Chapter 34
Georgia
The clearing where we’ve spread our green picnic blanket is surrounded by tall spreading trees.
Oaks and birches, from my paltry knowledge of local flora.
Through the tree trunks, I glimpse hints of a cottage sitting on a small rise.
I’m sure we passed it on the road here. Though there’s no noise from construction, scaffolding encloses the pale, red-brown stone and the two ivy-strewn archways nearest the entry.
The shooting lodge is, I think, on the other side of the mansion.
“Which way is Sir Ben’s mansion?” I ask as we carry to the rug the last of our essential picnic gear—the cashmere throw, a bottle of Chablis and of Pinot Noir, and the hamper. A robin is flitting through the foliage above the car, peeking down at us now and then.
Rafe points behind me.
“Ahh.” I’m totally turned around then.
Lazlo drops the hamper, spreads his arms wide and roars, “Let the frolicking begin!”
The robin swears at him in bird language and disappears, stage left.
“Quiet, you neanderthal.”
I laugh at Rafe’s insult. “Let’s get started. I’m starving.” Sitting cross-legged in my navy leggings and white blouse, I open the cooler bag and poke around to see what Lazlo had made by Sir Ben’s kitchens. “How did they get lobster on such short notice?”
“I twisted the cook’s arm. She likes me, really.” He picks up a bottle, searches for the corkscrew. “I gave her a big kiss.”
I’m smiling because it’s probably true. He has the staff wrapped around his finger.
We dig in as soon as we all have full plates.
The clink of our wine bottles as we fill our glasses adds new notes to the trill of a blue tit hopping about from tree to tree.
The conversation stays casual and never turns to recent dark events while we eat, but this secret of Rafe’s is gnawing at me, as I’m sure he and Laz know.
We clear away the food, leaving only the wine and a few small snack bowls of nuts and cheese cubes.
I take another sip that’s more of a gulp from my glass. The pleasant buzz from the wine is cloaking this afternoon in a longing for more of these days. Nothing but pleasure and fun and sharing a picnic with my lovers.
This is what life should be.
Guilt pokes me. This is too lazy, too indulgent, and even I have to surface at times.
“Here. Lie down.” Laz urges me to lie with my head in his lap where he’s parked a soft cushion.
I do so, breathing out a long breath in contentment. “Very comfy. You make a good sofa, Laz, but I can’t drink lying down.”
“You can have more later. Or has she drunk too much?”
Rafe rearranges himself to sit with his legs alongside mine, but he faces Lazlo. “Later, maybe.” He leans back on his arms. “I figure we need to tell you how things have been sorted out. You okay with hearing some serious business, Georgia?”
“I guess? I’m up to here with therapy talk and doctors.” I make a pensive smile. “And I am weaned off all the drugs.”
“It’s nothing too horrid,” Laz says, stroking my hair off my forehead. “This is the good stuff. The fixing of everything.”
“As well as can be done.” Rafe adds. “Plus some nice things. Presents for good girls.”
“I’m good? I will make a note of this.” I pretend to write on my palm.
“Sometimes.” Lazz agrees but tugs at a strand of my hair. I snag his hand and bring it lower to my neck where I can play with his fingers.
“That can be rescinded.” Rafe rolls my lower body toward him and gives my ass one firm smack. Then he reaches across the rug and the ocean of scattered food bowls, and finds an olive. “The secret.” He pushes the olive at my mouth.
I take a nibble and screw up my face at the tartness. “Go on.”
“Okay. First on the agenda, we’ve talked to the board members, and though they wouldn’t let us meet them again, you are now free.” He eyes me. “We added some clauses.”
I’m free? That means they won’t chase me if I run. “Let me guess. Clauses like you’re still hanging around me being my sexy hot bodyguards? I will agree to that.”
“Definitely.”
“Are we?” Lazlo sounds incredulous.
I try to draw his hand higher so I can bite it, but he resists.
Am I imagining the light that came into Rafe’s eyes when I said that? “I hope you know you’re stuck with me, anyway? Now there are some things I—”
A hand covers my mouth. Laz. I look up and see him looking down.
“Shhh, girl. Is she aiming to get into hot water again?”
Rafe grunts. “As usual.” From the bottom of the hamper, he fishes a plastic wrapped set of papers then holds them up. “These are also what I was trying to say. They declare that you can live in that cottage up there, in perpetuity.”
My eyebrows have climbed and I’m sure my eyes are wide. “Mmm ot?!”
“Translation,” Laz rumbles. “Something, something?”
I scowl at him, shake my head.
“Anyways, it’s yours and we can use it anytime. I will be away sometimes, of course. We can stay in London at a penthouse I have bought too. And there is this little place we are purchasing in Australia. In Tasmania, at the Bay of Fires.”
My eyebrows go even higher and Laz takes his hand away, then lets me spring to my feet. This is so nuts, so fucking incredible. How do I deserve this and these two men? I half-cover my face then I look at the cottage. “How? Where is all the money—”
“Rafe isn’t poor, Georgia.” Laz rises behind me and wraps his arms around my neck and shoulders. I lean into him and cup his forearm then I kiss his arm. He rocks us side-to-side.
“I know but still.”
“It’s partly just your money too.” Rafe points at the cottage. “Since they admitted guilt with Stephanie, they couldn’t very well order you a captive anymore. You have millions coming to you, as well as that new ID, new passport. I told them we trust you.”
“To the ends of the Earth but, just remember,” Laz intones. “We’ll still chase you if you run, then tie you to a tree and do dirty things.”
“This is crazy and perfect, and…” I heave in a shaky breath. “I don’t deserve it but my heart would break if I left you. If you two don’t know that by now.” I sniff. “Well.”
