Hers To Keep: THE QUINTESSENCE COLLECTION I

by Akeroyd, Serena

  He slumped over her, nearly suffocating her with his bulk.

  With his cock still hard inside her, his body a lax weight that pushed her into the sheets, she could finally relax. Her body unwound and uncoiled as the tension slipped from her muscles, replaced with a delirious bonelessness that only one of her men could gift her.

  Thirty-Six

  When Sascha glanced at him, Devon shuffled his feet nervously. His movement, however, further caught her attention because she frowned.

  “Devon?”

  He sighed. “Yes?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  A smile curved her lips, and he was happy to see it. She’d been kind of miserable this past week, and her smiles had been few and far between.

  Well, not when she was with them.

  At the dining table, or in Sean’s office, she smiled. She even laughed and teased as she usually did. She cuddled up in bed with him in the night-time, and he knew she wasn’t pulling away from the others either, because no one had said anything.

  But, in the moments when she was alone, as she was now, she was somber.

  The sparkle he’d come to associate with her was missing.

  Gone were the times when he’d hear her singing as she baked. The giggles as she listened to an audiobook no longer echoed through the house, or the guffawing laughter as she yelled something at the TV in the lounge…

  She was quiet.

  Sad.

  He didn’t like that.

  Not at all.

  She stared up at him, her head tilted back in a way that had to hurt her neck. Spying that, he ducked down and took a seat on the coffee table beside her.

  “There a reason you’re looming over me?” she asked, a teasing hint in her voice that made his chest squeeze.

  “I wanted to…” He squeezed his eyes shut, then shoved something at her.

  “What is it?” she asked, surprised.

  “Open it, and you’ll see.”

  He didn’t open his eyes, kept them tightly closed but he heard the ripping sounds of paper then peeked out.

  She pulled out the thick card, then frowned and shook the envelope so none of the contents remained within its tight clasp.

  A happy laugh escaped her at the tiny paper crane that was as flat as could be because of the envelope. With her delicate fingers, she dumped out the paper bird and said, “You remembered!”

  When he’d told her that he liked origami, she hadn’t believed him. Here was her proof. “I did.” Like he ever forgot. Anything. Literally.

  She grinned, leaned over, even though it meant nearly falling off her comfortably slouched position on the sofa to reach up and give him a kiss. “Thank you.” She studied the tiny crane, and asked, “Do you always make them so small?”

  He jerked a shoulder. “Makes it feel more difficult.”

  She blinked. “Can’t you ever just do something because it’s simple?”

  “Where would the fun be in that?”

  Her lips curved into a wide grin. “True. ‘Lessons From A Genius 101’, huh?”

  It was his turn to blink. “What?”

  “Never mind.” She let the little bird sit on the palm of her hand a second, before her attention was drawn to the actual gift within the envelope. Tilting her head to the side as she read, each short paragraph seemed to make her eyes widen further and further. He watched, then started wondering how wide her eyes could flare without getting sore.

  As he pondered that, he also wondered if he could make her look that wide-eyed when she was writhing underneath him.

  She murmured, “You didn’t.”

  The blanket statement had him frowning. “Didn’t what?”

  “You totally signed us up for tango lessons?” The bewilderment morphed into surprised glee. “And the first class is tonight?” She slapped her hands against the sofa. “Oh my God, it’s in an hour!”

  He cleared his throat. “There’s a reason for that.”

  “What reason?” she asked, scuttling to her feet, letting the ball of wool and her knitting needles fall to the mass tangle of blankets she’d had covering her.

  “Because I couldn’t chicken out then.”

  She froze, and her expression of gleeful panic softened. She turned to him, cupped his cheek. “Thank you, Devon. I promise, we’ll have fun.”

  He doubted that. But if it would make her smile again, if it would make her happy and make her start singing as she baked, then he’d suffer the torment of the damned and learn to tango.

  Ninety minutes later, as he allowed himself to be prodded by the South American dance teacher who seemed to have some kind of fascination with his arse, he kept that thought front and center.

  Though he knew the dance was supposed to be sensual, she kept on placing her hands on his hips then rubbing up against him in a way that felt more like an assault than anything else.

  “Oh my God, I totally see why you don’t go out often,” Sascha grumbled, shooting the woman a glare as Susanna hustled off to harass some other dancers.

  Even he wasn’t so blind as to miss the signals his teacher was sending, so he couldn’t plead ignorance.

  Unfortunately.

  “She’ll see I’m head over heels for you soon enough,” was all he said, trying to be placating, but he didn’t think he hit the spot when she grabbed a possessive hold of his hips—exactly where Susanna had, he noted—and began circling her own against him.

  The move wasn’t made to entice, but was supposed to incite passion between partners, Susanna had declared. “Tango is nothing without passion!” she’d said in her husky voice, the sounds of Argentina rolling through each syllable.

  Still, entice or not, Sascha’s rocking hips had his cock stiffening which, in turn, had a hectic flush gracing her pearly white cheeks.

  “You feel good,” she whispered, pressing her chest against his.

  “You feel better.”

  It was the truth, yet she shot him a stunned, but pleased look nonetheless.

