Alice became really, really ticked off.
She set her hands on her hips and stepped right into her men’s path. They’d just escorted her into the house—and very promptly locked the door behind them.
“Are you two playing the role of my bodyguards? Is that what’s going on here?”
Sheepish? Guilty? Alice didn’t know what she would call the expressions on her men’s faces, but innocent curiosity sure wasn’t it.
“Why are you ticked off?” Ken’s question in answer to her question was a good tactic, one she’d used in the past. Funny how something is good when I use it but not so much when it’s used on me.
“Because it wasn’t me that Owen Baker sued a couple of years ago. And it wasn’t my business he torched. Hell, he likely doesn’t even know that I exist. You’re the ones who might be in danger. Maybe I should just, you know, head on over to the firing range the family has and gear up. I’ve heard they have all manner of weapons and ammo over there. I’ll outfit myself with a couple of big black deadly guns and some ammo belts worn cross-wise on my body. That should do it. Then I can protect you!”
Well, hell. Alice tried not to let the shock of her personal epiphany show on her face. Who knew? Maybe that heroine treading-into-danger plot device isn’t as incredible as I thought.
“And if he does?” Ian put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “If Owen Baker is so pissed that he didn’t manage to get us arrested—and privately, Adam told me he thought that would likely be a possibility—then he might decide to try again. He could, perhaps, start following us. Or maybe he would hire someone to follow us. So maybe he does know about you since, you know, we can’t seem to be without you and vice versa.”
“There’s only one thing on this earth that could destroy us, sweetheart.” Ken’s voice shook. “Just one fucking thing. And that’s if something bad ever happened to you. Especially if something bad happened to you because some asshole was looking to hurt us.”
Alice understood in a heartbeat that, as much as she loved her men, they loved her right back. They were pissed, but she was smart enough, and tuned into them enough, to understand that they weren’t pissed with her.
They were pissed with Owen Baker and the threat he had become to the three of them and, by extension, likely the rest of the family. And they were pissed with themselves for daring to breathe and, therefore, putting everyone else in danger.
“I’m sorry. I’m just…” Words failed her.
Ken sighed. “You’re as upset as we are and for the exact same reason. We get that.” He reached for her and eased her into his arms. “Honest to God, sweetheart, if he hurt you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“You’d hurt him right back,” Alice said.
“No, we’d probably fucking kill him.” Ian said. He snuggled against her back, and Alice sighed with pleasure.
Alice thought they just might do that very thing. And that, more than anything, gave her all the motivation she needed to shove her affronted feminism into a corner and hang onto Ken really tight, even as she reached out her hand to Ian, silently urging him to closer.
When she had them both the way she loved them best, cosseting her, holding her, that urgency, that fear for them, eased a little.
“There will be no murder and no one getting hurt,” Alice said. “I won’t allow it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her men said that together, and they moved in even closer and held her even tighter.
“I meant to comfort the two of you, and here you are again, taking care of me.”
“It’s mutual, baby girl. You have comforted us, and maybe there’s something wrong with me because that image you just gave us, of you all weaponed up, that was a definite turn-on.”
“Fuck yeah,” Ken said. “Maybe we can role-play sometime. We’ll be the world-renowned business titans under threat, and you can be our deadly, but very sexy, bodyguard, ready to take on the world—or at the very least the two of us.”
Both men pressed their erections against her, and Alice suspected that lecture time—for the moment—was over.
“Well, now, if we’re going to get into role-playing games, I have a couple of fantasies myself that I wouldn’t mind exploring.”
“Oh yeah?” Ken’s hands felt hot as he stroked her arms.
Since her arms were wound around his neck, she showed her appreciation by gently rubbing her breasts against his chest. His erection pressed into her stomach.
“What kind of fantasies, baby girl?”
Ian’s erection pressed into her back. Alice thought her grin must be sexy as hell, because that was how it felt. “The naughtiest and dirtiest fantasy that you can possibly imagine,” she said.
“You have to share, sweetheart.”. Ken’s voice definitely had an edge to it. “We thought that was the perfect description of our loving, already. If there’s another degree to it, you have to tell us.”
“Tell you what, handsome.” Alice loved the look on her men and, especially now, when the shadows that had crept into Ken’s eyes had cleared. “Take me upstairs and get me naked, and I’ll tell you all about them.”
Ken’s grin looked dangerous. He cast a glance over her head, and she knew he was having a Zen-like moment with his cousin. That means I am gonna be in such big trouble. Yay, me.
“Upstairs?” Ian’s gruff word tickled against her ear. “Oh, I bet we can be a lot naughtier and dirtier than ‘upstairs’ would ever allow us to be.”
* * * *
Ken was beginning to suspect something about being in love that actually surprised him. He’d thought, in his analytical way, that once they found the woman they were meant to love, once they’d gotten to the point of proposing and receiving a yes from the woman in question, that he’d be able to map out the future, point by