“No crying! Not today!” Laz swings me high into his arms and flips me to face the ground. Then he lowers me onto the rug and straddles my waist.
I swallow and my heartbeat thuds faster as I realize where this is going. We haven’t done more than cuddle and kiss since we returned from Morocco. The day so many died and we were rescued and… Yeah. That.
But, I can feel his hard-on pressing along the small of my back.
He brings himself down to murmur to my ear, rubbing his beard over my skin—which makes me want to smack him but also makes me melt a moment later—I am so contradictory.
He’s tonguing me there, his breath hot, his body heavy and pressing me into the ground, until I feel myself awaken below.
My clit and nipples are swelling and erecting as my body gets clued in. They want to fuck me. God, yes.
I need this. I wriggle on the rug and he chuckles, bites my ear, and whispers dirty words. “Going to fuck you now, little doll.”
Rafe is standing before me, towering there, and he begins to undress—unbuttoning his shirt first. “I wanted to christen the cottage by doing this up there, but it’s fenced off.
The workmen aren’t there, or they’d get a free show.
” He squats, still wearing his pants but shoeless and shirtless. “Wouldn’t they?”
“How rough are we being?” Laz says then he takes my hands and holds them pinned to either side. “Well?” he asks me as he grinds on my ass. “A little? A lot?”
I groan as Rafe levers my head up with his hand in my hair.
He kisses me then says quietly, kissing me between the words, “Not a lot… not yet.”
I kiss him back, savoring this, loving the exchange of breaths, the unsticking of our lips, as he moves to kiss me elsewhere. My sighs even. And I do understand why he is being gentle. He’s afraid it will tip me into depression or fear. And likely he wouldn’t listen if I begged for it.
“Ahhh, what’s a little rough?” Laz asks.
Which makes me snort.
“A small hedgehog in her ass instead of a big one,” Rafe says matter-of-factly.
“Right. I’ll go fetch one then.” Instead he starts to strip off my leggings then pulls off my panties, while Rafe holds me down.
Wriggling and struggling is what I try, and what I need, and when I can barely move under the pressure of his hands, I end up panting and am so ready for Laz when he kneels between my legs.
“A little rough,” he mutters before he fucking bites my ass cheek, then does the other side too.
I shriek from the shock of it as much as the pain.
“Spread your legs some more.” He slaps my thighs and I do so, feel the first prod of fingers before he shoves in and fucks me hard for ten or twenty strokes.
Then he swaps with Rafe who gives me the same treatment. He bites my ass before he thrusts into me, and I kick my heels, drumming them on the ground, then he fucks me for long enough, and hard enough, that I’m gasping into the rug, as it slides back and forth before my eyes.
They tie my hands at my back with a cloth, tightly, just how I like it, make that love it. Then they hoist me onto my knees and pass me back and forth, to ride their cocks, while they sit against a tree stump they’ve cast a rug over.
At the last, when I’m wishing for and needing more, they edge me into an O. Laz has me impaled while Rafe kneels before us both, to lick and tongue me into a soft, gasping orgasm, where I can feel the thickness of Laz inside me as I spasm onto him.
When I’m crazily panting and still unable to resist almost anything they do to me, I’m pushed onto my stomach, and while I struggle to recall how to breathe, they both spear into me until they come. I keep my eyes shut to really feel those yummy, heightened sensations of being taken post-climax.
It must have been when we were lying in a heap, post-coital, satisfied and a little overcome, that I said it—murmured with amusement how funny it was they’d threatened to do me in the ass, umpteen times, but never have.
Bad mistake, I thought at the time, and then…I forgot it.
A place in Tasmania, they said? And a long plane trip to get there. Of course it is.
A long trip was an understatement. It’s a full day of flying after we leave Heathrow. At the end of almost twenty-four hours, I am back in Australia, but at the nether end of it—Tasmania.
I’m in my own country, under a fake name, and with a house in one of the most beautiful places on earth. A house to call my…our…own.
The airport in Tasmania at the capital city, Hobart, is the size of a postage stamp compared to Heathrow’s.
It is idyllic instead of being hectic. We’ve booked a helicopter to reach Freycinet National Park and then a rental Mercedes for the rest of the trip to reach our new house in the Bay of Fires.
The front of the house is almost a complete, curved wall of thick glass.
Perched high above a long and deserted beach, with miles of open ocean beyond, the house has only a few neighbors.
On our first walk on the beach, we meet only a couple walking their labrador, a few sea gulls, and two pied oyster catchers, trotting about on their orange legs and busily searching for food.
At the right time of year, whales and seals migrate past on the way to their breeding grounds.
Rock pools with meter-deep, crystal-clear water lap the shore to the north of the beach, shielded from the waves by their rocky surrounds.
On this first morning in our new abode, we dive and swim there, laughing and filming each other, before returning to sleep for a while in the soft, seductive, super-king-size bed to recover from the flight.
“This is amazing,” I tell my men, when I awaken, stretching gloriously to loosen those tight muscles. Then I open my eyes and see they’ve turned into my beautiful predators.
They strip me and both spank me, then ass fuck me against the glass, just to teach me not to mock them, or so they say. They remembered it for a whole…two…fucking…weeks!
Then…then they make me come three times in a row with their mouths and a vibe.
The glass gets rather smeared with foggy breaths and various fluids that I do not want to know about.
Not until I have the strength to clean it off, anyway.
They come, I come, we all come?
Sated, we lie on the rug in a mildly sweaty pile of humans and limbs, and I know I’m wondering about where we are, how we got here intact, and how much we have come to love each other.
“All for one?” I murmur from where my head rests on Rafe’s hard stomach, weakly raising my fist a few inches in the air.
“One for come?” Laz ventures.
Rafe groans and punches his thigh.
Me, I’m just laughing. And I have a sore ass.