  With her standing so close to him, practically plastered against his body—not that he was about to complain—he could no longer see his feet.

  Which meant he couldn’t watch his steps.

  Having figured out the pattern to the steps Susanna had been teaching, he calculated the angle of his footwork in correlation to Sascha’s, whose steps weren’t nearly so precise as his, unfortunately. She made the dance harder to fit to the conformed rhythm he was using at the base of his calculation, but it was worth it to have her bumping and grinding the way she did.

  “How do you do that?” Sascha groused ten seconds later as he swept her down the ballroom.

  The beginner’s dance class was filled with people laughing and joking with their partners as they fumbled the steps and stood on each other’s feet. One couple almost toppled over when, in a grand display of exuberance, the guy decided to tip his partner over his forearm and dip her low.

  Sascha had hid her giggles by pressing her face into his chest, which made him wish all the other guys would be stupid and fail to calculate the correct angles to keep them upright. Really, it was too easy to figure out the math, so why they weren’t doing so was beyond him.

  “How do I do what?” Devon asked absentmindedly, his mind sparking at a thousand miles a minute. He imagined exactly where he should place his feet, each visual clue annotated with scrawled working out—his own portable, invisible whiteboard.

  “Dance!” Sascha retorted. “Have you seen us? We’re dancing like we can do this.”

  He jerked to a halt. Confusion making him stop. “Shouldn’t we be able to do this?”

  “Well, let’s be correct here. I’m not dancing. You’re dragging me along in the tide.”

  He blinked. “I am?” Was that bad?

  “Yes. You are.” But a smile teased at her lips.

  Before he could wonder at the contradiction between her words and her tone, Susanna clapped her hands.

  “Class,
it’s time to learn another step.”

  The bumbling students groaned at the news, but gathered around the ballroom’s perimeter to watch her.

  There was a chalkboard at the bottom of the hall where there were notes that made little to no sense to Devon, but everyone else seemed to find the information on it useful.

  She didn’t add to the notes, however, instead, with eyes as dark as blackcurrants, swooped in on him.

  “Señor, it’s time we show the class the next move.”

  Beside him, Sascha tensed. But that was nothing to his reaction. “Excuse me?”

  Susanna waved a beckoning hand. “Come. Dance with me.”

  Devon frowned, took a step back. “No.”

  A shocked silence fell at his rebuttal.

  Susanna, huffing, said, “I wish to show them the cross! You are the most talented student. Therefore it makes sense to move onto the next step with you.”

  Devon shook his head. “No. Sascha’s my partner.”

  Sascha’s hand came up to cup his ass. “It’s okay, Devon.”

  He stared down at her. “No. It’s not. I’m only here for you.” He wasn’t sure why she said it was okay when it wasn’t. There was a storm in her eyes as she looked over at Susanna.

  He grumbled, remembering what Sawyer had said. “Women never make sense, Dev. Once you remember that, you’ve got it all under control.”

  “You heard him. He doesn’t want to dance with you.” There was a lilt on the words ‘with you’, and when he peered down at her, he saw there was a wicked smile on Sascha’s face as she huddled in close to him.

  Susanna narrowed her eyes at Sascha but swept off and grabbed another victim.

  She tossed her head, her hair sweeping over her shoulders as she sultrily stalked around the ballroom with the unsuspecting guy she’d ensnared in her trap, but Devon didn’t particularly notice.

  He watched her move, watched her feet, then tilted his head with curiosity as he saw the ripe sway of her body as she danced with the beginner. When Sean had told him about Sascha’s desire to tango, he’d looked it up online. Seeing that the dance was like sex standing up, he’d been encouraged by the prospect of doing that with Sascha.

  He couldn’t wait for her to start wriggling and writhing all over him again—there had to be some perks to learning to dance.

  The students who were already despairing the new step before they even tried it were on the receiving end of a demand from Susanna to try the move, as she went around each individual pair correcting and advising.

  Sascha’s eyes were sparkling as she looked at him. “You’re a bad, bad man, Devon.”

  He scowled at her. “I’m not bad.”

  She grinned, reached up to pat his cheek. “Don’t change.”

  The sudden fervency in her tone had him jolting in place. “I can’t change.”

  “Good.” She grabbed his hips again, pulled him against her so his cock, already semi-hard from having her writhing against him, stood to full attention. “Now, show me how to do what she just did.”

  “Didn’t you see it?” he asked, confused.

  “Yes. But I saw you doing that thing you do.”

  “What thing?”

  “Where you space out and mathify everything.”

  “Mathify?” He shook his head. “That isn’t a word, Sascha.”

  She chuckled. “I know, but it’s a word in our house. You make everything about math.” She pursed her lips. “I have no doubt that you’ve made some kind of equation to figure out where to put your foot or some crap like that. So, show me what she just did. You can even include sultry come-hither looks.”

  “I prefer to touch, not to look.”

  Her eyes flared with interest. “Why, Devon, it would seem we’re on the same page.”

  Thirty-Seven

  Laughter tore from Sascha as they left the ballroom where the tango class had been held, the milonga music still bubbling in her ears after an hour.

