Chapter 8
Meg couldn’t breathe. She was here. She was doing this.
The implications stretched out before her, tangling over each other and leaving only a mess in their wake.
Nothing good would come of this in the long term.
But she’d been focused on the long term for so damn long.
The next step, the end game, the path that would lead her out of the trap she’d been born into.
That would help her realize the American Dream.
She almost laughed at the thought. If that dream existed anymore, it came attached with crippling student debt and a Xanax prescription to battle existential dread.
None of that mattered, because it was hers and hers alone.
It paved the way for her independence and her freedom, and for that she’d make sacrifices too innumerable to count.
None of that mattered in this moment. The future didn’t matter, either, because it didn’t exist for them. If Theo somehow reclaimed his birthright, he would be King of Thalania, and no matter what the stories said, kings didn’t marry poor girls from Michigan who wanted to be accountants.
Strangely enough, that realization freed her up to take the first step and then another, to close the door softly behind her. Both men stared at her as if weighing her declaration against the truth, so she waited. She’d made her choice. She came. She damn well wouldn’t repeat herself.
Theo moved first. He didn’t ask her if she was sure.
He’d made the lines pretty damn clear before she ever walked into this room.
He walked to circle her, trailing a single finger along the line of her shoulders, lifting her dark hair to sift his hands through it.
“Very nice, princess.” He stopped behind her and pressed himself to her back.
“Don’t you think she looks nice, Galen?”
Galen typed something on his tablet and set it aside. “She looks like trouble.”
“Because that’s exactly what she is.”
They talked about her as if she wasn’t even there. She hated it. She loved it. Meg licked her lips, unable to contain a shiver at the feeling of Theo’s breath ghosting down her neck. She heard his grin in his voice. “You know the rules, Meg.”
No point in pretending otherwise. “I say stop, it all stops.”
“Yes.” He kissed her just under her ear, a spot he seemed to gravitate toward. Theo maneuvered her until she stood at the foot of the bed, framed by those massive iron spirals. He snapped his fingers at Galen. “The ties.”
“The ties?”
Galen reached into the nightstand and tossed two sets of cuffs to the foot of the bed. Meg stared at them, at what they represented, something hot and ugly squeezing her chest. “You have bondage gear in your nightstand.”
“Galen likes to be prepared.” Theo reached around her to pick up one, his big hands moving over it with the ease of long familiarity.
They’d done this before.
Of course they’d done this before.
She didn’t think they were coming to her virgins—she certainly was no innocent before they met—but somehow being faced with bondage gear that they must have used on some other woman, maybe in this very room. The ugly feeling inside her gained teeth and claws.
And then Galen was in front of her, clasping her chin tight enough that little sparks of pain flickered along her skin. “Where did you go?”
“I’m right here.” The words came out wrong, sharp and cutting. He looked over her shoulder and she smacked his wrist. “Stop that. I’m not some wild thing to be handled, and talking about me like I’m not there, like I’m just some toy that’s interchangeable with any other—”
“Interchangeable?” Theo murmured in her ear. “Do you really think that?”
Galen’s frown cleared, leaving something almost smug in its wake.
“Your princess is jealous, Theo.” He sat back on his heels on the mattress, towering over both of them.
“For all your eavesdropping, you don’t listen very well.
We’ve never been in this house before today.
” He watched her look at the cuffs again and gave a cutting smile.
“Theo is very particular about what goes into his bedroom.”
“I—”
He grabbed the other cuff and held it in front of her face.
Soft fabric lined the inside of her where it would clasp a wrist or ankle, shielding sensitive skin from the bite of leather.
Galen turned it so she could see the leather itself.
It was so new, it shone in the low light, not a single crease marking it as used.
Oh.
Shame withered her jealousy, and she couldn’t quite make herself hold his gaze.
Theo tucked a single finger under her chin, lifting her face to Galen.
He murmured against her ear. “No one has been in this house since it was renovated.” He snapped one cuff around her wrist and Galen tightened it.
