THEIR_VIRGIN_PRINCESS (18 page)

Cooper slowly wrapped his arms around her. She trembled for
a moment, then sighed as though she appreciated the heat their bodies
generated.

Once again, he appreciated how soft her skin was and how
sweetly she fit against him. “Consider this a break from civilization. You
wanted one, right? Here you go. No reporters. No one who needs your attention.
Well, besides us. No one is going to ask you to make appearances or to go to
balls.”

“No curious people who look at me with pity,” Alea
continued.

Coop wanted to take exception to that, but now wasn’t the
time to argue with her. Making her laugh seemed to work so much better. “Nope.
You just have to worry about us ogling you. All the time. Every day. Every
hour.”

Sure enough, she laughed. “You guys are crazy.”

Dane had his cheek against her hair. “My main goal in life
is to convince you that we’re not. At least not completely.”

“How can you not be mad at me? I’m the reason you’re here,”
she admitted in a whisper.

“I think I speak for all three of us when I say we wouldn’t
want to be anywhere else,” Cooper replied. “If I wasn’t with you here, I’d be
going out of my damn mind with worry. But cuddled up with you… It’s all good.
Alea, this wasn’t your fault.”

“But when we get home, and we
will
get home, I intend to find out whose fault it is,” Dane said,
sending Cooper a dark look. “Someone planned this.”

Someone meant to kill
her.
Cooper knew exactly what Dane’s expression meant. He was asking Coop
to join him in hunting and taking down this fucker. He nodded to Dane. Oh,
yeah. They would make sure this asshole couldn’t ever hurt her again.

“I thought the pilot was just crazy and hated my family.”
Alea’s arms slowly wound around his waist. “You’re both so warm.”

Cooper cuddled a little closer. “We’ll always keep you warm,
safe…whatever you need. We’ll take care of you. We can survive here
indefinitely. Landon is scouting the island for more food right now.”

“What happens if he doesn’t find any? What happens when the
food we took from the plane runs out?” Alea asked, then bit her lip for a
moment. “We got all we could, but we can’t survive on crackers, pâté, and
peanuts for very long.”

Dane chuckled softly. “There’s an ocean of food right out
there. This place has bananas and all kinds of fruit. We were all trained to
know what kind of plants we can and can’t eat. Lea, we’ve got this. We survived
the crash. That was the hard part. The rest is easy, especially now that you’ve
convinced Coop to make sure he doesn’t die of gangrene. I won’t say it will be
like hanging around the palace, but if we take care of each other, keep the
fire going, find a safe place to wait out any storms that might come, we’ll be
golden.”

She nodded against his chest. “I want to help. Just tell me
what to do.”

“Really?” Dane asked.

“Yes. Of course.”

“What we need most now is your trust. You have to rely on
us. Take this time to get to know us better. Let us have an actual chance to
please you and make you happy.” Dane laid a small kiss on her temple.

She shivered a little, her head coming up off Cooper’s
chest. He wished Dane hadn’t pushed yet, but everything his buddy
described…yeah, he wanted that, too. “Just a chance, Lea. You don’t hate this,
right?”

“I’m getting used to it,” she admitted, swallowing hard. She
was tense, but not rejecting. It was a step. “Can we agree to go slow? I don’t
know what I want and I don’t have any idea what I’ll be able to handle. It’s
going to take a while to get used to the idea that you guys could actually want
me. That someone touching me isn’t doing it to hurt me.”

There was a low shout as Landon marched through the foliage
and back into camp. He was carrying Alea’s mesh laundry bag, which he’d
appropriated earlier when he’d left on his quest to gather coconuts. But it was
dripping wet.

“Hey, I found a bunch of conches!” Lan held up the bag and
looked at it proudly. “That’s some good eating and—holy shit.”

Lan had obviously caught sight of Alea’s half-naked state
because it put a truly sizzling stare on his face. Then he lost his usual
athletic grace as he walked closer, jaw hanging around his knees, stumbling
over the log he’d dragged into camp earlier. He tripped in an epic pratfall.
That would make some popular shit on
YouTube
.

Alea broke free and started running for Landon.

“I’m okay!” Lan shouted, but Alea was right there, crouching
beside him, and there was no mistaking the way Lan took advantage to stare
right at her boobs.

