Seduced by Three (18 page)

“Well, I can’t say it was all in her head. The hostility had been bad,” Sarge said, “but we might have been on the verge of working that out.”

“And if we go get her now, would anything be different for her? Or would the rivalry between us just start over again?” Luke asked.

The air in the dreary space was electrified, tense.

“Same shit, different day,” Luke said.

Sarge studied the other two men. Luke sat unmoving, clenching and unclenching his jaw, and Van looked like a mountain standing there with his arms crossed over his chest and a give-me-a-reason-to-fuck-you-up expression on his face. “Well, I’m just going to say it. Whether we want to admit it or not, the problem lies on our shoulders, not hers. I’ll admit that our infighting weighed on her, made her feel guilty.
We
drove her away. She didn’t want to cause any more problems.”

“Duh, you think?” Luke snapped, then shook his head. “If we can resolve our issues, truly come to terms with how it is going to be, we should go to her. If we can’t, we should just leave her in peace. It’s not fair to her that we can’t get our pride, our possessiveness, under control.”

“There wasn’t any hostility that last day. But I just don’t see me always sharing with two other men. I would need some private time, too,” Van said.

“I think we all would,” Sarge mumbled. “But I have to admit, I feel hostile just thinking about you guys being with Grace.”

“Therein lies the problem,” Luke said. “The tension level in the shelter has already shot through the roof during the few minutes it took us just to have this conversation.”

“It’s not going to work,” Van stated. His tone and posture seemed to acknowledge defeat. “I don’t even know why you’re so interested.” He bobbed his head in Sarge’s direction. “You treated her like shit.”

The barb Van shot at Sarge hit its target dead center and sank deep into Sarge’s cache of guilt and regret.

“You have no fucking clue what was between us,” Sarge barked.

“I have eyes, and what I saw was an egomaniac and a bully. You’re the reason she left,” Van snarled back.

Without warning, Sarge charged Van, tackling him to the hard cement floor. He connected his knuckles to Van’s face with a crack before being bucked off.

“You want to fight for her? I’ll fight…but I’ll fight fair. No pussy surprise attacks,” Van spat at Sarge while they circled one another.

Luke stood up and approached the circling men. “Dammit, you two, this is the type of shit that drove her away in the first place.”

Before the last of Luke’s words left his mouth, Sarge made an end run around Luke and charged Van again. Both men landed punches on the other before they fell to the floor a second time with a thud. Luke tried to pull Sarge off of Van and was nailed in the eye by Sarge’s elbow as Sarge drew back to deliver another punch in Van’s direction.

Van took advantage of Luke’s interference and got out from under Sarge’s weight.

“Enough!” Luke roared as he started toward the stairs. “You two are dumb-ass fools if you think this shit can continue. I would fucking run away from you, too!” he yelled over his shoulder as he stomped up the shelter stairs and left Sarge and Van alone.

Luke’s words doused Sarge’s homicidal impulses. He stood breathless and eyed Van, who absently rubbed a drop of blood sliding down from his nose.

Sarge backed away and sat in a chair at the table. “He’s right. And you’re right. I was hard on her. It was truly only because it would have ripped me to shreds if anything ever happened to her.”

Van bent over and braced his hands on top of his thighs, trying to catch his breath. “So what do you want to do?” he panted.

“Get Luke. See if we can work out something we all can live with.”

The men popped the shelter door sometime in the small hours of the morning. As Sarge peered down the stairs into the total blackness, an instant of doubt flickered in his mind.

“Grace, it’s Sarge,” he called down.

No answer. He pointed his flashlight down the stairs. The air of anticipation that the men exuded when they entered the house fizzled.

“She’s not here.” The disappointment in Van’s voice stifled them all.

Sarge, Van, and Luke descended the stairs silently and walked through the rows of shelves that stocked the shelter. Unlike Sarge’s shelter, the sitting and sleeping area were on the far end of the basement instead of at the bottom of the stairs.

Sarge swept the room with his flashlight and glanced upon the sleeping area. There was a person sleeping in the bed. Immediately, Van raised his weapon to cover Sarge as he went over to investigate.

It was Grace. A relieved look passed from man to man as they closed in on her sleeping form.

“I don’t want to wake her up,” Sarge whispered as he lifted a chair from the sitting area and set it quietly close to the bed. “I need to get a few hours sleep before this goes down.”

