by Tina Donahue
She swallowed and continued to withdraw, her eyes filling. “I have to. You know why. I can’t come between you and Connor.”
“Aw, baby, you haven’t. You won’t.”
“Bull,” she shot back, tears running down her cheeks. She kept stepping away, trying to put distance between them, with him following. “Don’t, please.” She put out her hand to stop him.
He curled his fingers around hers, keeping their joined hands on his chest.
His heart drummed as hard as hers. His touch was as potent as Nikki recalled, generating all the wonder she’d missed. She wanted to lose herself in his embrace, to have him press his length to hers, taking what he wanted, providing pleasure, but couldn’t. Pulling free, she hurried back several steps. On either side of her, female servers and men moved aside, their conversations and necking interrupted. The music grew more frantic, matching her plea. “I just want you guys to be happy.”
Mitch gave her a look that said she was nuts. “How’d you think that would happen with you disappearing?”
“I saw how you two acted when I was around and I couldn’t stand it.”
“I know and that’s over.”
She sucked in a breath. “Over? What’s that mean? No. Don’t talk like that. Connor’s your brother. Family, Mitch. You need to leave. Go back to Atlanta.”
“Not without you.” He approached.
She moved back the same distance. “Forget about me.”
He continued to follow her around the tables with many of the patrons watching. “You actually think I could do that?”
“You’ll have to,” she cried, her words hitching. “I won’t let you choose me over your—” Nikki stopped at the solid wall of male behind her, his arm snaking around her waist. She looked over.
Connor?
Oh my god, he was here too? Nikki turned, taking in his black dress shirt, no tie, no jacket, no frills…exactly his bad-boy style. More tears rolled down her cheeks.
His expression was pained and helpless, his voice rising just above the din. “Mitch doesn’t want that, neither do I. How about you?”
He’d lost her. “What?”
Mitch spoke from behind. “She already said that she doesn’t, all right?”
“I want to be sure,” Connor argued.
Mitch sighed. “We can discuss this later. Ready?”
For what?
“In a sec,” Connor said. Despite the activity and noise surrounding them, he focused on her alone. “I know you want Mitch, Nikki, but do you still want me?”
“Are you serious?” she shouted. “Yes. Of course. How can you even question it?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling him all along,” Mitch offered, then asked again, “Ready?”
“I am now,” Connor said. With an ease that surprised Nikki, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the room’s exit, following Mitch.
“Wait!” she said.
Connor didn’t. He brought her closer, his firm caress proving he wasn’t about to let her go. Nikki’s body reacted before her mind could. She slipped her arm around his shoulders and held tight. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home,” Mitch said. “Right, Connor?”
“Yep.”
“The room I’m renting?” she asked.
Both brothers stopped in the smoke-filled hall.
“No,” Connor said, giving her one of his don’t-mess-with-me looks. “Home—our home. The one where all three of us will be living. What else?”
She stopped running her finger beneath her nose. “You’re taking me back to Atlanta? I’m going to be working at Wicked again?”
“No fucking way.” They’d spoken as one.
Connor added, “And you’re never going to be in another of my films.”
Nikki frowned. “I was that bad?”
“You were that good,” Mitch mumbled.
Oh yeah? “Then why won’t I be in any more of them?”
“You will,” Connor said, carrying her down the hall to the club’s exit, again following Mitch. “The private ones we make. No more public ones for you.”
“Wait a sec. I have to work. I have to pay you guys back. I have to prove to you that I’ve changed. I’m not the person who did all that bad crap.”
Mitch stopped at the door. “We know you’re not. That’s why we’re here.”
“Is that true?” she asked Connor, wanting to hear it from him.
He sighed. “Mitch showed me the picture you took of us at our graduation. Why in the hell didn’t you come over and talk to us then? Why’d you waste so many years, Nikki?”
“I was stupid, okay?”
“We both were.” He pushed his face into hers until the tips of their noses touched. “Don’t do it again.”
She loved when he was like this, pretending to be imperious when beneath it she heard his entreaty that she never again hurt him or his brother. “No, sir,” she breathed. “You’re the boss—director—whatever.”
“Try friend,” Mitch said. “And family.” He ran his knuckles down her cheek.
Nikki kissed them and his palm.
Connor huffed, “The door, please? She’s not getting any lighter.”
“Better you risk a hernia than me,” Mitch said.
Nikki mumbled, “I’m right here, guys. I can hear you.”
