“No, but I can hazard a guess. This lifestyle choice we’re making is limiting. It’s isolating. We knew that years ago when we all stuck together, but we’ve always been able to hide it behind that old line, confirmed bachelors. People accept that. They like thinking we’re just hiding from wedding bells. Anything else, and they will make life hard for us. Be it on Cyprus or in America.”
“We could have a bit more freedom.”
Leon gripped Aaron’s arm. “You need to stop this train of thought. Look at that French businessman, the one who owns the La Belle sans la Bête conglomerate. He’s a pariah, because it came out in the press he’s living in a ménage à trois. The only reason it’s not a problem is because he’s the major shareholder, but it put their merger on the line.” He sighed. “I was in reception when someone checked in today. The guests sign nondisclosure agreements. What happens in the hotel stays in the hotel. That’s because it has to remain a secret.”
Aaron ran a hand through his hair. “I’m just being stupid.”
“No, it’s natural to feel like this. Let’s face it, we’re signing ourselves off to a shitty deal in some respects, but to a great deal in others. Look at what we have…I’ll do anything to protect it. Won’t you?”
Slowly, he nodded. “You’re right. I’ll be okay. It just came as a shock, and I have no idea why. Seeing Loukas and Alexa together, it all felt so right. Like all our plans were coming together. And then, he went off to join her, and I realized I had no right to. Not here, anyway.”
“It’s worth it, Aaron. You know that. We’ve lived without her for ten years. Let’s not quibble over this on the first day of getting her back.”
Knowing Leon spoke the truth, Aaron accepted it with a heavy heart. It seemed so wrong that a love as strong as theirs could be eyed with distrust. In a world where misery seemed to reign, happiness ought to be celebrated, but he was being naive thinking that way.
Wasn’t he?
Chapter Eleven
Two days later
“Come out, Alexa.”
“No, I don’t want to.”
Aaron grimaced at the door. She’d been locked in there ever since her birthday party, when things had come crashing down around them. They left food outside her door. It mysteriously disappeared when no one was looking and was returned empty to the jamb afterward.
Grief was capable of causing many a reaction, and he understood that, but this wasn’t healthy.
“Why don’t you want to? Stavros was our friend, too. We can all help each other get through this.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe the fact you don’t want to means you should.”
“That’s some cockeyed logic,” she snapped, but it was closer to the door this time. Her words were muffled but a little clearer.
“That’s the kind I specialize in,” he quipped. “You don’t have to open the door,” he offered. “I’ll talk to you from here.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it, any of it.”
“I know, agape mou, but please, it hurts me to see you like this. Or, not see you, I guess is more accurate.”
“I can’t believe he’s dead. I saw him only that morning. He was talking about a date he was going on. How can he be dead? He was so alive. So filled with energy. It’s not fair,” she wailed.
He couldn’t argue with that. The man had hardly been in his prime, had been closer to eighty than seventy, but still, to be cut down, murdered…it was anything but fair. When a man reached that age, and was a decent human being at that, he deserved to die peacefully.
Not butchered for his wallet.
At least, that was what the police were saying.
“I know, Alexa, it isn’t fair. But you locking yourself up in there won’t do any good.”
“He was the last link to Papou,” she whispered, and he heard a faint whoosh and saw the door move a little, making him realize she’d taken a seat and was leaning against it.
“There are plenty of links left to him. All of your family, for one.” Christ, even they were. Her grandfather was probably doing a round of somersaults in his grave. If anything could reanimate the dead, it was Antonis’s fury that the three of them had corrupted his granddaughter.
Not that he was going to remind her of that.
“No. It’s not the same. He was Papou’s friend. They were cronies. No one knew him like Stavros did.”
He sighed. What could he say to that? “I’m sorry, Alexa.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“No, it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean to say that I’m not hurting for you.”
“You’re a sweetheart,” she whispered, making his lips twitch.
“I wish I could take your pain away, but I can’t. You need to come out of there, love. The funeral’s tomorrow. I want to see you at least once before then. Plus, the hotel has been calling.” The last thing he wanted her to worry about was work, but if it got her out of her room, then it was for the good.
“Leave my cell outside my door,” she ordered.
“No. This is childish.”
“I don’t feel very adult, Aaron,” she snapped. “One of my best friends has just been murdered. I need space. Time.”
“I understand that, and we’ll all give you exactly what you need, but agape mou, there are better ways to deal with grief than locking yourself in your bedroom.”
When she didn’t reply, he sighed in defeat. “I’ll leave it outside the door. But tell me one thing. Are you going to the funeral or not?”
“Of course I am,” she whispered, making him want to scream at the sound of tears in her voice.
God, it hurt him to hear her suffer.
It wasn’t supposed to have been like this. This was the beginning of their happy ever after, and some fucking mugger had gone and destroyed it all. Robbing Stavros of his life, snatching away a close friend from Alexa and Loukas…skewing what should have been the first days of the rest of their lives and turning them on their head.
He left the phone and shuffled down the hall to Loukas’s salon. They each had one, just like they each had their own bedroom and their own outbuilding on the property line. Just because they were lovers and best friends didn’t mean they didn’t need space. Hell, it meant they needed more of it.