Van and Luke followed suit.

Sarge sighed and relaxed a little, enjoying the soothing knowledge that Grace was safe. Now that he’d seen her, he worried whether he could live with the plan that all three of them had agreed on. He supposed it was about as fair and equal as a situation like this could get. They’d decided that the sleeping arrangements would rotate with her, like before. They would take her together when she wanted it, and any one-on-one sex could only occur if the man was assigned to sleep in the bed with her that night. And most importantly, there was to be no sniping, no competition, and no complaining.

The repercussions of not following the agreement would be swift and brutal. No place in the sleeping rotation for six months. Which, according to their plan, meant no sex for six months.

Sarge dozed on and off, lost in a fog of semiconscious dreams. Gradually, the sun’s first rays traveled through the tiny, round skylight, transforming the blackness to the eternal dusk of her shelter. The men’s greedy eyes absorbed the lines of Grace’s face and body as they were slowly revealed.

Sarge’s heart pounded with the deep, regular thud of a bass drum as his eyes roamed over Grace’s face. She looked sick. Her skin looked the color of ashes, and she had dark half circles smudged beneath her eyes. She had lost weight, a lot of weight. Her cheeks were shallow depressions over the bones of her face.

Alarm began to filter through the relief that he’d felt since they’d found her. His eyes darted to her chest. It was rising and falling with regular, even breaths.

“She looks…half dead,” Van whispered.

Luke sat next to her on the bed, and Grace startled awake at the light caress of his finger on her cheek.

“Good morning, ladybug.”

Grace’s eyes opened wide. They took him in, and it was several moments before a dawning expression transformed her face.

“Luke? You’re really here?” It only took a split second for Grace’s look of disbelief to change into a rush of ragged sobs. She sat up and hugged Luke frantically and then caught sight of Sarge and Van behind him.

“Oh, my God, I missed you guys so much. I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry more than you’ll ever know.”

Minutes passed before Grace stopped sobbing and clutching Luke.

“We’re sorry, too. We can’t blame you for leaving,” Van said. “We know we were acting like pricks. But we’ve worked everything out between us. We missed you so much, love you so much.”

Sarge squashed the impulse to push Luke away and comfort Grace himself. “We came to bring you home,” he rumbled through the knot in his throat.

Finally, she pegged each man with her shrewd, blue-gray eyes. Her inspection lingered over the scrapes and bruises on their faces.

“Worked things between you how? Your faces tell a slightly different story.”

“It was a process.” Van hesitated as if he were choosing his words carefully. “Our compromise and negotiation techniques need some tweaking.” He grinned. “But that’s over now. We promise you won’t have to deal with our lame attempts to keep you for ourselves. No pressure for you to choose. No animosity between us. Just the three of us loving you. Period.”

Grace’s face softened, and then an easy smile emerged. She squealed as she scooted herself from the bed and moved toward him and Van. She hooked one arm around his neck, and one around Van’s, and pulled them close.

“I love you, Gracie,” Sarge whispered in her ear.

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. “I love you, too.”

His desire for her returned as soon as her lips met his. There was no hesitation in her kiss. Her mouth opened to him immediately. Each tongue swirled and caressed the other with hot, wet synergy. His hand traveled to her back, flattening her body against his.

“I was coming back to you,” she whispered into his ear before she moved her kisses to Van.

Sarge’s blood pressure rose along with his cock at their reunion. He needed Grace’s smooth skin under his lips, her body under his. He glanced at Van and Luke. He didn’t need to be psychic to know that the other men were thinking the same thing. Sarge squelched the flash of possessiveness that raged at the thought of the other men having her. He had made an agreement, and he was going to honor it. His selfishness and domineering in regards to Grace would have to be curbed, just as theirs would.

He would have to remind himself frequently that above all, he wanted her to be happy. They all did.

She was all of theirs. Period. And he’d better start acting like it.

Luke pressed up against Grace from behind. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the side of her neck. His arms wrapped around her thin form, and his hands caressed her stomach, her breasts. Without warning, he tugged at the hem of her nightgown, pulling it over her head.

Grace stood completely naked in front of them.

Sarge couldn’t stop the sharp intake of breath that escaped him, and the “Oh my God” from Van told him he wasn’t seeing things. She was a skeletal version of the woman who’d run away from them. In the vague light, Sarge saw the outline of her ribs on her chest above her breasts. Her knees were knobs in the center of her legs, like a newborn colt’s. And her stomach protruded, just like the images burned into his memory of the starving people he’d encountered during his time in the service.

