by Madison Faye
The glass wall behind us overlooking the city suddenly shattered under a hail of bullets as Ryan and the other man screamed and dove for the floor.
The helicopter pulled up, hovering even with the shattered window.
And my jaw dropped.
It was them.
More men poured into the room, guns blazing. Oliver and Ash returned fire from the open doorway of the helicopter, scattering the men as bullets raked the walls.
In the chaos of the moment, I lurched to one side, slamming over onto my side and feeling the wind knock out of me. But I also felt my arms slip free of the ties holding me. I scrambled, kicking free of the ties holding my legs as I made a dash for—
One of Cunningham’s men suddenly hefted a large pipe onto one shoulder and leveled it at the chopper.
I froze.
Not a pipe.
A rocket.
Oh God.
The explosion deafened the room, shattering the shelves behind the man as the rocket thundered out of the launcher. The helicopter jerked up, pulling hard away, but it was too late. The tail erupted in fire as the rocket clipped it, fire and shrapnel ricocheting through the shattered windows as the chopper started to veer up and spin.
And then I did what I swore I wouldn’t in front of Ryan.
I screamed.
23
Erik
Alarms screamed through the chopper, lights flashed, and sparks and smoke belched from the control panel against my face. I roared, jerking the stick up and hauling us up away from the windows as we started to spin.
I could hear the screech of shattered metal, and started to choke on the acrid smoke pouring into the cockpit. I glanced behind me, my face grim.
“We’re going down.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Ash hissed.
I slammed the sick left to right, fighting the loss of control as we started to veer wildly around the rooftop of Ryan’s penthouse.
I’d gotten one look at her — one fleeting glimpse of her tied to that chair in there before we’d been hit. And her face was the only thing flashing through my mind as the whole thing started to spin out of control. Not the fortunes we’d made, not the life we’d built.
Her, and the life we could have had with her.
I gritted my teeth, muscles straining as I yanked the stick hard, keeping us away from a neighboring building.
Mia.
Mia who was everything, for one quick flash of a second.
And then something in me snapped.
Fuck this.
Fuck going down like this. Fuck her tied up and in the hands of that monster being the last image I had of her.
I whirled back to my friends. “Fuck it. You ready to make this count?”
Ash grinned like a maniac, as Oliver nodded. “Fuck yeah.”
The helicopter veered wildly as I yanked the rotors down. “I’m gonna try for the roof!” I bellowed behind me.
“If we miss?”
I glanced back at Ash. “Then it’s been an honor—”
“Shut up.”
I grinned. “If I miss, it’s gonna be a long drop and a quick stop at the street thirty stories down.
He nodded grimly, and Oliver leaned forward. “Here’s a wild idea, what if you don’t miss?”
I laughed, feeling the rush of this — the danger and the adrenaline pulsing through me.
The helicopter started to disintegrate around us as I aimed us right at the roof at an insane angle.
“It should go without saying that this is going to be a rough fucking landing,” I roared at them as the city lights blurred around us and the roof came screaming towards us.
I jumped from the cockpit, lurching for the open side door along with my friends.
“Lock and load,” I muttered to myself.
It was go time.
24
Ash
The crash is still a blur to me, even now.
We hit like thunder, the rotary blues shredding up the roof and shattering the other windows. The whole damn thing flipped, and that’s when the three of us jumped free, tucking and rolling away.
We came up firing.
Honestly, I wish I could say there was this big fire-fight, but that shit was fast. No one expected that entrance, for one. That and the helicopter itself took out about half of Cunningham’s guys as it went skidding and rolling across the roof.
The rest were just shocked that we were alive as we quickly made them very much not alive.
Gunfire raked the side of the wall next to me, and I roared as I darted out, dropping to my knees and leveling two more of the guys.
“Ash!”
I flattened as Oliver fired over me, dropping another goon with his shotgun.
The three of us shot our way past the last three of them before we went barreling into the stairwell and racing down the stairs to Cunningham’s penthouse.
“Not a step closer!”
We froze. There in the doorway of his place, all three of us bristling at the sight of Ryan brandishing a knife at her.
“Not a step,” he hissed, eyes darting around like a man who knows he’s cornered and just about out of options. “I mean it!” he squealed.
We kept walking.
The thing is, I knew Ryan Cunningham — we all did. We’d studied him and pieces of shit just like him like it was our religion, preparing for his take-down. And men like Ryan — men who enjoyed hurting women — were easy to figure out.
They were all weak, and when push came to shove they broke.
All of them.