“Sorry.” Mitch’s smile said he wasn’t. He enjoyed teasing her. The moment he opened the door, Connor carried her to the back parking lot where a black limo waited. The Vegas sky was too bright from the casinos’ lights to allow many stars to shine through. Certainly not as many as she’d seen from the mansion on Sea Island during her one and only starring role in an erotic film. According to Mitch and Connor, there’d be no more of that or working at the club.
That wasn’t right. She had to stop them. “Wait,” Nikki said as Connor put her down.
“Nope.” He took Mitch’s offered jacket and draped it around her shoulders, concealing her nudity from the limo driver who’d come around the vehicle to open the back door. “Get in.”
“I have to work,” she insisted. “I have to pay you guys back. Every cent. I sold my car and my hair to make the first couple of pay—”
“What?” they both said at once.
Connor grabbed a hunk of her wig, pulling it off. Mitch gaped at her boyishly short hair, then complained, “Why in the fuck did you do that?”
Well, duh. “For the money. Don’t worry, it’ll grow back.”
“Fucking A it will.” Connor growled, “Get. In. Now.”
Yes sir.
The moment she was sandwiched between them on the leather seat, Mitch spoke to the driver. “Take us to the airport.”
“Right away, Mr. Wade.”
“Whoa, hold it, my things,” she said as the driver raised the glass partition. “It’s not much, but it’s all I have. My purse and street clothes are still inside the club.”
Connor eased her back against the seat and spoke softly. “A staff member came with us tonight. He’s gathering your stuff here as we speak and he’ll get the rest in your room and will bring it all back. Don’t worry, okay?”
Nikki wanted to say “sure” or even nod. All she could manage were hitching sobs at how nice he was being.
“Oh shit, baby, don’t do that,” Connor begged. “Nothing bad’s gonna happen, I swear.” He cupped her face and brushed his lips over hers.
The scent of his clean breath, his strength and heat were even better than Nikki recalled, bringing more tears.
“Forgive me,” he said, kissing the corners of her trembling mouth, her damp cheeks and each lid. His actions were gentle, tender, filled with respect and love. “I treated you so badly. I was such an idiot. A damn fool.”
“A prick,” Mitch offered.
“Stop it,” Nikki blubbered. “I don’t want you guys to fight about me.”
“Love us both and we won’t have to,” Connor said.
“That’s right.” Mitch turned her face to his, givi
ng her a deep, impassioned kiss.
Connor removed the clips from her nipples, rubbing them with great care, licking them as though he feared they might hurt.
Together, both brothers took turns kissing, touching, comforting her, pulling moan after moan from Nikki.
Outside the limo, horns honked, music throbbed, Vegas’ visitors shouted and laughed.
“Come home with us,” Mitch murmured at last, speaking above her breathy sighs. “Let us take care of you.”
She swallowed and regarded them both, so different, but equally beautiful. “No.”
They exchanged stricken glances, then frowned. Mitch spoke first. “All right, all right. You need to work and pay us back? Then you can do so in the business end of the club, okay?”
“Yeah,” Connor said. “We’ll let you help us with loans from banks and legal shit.”
“That’s right,” Mitch cut in. “You’ll work with us to make Wicked even more of a success than it already is.”
Nikki made a face. “Don’t you already have someone on payroll to do that?”
“We’ll give Fred a promotion,” Connor said. “He’s been wanting one for a while. Right, Mitch?”
“You bet. We’ll make him executive VP to Nikki’s ordinary VP.”
“I don’t want charity,” she said.
“You’re not getting it,” Mitch growled. “You’ve never worked under Connor and me before.”
She ran her thumb across his bottom lip. “You may have forgotten about the film, but I haven’t.”
His mouth turned up in a smile. “In an office setting,” he amended.
“I don’t want you guys taking care of me.”
“Why not?” Connor argued.
She cradled his handsome face, Mitch’s too, loving what she saw, the men they’d become.
Her guys. Strong. Generous. Honorable. Loving. Sexy as fucking hell.
Nikki dropped her hands to their groins. Her fingers snaked over their stiffening cocks.
In a whisper, she said what had been in her heart for too long, “I want us to take care of each other.”
The End
About the Author
Tina Donahue is an award-winning, bestselling novelist in erotic romance, and an admitted chocoholic known to down semi-sweet candy bars in grocery checkout lines. She lives with her family in Palm Springs, California, where tires melt in the 120-degree summer heat and an occasional earthquake puts everyone on notice to bolt things down. When she’s not writing her steamy stories, trying to stay cool or crawling beneath her desk during a trembler, she loves shopping, eating at her favorite Mexican restaurant and meeting other authors. Before she wrote romance, Tina was the editor of an award-winning Midwestern newspaper and worked in Story Direction for a Hollywood production company.
Tina welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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