Controlling Interests: A Step-Brother Romance (The Legacy Book 2) (8 page)

“If I didn’t think the Bennetts were freaks for kidnapping me, I’d know it now.” She scowled. “Who the hell has a barbecue with linen tablecloths and
oysters
?”

Reed grinned. “Supposed to be an aphrodisiac—”

I hadn’t the patience for my little brother and interrupted him before he finished. “Sarah, go to your room and stay there. Don’t open the door for anyone but me.”

Max and Reed stilled, but Sarah never obeyed when I issued a command.

“Why?”

“It isn’t safe here.”

“But…” She rolled her eyes. “These are
your
investors.”

“Not anymore.”

Max swore. Reed tugged Sarah close, ignoring the sticky drink coating her dress and arms. I’d let him hold her, comfort her, but unless she was tucked between all three of us, I’d never consider her truly safe.

If we even could protect her. What I planned to do with her,
to her
, was anything but
kind
.

Unfortunately, we had no choice. No other alternatives.

Sarah had to conceive, regardless of her health or whatever she believed was wrong with her body.

My father wasn’t the only danger to her now.

“What’s wrong?”

It wasn’t often her voice trembled, but Sarah Atwood was right to feel fear, if only because I was afraid too.

But she wouldn’t like how I’d chose to defend myself.

“I just lost my majority,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

It meant that I’d failed her. It meant that everything I worked for, everything I planned, and the only way I had to protect her was not only gone, it was flaunted in front of my face by my father. He orchestrated the entire event, including revealing his alliances in a deliberate attempt to humiliate me.

And it worked.

I couldn’t share Sarah’s gaze.

“It means I just lost the takeover.”

“All alone, baby?”

I flinched. My sandwich flopped onto the floor. The iced tea nearly followed, crashing into the sink.

Max and Reed laughed as I peeled myself off the kitchen counter and hid my trembling hands.

“Not funny.” My voice hardly raised above a whisper. I flushed. Darius wasn’t even in the house, and I still tip-toed around the kitchen like a coward.

“What are you doing without your leash?” Max twirled the leather around his finger. Reed tisked his tongue.

“Nick freed me before he left for the office.”

“Isn’t he a sweetheart.”

I didn’t like wandering downstairs. Without Nicholas at my side, my steps echoed too loudly, the stairs ached my lungs, and the shadows reached gangly fingers at me. Groping. Petting.

Hurting.

If it weren’t for the empty fridge in Nicholas’s suite, I’d have stayed tucked away in the corner of his bedroom until I turned twenty-one.

I wasn’t an optimistic person—even with my billions, I couldn’t buy luck, bargain for my freedom, or sell the damn company which now depended on an imaginary heir. I had to be pragmatic. I’d never conceive a child, Nicholas’s takeover failed before he moved on it, and I was trapped within the dungeon of a monster as his little play toy.

Darius paraded me around the barbecue to his friends and partners, presenting me as a perfect daughter.

I couldn’t scream while the beast dared to touch, compliment, and degrade me.

No one knew what he had tried to do.

What he almost did.

What he would have done if Nicholas hadn’t rescued me just in time.

Suddenly, I wasn’t very hungry. Frustration curdled my stomach, but biting my lip drew blood. I imagined it wasn’t my own.

That helped.

Reed didn’t let me run. He tugged me into the dining room, setting my food aside to set me on the table. Max stole a potato chip. I pushed the plate toward him.

“You okay?” Reed’s dimple usually offered instant comfort, but it didn’t help now.

“Would
you
be okay?”

 His fingers drifted over my arms, tickling where Nicholas had kissed in fierce silence as we showered. I wasn’t used to Reed so freely touching me. Neither was he.

“Nick asked us to…check on you.”

“He actually spoke to you?” I’d be jealous if I wasn’t worried. Reed’s fingers tangled in the dress straps. He brushed one over my shoulder. “He hardly talked to me this morning.”

“The takeover shit fucked with him.” Max drifted closer only to clip the leash on my collar. He tugged and teased me against his hand. “Don’t worry, baby. We’ll take care of everything.”

I didn’t doubt their commitment, but their solution would never work, no matter how much Nick hoped.

Tried.