Because it doesn’t take a strong man to beat on or force himself on women, it takes the weakest fucking kind of man there is. It takes a spineless piece of shit to do that.
Which is exactly what he was. It was also exactly why we knew he wouldn’t do it. It was why we knew he was a man of backing away, not a man of action.
Like us.
Because when push came to shove, Ryan Cunningham and men like him were really just big pussies.
He screeched as we rushed him, letting go of Mia in his haste to scamper away. I roared as my fist got him in the teeth, bloodying his mouth. Oliver’s swing got him across the face, breaking his nose and making him scream, and Erik’s elbow to the ribs most certainly broke a few.
We pulled Mia behind us as we pushed Ryan back, fists raining down on him as he stumbled further and further back in his futile attempt to get away from us.
This was for Amy. This was for Mia. This was for every single other woman he’d hurt over the years.
“Okay! Okay!” he screamed. “I’m sorry alright?! Fuck, keep her!”
We kept moving.
“You want money?!”
Oliver laughed bitterly.
Ryan’s face paled. “Well what the fuck do you want?” He gasped as he felt his back come against the shattered frame of his floor-to-ceiling windows, the wind from the city streets thirty stories below whistling past us.
“What the fuck do you want!?” he screeched.
“What do we want?” Erik said softly, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him close.
“We want our fucking sister back, you piece of garbage.”
The three of us grabbed him, and without a second’s hesitations, we pushed.
His heel caught, his body tripped backwards, his eyes went wide—
And we turned away.
Mia’s eyes were wide as we turned back to her, and I shook my head. “Before you say anything, before you tell us that was wrong, or murder, or—”
“I’m not going to say any of those things,” she said quietly, stepping over the rubble before she just gave up and ran into our arms. She melted into us as we held her tight, breathing in her scent, and letting the warmth of her radiate into us.
She lifted her face and pressed her lips tightly to Erik, kissing him fiercely before pulling away and moving to Oliver, who scooped her close. She pulled back and turned to me, her face flushed as she threw her arms a
round my neck and let my mouth sear itself to hers.
“I was just going to say thank you for flushing that piece of trash away,” she finally said as she broke away.
I grinned. “My kinda girl,” I murmured, as I leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
“Can we go home now?”
Oliver grinned. “Oh, it’s home now?”
“I could keep calling it the tower, where the wicked beasts have me locked up.”
“The locking up part could be arranged,” Erik murmured.
“I’ll wear my finest choker.”
We all grinned as we pulled her close, kissing her, claiming her.
Loving her.
Always.
Epilogue
Mia
And somehow, the three evil beasts who locked me in the tower turned out to be the knights in shining armor after all.
Well, maybe more like knights in black, tailor-fit, non-shiny armor, but you get what I mean.
You’d have thought crashing a helicopter into a building in midtown Manhattan, getting into a gun fight, and then throwing a man off said building would land you in a world of trouble. And you’d be correct — that is, unless you worked under the table for the US Government. And let me say, friends in high places are a very good thing to have if you plan on doing any of those things.
Especially the helicopter part.
Whoever Ash, Erik, and Oliver’s “friends” were, they made the whole thing disappear. Completely. The crash was deemed an accident, and the gunfight and dead thugs swept under the rug. Ryan’s death was declared a suicide in the papers, but the message had been sent.
And it was heard.
The night on that penthouse roof changed a lot. It’s funny to think of there being “good” criminals and “bad” criminals, but the fact of it is, there are both. After that night, the bad ones — including Johnson Cunningham and the rest of his goons — sort of disappeared.
The Auction House has reopened — back to its original concept, and with its original clientele — both the women who choose to be there and the men who take them home. It’s still a funny concept to me, but then, it’s not a scene I or my men have anything to do with anymore.
Not since we decided four was a pretty solid number.
My mother never heard the real story, because honestly, there was no need to freak her out. I did come clean about the fact that I was moving in with three rich, powerful men, and I even leveled with her about the nature of that relationship. Eyebrows were raised, and pearls were clutched, but at the end of the day, she was just happy that I was happy. It certainly didn’t hurt that when she met them, Ash, Oliver, and Erik were the most freaking charming versions of themselves I’d ever seen.
Andrea was another story. Andrea got the whole story because she’d been dragged into it.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Ryan’s people had her when I’d called. They’d kicked down the door to our apartment earlier that very day, dragged her away, and waited for me to call. They’d had the chopper and the men on standby, and made her at gunpoint talk me into stepping outside, where they could grab me. Luckily, we’d found her right after Ryan went over the edge that night, pounding on a closet door a floor below. She was a wreck, of course, and she’d thrown her arms around me as we’d both let the tears come.
