Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ISABELLE
“Why did you want to be a doctor?” I whispered, my head resting over Seb’s chest, rising with his gentle breathing, my fingertips grazing Ben’s where he still slept on Seb’s other side.
Seb was quiet while he thought. “Some time after I first met Ben I suppose.” He paused to think again.
“Ben made me realise there are plenty of people out there who don’t get the support they deserve.
It seemed so simple, so easy to give, and yet he was offered nothing.
I knew I could help people to feel better. ”
I smiled, of course he could. “Do you enjoy it as much as you hoped?”
My head jostled slightly as he huffed. “Sometimes.” He fell silent.
“Because?” I prompted. It wasn’t very Seb-like to be so cloak and dagger.
“Sometimes I get to help people. Sometimes there’s less helping than I would like.
Plus being a local GP comes with other considerations.
Everyone knows me, the visibility of being a good, upstanding gentleman in society.
Well, sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have gone into a speciality, worked in a hospital, to keep me out of village drama and pearl clutching, you know? ” he explained.
I wasn’t entirely sure I did know, but I could imagine. Small-town life couldn’t be too dissimilar to political life, what with everyone being in each other’s business.
“He means that he finds it frustrating being everyone’s doctor, and he hates that he’s the most eligible bachelor for miles. He can’t move for people trying to set him up with their granddaughters,” Ben offered sleepily, drawing my fingers between his and rubbing them gently.
“Oh,” I muttered. How did I feel about that? I mean I’d fallen for Seb almost immediately – the delay only caused by my trouble accepting his sincerity for what it was? Of course he was fawned over.
“Jealous, Killer?” Seb’s arm tightened around my back.
“No,” I lied. “Of course you’d be the man to catch. Both of you. Even Mr Personality I suppose.”
Ben chuckled and I gave in to the urge to clamber over Seb unceremoniously to wedge myself between the two. Placing my head directly back over Seb’s chest to hear the steady thud of his heartbeat, Ben turned inwards curling his body around mine. My heart sang at the closeness.
“That we are.” Seb’s fingers found my hair and began gently running through the strands.
“Seb is the most desirable, that’s why he runs away from town every chance he gets.
” Ben slung his leg over my hip, I hoped because he was as desperate as I was to mould our bodies so close there wasn’t an atom of space separating us.
I clutched his leg. He wasn’t getting this back.
“Then Alex, the Cavendish heir. Me, not so much, I’m too different,” he emphasised the last word.
“Fuck them,” I snapped before Seb could interject but my anger was met with quiet chuckles from the men.
“I don’t care, Sugar,” Ben whispered in my ear. “I’ve never met anyone I wanted outside of Seb.” My chest warmed at the admission of how deep and long their affection for each other had run, but then my happiness dipped slightly at how much I wanted to be loved the way they did each other.
I needn’t have even allowed that to factor for me because Ben spoke clearly.
“Until you.” He kissed my head and joy surged. I squeezed them both everywhere I touched them.
“We both feel that way, Killer. And Ben’s not exactly right. There are plenty of women, and men, who hold interest in us, and Mr Personality.” Seb still petted my hair gently as he spoke. “But neither of them notice because they’re unobservant, and frankly reclusive at times.”
Ben murmured an objection.
“And I have to put up with their ongoing advances because this one won’t agree to settle down with me.” Seb’s comment was intended as light-hearted but I could hear the pain in it.
“I’m keeping his options open,” Ben replied.
Seb and I froze.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“Seb has a world of opportunities open to him. I’m not going to let him tie himself to me and this life. Not when he could do anything, go anywhere. His future is so bright.” Ben was so matter-of-fact in his words that I turned to face him.
Seb waited for me to settle before pressing our bodies back together, both of us facing Ben.
“You’re for it now, Benji,” Seb chided, releasing me briefly to reach for something. The blinds lifted a fraction and he wrapped me back up. “I want to be able to see your face for this bollocking.”
Ben’s face was clearer in the sliver of light and I watched him closely; he gave nothing away. No pain or hurt. He believed Seb deserved more than him.
“Benjamin Cavendish.” I used my teacher voice, several years as a doctorate tutor and teaching aide had to matter for something. “How dare you?”
Ben’s features lifted in surprise, maybe he had expected a lecture and my reaction was a shock.
“I don’t know what you mean?” he replied.
“How dare you assume for Seb what he wants or needs?” I asked, my hurt for Seb making me emphatic in my tone. “This man loves you, and has done since he was young, and you choose to keep him at arm’s length because you believe you know better? That you aren’t enough?”
