.
Cam grabbed her arm and threw her out of the fray, next to Curtis, who fumbled a gun in his shaking hands.
Marco’s henchman gave Cam a mighty shove. He fell back against the island, his back slamming into the counter. Thorn shot MacIntyre in the next moment, and turned to Marco, who already had his gun raised to Cameron, aiming right for his head. Brenna could hear a silent ticktock of milliseconds in her head. It was now…or no more Cameron. She pushed him to the ground.
Which left the gun pointing directly at her.
Marco’s hand tightened on the weapon, and he shot her a cold smile. Shit, he was going to pull the trigger. It was there in his empty eyes.
With a roar, Curtis leapt to put his body between her and Marco. She screamed as Cam launched himself at Marco, whose body slammed back against the oven again.
Despite that, he still managed to squeeze the trigger.
A moment later, Brenna fell to the floor under her father’s weight. Her head hit the kitchen island. Pain exploded at the back of her skull. She closed her eyes against the rush of agony.
Pounding footsteps made her open them again. Marco turned to run, hobbling due to his gunshot wound, but he still made it to the front door. Cam gave chase.
“Stop, asshole!”
Marco just kept running, right past large bushes on either side of the door. As soon as Marco ran past them, a pair of cops concealed in those bushes jumped the criminal from behind, disarmed him with a knee in his back and a fist in his hair. They read him his rights.
Brenna groaned, trembled, and turned to her father to thank him for saving her.
He lay on top of her in a heap, motionless. There was a little red hole right between his wide-open eyes.
She screamed and scrambled back in utter shock. He slithered off her, still.
Brenna had come to Arizona for closure with her relationship with her father, but not like this. When she’d boarded the plane, she’d never imagined it would end in his death.
Suddenly, Thorn was there, raising her to her feet, curling her body into his, turning her gaze into his shoulder and away from Curtis’s sightless eyes.
“I’m sorry, baby. So sorry.”
Dead, dead, dead… The word was a chant in her brain. And she knew it would hit her at some point that he father was no more. But right now, shock and a gladness that Thorn and Cam were both okay filled her.
She couldn’t feel her legs. Dizziness assailed her. Her head throbbed mercilessly. The edges of her vision started to close in.
Brenna opened her eyes, feeling disoriented. Sterile smells assaulted her nostrils and the fog in her head cleared. She didn’t remember much after the gunfight in the kitchen. But she hadn’t died, right? Death couldn’t smell this chemically clean…
Her head ached as if someone had been using it as a drum at a heavy metal concert. She was laying on something soft. But she was definitely alive. Thanks to Curtis’s sacrifice.
Memories assaulted her—good and bad. Julio Marco arrested…her father dead. It saddened her that they’d never had a real father-daughter relationship. But he’d made choices—to be a criminal, to get involved with Marco, to jump in front of the bullet. He’d cared enough about her to give his life so that she could live. His last act confirmed that, in his way, he’d cared.
A moment later, the sensation that someone was staring besieged her.
Gingerly, she opened her eyes to a semi-dark room, thank goodness. Moonlight poured in through a little window. The ceiling was sterile white.
But the two concerned faces above her made her heart lurch with relief.
“You’re here…”
Cameron grabbed her hand. “We wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
Thorn caressed her cheek. “We haven’t left your side for the last four hours, despite some pissed-off cops.”
Brenna lifted her head a fraction and glanced past them to see two uniforms guarding the door, wearing identical glowers.
“They have questions.”
“Yes, but we didn’t want you to wake up alone.” Cameron kissed her cheek.
Thorn brushed his mouth over her lips softly. “You’ll be okay if we answer the police now?”
She nodded.
“The doctor wants to see you anyway,” Cam noted then backed away from the bed. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“Me too,” Thorn nodded. “I didn’t love the guy, but…”
“I know. You tried. I thank you for it.” She squeezed his hand.
A brisk forty-something woman in a white coat came in and shooed her men away. She did a quick exam and asked a few questions before saying that Brenna simply had a mild case of shock and giving her an otherwise clean bill of health.
She rose from the bed gingerly. Two seconds after donning her clothes, the uniformed officers descended on her, asking a bevy of questions. But it didn’t take long. Evidently, her story corroborated Cam and Thorn’s. Marco and his surviving goon were behind bars. Between Marco and his lackey, along with the sworn statements her father had already given, the police had managed to conduct a raid of Marco’s secret properties and discovered dozens of illegal immigrants working against their will.
When Cam and Thorn returned to her draped-off corner of the emergency room to help her gather her things, they assured her that Marco would be going away to the big house for a long time.
It wouldn’t save her father. He was gone, and she hoped that he could find the peace in death that he’d never found in life. She might never know what demons drove him to badness, but she understood now that he could never be hurt again and that he hadn’t rejected her as much as he’d tried to protect her from the black life he’d built.