“I’m so sorry! About all of it!”
She felt the whole thing was her fault, of course, what with setting me up with Blaine’s friend. But Ash, Oliver, and Erik set her straight soon enough, helping me to calm her, and to let her know about the divide in the scene. As it turns out, Blaine really was a good guy, and out of the Auction House scene enough that he had no idea what kind of guy Ryan really was. My three men actually knew him, at least peripherally, and I think them vouching for him being one of the good ones went a long way with Andrea.
He’s since stopped paying her for dates and asked her to marry him, and their wedding is next month.
And the month after that?
Well, the month after that I get to figure out how to throw a wedding with one bride and three grooms without causing the scandal of the century.
I know the saying is “three is crowd,” and you know what? That’s actually true. But who’s to say a crowd is a bad thing? A crowd is a group, or a tribe, or a club. A crowd can be connected, and bound together. And our crowd?
Well, our crowd is a family, and that’s something I’m never giving up, no matter what they say.
Besides, let ‘em talk.
…We’ll just have to go out of our way to give them something to talk about.
The End.
Surprise!
Don’t you just hate when you get the end of a good book and it’s, well, the end?
Yeah, me too! So, I decided we weren’t quite done with Mia, Oliver, Erik, and Ash!
Available exclusively for mailing list members is a two chapters quicky story involving the characters from this book (think of it like a second epilogue!). A very filthy wedding, three of the hottest, most dominant and demanding grooms you’ve ever seen, and probably the luckiest bride ever ;).
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Royally Shared
Royally Shared
Three Princes, one Beauty. Triple the fairytale, triple the scandal.
They’re rich, dominant, gorgeous and toe-curlingly undeniable. One’s my boss. Two are his friends. All three are real, honest-to-goodness royal princes.
…And they say they want to share me.
There’s a place they want to take me, and things there they want to show me. It’s called The Triple Crown Club - the filthy, dark, secret playground of the royal elite. A place from the darkest corners of fantasy.
I know it’s wrong, and forbidden, and if the world found out, the media scandal would destroy us all.
But with three filthy mouths, six powerful hands, and three big, huge, gorgeous…um, crowns?
Well, it’s getting harder to say no. In fact, it’s getting hard to say anything but “yes sirs.”
Cinderella never had this problem.
…Too bad for her.
*Please note that each of the Triple Crown Club books are completely standalone stories centered around one heroine, with no cliffhangers.
Royally Shared is a modern fairytale involving three utterly obsessed alpha heroes and enough insta-love, kindle-melting steam, and sugary-sweetness to make you swoon. This mfmm romance is all about her – no m/m. If you love over-the-top, slightly unrealistic, and wildly dirty stories, this one’s for you! HEA with NO CHEATING!
Copyright © 2017 Madison Faye
All rights reserved.
Cover: White Rabbit Creative
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for review purposes.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, actual events or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status of products referred to in this book and acknowledges that trademarks have been used without permission.
This book is intended for mature, adult audiences only. It contains extremely sexually explicit and graphic scenes and language which may be considered offensive by some readers. This book is strictly intended for those over the age of 18.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older. All acts of a sexual nature are completely consensual.
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1
Julia
My pulse raced as I stared at the computer screen in front of me. My mouth felt dry and my eyes were wide open — my brain almost unwilling to process what I was reading.
“Hey, Earth to Jules?”
I barely heard Emma, my eyes re-reading the email over and over.
“Um, hello?”
I blinked, tearing my eyes away from the screen and staring at my roommate.
“Dude, are you—”
“I got it.”
She frowned for a second, like she was trying to decipher what the heck I was talking about, when suddenly, her whole face lit up.
“Holy shit! Are you kidding me?”
I shook my head, still almost numb from the shock.
I’d gotten it. “It” being the job of a lifetime, or at least, the job I needed so badly at this point in my life.
When my cousin Anya had first told me she’d hooked me up for an interview for the personal assistant position to none other than Prince Luke Snow, I’d laughed, thinking she was pulling my leg.
My first cousin worked as the personal head of royal affairs for Princess Adele White, of Lorne. In the olden days, the job would have been called the “head lady in waiting,” but then, this was the modern world. It was a seriously amazing job — an enormous paycheck, residences in the royal palace, and basically all the perks of being a princess herself without all the crap a real princess has to deal with. Oh, and if that wasn’t cushy enough, she and Adele also happened to be best friends.
