“What do you say, Lach?” I give him a wink, our secret sign that we’ll pick up with last night’s story after his sister is asleep.
He tries to wink back, but it comes off more like a squint. “Okay. I guess we can hear our story… again.”
“Once upon a time there was a prince from a faraway kingdom who inherited the crown of a new kingdom.”
“And the prince needed a princess.” Barely four and my wee lass is already a romantic.
“Yes, baby. The prince needed a princess, but no ordinary princess. She had to be chosen from the royal family of his new kingdom’s enemy.”
“And the prince’s enemy wouldn’t give him his princess, so he had to ride in on his horse and kidnap her,” Bristol says.
“That’s right. He had three princesses to choose from and which one did he steal?”
“The bonniest one.”
I look at Westlyn across the bed, her fingers laced and her hands resting on top of her swollen belly. “Aye, she was the bonniest one indeed. And still is.”
“But the princess didn’t like the prince because he was mean to her.” Bristol punches my leg. “Bad Da for being mean to Mummy.” She always scolds me when we get to this part of the story.
“The prince was mean to the princess, but he became sorry and full of regret for being cruel to her.”
Bristol looks up at Westlyn. “Because the prince fell in love with Mummy.”
I pet the top of my daughter’s head when I see her eyes growing heavy. It always helps her fall asleep. “The prince did fall in love with the princess, and their marriage brought peace between the two kingdoms.”
“And their princes and princesses were half of one kingdom and half of the other. Their children would forever bind the two lands, so they would never be enemies again.” Westlyn’s voice is soft and soothing.
Bristol yawns. “And they lived happily ever after.”
I don’t know why Bristol asks to hear this story. She’s the one who ends up telling most of it.
My daughter closes her eyes, and Lachlan places his finger over his lips to shush me.
Westlyn leans down to kiss Lachlan. “I’m going to lie down while Da reads with you tonight.”
She usually stays while he reads.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Fine. Just aching in my back.”
“Sure it’s just a backache?”
She nods. “I’m fine. Stay and read with him.”
Lachlan usually reads to us for thirty minutes every night, but I cut our time short tonight. I’m worried about Westlyn. With her last pregnancy, she complained of a backache, her water broke, and she delivered… all within three hours. We barely made it to Royal Infirmary before she got the urge to push Bristol out.
“Doll?”
“Just a minute, Kier,” she calls out from the bathroom.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice is calm, which eases my worry.
The door opens and Westlyn comes into the bedroom wearing one of her short, sexy gowns. “Pregnancy hormones doing crazy things again?”
She nods and walks toward the bed. “Very crazy.”
She sits on the side of the bed and moves to the middle. “You know what I need, Mr. Hendry.”
I start taking off my clothes, beginning with my tie. “I do know, Mrs. Hendry. Very well.”
Westlyn is approaching her due date. Positioning has been tricky the last few weeks. “Tell me how you want it.”
She rolls on to her side. “From behind.”
“Not a problem, wife.” I love rear entry.
“I didn’t think you’d mind.”
I lie on the bed and move behind her, kissing the back of her neck and shoulders. I do it to give her time to get wet, but I find that she’s already drenching when I reach between her legs. “Always wet for me.”
“Always.”
I ease inside her, and it’s impossible to suppress my groan. I pull back and thrust slowly, savoring the squeeze of her body around mine. “Fuck, I can’t believe how tight you are.”
How can she have given birth twice, almost three times, and still feel this virgin-tight? A woman’s body can do amazing things.
I thrust a few more times. “Is this position good for you?”
She’s tilting her bum upward, rocking to meet me with every stroke. “Mmm-hmm, but I want you to rub me. Make me come with you.”
I reach around her pregnant belly to that sensitive place between her legs. She moans, and without a word, I know I’ve hit it. “Right there, Kieran.”
I circle the whole area fast and hard. Slow and soft. Back and forth. Side to side. I give her a little of it all.
I move faster. My cock and fingers. “I want to feel your body squeeze me because you’re coming so hard.”
“Ohh… I’m coming, Kieran.”
I bury my face in the back of her hair. “I love you, Westlyn. So fucking much.”
She reaches over her shoulder and grabs the back of my head. “I love you, too.”
I plunge into her one last time and hold that position while my balls squeeze until they’re completely empty. When I finish, our arms, our legs, our entwined bodies collapse and go lax.
I pull out and reach for a pillow to place under her head. “Need one between your knees too?”
“Yes, please.”
I spoon behind Westlyn, wrapping my arm around her waist and rubbing her tummy. This is baby number three, and the movement I feel beneath my hand still amazes me. “He or she is going crazy in there.”
She places a hand on her belly next to mine. “I think this wee one will be coming soon.”
Her due date isn’t until next week. “Why do you say that?”
“I felt really good today.” She always gets a burst of energy the day that she goes into labor.
“Then you should get some sleep, in case he decides to come tonight.”
