I think the dude should explain himself from time
to time. Oh, look, he got the designer shoe stomp.”
Sure enough, Princess Alea stomped her right foot, threw her
hands up, and stalked off, tossing open the door to the ballroom and flooding
the hall briefly with glittering lights. Dane saw the way Lan sighed and opened
the door again, his stare following her as he pursued.
Dane’s hand twitched, and he made a fist to quell his urge
to smack her sexy but rebellious little ass. “I swear to god, Coop, sometimes I
want to lay that girl over my knee and not let her up until we’ve reached an
understanding.”
“Only sometimes, Dane?”
Nope. Pretty much all the time. From the minute he’d seen
Princess Alea Binte al Mussad, his cock had been hard and his heart had taken a
nosedive. She’d hit him like a bolt of lightning. He’d stood there staring at
her, feeling like a damn fool, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Then
he’d looked at his two best friends, ready to tell them that he’d finally found
the one woman he wanted to put a collar on—as crazy as that would have
sounded—and realized they were just as head over heels. That quickly, all three
of them were fucked.
But they had all backed off, unwilling to step on each others’
toes. They had been through too much together. Coop and Lan were the only
family Dane had left. Oh, there was a father and three brothers back in
Georgia, but he’d come back from the Korengal Valley a different man. Shortly
after his second tour, the family drama and his divorce had ended any affection
or allegiance they had for him. In their head, Dane was as good as dead. Coop
and Lan were his brothers now, and he couldn’t fight with them. They had been
at an impasse.
Until they had really understood the way relationships
worked here in Bezakistan. It was tradition among the wealthy and the
landholders in this small country for the brothers of a family to share a wife
so they didn’t have to divide the family riches or leave any sibling to suffer poverty.
After a few weeks, Dane had decided they could adopt the Bezakistani way. He,
Lan, and Coop might not truly share blood and they might not be preserving a
fortune, but they all wanted Alea and weren’t willing to stab a brother in the
back to have her.
So after a full month here, he’d decided he liked the idea
of sharing. The families in Bezakistan seemed happy, and he wouldn’t have to
relinquish his backup. He’d spent the majority of his adult life in the
military, his whole childhood before that following his dad from base to base.
The idea of having a family that functioned as a team really suited him.
And then just as they’d settled everything between the three
of them, they realized they had forgotten to talk to the most important member
of the team. And Alea didn’t want anything to do with them. Or at least that
was her story, and she seemed to be sticking to it.
Landon touched his earpiece and suddenly his voice came on
the line. “I want you to do a background check on that British fucker, Oliver
Thurston-Hughes. Get me everything you can. I want to know it all, right down
to what the asshole eats for breakfast so I’ll know what to poison.”
“Slow down,” Coop said. “Why are we going to poison that
Brit’s oatmeal? Do they even eat oatmeal in England?”
Lan ignored the question, getting right to the point. “He’s
a little too interested in the princess.”
Fuck . If he was
calling her “princess,” then their conversation had been a clusterfuck. “What’s
going on, Lan?”
His pal didn’t look back. Instead, Lan stared across the
ballroom, never taking his eyes off her. “That cousin of hers is trying to get
her to go to England. The princess walked out onto the balcony to get some
fresh air. First Mr. Small Dick followed her, then Crazy Bitch crashed the party.
They laid all