Ben frowned. “I suppose so, yes,” he admitted.
“And you stand by that?” I pressed.
Ben paused to think. “I do believe that, yes.”
“How would you feel if I said the same thing? That I wouldn’t settle down with Seb, if I could.” Seb squeezed me so tightly I had to wait for him to release me to continue. “That he should have more than me? That I wasn’t enough?”
Ben tutted. “That’s not the same.”
“The fuck it isn’t,” Seb jumped in. “You’re as perfect to me as Killer is. We are who we are and I love you because of it, because it is part of you. Just like I love that Killer is wilful and also won’t listen to reason.”
Bugger. “We aren’t talking about me, Seb.” I tried to bring it back on track. “You deserve happiness, Ben. And I know happiness for you is Seb. I saw it the first day I arrived.”
Ben looked distinctly uncomfortable. “It doesn’t change how I feel about what I would choose for Seb.” He paused. “But I understand, Izzy.”
His concern softened and I ran my fingers so gently over his cheekbones, pushing his hair back from his face to look at him.
“I love you.” I choked on the words. “Both of you.”
They mumbled their agreement.
“I’m so pleased you have each other. It will bring me so much comfort when I’m gone.”
Alex was ignoring me. How could he be ignoring me?
It wasn’t in a ‘she doesn’t exist’ way, it was more ships passing in the night.
“Talk to him,” Seb whispered in my ear from his position behind me.
I was wrapped between his arms and legs on the sofa. The fire raged in the hearth, the trusty blankets tucked up over our legs and Ben sat opposite us, his feet extended, wedged amongst ours so no-one was left disconnected.
It was everything. And yet, Alex.
I looked at the darkening sky, waiting for the turn in the still cool weather and wedged myself deeper into Seb’s hold, tucking my foot under Ben’s trouser leg until our bare skin touched. His lips quirked while his attention remained on his book.
In the forty-eight hours since we’d been back, the men had barely left my side.
Since they moved me into Ben’s room we now did everything together.
Waking up in a tangle of limbs, I hadn’t showered alone, Seb had been begging for a bath together but no bath would be big enough for the three of us and I wouldn’t refuse either of them.
I wanted them with me whenever they wanted to be.
Ben’s routine shifted, something Alex made sure to grumble about vocally. He stayed wherever Seb and I were now. Even when he did go outside to the workshop, Seb and I trailed him.
Another of Alex’s complaints was the lack of movement, but Seb simply shut him down with graphic descriptions of whatever we had been up to in – or indeed out of – the bedroom, earning him a snarl and a few choice words.
I turned a page and Seb tutted in my ear causing me to reverse the page turn and wait for his mumble to confirm that he was ready for the next.
I was a quicker reader and although he knew the book inside and out, he still couldn’t keep up.
“I’d been thinking about this one, Killer,” he murmured, slightly louder so Ben could hear. “Now I know Benji likes his workshop a specific way.”
Ben closed his book, looking up with an arched brow.
“And we’ve done a little play time in there. But all the bodice ripping in the outhouse between our beloved Viv and Rory had me thinking about doing some bodice ripping of our own? I’ve always been a fan of a role play?”
I snickered to hide the shudder brought on by the image.
“Maybe we find a stow-away in the barn and she’s deeply unloved and two frankly beautiful men worship her for a night?
” His hands ran down my stomach. “Or, if we’re feeling a little more adventurous, we could go more in the direction of a sexy thief who is caught red-handed in the barn, so we have her repay a debt with her body? ”
Ben was enraptured, a devilish smile playing over his features. Bloody Seb.
“Right.” I replaced my page marker and closed the book. “Straight off, you’re not ripping a single item of my clothing. I have like four tops.”
“Not to worry, I offer one of mine as a willing sacrifice,” he replied.
“Two, that’s sounding a little porn-trope heavy, wouldn’t you say?” I tried to infuse the lightest reprimand into my tone. “Very damsel in distress, heavy on the objectification?”
“Wow!” Seb turned me slightly for the full effect of his faux-shock. “Miss Blackthorne, are you saying you don’t enjoy our objectification?”
I raised my palm to cover the smile then schooled my features. “Not at all, I’m just wondering why I am the damsel or the thief in this scenario. Let’s share the objectification.”
“She has a point.” Ben’s foot softly grazed the skin of my leg.
“See?” I reached for Ben’s hand, entwining our fingers letting the connection to his body bleed into me, as if it were filling some well of affection or care.
