“All right then. Don’t touch the settings on my electronics.” He turned and squeezed Sera’s hand. “I’ll be back, well . . .” He looked at the three of them again and sighed. “Tomorrow.”
Once they were alone, Brandt went to her and embraced her, holding her to his body, feeling the steady beat of her heart against his own when they stood chest to chest.
“I’ve missed you. More than I’d thought, and I thought it was pretty bad.” He captured her lips quickly, relieved when she immediately opened to him, receiving his tongue eagerly.
Her hand slid into the waist of his pants and found his cock. He moaned into her mouth, and she swallowed the sound, pressing against him.
“Gods, before I fuck you right here . . .” He lost his train of thought as she brought her thumb over the slick eye of his cock, smearing, delivering nearly painful sensation to him.
“I haven’t come in four days, no wait, five. I need it. I need you two.” She spoke as she delivered kisses to his neck while pumping her fist around his cock slowly.
“Oh, you’ll get it. Lots of it.” Ash picked her up and pulled her back. Brandt’s knees nearly buckled when Ash licked her thumb, biting it gently. “But we need to talk first.”
“I don’t want to talk. There’s time for talking, and that’s after we have lots of sex.”
Brandt laughed at the sight of her pretty pout. “Are you trying Sela on now? Like a costume? I like that, I think. But let’s all get settled and have a drink while we talk.”
“Talk? Is this the it was nice while it lasted, but we should just be friends talk?” She stopped, her arms crossed, looking partly defiant and partly scared.
Brandt went to her, caressing her cheek. “You’re not very smart sometimes. Try listening to your heart. Does it tell you I’m going to break things off? If I didn’t know how frightened you were, I’d be offended you had such little faith in me.”
“In us. Now, get that sweet ass in the other room. We need to talk, and then we will fuck.” Ash hefted a bag. “This is full of toys, Freka.”
Brandt barely withheld a moan of pleasure at the fine tremor vibrating from her.
She nodded and led them up a stairwell and into a large set of rooms. “I’m staying here. Paul keeps a place for me, when I need to get away and unwind.”
Brandt watched her wince as she reached to grab a tray with their drinks on it. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been hunched over reading data, breaking all sorts of laws looking for information.”
“Well, let me take the tray; you sit.”
Ash widened his legs, tossing a pillow on the floor at his feet. “Sit there, and I’ll massage your back and neck.”
“You’re both being very nice to me.” She sat, and Brandt snorted, handing her a drink.
“Then I won’t feel so bad when I flog you for distrusting the fact that Ash and I want to take care of you.” He sat across from her on the floor. The lines on her forehead smoothed when Ash began to knead her neck muscles.
“Mmm. I’m supposed to complain about that? And that wasn’t distrust, it was a compliment.”
Brandt scooted forward to touch her. “Oh. Well, thank you. First, let’s just get this all laid out, shall we? I love you. Ash loves you. We both want to be with you. In a relationship. Permanent and exclusive. How do you feel about that?”
She twisted her fingers together in her lap for long moments before speaking. “I’m all right.” She shook her head and chewed her lip. “No. I’m afraid. Because I love you both, and I don’t know if I can choose. The last time I loved a man, my heart broke, and my life was nothing but work for so long. I’m afraid you’ll go against your family for me and not marry and lose everything. I’m afraid you’ll force me to choose, and one of the three will resent the other two. I worry if I had to choose, I’d yearn for the one I didn’t pick. I’m afraid you’ll choose each other and not me. I’m afraid you’ll both ask me to be a mistress while you marry a woman of your rank, and I won’t have the strength to say no this time. I’m afraid I’m not good enough for you. I’m afraid you’re both going to be exposed to censure for being with me. I’m afraid you don’t really love me, but this is exciting and fascinating, and once it wears off, you’ll be bored. I worry I’ll have to keep up the Sela ruse because how can we be together and say who I am without exposing what we’ve been up to?” She took a deep breath. “Yeah, I think that covers it.”
“Thank you for being so honest. I’m—I’m touched you trust us enough to share yourself so intimately.” Brandt took her hands, kissing the fingers she’d been wringing as she’d spoken.
“We worry about some of those things, too, you know.” Ash moved down to the floor with them, still rubbing her shoulders. “Some of those things. Not that you’re not good enough, because that’s so far from the truth it’s laughable. But we worry about people using this to hurt you or one of us, too. I worry you’ll feel more deeply for Brandt than for me. I love you so much. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be with you like this, and now that I have it again, I don’t think I can survive losing it.”
“We can do this,” Brandt said. “We can make a triad work. It will take energy to be totally open and make sure everyone feels like they’re getting enough attention and love. But I’m not going to force you to choose, and while I love Ash, I’m not choosing him over you. I choose you, Sera. Always. But I’m not sorry I can choose you both, because you choose him as well as me.”
“Agreed,” Ash said. “You’re it for me, Sera. Forever. The three of us can do this.”
She swallowed hard and blinked quickly.
“So.” Brandt reached into his pocket and pulled out the sheaf of marital papers. “Will you marry me?”
“Only one of us can marry you, Sera, or I’d ask, too,” Ash said quickly. “And there’s the matter of my being a second son and needing Familial permission. But I want to give you the protection of my status, also, to make a statement, a public statement, about who you are to me. What this relationship is. So I’ve filed papers to declare you my mistress.” Ash pressed his finger to her lips. “No, it’s not like last time. I swear to you on my life. There will never be a wife for me again. You will marry Brandt and be my mistress and the three of us will be together. You’ll be my wife in every way that matters. I wish it could be different.” He shrugged, looking pained. “But it can’t. The important thing is we’re together, and we can make this work.”
Brandt nodded. “Please say yes. I want you to be at my side forever. I want to walk out with you on any avenue in any ’Verse and have people know not only that we’re together but that I honor you, and Ash does as well.”
“People will talk. They’ll say, gods, they’ll say all the stuff they said about me when Ash married Kira.”
Brandt heaved a sigh. “They will. I’m sorry about that. But they’ll say worse if we don’t do this. And I don’t want anyone thinking you aren’t worth marriage. That you aren’t worth status. Because you are. People will understand why Ash can’t marry you.”
“And I’ll tell them. Please say yes,” Ash added.
“I don’t want to be the biggest mistake you ever made.”
Her voice was so small, so threaded with emotion, that Brandt’s own tears threatened. There it really was; he could tell from the way her body bent, the sound of her voice, this was what had bothered her most and kept her so wary.
“My beautiful Sera. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You make me whole. Look into my eyes and see the truth of what I feel for you. That’s not going to change. You said you gave yourself to me. To Ash. Well, it’s time to take that final step.”
Ash knew what had to happen. She was scared, frozen, and worried any choice she made would be the wrong one. He finally truly understood why. She hadn’t the luxury they had to make mistakes. He’d always thought of himself as a victim of circumstances, too, when it came to marrying Kira and in a sense, he was.
But it was Sera who’d paid the price. Yes, he’d lost the love of his life, but he’d gone on, gotten married, and there had been some good times with Kira during the time they were together.
Moreover, he’d enjoyed the luxury of what came with his rank. He had homes in several cities all through the Known Universes. He traveled, he continued to rise within the ranks of the military corps. His place in the world had been secure. While the choices he made did affect people, mistakes she made would be far more harmful to her own situation than he’d given thought to before.
And here she was, worried for them. Worried they’d regret choosing her. Gods, he loved her so much for being so giving, so loving.
Which was, of course, why he and Brandt needed to protect her and make her officially theirs.
Chapter 26
“Sera, stand and remove your clothes.”