“What about your house?” Brenna asked Cam. “Marco and his guys trashed it.”
“My buddies already did the clean up on aisle five. New glass will be delivered tomorrow. Why don’t you come see for yourself?”
Brenna cocked her head at his eager yet anxious expression. Did he fear she’d say no?
“I’d love to.”
Cam brushed his lips over hers. “Good, as long as you’re there, maybe I could persuade you to stay a while.”
She tamped down an excited smile. “How long is a while?”
He shrugged. “Fifty years. To start.”
Casting her shocked glance Thorn’s way, he looked tense too. Did he also want her to stay and was worried she wouldn’t? What was up with these two?
“What about him?”
“I’m in,” Thorn replied. “We’ve discussed it.”
“So you’ve mapped out my whole future?”
Put that way, they both had the grace to look sheepish.
“Well,” Ca
m began, “we had a thought. But we’d love to hear yours.”
“Okay. Why don’t I come stay for a few weeks with you two, and we’ll see how it goes.”
Thorn gritted his teeth and cursed. “That plan sucks.”
Brenna sashayed closer to the guys, stopping between them to glance at one, then the other. Talk about unexpected… “What exactly did you have in mind?”
“A hell of a lot more than a vacation fling,” Thorn groused. “We want you to move here. We want to make things permanent. I love you. God, I’ve never said that to anyone in my life,” Thorn said in one breath. “Scarier than shit. But it’s true. I care about you both. I’ve never had a personal life that meant more than a cheap fuck. You and Cam mean…everything.”
Thorn wasn’t great with words but sincerity ruled his face. It was impossible not to believe him.
Impossible not to be celebrating inside.
“Let me hear this plan you two cooked up.”
Thorn opened his mouth but Cam cut him off. “We thought maybe you could move in with me. Us. Thorn will give up his trailer.”
“Lars can have the piece of shit.”
Cam sent him a glare, then turned back to her with an expression so placating, it was comical. “Then we hoped you would marry me.”
She blinked once. Twice. Marriage? She’d known them less than thirty-six hours.
Yet she didn’t doubt the fact she loved them both. They loved her and each other. Conventional, no. But no one’s business. If she was happy with them, to hell with everyone else’s opinion.
“Why not Thorn?”
Thorn himself supplied the answer. “Cam has family that will give a shit. Plus, he has health insurance, so that when the babies are born—”
Cam punched him in the arm. “We agreed to ease her into that, you idiot.”
“I didn’t put it all in one sentence.”
Shaking his head, Cam closed his eyes. “I meant that maybe we wouldn’t bring up the babies for a few months.”
“Fuck that. I want to get started now.”
Brenna bit her lip, trying not to laugh. This had to be the most offbeat, comical proposal a woman had ever received.
“Who’s fathering these babies?” she ventured.
They both hesitated. Cam looked at Thorn and vice versa. “It doesn’t matter to us if it doesn’t matter to you.”
It didn’t, but she was glad to hear them say it.
“I’m not a breeding machine, boys. This would have to be planned. I wanted to finish college in the next few years. I hate waitressing and I want to make something more of my life.”
“Sure,” Cam agreed.
“Totally,” Thorn said. “Babies can wait a few years, I guess.”
He actually looked disappointed. Who would have imagined that the man who’d first tied her to a bed and treated her like a one-time fling would want to tie himself to them in every way possible in just a few short hours? Miracles never ceased. And she knew that love was their most unexpected miracle.
“Good. Law school takes time.”
“Law school?” they echoed.
She shrugged. “I figure we need to round this out. Cam can arrest them. Thorn can find them if they skip bail, and I can prosecute them once they’re captured. Deal?”
“Absolutely,” Cam murmured against her mouth as he planted a long, sweet kiss on her.
Thorn elbowed him out of the way and laid a powerful kiss full of demand on her lips a moment later. Cam sidled up to her, kissing her neck. Someone fondled her breast. A hand drifted down to her ass and dipped between her legs. She felt herself go moist…just as one of the hospital staff standing at the door cleared their throat.
They looked up to find the nurse wearing a slightly shocked expression. She had Brenna’s discharge papers and post-visit instructions. Thorn took them, and the two men guided her out of the emergency room and into the cool October evening.
“So was that a yes? Are we taking you home with us?” Cam asked, his expression so hopeful, she couldn’t keep him dangling any longer.
“Please…” Thorn cajoled like a six-year old asking for a candy bar.
For Thorn to use that word, his feelings had to be serious.
She smiled and looped her arms around them both. “Yes.”
“You’ll marry me?” Cam asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ll move in with us and have babies?”
She smiled, wondering at Thorn’s new fascination with kids. “Yes.”
They whooped and hollered, exchanging high-fives.