Westlyn’s prediction comes to pass five hours later when her water breaks, and we rush to the hospital. Same as last time. She’s barely admitted when she tells me that she needs to push.
We finally get to meet our next son or daughter.
Westlyn starts pushing, and the nurse tells her to stop because she needs to get the doctor.
“Hear that, doll? She’s calling the doctor to come.” I lean down and kiss Wes’s forehead. “I love you so much.”
She strokes my face with her hand. “I love you, too. But that doctor needs to come because I won’t be able to stop pushing when I have another contraction.”
“You have to breathe and not push.”
“Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen. This baby is coming. It doesn’t care who’s ready.”
Westlyn’s physician comes into the room. “Oh… it’s coming. I’m trying… but I can’t stop it.”
He hurriedly puts on a pair of gloves. No gown. “It’s all right, Mrs. Hendry. Just means it’s time to meet this wee one.”
I watch the head of our third child emerge from my wife’s body, and the doctor suctions his nose and mouth. Westlyn’s legs are shaking, and she’s breathing erratically when she reaches up to grab me. She pulls me down and squeezes me around the back of my neck. “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.”
“You’re almost finished. Push him out.”
Westlyn releases her ironfisted hold on me and works to catch her breath. She pulls her legs back, her eyes squeezed tightly, her brow wrinkled. A pair of tears escapes her eyes, and it breaks my heart to see her suffering in silence.
“Here he or she comes.”
I hear a gush of fluid and then a piercing cry—our baby’s first sound.
“It’s a boy.”
She falls against the bed, exhausted, and I kiss the top of her head. “You did it, Wes. We have another son.
He’s placed on her chest where the nurses wipe him clean, cover his head with a blue beanie, and stuff him inside his mother’s gown. Skin-to-skin.
Westlyn puts him to the breast, and it only takes a few minutes for him to figure out how to latch on. “Look at our boy, Kieran. He’s so much like Lachlan and you.”
“Ethan Graham Hendry.” I lower my face so I can get a better look at my son. “I already love him as much as I do Lachlan and Bristol.”
“Me too.”
I look at our third child and know that I owe all of my happiness to Westlyn. Without her, I wouldn’t know this kind of love and joy.
When I stole this beautiful woman, all I had in my heart was anger and rage and malice. I had cruel intentions. But then everything changed. My affection for her was unexpected. My love, unintended.
The End
Redemption
Book Six
Leith and Lorna’s Story
I was on my way to having everything that I wanted… until I opened that door. That’s when my entire world shattered. In a single second, my happy life was gone.
She broke my heart. There, I admit it. But a Fellowship man doesn’t mourn the loss of a woman. He moves on to the next one. And the next. But what I quickly discover is that it doesn’t matter how many women I’m with. I’ll never find one who can replace Lorna Frazier.
I’ve been an arse, doing everything within my power to hurt her. And I’ve been successful at it. But it doesn’t heal the pain of losing the woman that I love. She is my everything, and I’m nothing without her.
Apart, we’re weak. Together, we’re strong.
Apart, we’re in hell. Together, we’re in heaven.
Apart, we’re broken. Together, we’re whole.
I won’t give up on us.
Prologue
Leith Duncan
Four Years Earlier
Left side of the room. The middle. Right side of the room. Behind her. Lorna’s head turns from one side to the other, and her eyes scan the members of our brotherhood surrounding her.
She’s looking for something. Someone?
Me?
I watch her. Unable to resist, I study her face and body and analyze her facial expressions and body language. It’s all part of an attempt to gain some insight into what’s going through her mind.
I do it a lot—watch her while she’s unaware. It’s impossible not to when she sashays around my pub wearing the Duncan’s uniform. No one looks like she does in that blouse and kilt.
I want to get closer. Close enough to smell the peach and cherry-blossom body spray on her skin. Her signature fragrance. That shite drives me crazy. Just a single whiff of it makes me hard.
One of her arms crosses over the other, and that’s my cue. I’ve indulged for too long in my little spying game.
“May I have this dance, Miss Frazier?”
Lorna unfolds her arms and looks at me over her shoulder. I love watching her dimples form, but I especially love watching those small depressions in her flesh deepen when her eyes meet mine. Because I know that her smile is especially for me.
She clears her voice and whispers, “You already know that you can have anything you want where I’m concerned.”
“Do I know that?”
She turns around and both brows lift, widening her brown-green-golden eyes. No one has eyes like hers. They’re like chameleons, always changing colors. “You should.”
“Perhaps I need reminding again.”
I slip my hand inside of hers and lead her to the center of the dance floor. Once we blend into the dancing couples around us, I pull her close. Probably closer than I should, but I don’t care. And even if I did, I can’t help myself. This woman does something to me.
No, this woman does everything to me.
Lorna Frazier. She’s the first thing to come into my head when I wake and the last before I fall asleep. And that isn’t the end of it. She constantly enters my thoughts throughout the day. I can’t get enough of her. She consumes me. No woman has ever had that kind of power over me.
