Beast digs his hand into my hair and tugs sharply, bowing my back and drawing a gasp from my lips. In all our time together, he was always devastatingly gentle, until I thought I’d go out of my mind and scream in his face to touch me. Pain flickers to pleasure and back again, and I have to bite back a moan. I stare up into his beautiful face, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at Gaeton. “I propose a bargain.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“Gaeton.” Beast says it almost gently. “Look at her.” He gives my hair another sharp tug. This time, I can’t stop the moan. My body doesn’t feel like my own. My skin is too tight, my nipples pebbling and my pussy clenching with an ache only one thing can assuage. What is he doing to me?
“Get your fucking hand off her.” Gaeton’s voice is low and strangled. “Now.”
Beast releases me in an instant and I slump forward, barely catching myself before I crumple into a ball on the floor. Dazed, I touch the smarting spot on my scalp. I should be furious he dared handle me like that, but all I can focus on is how much I need. I straighten back to kneel with some effort. “What are your terms?”
“No.”
Beast ignores Gaeton and resumes his position leaning on the desk. “The three of us for a limited duration. At the end, you make a choice once and for all. Him or me. Regardless of your decision, we will both stay in the territory and resume our roles.”
“You want me to pick?” My inability to choose is what caused this catastrophe to begin with. I strive for calm, to stop myself from shoving to my feet and demanding answers. “And then what? We date? You get your bragging rights and dump me? What?”
“Worry about that when we get there.” There it is again, his cruel little smile. “For the duration of this little bargain, you will pay penance, little Isabelle.”
I shiver. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you played us to your heart’s content for years on end. Now it’s our turn.” He turns to Gaeton. “You’re furious about how things fell out.”
“Yeah.” The word seems almost forced out of him.
Even as I remind myself I don’t have any power here, I can’t stay silent. “That’s not fair. You two are the ones who proposed the idea to date me at the same time.” And I was fool enough to agree to it, thinking it a wonderful way to have my cake and eat it, too. I should have known that if I couldn’t pick one of them before we dated, I certainly wouldn’t be able to once we were in the throes of a relationship.
“We played by her rules and cut off pieces of ourselves to be worthy of her.” Beast turns those eerie blue eyes back to me. “Now we drag her down into the dirt with us.”
Gaeton folds his hands together and seems to be actually considering it. “Explain what the fuck you mean when you say ‘us.’”
“We top her together.”
My gaze jumps back and forth between them. Surely they’re not saying … “Together.”
Gaeton doesn’t look at me. “Careful there, Beast. Might start to think you’re sweet on me.”
Beast doesn’t blink. “It’s an efficient use of time and effort.” He’s on the move again, but this time he circles Gaeton, coming to a stop behind the big man’s chair. He leans down, not touching Gaeton, but near enough that I catch my breath at the sight of him so close to the bigger man. His rough voice is pure sin. “Think of every depraved thing you’ve wanted to do to that sexy little body. All the times you held back. All the fantasies you kept locked down.”
They’re both looking at me like a pair of wolves who happened across a lamb in the forest. I can’t stop another shiver. I came here with the intention of walking out with both of them. I didn’t bargain on this. Any of it.
But we need them too much for me to walk away. I clear my throat. “State your terms in explicit detail.”
Beast still hasn’t moved back from Gaeton. “Gaeton and I dominate you. We fuck you. We are your gods and masters for the duration of two weeks. You will have a safe word and will use it when necessary, but otherwise will obey our every whim. At the end of the timeline, when we’ve balanced the scales, you will make a decision and stand by it.”
The loss of power is staggering. They want me trapped and helpless. A safe word, yes, but we all know I have no choice in this. If I say no and walk out of here without them, there’s a very large chance that my territory will fall. Cordelia is ruthless and a good leader, but the loss of our father and his two top generals at the same time is too high a cost. Already our enemies nip at our borders, testing us. We need Gaeton and Beast back, and we need them back now. “What will you do to me?”
“Anything we want.”
“And after?”
Beast’s expression doesn’t change. “After you choose, you honor that choice in the way you should have from the beginning. Your very own happily-ever-after. Isn’t that what all princesses dream of?”
Maybe other princesses. Not me. My dream was always to be free. I feel like I’m watching that future swirl the drain as we speak.
I’d known it would come to this, even if I wasn’t willing to admit it to myself. There is always the next power struggle, always the next crisis. My father didn’t need me to play a vital role in territory politics, but my sisters do. If I’m in a relationship with one of our most powerful generals, we won’t be able to flit away at a moment’s notice. I’m not sure we’ll be able to travel at all, not when his absence can make the difference between victory and defeat in any given skirmish.
I knew I would have to compromise when I agreed to talk to these men. I didn’t realize I’d have to sacrifice everything.
Gaeton shoves to his feet. With me still on my knees, the difference in our sizes is so pronounced, I might as well be kneeling at the base of a mountain. He seems to realize the same thing and stops short as if he’s afraid he’ll trample me with one wrong step. “I didn’t agree to anything.”
“But you will.” Beast still hasn’t moved. “You want to know the answer as much as I do.” The answer on who I’d choose. I’d like to know that answer, too. If making a choice between these men was so easy, I would have done it years ago and saved us all the heartache.
Gaeton doesn’t deny it. “There has to be a better way.”
Beast shrugs. “We’ve participated in scenes together over the last year. Consider the next two weeks one long scene.”
They’ve participated in scenes together? The jealousy wrapped around my heart digs its thorns in deeper. It’s not even necessarily the fact that they fucked other people—or were intimate, since I know enough about kink to know that it doesn’t necessarily mean sex. It’s that they let others experience parts of themselves that they always held back from me. I got the sweet, vanilla sex. The making love. The term makes me cringe.
Gaeton looks down at me, his dark eyes stormy. “You aren’t doing this because you want us—either of us. You’re doing this because of your family. Out of loyalty.”
I open my mouth, but Beast beats me there. “No lies, Isabelle.” His growling voice turns my name into a threat and a promise.