Her voice cut through the middle of that. “With conditions.”
They abruptly stopped. “Conditions?”
“One, we meet Cam’s family before the wedding and tell them the truth. I’m not hiding our relationship. If some of the babies turn out blonde and blue eyed, I don’t want them to have any questions.”
Cam let out a big sigh and pressed his lips together. Eventually, he nodded. “You’re right. It will be tough for them at first, but it’s better if they know.”
“You can meet Lars if you want, but I doubt it will be a pleasure. He’s a first-class bastard.” Thorn shrugged.
“We’ll be telling him too, just in case. Two, Cam and I will have a legal wedding at the JP or something small, but the big bash will be our own private ceremony with family and friends joining the three of us. I’ll be inviting my family, too. We’ll see if they come. If they don’t… I don’t need their approval to be happy.”
They both nodded as they approached Cam’s truck. He unlocked it and eased her inside. Thorn ran around to the other side and sandwiched her in between them on the bench seat.
“Three,” she went on. “I need names. Full names. I can’t be living with, marrying, and having babies of men whose full names I don’t know.”
“Cameron Eduardo Héctor Rafael Martinez.” He grimaced. “I had lots of uncles to be named after.”
“Oh my gosh. I’ll try to remember all that. Thorn?”
Cam leaned over her as he started the truck. “Yeah, what does that R. A. stand for? You’ve always refused to say, and no one at the stations knows.”
“I like it that way.” He released a long-suffering sigh. “The only person who knows is Lars and that’s because he was old enough to remember the day I was born. Don’t think he didn’t torment me with it all my life. You will too. Nope, I’m not saying.”
Brenna crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s one of my conditions. Take it or leave it.”
“Aw, fuck.”
Cam laughed long and loud. “Spill it, man. We’ll keep your secret.”
“It will be just between us,” Brenna assured.
He hesitated before closing his eyes in defeat. “You will never, ever call me by this name at any moment of any day. I don’t care how annoyed, ecstatic, or aroused you might be. This never crosses your lips.”
Brenna made an X over her heart. “You have my word.”
Thorn shook his head, golden hair brushing his shoulders. He’d always be a bit wild and hard to tame, but she knew he’d be hers and Cam’s.
“Rikard Alviss. Don’t you dare laugh.”
She looked at Cam and could see that he, too, was suppressing the major urge to bust out. Somehow, she managed to keep it down. Probably had something to do with the blood she tasted in her mouth after biting the inside of her cheek.
When she’d finally composed a straight face, she turned to Thorn. “Thank you for sharing. I’ll make sure you don’t regret it.”
His face softened. “Baby, I could never regret sharing anything with you.”
“Me, either,” Cam confirmed. “I’ve never been happier.”
Neither had she.
With a smile, she reached out and put a hand on each of their crotches. In seconds, she had a pair of erections beneath tight denim right at her fingertips.
“Care to go home and share more, then?”
Cameron peeled out of the parking lo
t while Thorn divested her of her shirt.
“Can you make it home in five?” Thorn asked.
“Three,” Cam vowed.
It was really more like two minutes before they stumbled into the bedroom where Cam and Thorn both proved they had absolutely no trouble sharing her or each other.
Read on for more from Shayla Black.
Want another ménage world full of passion and drama? Welcome to Doms of Her Life…
* * *
Two friends. One woman. Let the games begin…
* * *
Read ONE DOM TO LOVE, the first in the sexy Doms of Her Life: Raine Falling saga.
* * *
ONE DOM TO LOVE
Doms of Her Life: Raine Falling, Book 1
by Shayla Black, Jenna Jacob, Isabella LaPearl
Click to purchase
(available in eBook, print, and audio)
* * *
Raine Kendall has been in love with her boss, Macen Hammerman, for years. Determined to make the man notice that she’s a grown woman with desires and needs, she pours out her heart and offers her body to him—only to be crushingly rejected. But when his friend, very single, very sexy Liam O’Neill watches the other Dom refuse to act on his obvious feelings for Raine, he resolves to step in and do whatever it takes to help Hammer find happiness again, even rousing his friend’s possessive instincts by making the girl a proposition too tempting to refuse. But he never imagines that he’ll end up falling for her himself.
* * *
Hammer has buried his lust for Raine for years. After rescuing the budding runaway from an alley behind his exclusive BDSM Dungeon, he has come to covet the pretty submissive. But tragedy has taught him that he can never be what she needs. So he watches over her while struggling to keep his distance. Liam’s crafty plan blindsides Hammer, especially when he sees how determined his friend is to possess Raine for his own. Hammer isn’t ready to give the lovely submissive over to any other Dom, but can he heal from his past and fight for her? Or will he lose Raine if she truly gives herself—heart, body, and soul—to Liam?