“Grace,” Sarge hissed. “What the fuck is going on?”

Grace turned her back to him and his question without answering. She wrapped her arms around Luke, and Luke mouthed to him, “Calm down.”

Sarge saw the trembling in the underworked muscles of her legs. She could barely hold herself up.

“He’s not mad, ladybug, just a little shocked.”

Grace looked over her shoulder at Sarge with questioning eyes.

He smiled at her. “After the last few months, I don’t think I could ever be mad at you again.”

Grace’s eyes darted toward Van. “We’re all good, and, Luke, give the woman her nightgown, it’s obvious that she’s in no condition to do much of anything, let alone what you have in mind.”

“Besides, I’m hungry.” Luke looked at Sarge with a burning glare. “Hungry, Sarge?” he asked as his eyes widened and his eyebrows raised. “Van?”

“Starved. I’ll get us some food,” Van said before he disappeared to the pitch-black side of the basement. He returned immediately. “Flashlight,” he said to Sarge, holding out his hand.

Sarge handed it to him and then looked around at the shelter. “This place is a hole.”

“Pretty depressing, huh?” Grace mumbled.

He turned to face her. She was a lovely skeleton with bleak eyes and the strain of solitude evident from the air of hopelessness surrounding her.

Sarge’s vocal chords refused to do the whole sound-coming-out-of-his-mouth thing. He swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Why aren’t you eating?” Luke asked.

She shrugged. “I couldn’t keep anything down for a long time, and then it just seemed like”—she paused—“like my mind wasn’t working right.” Grace choked back a sob. “I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want to get out of bed, and the longer I stayed that way, the easier it was to just not bother.”

Luke sifted Grace’s hair with his fingers. It was longer, almost to her shoulders, and it looked like she hadn’t brushed it in a month.

Sarge cleared the pansy-assed lump out of his throat. “I’m going to get some stuff to clean up with.” He didn’t wait for a reply. He just walked into the darkness among the shelves, and, in the darkest corner he could find, sat his ass down on the cold cement. His composure disintegrated. He felt crippled. There was nothing he could do. He wanted to take back every word, every action that had led Grace to this. His whole body teeter-tottered between rage and monstrous horror. He officially hated himself.

It took him a long time, sitting there in the dark, to regain his composure. When he finally did, he retrieved the flashlight from Van, found what he needed to clean Grace up, and then returned to the group just in time to eat. It wasn’t only Sarge who repeatedly eyed the spoon of peanut butter, powdered orange juice, and granola sitting in front of Grace. All the men were keeping careful track of her interaction with the food, trying to determine if she was going to be friends with it, or if it was going to be a forced pairing.

She was talking as she intermittently licked a little peanut butter into her mouth.

Then, a word grabbed his attention, bringing him back to the group. “What did you just say?” Sarge asked.

“When I got here, my ex-boyfriend was in the shelter.”

Okay, so now she had his full attention. “The asswipe your dad talked about?”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “I made a terrible mistake. I just couldn’t shoot him when he was coming at me.”

“Coming at you?” Van asked.

“Yeah, he was going to…He wanted to…”

“It’s okay, Grace. You don’t have to talk about it if it’s too much,” Luke said, rubbing her blanket covered leg.

Grace shook her head. “I’m not upset about him trying to rape me. I’m upset and disappointed in myself. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill him, and it almost cost me my life. My dad, he spent his whole life training me for this, and I couldn’t do any of it on my own.” She looked at Sarge. “He was right to have you come get me. I failed.”

Sarge registered the word “rape” and had a difficult time tracking what she said after that.

“Where’s the ex-boyfriend now?” The malevolence he felt heated his body, and an urge to kill the fucker had him fisting his hands.

“He’s dead.” She looked directly at him with her sad, hollow eyes. “I pushed him down the stairs. I was lucky that I didn’t go down with him.”

Sarge stared at Grace, waiting for her to go on, but she didn’t. Her eyes roamed over his face, and then she leaned back against the wall and clammed up.

“What?”

“Dude, you look like your head is going to explode,” Van said.

Sarge took a breath and sat back in his chair. “I’m good.”

“I’m ready to go home,” Grace announced. She looked at Sarge. “Please.”