When he popped his head around the door, spotted Loukas lying back on the sofa, a book resting on his face, shielding his eyes, Aaron stepped in. With his legs crossed at the angle the way they were, he knew his lover wasn’t sleeping. Loukas was an inelegant sleeper, arms and legs everywhere, not neatly in line the way they were now.
“She still won’t come out?”
The mumbled words confirmed Aaron knew his friend well.
“No.”
Loukas let out a loud exhalation. “There’s nothing we can do. We just have to work through this. With her.”
“How can we when she won’t leave the bedroom?”
“It will take time. Is she going to the funeral?”
“Yeah, she said she will.”
“That’s something at least. I thought we’d have to force her to go. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.” He reached for the book and moved it away.
Aaron was shocked, although not entirely, to see the red rings under Loukas’s eyes. The shock came from the fact Loukas had removed the covering…He wasn’t one for sharing his weaknesses. And that particular fault lay with his harpy of a mother.
The bitch.
His tears were understandable. Of them all, Loukas had been closer to Stavros. Alexa’s grandfather and Loukas’s had been pals with the old man. But, as always, Loukas chose to be stoic, silent in his grief.
Feeling helpless, knowing his lovers were suffering and that there was jack shit he could do to help, Aaron moved toward the sofa and took a seat on the jutted-out lounger. He reached for Loukas’s hand and squeezed.
They weren’t very tactile. In fact, that was one aspect of the relationship with Alexa he
was looking forward to. In a fashion, the three of them were all pretty macho. Hugs came to celebrate a huge deal or a new gallery opening. Kisses were restricted to the bedroom, and holding hands hardly ever happened.
It was a testament to how Loukas was feeling that he squeezed Aaron’s fingers and didn’t let go.
Scrubbing his hand over his face, Aaron murmured, “You don’t have to hide what you feel, Loukas.”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“Says the man who covered his face with a book. You were crying.”
Loukas peered at him from the corner of his eye but said nothing.
“You can’t deny it. Your eyes are pink, and your cheeks are white. Why do you think you have to hide it?” Aaron shook his head. “Leon’s hidden away in the studio, you’re here hiding under a book, and Alexa won’t come out of the bedroom. I think we all have crappy ways of handling our emotions.”
“Aaron’s right.” Alexa’s small voice piped out from the doorway. “Although, I have come out of the bedroom.”
Seeing her, he beckoned her over with a hand. “Come here, agape mou.” When she stepped closer, Aaron grabbed her pinkies and pulled her down onto his knee. She settled there like his lap was made for her, and in a way, it had been.
He’d known Alexa since she was nine hours old. That was when his mother had received the call that her best friend had been in labor and had already given birth. And so, with a shitload of balloons tucked in his small hand, he’d been paraded to the hospital, gloomily dreading an afternoon of baby talk and maternal anecdote sharing. The only consolation being that Loukas and Leon had been dragged there, too—also with balloons in hand and glum looks on their faces.
But, when his four-year-old self had seen Alexa, his heart had belonged to hers. She’d fascinated him. From the downy softness of her cheek, to the crystalline-blue eyes that would eventually deepen into smoky peridot. She’d smelled odd, had looked like a prune for the most part, but in that moment, something had just clicked.
For the remainder of her childhood, he’d set himself up as her protector. Leon and Loukas, too. They’d been the ones to handle the bullies at her prep school, the ones who had helped her learn to ride a bike, who had snagged her a fake ID and taken her dancing when she should have been at home studying.
They’d all screeched at her as they took it in turns to teach her how to drive, had eaten too much pizza and watched way too many movies, and generally, had loved her.
An innocent love.
A pure love.
Until she’d turned eighteen. Things had changed. She had changed. And they’d started dating. Slipping into the relationship had been as easy as breathing. But behind the scenes, at college, he, Loukas, and Leon had already been a triad. They’d all known what they wanted and had championed Aaron as the one to ease her into what they felt sure Alexa wanted too. And she had, only, she’d said it too loudly and in the wrong garden.
That one conversation, a conversation where she’d hesitantly asked him if a woman could have three lovers at the same time, and as his heart had stuttered at how in sync she was with them, all of his dreams had seemed to be on the brink of coming true. He’d made love to her that night, taking her virginity, claiming her as theirs. It hadn’t been a success. She’d been his first and last woman, and he’d hurt her, but she’d seemed to accept that as a given—had even smiled at him afterward, telling him she knew it would get better. With the promise of more in her eyes, it had come as a hell of a shock for his world to come crashing down around him. Hours later, the ultimatums had started.
The woman in which they’d invested so much time, energy, and love, they’d had to discard. They’d had to live without her.
She’d been harder to give up than crack.
And he knew, because he’d had to give up both.
The thought had him pressing his face into her hair. “Promise me you won’t leave.”
He didn’t know where the words had come from, only that they’d needed to be spoken. Death changed people, made them question their priorities, wonder if they were on the right track.
They’d had a few hours where they’d believed things were finally heading in the direction they’d been dreaming of for so long, and just like before, later that day, the world had come to a crashing halt.