“I understand.” Seb turned solemn. “I apologise, allow me to amend my recommendations.”
He cleared his throat dramatically.
“A naughty, if stunning, tall, dark and handsome man, with ensnaring green eyes and a smile that could leave you breathless, is found stowed away in the workshop. You aren’t sure if he’s hiding or stealing, but his beauty and his evident craving for you would be just too much to withstand and it all ends in a shirt-tearing, sweaty-bodied exploration of sexual desire.
” Seb finished his description by rolling his tongue over his lip and the thread of amusement in his suggestion was lost.
“Sounds like Seb’s unearthing some mildly submissive tendencies,” Ben commented.
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I’ll happily accept a spanking if it’s one of you two administering it? I can switch for a while.” Seb dragged me back into his chest.
Alex took that moment to slam a thick set of paperwork onto the coffee table, a bottle of brandy and a glass followed placed much more carefully.
Clearly he wanted to announce his arrival.
He may have been ignoring me but the fact he was absolutely bloody everywhere only made it more palpable that we weren’t… talking? We weren’t anything.
Still, instead of working from his study he took over the kitchen table. He stayed up later at night. He called into the workshop on the few brief occasions we ventured out there.
I wasn’t an idiot. He was choosing to be in our company. In my company. But every time he was he didn’t really speak, or join in with our conversation at all, or make any small talk. And if he did, it was aimed at Seb or Ben. Otherwise, he just existed near us.
This moment was no exception to that.
“Nice of you to join us, Alex.” Seb broke the silence Alex had created. “We were just talking about spanking.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Alex growled. “Of course you are.”
“Killer here was arguing against female objectification and porn storylines, I offered myself as tribute. Unless you want in?” Seb pushed.
“Hard pass,” Alex snipped, pouring a drink, the ice cubes clinking.
“Liar.” Seb chuckled. “You’d love to be objectified by our Killer.”
“She’s not our anything,” Alex responded quickly.
The barb landed and I scowled at the rejection. He had put words to the belief I held secretly; I wasn’t anything to Alex.
“She’s our everything,” Seb cut him down, Ben voicing his agreement. “And she’d willingly be your something if you stopped being such a fucking dick.”
Alex discarded the papers at Seb’s challenge. “Stop calling me that,” he bit out.
“I’ll stop calling you it when you stop being it,” Seb argued.
“Seb,” I whispered sharply. “Leave it.”
“Nope.” He didn’t lower his tone to match mine.
“You won’t talk to him, he’s stomping around the house like a little boy whose favourite toy is about to be stolen, despite not even acknowledging it.
He’s everywhere, hovering on the periphery but refusing to actually cross the line and take what he fucking wants!
” Seb’s irritation was rising. “He’s being a brat. ”
“Don’t forget a fucking dickhead,” Alex goaded Seb.
“Correct!” Seb stood suddenly, taking me with him.
I threw a startled look at Ben who simply smiled calmly.
“Don’t worry, Sugar,” he cooed. “Alex only responds with action when he’s called out on his shit.”
“Okay.” I wriggled in Seb’s arms. “But I’ve got no interest in being stuck in the middle of this.”
“Incorrect, Killer.” Seb was a wall behind me, his body stiff but his hands cupping my body, no real pressure to them.
“Need I remind you of the first time we met, Sebastian? The fall would be much harsher in here,” I warned him.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Killer.” He leaned his head into the nape of my neck, placed a kiss there and whispered, “Trust me.”
I shuddered, conceding with a nod.
“So, what will it be, Alexander? The man of facts, harsh realities and brutal truths, and the only one here who’s living in total denial.” Seb ran his fingers up my arm, over my shoulder to caress my throat. “Are you going to keep watching from the sidelines, denying yourself?”
Alex’s lip curled and he shot out of his chair. “Back off, Seb. You’re overstepping.”
“Hard pass,” Seb mocked Alex’s earlier comment. “Okay, but if you’re going to torture yourself, at least let me in on the fun.”
Seb cupped my jaw and turned me to face him, taking my lips in a heavy kiss. Angling my face to put me exactly where he wanted he drove his tongue inside my mouth and claimed it.
Any awkwardness I felt at his display fell away almost immediately and I softened in his hold, Seb groaning into my mouth at my compliance.
“Seb!” I heard the snarl from Alex. “God damn it, Seb!”
Seb only deepened the kiss until I was snatched from his hold, his hands releasing me immediately. I was spun, large hands tugging me into a solid body.
Then Alex kissed me.