Page 11 of Three Billionaire Grooms and Not the Right Bride

“Our lawyers disagree. You are legally and eternally married to us,” Dayton says.

“Well, okay, fine. Who am I to doubt your big-shot attorneys, right? But it’s really simple. You just have to annul the whole thing, and it’ll be over. So easy. And then you can marry Tatiana Neal, the girl you were supposed to marry, and then your families can take over the world together, and I can carry on living my life. That’s how things should be.”

“No. You’re ours. Our marriage stays,” Edison says.

“Ugh,” I grumble, stamping my feet. “It can’t stay. It has to go away. Make it go away. Okay, look, you don’t understand. Mrs. Neal is going to kill me. I’m not exaggerating. I mean it quite literally, in the sense of extinguishing the last breath from my soul. Do you understand?”

“Still not annulling this marriage. You’re ours.”

“Okay, please. You may have met Mrs. Neal, but you really haven’t met Mrs. Neal. She will chop me up into pieces and feed me to her alligator. I mean, if she had an alligator. You know what, she would probably buy one if she could, just to feed me to it. I am truly terrified of the woman, and I say that after dealing with not one but two gangster crime lords.”

“Are they still bothering you?” Cristian asks with such a dark tone; it almost doesn’t sound like him. Both Edison and Dayton seem to tense up too. What?”

“No, because I sort out my own problems. And I’m still very much Mrs. Neal’s problem, so please. I’m just an ordinary girl, trying to make ends meet, still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up, which I might not get to do if you don’t annul this marriage and marry Tatiana. Please, I’m begging you.”

“Again, no. You’re ours. But also you’re the Skycrest bride. No person, man or woman, will harm a strand of your hair without losing their arms. Do you understand that?” Edison says so seriously I’m taken aback by the darkness of his tone.

What is going on? This must be a joke. Payback for duping them. Their egos couldn’t handle it, and now they want to even the score. Billionaires, right?

I take a deep breath. They can’t keep me here forever, and eventually they’re going to say the joke is on me and let me go, and beautiful Tatiana would have been in on it too, and everything would go back to being perfect.

“This is kidnapping, and don’t think just because you’re so insanely good-looking and have all the money in the world, you can get away with it,” I say lamely. Of course they’ll get away with it. Even if they had no money, their power comes from deep inside them. It’s just who they are. And I really need to get away from them.

Except, two weeks later, I’m still in Italy. Still on my honeymoon, sans any more spankings or bedroom activities.

And the worst part, I’m forced to spend time with each of them. Edison is an excellent cook, and when the man feeds me all his most wholesome, delicious meals, well, the word "orgasmic" comes to mind. When his fingers slip into my mouth, and I forget I’m tasting food when he tells me to suck, a wave of desire rolls through me, building on something I didn’t know I was building.

Cristian is a reader, like me, and we spend hours talking about books we read and loved. Falling asleep while he reads to me, in that deep, smooth baritone voice of his in the afternoon Italian sun, is one of my favorite pastimes, especially when he moves me onto his lap and strokes my hair.

Then there’s Dayton, who seems to love nothing more than playing with my nervous system. He’s an adrenaline junkie, and that’s an understatement. And yet when he takes me diving from the highest cliffs or climbing mountains so steep it seems impossible, but when he has his arms around me, I feel as cocooned as if I were made of some precious jewel.

Every day I ask them how long they plan to ride this out, and every day they tell me until the end of time. I don’t understand what their end game is, and it’s quite infuriating.

I do admit, though, I’m quite relieved I haven’t heard from Mrs. Neal or Tatiana yet, but honestly, what am I doing? Honeymooning with my fake husbands? I wish I knew what was going on.

But this has to end. I’m growing too... addicted to them, the way their nearness makes me feel when the scent of their cologne lingers on my skin from touching them, the way they sound and move, and the things they say, I’m constantly seeking them out. As if I’ll wilt without their nearness, and that’s the stupidest thing I could ever do for myself.

And now my body lies awake at night, reliving their touch as if it were happening in real time again.

This is bad. So bad.

Chapter Ten

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Hadley

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I can’t take it anymore, so I’m leaving. I don’t care what they say. I’m in the middle of repacking my bag when my phone rings. My heart drops down a rocky cliff and shatters into pieces.

It’s Tatiana.

I answer on the third ring.

“Tatiana, are you okay?” I say immediately.

“Yes,” the girl on the other side laughs. “I’m perfectly fine. Completely recovered from my episode, if you want to call it that.”