She turned in his lap and faced him. He noticed Loukas was staring at her, a similar question in his eyes. “Why would I leave?”
“This changes things.”
“It does?”
“Yeah. It does. And don’t deny it.”
“It makes me wish things were different. It makes me wish I’d strong-armed Stavros into taking me to the party so he would never have gone out with that woman. But about the four of us? No way.
“If anything, it makes me gladder that we’re together.” She sucked in a breath. “I’ve been so alone, for so long. I’m not saying this to make you guys feel bad, I swear I’m not, but I have. I haven’t been lonely, just alone. Cut off.
“I guess it was intentional. I didn’t want to let anyone in who could hurt me again. The guys I dated were safe and boring, and that’s why the relationships never went anywhere. I just wasn’t interested in them because they could never mean much to me. Never as much as you three did. Do.”
Her words made him close his eyes as he sucked in a deeper breath of jasmine-scented hair. “I’m glad. We’re lucky everything you felt didn’t turn to hate.”
“Yes, you are,” she told him simply. “But what we share—it isn’t simple. It’s complicated—too complicated for it just to disappear.”
He rested his head against hers. “We’re lucky to have you.”
“Yes, you are,” she repeated, but this time, there was a faint smile in her voice. When she squealed, he realized Loukas had pinched her thigh. She slapped his hand away and shrieked, “That’s not fair.”
Loukas growled. “I’ll show you what’s not fair.” He grabbed her, tugging her off Aaron’s lap and onto his own. Another shriek sounded but was cut off when Loukas’s mouth pounced on Alexa’s. Aaron watched as the two kissed, tongues tangling, lips battling, each of them trying to hide from the grief plaguing them.
He sat back, intent on the show and content not to take part.
And what a show.
Within seconds, Loukas’s hands were on the sleep shirt Alexa wore. His fingers were shaking as he unfastened the buttons, and seeing his hands tremble as they cupped Alexa’s breasts made Aaron’s belly clench. The inherent need in that move had everything inside him clamping down in reaction.
Sucking in a breath, he watched as Alexa’s back arched as she reveled in Loukas’s touch, luxuriating in the sensation of his skin on hers. His own fingers craved to feel them both, but he knew this was a moment they needed.
It was to reaffirm what they had together. And while he needed that too, he wasn’t selfish enough to butt in. There were times when he sought Loukas out, or Leon, because they each gave him different things. Loukas represented security in Aaron’s mind, Leon affection. He knew it would be the same for Alexa. She’d come to see each of them as having a different purpose, and that purpose would merge together to create a perfect partnership between the four of them.
In this, Aaron knew he was fortunate to be watching at all.
He sat back, delighting in the slow reveal of Alexa’s form. The delicious curve of her back, beautiful golden skin, the pert globes of her ass. Loukas’s hands cupped those generous mounds as his mouth sought her nipples, tugging them between his lips. He laved the supple crown, licking it—flicking his tongue against it. She arched back, obviously reveling in his attention.
Her hands grabbed his, and she pressed one between her legs. The other, she cupped around the breast he wasn’t lavishing attention on. She rocked her hips as Loukas began to play with her pussy. A gasp escaped her, enough to have Aaron’s already aroused self grabbing his shaft and trying not to come in his pants like a fifteen-year-old kid. A loud cry esca
ped her, and from his vantage point, he could just see the sticky fingers Loukas was plunging in and out of her cunt.
She grabbed his head, jerked it from its resting place against her breasts, and smashed their mouths together. It could have been awkward. They could have bashed their heads together. Instead, it was perfect poetry in motion. Aaron had to sigh in delight at the sight.
Their tongues fought. Their lips plagued each other. Two dominant personalities clashed and battled with their mouths, the war only coming to a halt when Loukas grunted, pulling his mouth from hers and hissing, “That’s not fair.”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
Her taunt had him growling, but that growl was cut off, and Aaron knew why.
Between Alexa’s thighs, he saw the thick root of Loukas’s shaft and saw, with a little wiggle, her thrust herself upon it. Her sigh was luxuriant, as were her wriggling hips as she started to ride him. Her years on horseback were evident, because she rode him like a pro. And Loukas? His eyes were close to crossing, and Aaron could easily understand why. Hell, he looked forward to something similar himself!
He watched as Loukas’s fingers slipped between her legs, and the mewl of delight that came from Alexa was so redolent with pleasure it made him smile.
Like that, with Loukas pinching and playing with her clit, and Alexa riding him like a jockey at the Grand National, it was no wonder their dual yells powered through the room. They echoed around, encompassing the trio in the sounds of orgasmic delight, and Aaron felt his eyelids start to flicker with need when he saw cum start to pool at the gate to Alexa’s body. The idea of taking her, grabbing her to him, freeing his cock and impaling her on it, was a hard temptation to fight.
Had things been different, had the situation not been altered by Stavros’s death, he would have. He’d have fucked her silly, but instead, he watched as she sank into Loukas’s arms, resting against his chest, allowing herself to be wrapped up in him, and he was welcoming her affection.
Loukas needed her. He needed to be with someone with whom he felt he could express himself.
Old Enough to Know Better [The Corsakis Hotel 2] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) Page 12