  The old fifties’ dance hall was loaded with such atmosphere, she could almost see the girls in their flared skirts and the teddy boys with their Brylcreemed hair.

  Hell, she could practically smell the Brylcreem!

  Clapping her hands, she danced away from Devon, then practiced the 8-step move they’d just been working on to shuffle back to him. He eyed her with his usual calm collectedness. She rarely saw him look anything else.

  Well, apart from the wide-eyed distaste when he’d glanced the instructor’s way.

  Sascha had wanted to hoot at his reaction to the sexy Señorita, but she’d managed to keep the catty noise in. It had been hard because Susanna had made her attraction to Devon so damn obvious it had been nauseating.

  Only she had the right to grab a hold of Devon’s tight ass and pull him to her. Only she had the right to dance against him like they were having public sex. And it would seem, Devon was in full agreement. A thought that had her grinning with delight.

  “You’re happy,” he said, sounding pleased.

  “I’m more than happy,” she countered. “I’m ecstatic.”

  “Because of the lesson?”

  He sounded dubious and she could understand that. But the class went far deeper than the surface.

  They’d listened to her. Hell, Devon had. He’d been the one to take her. When Devon barely noticed anything unless it was spoken to him directly.

  More than that, her possessiveness had never really been put to the test because they spent so much time at the house. And recently, when she might have been willing to go on dates with them, she’d had that stupid concussion to deal with.

  The headaches still came, but they were easier to manage, and not so debilitating, meaning she had more freedom.

  Trouble was, recent events had made that seem impossible. But her picture had been kept out of the papers ever since the news had broken and Devon had begged, stolen or borrowed to have an injunction put in place. So, though only a few weeks had passed, news being what it was—traveling at the speed of light—no one really remembered what she looked like, making her safe. Safe to explore London with her men. Safe to go on dates and do regular stuff.

  So yeah, she was happy. And until the status quo changed, she would continue to be. Even then, she’d deal with whatever her current circumstances triggered, because she had her five delicious bosses to look after her.

  She cuddled the knowledge to herself.

  Sascha knew they hadn’t been her bosses for a hell of a long time, had been her men for longer, but the label sent dirty, naughty thoughts Sashaying through her mind like she and Devon had just done across the dance hall.

  “Was it just me? Or did we dance up a storm in there?”

  His chuckle was low, dark. “We definitely danced up a storm,” he teased, making her eyes widen.

  She’d expected a serious remark about storm fronts and how dancing would have no negative impact on the climate, but instead, he seemed to be enjoying her amusement and her happiness, enough for him to relax too.

  She reached for his hands and jerked him to a halt. She’d worn one of her few dresses—a sweetheart neckline with a pencil skirt, in a dark navy blue with a huge cabbage rose at the left hip that curved over her belly and ass, topping it with a fluffy shrug to cover her shoulders.

  He wore his usual disreputable jeans and tee shirt, but he’d dragged on a leather jacket, and especially for the occasion, she thought with a chuckle, shoes. Dark brown loafers that were almost like slippers—totally inappropriate for London’s rain-slicked streets.

  Not that he seemed to mind.

  With their torsos pressed together, their hands gripping the other’s tightly, she asked, “What made you do this?”

  “I wanted to see you smile.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve been too sad of late. You’re such a happy person,” he told her, damn near breaking her heart. “I thought this would make you laugh.”

  Her smile was slow but loaded with meaning. “You a
lways make me laugh.”

  “I also make you angry,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be.” She reached up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lips. “Although, thank you for apologizing. I like it when you make me angry.” He gaped at her until she winked. “Don’t tell Sawyer.”

  She curled her arm through his and let him lead her back to Sean’s Maserati sedan.

  It still astonished her that Sean had a Maserati. Although, he had the boring one, so that kind of fit. Not that Sean was boring. He just wasn’t flashy.

  If anyone was flashy, it was Andrei. Not in the American way. All white teeth and gold watches. Just… there was something about him that shrieked money. Kurt too. Although, she supposed that fit considering the pair of them had been raised in wealthy families.

  Her lips twitched. Comparing Kurt’s family with Andrei’s would undoubtedly make Kurt’s mother have some kind of epileptic seizure. Old money to mafia money… She rolled her eyes. When had her life turned into some kind of Dynasty-esque saga. Seriously, she fully expected Joan Collins to make an appearance in her home any day now.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That my life belongs on a soap opera.”

  “It kind of does when you think about it,” Devon said, pursing his lips. “You’re the secret baby and secret heiress! You’d be the headlining act.”

  She grunted. “Thanks. Queen of drama.”

  “Nah. Your life might be a fuckfest, but you’re not.”

  That had her hiding a grin lest she encourage him. “Fuckfest?” she asked, peering up at him. Sometimes, she felt so goddamn short around them, even in her stacked heels. But now, it made her feel delicate.

  And considering delicate could in no way describe a woman with Sascha’s tits and or hips, that was a miracle in itself.

  “Yeah. You know. A festival of fuck.”

  “That sounds like some place we should visit.”

  He pondered that a second, falling quiet. “Isn’t that just an orgy?”

  “I’m game if you are.” The husky words tripped from her lips without a second’s thought.