Dane slapped Coop on the back. “Let’s shore up for the
night. We’re all tired. We can cook up those conches and talk about making base
camp more comfy. Tomorrow we put our plan into action. It’s time to claim our
girl.”

Coop nodded. “Amen, brother.”

Dane strode over to give Landon a hand with the conches,
whistling as he walked.

It was the happiest he’d seen Dane in a long time. As Alea
turned to glance at him over her shoulder and shot a smile his way, he had to
admit, it might be the happiest any of them had been in a good, long while.

* * * *

Alea shivered a little and wished that her clothes had dried
during dinner. But they hadn’t yet. The fire Dane had built was roaring, but
she still trembled. Even so, the stars awed her. They wove a brilliant canvas
across the dark sky. She’d never seen so many twinkling so brightly.

“Beautiful, huh?” Lan sat beside her, his shoulders rubbing
against hers.

She wasn’t alone. She might be on one of the remotest
islands in the world, but these three men had gone out of their way to show her
that everything would be all right.

“It is.” The fire crackled in front of her. Cooper and Dane
were talking quietly on the other side of the fire pit they’d dug. “Do you
think someone will find us?”

“Sure.” There was no hesitation in his voice. “I think your
cousins will move heaven and earth. But it’s a damn big ocean, Lea. It could
take some time. Be prepared to settle in and get comfortable waiting.”

Her cousins. They would be worried by now. She’d intended to
text…and now that wasn’t possible. They would know the plane hadn’t landed in
Sydney. Piper would be so worried. They would be forced to call all of Dane,
Cooper, and Landon’s relatives to tell them their sons were missing. She knew
Dane had a father he didn’t talk to anymore. Cooper had a big family scattered
all over southern Colorado. What about Landon? “Is there anyone back in the
States who’s going to be upset? You have to know Talib is going to call your
parents.”

Lan turned to the fire. “Don’t have any.”

His parents were gone? “I’m so sorry.”

A bitter smile crossed his face. “Don’t be. They aren’t dead,
darlin’. At least I don’t think they are. I don’t know. My mom ditched me about
five minutes after I was born. As for my dad, I don’t even know who he is. I’m
not even sure my mom did. She got around.”

She knew he came from a small Texas town. How hard had it
been to be abandoned by the woman who should have loved him above all others?
“How old was she?”

“She was all of seventeen when she had me. The way my
grandma told it, she tried really hard to get rid of me, but I was dug into
that womb.”

“Get rid of you?”

Lan turned to her, his face a careful blank. “She tried a
homemade abortion. I wasn’t part of her plan.”

“Oh, Lan.” She reached for him, feeling sick, and yet an
urge to comfort him all at once.

Then she stopped her hand in midair as she realized that
she’d been about to hug him. The sympathetic gesture had come almost
instinctively.

Lan turned back to the fire as though he couldn’t stand to
watch her choose to not touch him. Like other women in his life had rejected
him. “It’s no big deal. My grandma raised me. We didn’t have much, but she made
sure I got fed and had clothes.”

He’d said absolutely nothing about anyone loving him. “Do
you miss her? Is that who Tal will call?”

“She died a couple years back. She wouldn’t have really
cared. She was a mean old lady. There was a reason my momma wanted to get the
hell out of that trailer. My grandma ran off everyone who ever loved her. She
never let a day go by where she didn’t tell me what a whore my momma turned out
to be and that I was an embarrassment. She kept me because righteous women take
care of their mistakes.”

How hard had it been for his sole guardian to consider him a
burden? Lan was so competent. In the course of one day, he’d scouted the
perimeter of the island, found food, and set up a desalinization station that
was gathering water so they could stock up. He was amazing and he’d always been
so deeply kind. She didn’t stop this time. If nothing else, he was her friend.

Alea scooted closer to him and placed a hand on his back,
leaning her face against his strong upper arm. His skin was warm and smooth, so
much softer than she’d imagined, though it covered rock-hard muscle. “You
weren’t a mistake. I can’t imagine any mother not being so proud of you.”

He turned slightly, forcing her head up and looking on her
with a curious gaze. Slowly, he reached down and brushed away tears she hadn’t
known she was shedding. “Are those for me?”

