I GUESS I’M A lucky girl. My small-town life was easy enough, being the wife of the son of the richest man in town. Drunk, yes. Violent, often. Stupid? You have no idea. If there was a dumb-lympics, he’d have won gold in every event.
Except, of course he’d never have shown up, if he did he’d have been drunk and stoned, and, of course he’d have tried to cheat. Because that’s who he was. And that’s why he’s dead.
My life changed so much when the two hitmen he hired came to town, oh my god. They pulled up on Main Street in the hot morning sun, strode into the diner looking for him. I nearly melted in my seat. And I know all of the other ladies in town did the same. If you didn’t see them fidget, the scent would have hit you hard.
When those two big men stood in their black suits and the little bell over the diner door tinkled behind them, and their hard eyes cut around the room, there cannot have been a dry seat in the place.
The testosterone tang cut through the female fragrance and their male voices shook the floor almost as much as their boots.
“Who knows where Hollis Cullen is?”
I had status in the town on account of Hollis. Well, more because of his family name, but I couldn’t say that I was popular. Not with the other women at least. It was nothing personal. They just all wanted Hollis, or thought they did.
Plenty of them still took their turns with him, even after we were married. Not that I really could have blamed them too much because I guess he was just about the meanest and most dangerous thing that there was in that little town.
Until Liam and Declan showed up, of course.
It turned out Hollis had hired two big-city hitmen to fix a problem of his own making, a problem that would probably have been righted in a couple of seconds if Hollis had known how to make an apology. He didn’t bother to be around for the appointment that he made with them, of course. Hollis thought it was a sign of strength to go around pissing people off for no good reason, so why would he keep an appointment? Not content with that, he tried to cheat them on the payment. The down payment.
And that was the end of Hollis. It meant that I had no reason to stay in that little poke of a town. And Declan and Liam both gave me reasons to leave. Really big, hot, hard and urgent reasons. Oh, my.
So, Liam and Declan do their work, which is dirty and not exactly legitimate, and they come back to me. And then what we do is filthy. And not legitimate at all.
I had legitimate before. My life with Hollis was entirely legitimate. Legitimate got me a big house, a state-of-the-art kitchen and a constant supply of bruises and cuts, all where they wouldn’t show. I was the envy of all of the women in the town, which only meant they hated me slightly more than they all hated each other, and probably a little bit less than they despised their own no-good men.
Believe me when I tell you the men in that town were all no good. Every one of them went out of his way to find an opportunity to prove that to me beyond any reasonable doubt.
So, yes. I am a lucky girl. Lucky to have gotten out of a cruel, loveless marriage headed for nowhere in a dead-end town. Lucky that the two biggest, hardest and horniest hitmen ever scooped me up and whisked me away to be their plaything. Lucky to never get a minute of sleep or rest from the endless needs and exhausting demands of the two studs.
Lucky that I can just about keep up with the two of them. They wear me out night and day, but you won’t hear me complaining about that.
Some odd things went down on their last mission, though, complications occurred. They left me wondering about the true status of our merry troupe of travelers.
Some of the cloud on my dirty little horizon was just me worrying how the three of us were going to keep our group tight. Whether we really could hold together. I had really strong feelings, stronger than I ever knew before. Stronger than emotion alone. These physical pangs and aches ran deep. I felt them hard just thinking about Declan. And on a different note, but just as powerful thinking of Liam.
Deep down I felt that their feelings for me were every bit as strong and as true, but they didn’t talk about their feelings much. I’m always afraid that men’s feelings are apt to change.
And there were the complications. Big, blond, German complications called Horst and Gunner. A dangerous pair of German twins had been sent to attach themselves to Declan and Liam for a mission of some kind. They seemed like they might be trying to nose their way into the boys’ lives as well as their work. Would we accept another two players or would that break the illicit bonds in our circle? I wished I knew
Could we go an international round or two, or would that be too much of a strain for our nasty group, our trio, our three in one? Most of all I wanted to keep what I had and I know well enough that in this life you can never be certain of anything.
I know that I am incredibly lucky to have the two most fantastic men, and to have them all to myself. They’re highly protective of me and very possessive, but they aren’t jealous. The only thing wrong is that I can never get enough of them. Believe me, I do try. I try really hard.