Chapter 7 #2
Galen crept around the kitchen island. He touched his gun, but he didn’t think for a second that it was an enemy on the other side of the wall.
No, it was a nosey little woman who didn’t know how to follow orders.
Sure enough, when he burst into the formal dining room, he was greeted with a startled yip and the sight of Meg landing on her ass.
Amusement crept through him as she climbed to her feet, as dignified as a queen, and brushed imaginary dust from her jeans. Meg lifted her chin. “Galen.”
“Meg.” He raised his eyebrows at her audacity. She was just going to brazen through this, and hell if that didn’t have him fighting a smile. “I could have sworn you were ordered to go upstairs.”
She raised her eyebrows in response, a perfect mirroring of his expression. “How am I supposed to know what’s going on if you send me away every time you’re about to have an important conversation?”
“You could ask.”
She opened her mouth, seemed to reconsider, and shut it. Those witchy hazel eyes flashed. “You wouldn’t tell me.”
“Too late to find out now.” He grabbed her and tossed her over his shoulder, enjoying the way she yipped again and immediately started cursing him out.
He walked back into the kitchen to find Theo had made good use of his time.
Half the groceries were unloaded. Galen gave Meg the tiniest of shakes. “We have an eavesdropper.”
“So I gathered.”
Meg finally managed to finish sputtering. She smacked his back. “Put me down, asshole. You can’t just manhandle me whenever you feel like it. I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t sign up for any of this.”
He couldn’t argue that, but she seemed to be forgetting one crucial fact.
Galen readjusted his grip on her, sliding her more securely onto his shoulder.
“Funny, but I could have sworn Theo offered to get you set up somewhere while we dealt with this problem. You chose to come with us, just like you chose to ignore my order to keep yourself out of this. So tell me again how you didn’t sign up for any of it. ”
She just cursed more viciously.
Galen met Theo’s gaze, his friend weighing her response. Theo finally grinned, the first real grin Galen had seen on him in months. “I’d say this infraction deserves a punishment, wouldn’t you, Galen?”
“If you try to spank me, I will fucking gut you.”
Galen tilted his head in question, but Theo was focused entirely on Meg.
He motioned for Galen to set her on the counter, which he was only too happy to do.
They might be tempted to play this game out, but the truth was that Meg hadn’t signed up for the mess she was on the receiving end of.
She was a civilian. No matter how he’d warned her, she couldn’t be expected to know the stakes.
Before.
She knew them now.
Theo moved to stand opposite her, just out of reach. “Spanking, princess? Don’t be so pedestrian.”
She looked at him for a second like she might actually try to follow through on her threat, and Galen tensed in response. But just like that, the rage melted away, replaced some irritation. She pointed at Galen. “Don’t pick me up again.”
“Don’t eavesdrop on conversations you’re not invited into.”
She glared, turning that accusatory finger on Theo. “And you—no punishing. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Theo gave a slow smile that had Galen’s pulse picking up. He knew what that expression meant. Meg was playing right into his hands, and he had her exactly where he wanted her. “There’s a reward at the end, so I think you’ll find the punishment is more than worthwhile.”
She blinked. The moment spun out between the three of them, ripe with possibility.
Galen should have said something, done something, to put an end to it, but when it came right down to it, he was a selfish bastard.
He’d always been one. In the months since the exile, he’d only seen Theo put down his weight of responsibility twice—both times when he was inside Meg.
She did something for Theo that Galen was incapable of.
Theo looked at Galen, and he saw endless reminders of home.
Of what they’d lost. Of the price he’d paid for being caught flat-footed.
Meg was outside it all.
Or at least she had been.
Theo let the silence spin on and on, and then he stepped forward and patted Meg’s knee. “Later, princess. No need to make a decision now. Let’s eat.”
Meg’s body was a traitor. Or maybe Theo was a sorcerer. Or perhaps it was that Galen infected her with lust with just his touch. More likely, it was a combination of all three.
Her eavesdropping hadn’t netted her any worthwhile information.
Theo’s cousin seemed untrustworthy, and there was something about a clinic being burned down and records lost, but without context clues, it might as well have been in Latin for all she understood it.
And then Galen tossing her over his shoulder and Theo talking of punishment…
Meg prized herself as a smart woman. She wouldn’t have made it to where she was in life without brains and drive and being too stubborn to back down even when the going got hard.
The going started hard. It was just life, and she didn’t know when to quit—or at least that was what her mother accused when she got a good drunk going.
Girl, you don’t know when to quit. One of these days, life is going to kick you right good in the teeth and then you’ll be sitting where I am now, drinking away your pain.
No.
Never.
Meg stared at her glass of wine. Falling into bed—back into bed—with Theo and Galen was a mistake.
It had to be. Their strings had already entangled her and tipped everything she knew as truth on its head.
They might feel a little bad that she was paying the consequences of their mutual pleasure, but she didn’t get the feeling that either of them would do anything different.
Would you?
That wasn’t fair.
But then, life wasn’t fair. She knew that all too intimately.
She was here. They were here. The danger lurked in the shadows around them and showed no signs of dissipating anytime soon. She’d refused their offer to set her up somewhere until this all blew over, refused to sit on her hands while important things in her life were decided without her presence.
What more could she possibly lose by throwing sex back into the mix?
More than you can possibly imagine.