She shrugged, then nodded. He wrapped a bulky arm around her
and hauled her in close. For a moment, she stiffened, then sank against the
heat of his body. And the safety. She felt safe with all of them.

“Don’t you cry for me, Princess.”

Sometimes when he called her that she could almost believe
it was a term of endearment and not merely a title. “Someone should. And I’m
not really crying for you. It’s not pity. You came from so little and you’ve
turned into a wonderful man.”

“Sometimes,” he began, staring down at her, “bad things
happen to good people, and they still find a way to turn it around. They find a
way to be brave. I know you’re brave, too. I want you to kiss me, Lea.”

So much for his lack of smarts. He was a manipulative
bastard. But if she wanted to heal, wanted to move forward and not let the
kidnappers beat her, as Piper had pointed out, she had to be willing to take
chances. Get out of her comfort zone. Try to be a whole woman. Believe that she
could trust them.

Alea closed her eyes and tilted her head up. She could
handle this. Landon would never hurt her.

She waited, but nothing happened.

Alea opened her eyes, and found Lan staring down at her.
Cooper had moved behind, and she could feel his heat. Dane had edged closer,
too. His gaze was fixed on her, smoldering like the nearby fire, as he leaned
back against a tree.

“He said he wanted you to kiss him, baby,” Dane pointed out.
“You have to listen to instructions or there might be consequences.”

She stiffened a little. “I don’t think I like the sound of
that.”

Cooper leaned in. “Come on, Lea. Don’t be scared. You know
Dane likes to play. It’s just who he is. He needs to feel like he’s in
control.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “If he thinks you’re afraid, he’ll
pull away. His ex-wife told him he was a pervert, and I don’t think he can
handle it if you feel the same way.”

Talib liked to “play,” too. Oh, her cousins had tried to
hide that fact from her, but she’d snuck into Tal’s “dungeon” when she was a
teenager. The locked door had always intrigued her, and they’d never let her in
or explained. Unfortunately when she’d finally figured out how to sneak in, Tal
had been playing at the time. She’d hidden, of course, but she’d heard the
moans, the slaps of leather on skin, the gasps—the sounds of satisfaction.

And she’d heard the tenderness he’d shown his submissive
afterward. The praise he’d given her. The woman’s sighs of contentment. They
had both enjoyed themselves. There hadn’t been anything wrong with it. She’d
heard that the dungeon was open again and her cousins played with Piper,
teasing her and loving her. Tal needed the control after what had happened to
him.

What had happened to Dane?

She sat up and stared at him, illuminated by the fire. He
had a bland, somewhat expectant look on his face, but she was starting to
really know him. His anxiety revealed itself in the hard line of his shoulders,
in the stiff way he held himself. “What if I’m not submissive?”

And just like that, his body relaxed, and the teasing Dom
was back. “Oh, you are.”

“Maybe I want to be in control. Maybe I need it after what
happened to me.” How would he handle that?

A smile softened his face. “You’ll always be in control.
That’s the great misunderstanding about the lifestyle. The submissive can stop
the scene at any time. Any play is meant for your pleasure. Any rule is meant
to protect you, build trust between us, and lift you up. It’s why I won’t
listen to you talk badly about yourself. I’m willing to spank you over that so
you’ll remember. Even if you hate me, I need you to believe how amazing you
are.”

She didn’t necessarily understand, but she was pretty sure
she couldn’t hate him. Ever. “We have to go slow with the whole play thing,
Dane. I might never be able to handle it, especially the bondage. Being unable
to move…it scares me.”

Which meant she might never be able to please him.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay. We’ll go as slow as you need,”
Dane assured her. “Trust isn’t an overnight process. We’ll take it one baby
step at a time, if that’s how it’s got to be. For now, I want you to kiss Lan
slow and deep. He’s going to sit back and let you have your way with him.”

Lan smiled at her, placing his hands behind him and using
them for leverage as he tilted back. The move left his big chest on display.
“I’ll keep my hands to myself, darlin’.”

She rose to her knees. Her having control while she had her
way with Lan confused her. “That doesn’t sound terribly submissive, Dane.”