“No one has slept in these rooms.” They repeated the process with her other wrist. “No one has fucked on this bed, or in the shower, or in the tub.” Galen reached up and snagged a metal tether she hadn’t seen woven in with the iron bedpost. He adjusted the length and attached her left cuff to it, and then did the same with the right.
It left her spread, her arms held up and away from her body. Helpless.
Theo traced the edge of her robe, parting the fabric easily.
Giving Galen a show. He nipped her neck, his voice low and almost dangerous.
“We’ll fuck you here, princess. We’ll fuck you in every bedroom, and then we’ll take you downstairs and fuck across this entire goddamn house.
” He cupped her breasts, rolling her nipples between his fingers until she arched back against him.
“On every surface. Against every wall. Until none of us can ever walk into this place without seeing it overlaid with those memories.”
She wouldn’t be walking into this house again once this was over.
He and Galen would.
Warmth spread through her, killing the last of the ugly feeling. She gave the tethers an experimental tug. “Okay.”
The heat of Theo’s body against her back disappeared. He circled around to study the picture she made and nodded to himself. “Part the robe a bit more. I want to see her.”
Galen obeyed, untangling the tie at her waist and pushing the robe until it was only the angle of her bondage that kept it on her shoulders.
He moved away without touching her further, crawling to the edge of the bed and sitting there as Theo came to stand between his big thighs.
He seemed to consider something and nodded to himself.
“Jeans off, Galen. Lay on the bed with your head at the foot.”
She watched helplessly as Galen obeyed, stripping with a casual grace that had heat licking at her skin.
They were so fucking beautiful it took her breath away.
Handsome on their own, but together they somehow become more.
Theo’s refined control played off Galen’s rough and tumble meanness.
Galen looked like some ancient gladiator who’d charged into their midst, big and brutal and scarred.
Theo would have been at home in any aristocracy in Europe, almost pretty and playing at games she could only guess at.
And yet it worked. They worked.
Galen climbed back onto the bed and took the position Theo had indicated, his head inches from where Meg stood.
The mattress was tall enough that they were even with her hips and she shivered at the sight of Galen laid out like the best kind of feast. His cock was already hard, laying thick and heavy against his stomach, and he watched her with dark eyes that promised things she could only guess at.
Theo tossed his towel to the side and joined Galen on the bed.
He pushed the bigger man’s legs wide and knelt between them.
Theo gripped Galen’s thighs and held perfectly still, his gaze dragging over the man before him and up to where Meg stood.
He was a king surveying his kingdom of two, and she had no doubt in her mind that he’d just planned out the remainder of the night down to the finest detail.
“Are you ready for your punishment, princess?”
“Yes.” The word burst out of her as if summoned, an agreement to something she needed more than she needed air. Her very own deal with the devil, though he didn’t want her soul—he wanted her body.
He gave her a smile with a hint of cruelty. “Good. Be very quiet, and very still, and you’ll get your reward at the end.” He leaned down and took Galen’s cock into his mouth.
Holy shit.
The truth sank into her. She’d been prepared for spankings, a punishment interwoven with pain. She hadn’t been prepared for this.
Galen reached over his head to grip the edge of the mattress as Theo sucked his cock, both of them watching her. If she arched her hips, she might—might—be able to brush against his fingers, but Meg knew without a shadow of a doubt that he’d remove his touch if she tried.
They wanted her strung up like some kind of decoration at the end of the bed, still and silent, while she watched them fuck.
Theo couldn’t have devised a more ingenious punishment. She was going to kill him… as soon as he uncuffed her.
Galen cursed long and hard, and half sat up.
Theo met him there, claiming Galen’s mouth the same way he’d claimed his cock.
Once upon a time, she’d compared them to two opposing forces of nature, and that was never more true than in that moment.
They clashed, their big bodies moving together in a dance older than time.
Galen gripped Theo’s hair and wrenched his head back, kissing his way down his neck.
There was nothing cold and calculated in this.
They’d stopped concentrating on putting on a show for her the second they kissed.
They touched each other like they’d forgotten she was there.