“Meg?”
She blinked and realized that the conversation had gone on without her.
Dinner was long gone, the plates cleared and only the wine left behind.
Meg picked up her glass to cover her embarrassment, hoping like hell they thought her blush was about zoning out and not picturing them all naked together.
“Sorry, I was thinking of something else.”
Theo lounged in his chair on the other side of the table, a small smile pulling at the edges of his lips. “You’ve been distracted ever since we sat down to eat. Something weighing on your mind?”
You ass, you know exactly what’s weighing on my mind. This so-called punishment. She sipped her wine. “Should there be?”
“You’ve been going over all the possibilities for punishment Theo could have possibly cooked up in that big brain of his.” Galen stared her down with those dark, dark eyes, daring her to deny it.
Conversations with him were a game of chicken. Even when she knew she should back down or swerve, she couldn’t stop herself from rising to the bait. “I’m a grown ass woman. I will not be punished just because I happened to overhear part of your conversation.”
“Hmmm.” Theo contemplated his wine glass as if it held all the mysteries of the universe.
“It’s a game, princess. We all know how well you like to play when you’re inspired.
” There was that smile again, the one that promised to fulfill all her darkest, filthiest fantasies.
And, damn it, she knew he could do it, too.
Theo pushed his chair back. “But never let it be said that we coerced you.” He finished off his wine and glanced at Galen, which was all the other man needed to push to his feet and follow Theo toward the doorway.
Meg stared. “What are you doing?”
Galen disappeared through the doorway, but his shadow darkened the wall just out of sight.
Theo turned to face her. “You know what lies on the other side of punishment. If that’s something you want, we’ll be in the last bedroom at the end of the hallway.
” He paused, blue eyes stripping her bare, laying all her sins on the table between them.
Theo shrugged. “If that’s not something you want, then this ends here. ”
“Ends?” She swallowed past her suddenly dry throat. Surely, he wasn’t saying what she thought he was saying.
“We’ll keep you safe, Meg. The money stays where it’s at, no strings attached.
This?” He motioned to encompass both of them and Galen.
“This is a separate thing. If you want it—us—then you have to make that call. No coercion. No seducing you out of your senses. You come into this with eyes wide open.”
“Theo…” She didn’t know what to say. It had been so easy before, when she didn’t know the extent of who he and Galen were, and later when she was so furious she told herself it didn’t matter anyways.
Choosing this now meant something, and she couldn’t lie to herself and say it didn’t. “What if I change my mind?”
He didn’t look away. “Then you change your mind. I’m not demanding you sign a lifetime contract, princess. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. My life isn’t my own.”
It belonged to Thalania.
That right there should be enough to warn her off. She couldn’t have Theo in any permanent way, and Meg knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she couldn’t have Galen without Theo. He offered her something temporary, and if she couldn’t accept that, then she had no business going up to that room.
“Think about it. Be sure.” He turned without another word and walked away, Galen falling in half a step behind him.
Meg should clean the wine glasses and go up to the room where they’d left her bags.
Not the one at the end of the hallway, though she remembered that room well enough from their quick rush to clear the house.
The obvious master bedroom in a mansion full of suites, the walk-in closet bigger than her entire apartment back home, the massive jacuzzi tub and even larger tiled shower with no fewer than five shower heads.
And the bed.
That bed was large enough to fit five people, situated on a massive wrought iron frame, each corner spiraling up as if attempting to kiss the arched ceiling. That bed was made for fucking.
There is the punishment to consider…
The warning lacked any weight, though. Meg drank her wine slowly, letting the truth settle over her.
There had never been any decision to be made.
Her destination was decided the second she chose to come with Theo and Galen.
Facing that, acknowledging that, burned.
If she had nothing else, she had her pride, and her pride demanded she ignore Theo’s offer and go to bed alone.
Better to lay there and imagine all the dirty things they could be doing than submit to a punishment like she was a naughty child.
But was it really better?
No.
Last spring, she’d thought she’d only have one night with Galen and Theo and so she’d soaked up every minute with them, a starving woman at a feast she’d never be able to consume in a lifetime.
This truth they chased—the one both were so sure would set Theo back on the throne—might have a conclusion in a day, a week, a month.
Or it might stretch out for the next nine months as the clock ticked down to Edward Fitzcharles’s coronation.
Either way, was she really prepared to deprive them all of something they wanted for the sake of her pride?
Meg finished her wine. She washed all three of their glasses and set them in the drying rack.
She walked upstairs and into her room and took the quickest shower of her life, not even pausing to enjoy the mosaic art tiled into the shower walls.
After the briefest of considerations, she pulled on a short silk robe hanging on the back of the door.
She might be doing this, but she wasn’t willing to show up naked as an offering.
Taking a deep breath, she padded down the hallway to the door Theo had indicated. She raised her hand to knock and then reconsidered. Meg twisted the handle and walked in.
Galen sat propped against the headboard, a tablet in his hand, wearing nothing but a pair of faded jeans.
She spent a precious second visually tracing the scars that crisscrossed his chest. He glanced up and went still.
“Theo.” Theo stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. He didn’t say anything, both of them seemed to be waiting for something.
Waiting for her.
This was her last chance to bolt.
She straightened her shoulders and met each of their gazes in turn. “I’m ready for my punishment.”