Their Virgin Hostage (Masters of Ménage #5)(48)

"She got scared." Law sipped his coffee, not looking at him. "It's not so surprising. She has very little experience. We have to be careful with her, but she's coming along."

Had his brother lost his ever-loving mind? "She ran from you. She couldn't get out of the kitchen fast enough."

Law's face bunched up in consternation. "No, Kinley was afraid, not of me or Dominic. She enjoyed the way we touched her. A lot, in fact. What she felt scared her. Put yourself in her shoes. If her own family is willing to betray her, she's going to find trusting anyone, especially the guys who kidnapped her, really hard. But she wants what we're dying to give her. She won't be able to hold out for long." 

Law sounded more confident than Riley had ever heard, assassinations excepting. His brother never worried that he wouldn't be able to take out a target, but when it came to women, he often seemed dead inside. Or maybe Law's attitude had stemmed from the fact that he hadn't cared about the females they'd shared in the past. Maybe he'd always just gone along with what Riley and Dominic wanted. After all, Law had never brought a potential female to them. Sure, he'd enjoyed the sex, but he'd never fought for a girl the way he was fighting for Kinley now.

"Did you ever care for Simone?" He'd never asked Law before. Now Riley realized that once he'd fallen for Simone, he'd assumed his brother would too … eventually.

Law shook his head. "I find it hard to really care about a woman who's completely cold. Now, as a beer cooler, she worked perfectly. I could set a brew down next to that woman and it was chilled in three point five seconds."

Where had the sense of humor come from? "Could you be serious?"

"All right. Here's the truth: Simone was interested in you because she liked having a Harvard-educated man on her arm. She wanted Dominic for his social connections and his millions. She put up with me because fucking me was the price of admission if she wanted to keep you two. And she never let me forget it."

Simone had said that to his brother? Why had Law never told him? "When shit got serious, she didn't want me either."

Law sighed. "When she turned your proposal down, she claimed it was because she couldn't live an openly perverted lifestyle because everyone would call her a whore. I call bullshit. Everybody already knew she was a whore. I firmly believe she would have been more than happy to spend the rest of her life in bed with both you and Dominic. And she would have put up with me. Your trouble was the marriage proposal didn't come from the right person."

As soon as Law had spoken, Riley realized there was a lot of truth to his brother's words. God, he'd been so fucking dumb. "She wanted to be legally married to Dominic."

"Money wins over brains," Law said, sympathy in his voice.

"Fuck me." He felt like he'd been kicked in the gut all over again.

His brother shrugged. "Look on the bright side. Your brain still won out over my brawn."

Despite that, if Simone had said yes, Law would have sacrificed his heart to make him and Dominic happy. "Why did you let me propose to her, knowing what she was? Why would you have stayed in a relationship with a woman you didn't even like?"

"Beyond the extra freezer space?" Law took a sip of his coffee and sat back. "You were in love with her. Or you thought you were. I've never felt that way before and I thought at the time that I was incapable of it. So I played along. And, to be honest, I didn't think it would work in the long run anyway because I knew Dominic wasn't going to marry her."

"Finding and sharing one woman is never going to work, is it?" The family they had talked about didn't make sense in the real world. Legalities aside, no woman wanted to deal with three men. Not even if she realized it meant she'd never be alone, that she would always have someone to care for her. That she would never end up like his mother.

"I think it can, if we handle her in just the right way. Our strategy has to be stealth. We have to point out all the great things about having three guys around, reel her in with the sex, downplay the cooking and laundry, then maybe..."



       
         
       
        

"I'm serious, Law."

"So am I."

"You've got to stop imagining that Kinley is our dream girl."

"You weren't in there," Law argued. "You were outside listening. You didn't see how Kinley reached for Dominic. No hesitation. She saw him and she grabbed on. If you had walked in, she would have grabbed you, too."

The door opened, and Dominic joined them on the porch for the chilly morning, steaming mug in hand. "It was a mistake."