The phrase was so cold, so clinical, and yet it ignited a fire in me that I refused to acknowledge. The image flashed through my mind, unbidden and intoxicating: three sets of hands on my skin, three different voices whispering my name, three different men all interested in me. Roman’s teasing, exploratory touch. Lev’s rough, demanding punishment. Dmitri’s possessive control.
I had to get a grip on myself.
I managed a small, dismissive laugh. “You make it sound like a business merger. What’s the exit strategy? Do you vote her off the island when she gets boring?”
A genuine smile, the first one I’d seen from him that wasn’t purely predatory, touched his lips. It was a devastatingly handsome thing. “We don’t get bored. And we’re not in the business of relinquishing assets arbitrarily.” He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “But you’re a complication.”
“Every man’s favorite kind of woman,” I retorted, though my mouth felt dry.
“Complications,” he said, his eyes darkening, “can be managed. Transformed. Integrated.”
The words hung there, thick with implication. He was circling me, not with his body, but with his words, a predator testing the perimeter of my defenses.
“And if I don’t want to be… integrated?” I challenged.
He stopped directly in front of me. “Then you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, waiting for ARCHEON to pull that trigger,” he said softly. “Is that the freedom you want?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Look at you,” he said. “Defiant, even now. Standing here in a torn swimsuit, with my cum drying on your thighs and my handprints still painting your ass red, and you’re still trying to negotiate.”
My cheeks burned, but I held his gaze. “It’s all I have left.”
“You have more than you think,” he said. He reached out, his finger tracing the line of my collarbone, a soft, gentle caress that made me hold my breath. “You have our full attention. That’s a very dangerous and very valuable thing to possess.”
I wanted to pull away, to slap his hand, but I couldn’t. His touch was an anchor in a storm I hadn’t realized I was lost in. The air between us thickened, charged with a current that was far more alarming than the sex that had just happened between us.
“I suppose I should be flattered,” I managed, my voice regaining some of its edge. “The Markov men, all interested in the same girl. Did you take a vote?”
He smiled, a slow, lazy curve of his lips that was more devastating than any smirk. “No vote was necessary. Interest was expressed by my brothers, and now I concur. It’s mutually and unanimously agreed upon by us.”
“Mutually,” I repeated, the word tasting strange on my tongue. “That’s a very… cooperative way of putting it.”
“We’ve always been good at sharing,” he said in a smooth, confidential tone that was meant to disarm me. “Trust. Secrets. Toys.”
He paused, his gaze dropping to my mouth. “And, on rare occasion, a woman.”
My heart gave a single, hard thump against my ribs, a sound I was sure he could hear. The image flashed through my mind again, brighter and more detailed: Roman’s lazy smile as he watched, Lev’s intense focus as he held me down, and Dmitri directing the scene, a conductor of a dark, beautiful symphony of flesh. It was a wickedly shameful thought. A degrading thought.
And it sent a jolt of white-hot heat straight to my core.
CHAPTER 15
Dmitri
I watched the thoughts war behind her eyes, a silent, chaotic battle I could read as easily as a book. She was fighting it, of course. The thought of being shared, of being a prize passed between three powerful men, went against every ounce of her carefully constructed independence. But her body, her treacherous,honestbody, was already betraying her. The slight flush on her cheeks deepened. Her breath caught, a small, audible sound in the quiet early evening air. Her pupils dilated, the storm-gray of her irises swallowed by black.
She was terrified of the idea.
And she was irresistibly drawn to it.
I knew, with the same certainty I knew the markets would react to instability, that this was the way to own her. Not through force, not through threats, but through the undeniable, terrifying truth of her own desire.
“A partnership,” I said in a low, hypnotic murmur. “Think of it that way. We offer you something no one else can. Complete and total protection from ARCHEON. A chance to disappear, not as a fugitive, but as one of us. In exchange…”
I let the word hang in the air, a hook baited with both salvation and damnation.
“In exchange,” she finished for me, her voice tightly controlled, “I become your shared whore.”