The longer we dance, the closer we become. And the closer we get to exposing our secret.
“I love this song,” she says.
“I don’t know it.”
I’m not usually a fan of the bands that The Fellowship hires to play at weddings, but this one isn’t half bad. Their music isn’t a repeat of the typical wedding songs that the other bands perform.
“This is ‘Moonlight’ by Dan Owen. But I’m not surprised by your not knowing it. Your taste in music is…”
The corners of her mouth curl upward and she looks away.
“My taste in music is what?”
“Not the least bit romantic.”
I’m a man and not just any man. I’m Fellowship. I don’t do romance and Lorna knows this about me. “Why should my choice in music ever be romantic?” The final word of that sentence leaves a bad aftertaste on my tongue.
Those dimples that I love so much slowly disappear, and the light in her eyes fades. “I guess there is no reason.”
I don’t like the sadness I see on her face and hear in her voice. And I especially don’t like the distance that is growing between her body and mine.
I lower my head and place my mouth against her ear. “Have I upset you?”
She shakes her head. “Don’t be silly. I’m not that girl, the one who pouts because she doesn’t get wooed by the man in her bed.”
The man in her bed. Singular, implying that I’m the only one, and that isn’t the case. I share Lorna with another. And I’ve come to hate every fucking second of it. But at least it’s an improvement from when I used to share her with two men.
But I don’t want to think about that right now.
Sin will be tied up at this wedding for the rest of the night. There’s zero chance of him intruding on my alone time with Lorna this evening. And I plan on taking advantage. “We should wish Logan and Emilia our best and get out of here.”
“And where would we go?”
“You know exactly where we’d go.”
Her smile returns. “Another one-on-one?”
“Aye. Just you and me tonight in our special place. What do you say?”
“I say that you leave first. I’ll follow fifteen minutes later and meet you at your flat.”
The song ends and my lovely raven beauty steps away, slightly lowering her face and bending at the knees. “Thank you for the dance, Mr. Duncan.”
Her curtsy is proper and old-school, just the way Edin taught her it should be.
She doesn’t look anything like a woman who is about to get fucked into oblivion.
“It was my pleasure, Miss Frazier.” The first of many that I plan to have with you tonight.
At least a dozen brothers prevent me from leaving as I’m on my way out the door. All of the bastards want to talk tonight, and it takes much longer than I’d like to slip away from the wedding reception. I suspect the same must be true for Lorna as well since I’ve been waiting for her at my flat for almost an hour.
Lorna: Sorry. On my way now. Be there soon.
Leith: You better be. I want you beneath me right now.
I grab a whisky and turn on some music, thumbing through my favorite playlist. And Lorna is right. My taste in music works for me, but it is gruff and unromantic for a woman.
Lorna wants to be wooed. She didn’t come out and say the words, but I heard them loud and clear. And I want to give her everything that she desires.
Her knock is soft, just like the music that’s playing when she comes through my front door.
“Sorry, I’m—”
I put an end to her apology when I push her back against the interior side of my front door. With my hand in the back of her hair and my mouth pressed against hers, a soft moan emits from the back of her throat, making my already-hard dick throb against the zipper of my trousers.
Her mouth opens and our tongues meet, moving frantically against each other at first, but then they slow to the rhythm of the song playing through the surround speakers in my flat.
“Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” by Cigarettes After Sex. Maybe
not the most romantic song in the world, but it fits us. Or at least it fits the way I want us to be.
My mouth leaves hers and moves down the side of her neck, leaving kisses in a path.
“This song… it’s soft and slow,” she whispers.
“I know. I chose it for you.”
“I love it.”
My hands grip the backs of her lower thighs and lift. In one fluid motion, her arms encase my shoulders and her legs wrap around my waist.
“Take me to your bed.”
I’ve shared Lorna with Jamie and Sin more times than I care to admit, but never at my place. My bed is a refuge where it’s always been only the two of us. I think of it as our hideaway where she belongs to only me. I never have to share her when we’re here.
Our one-on-ones have been happening more and more frequently. And each time I have her all to myself, it only manages to increase my inclination to make her mine. Only mine.
This arrangement, the three of us sharing her, was Lorna’s idea. And for months, the sex was hot as fuck. But something unforeseen happened along the way.
I fell in love with Lorna Frazier.
I. Fell. In. Love. And I don’t even know how it happened.
Fucking. Lie.
I know exactly how it happened.
It began when we started seeing each other one-on-one behind Jamie’s and Sin’s backs. She could have chosen any one of us to be alone with. But she chose me—a Duncan by birth. A simple pub owner. Not a Breckenridge. Not the next leader of The Fellowship. Not the well-educated doctor.
Our secret trysts had been going on for a few months when Jamie stopped joining our foursomes. I can’t lie. I was happy to have one less person taking a turn with her. And I had hoped that Sin, too, would lose interest. But he hasn’t, and it’s becoming a huge problem for me; he’s standing in the way of my having Lorna all to myself.
Complete Sin Box Set Page 111