In unforgiving silence, he took me that morning in the shower. I braced against the slippery tile as he burrowed himself within me again and again, grunting in a frustrated burst of muscle and force. It might have frightened me had I not recognized the adoration in his eyes. Except, after, the gold hardened, fracturing into an amber remorse. Nicholas left, angry and sullen.

But he promised to take care of me.

I didn’t need false hope. Their plan would never work. If I wanted to survive, I’d have to protect myself even without their
breeding
.

Nothing meant more to me than surviving. I
had
to live, if only so I could secure my future, my wealth, and my power from Darius’s defeat. I’d watch him crumble, make him squirm and panic, just how he humiliated me at the barbecue.

My revenge would punish Darius with the same fear and shame he forced on me.

Until then, Max twisted my leash, and Reed flicked down the strap of the dress protecting my curves from the hungry gaze of my step-brothers.

Nicholas demanded my submission. Some orders were easier to obey than others, especially when commanded by two sexy, attentive, and demanding men. Max no longer frightened me, and I didn’t suffer the unfamiliar awkwardness around Reed. Now, my insides fluttered in different ways when presented before them.

Max bulked and lifted, forging a strength that threatened more than it protected. Dark, spiraling tattoos striped his chest…and lower. Max took pride in his ink, preferring the symbols to a designer suit. A Bennett didn’t use tattoos to intimidate, but Max possessed a darkness that forced my pleasure instead of earning it.

Not like Reed. Nothing about the sun-bleached surfer was menacing…unless I happened to fall for the dimple framing his charming smile and silken laugh. Everything Reed did was meant to earn my pleasure. His simple affection conquered me without Nicholas’s possession or Max’s flogger, and he did it with an expert’s precision.

I blushed under their attention. Both of my step-brothers honed their bodies to perfection.

And they planned to feast on mine.  

Reed bundled my dress over my hips.

“Panties?” He groaned. “Really?”

I shrugged. “Gotta make it hard on you.”

“Believe me, Sarah. I’m plenty hard.”

Max’s voice lowered. “You’ve got orders from Nicholas, baby. No sense playing games.”

A strange thrill tickled over me. Nick left me to his brothers and expected them to do all manner of twisted and sensual things. He knew they’d fuck me, and he encouraged them to tease and fill.

Nicholas swore conceiving would save my life, no matter the man who did it. I expected him to bleed with jealousy, but he hadn’t. If anything, he took me harder, faster, more intensely than before.

Did Nicholas
like
sharing?

I shivered. A new warmth built in me, without the bite of the flogger or Reed’s skilled touch.

Did I like being shared too?

I did. Oh, what did that make me? I was the luckiest woman trapped in the unluckiest of circumstances. Each of my step-brothers offered me something vastly different. Reed’s attention was all for me. Max’s dominances awoke a dark and mysterious urge inside me. And Nicholas completed me, his every touch a hope that we could end the captivity.

Reed’s palm wove over my thigh, encouraging my knees to spread. He moved between my legs, lowering his lips to the hollow of my neck. I shuddered. Reed noticed. He winked at his brother.

“Doubt you need the leash,” Reed said.

Max wasn’t convinced. He waited at my side, letting Reed take control. They both forced me down against the table. I tried to close my legs, but Max slapped my thigh. My panties peeked, too white and innocent for the eager gazes of the men determined to taste, mount, and conquer me.

“The leash is half the fun,” Max said.

“You sure?” Reed’s finger brushed the tempting white of my panties. He teased the right spot, flicking across the sensitive area twice more. “I have her attention without slapping her around.”

“It’s not about the slapping.” Max curled his hand over my neck and squeezed. “It’s the control. Nick hates getting rough, but I had hopes for you.”

“Maybe I don’t need to be rough.”

“Don’t you want to dominate her?”

That shiver again. I knew Reed’s answer before he did. He whispered the truth in a thousand hushed desires and revealed his intentions only once we tangled together in an embrace that suffocated us in passion. My sweet and gentle Reed longed to claim me as badly as Nicholas.

But it tortured him to think of me that way—helpless and bound and completely at his mercy.

I shuddered. Nicholas was demanding enough. He’d never strike me to earn my obedience, just as he no longer bothered binding me to the bed with restraints. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t use them. If given the chance, my step-brothers would all tie me down for
their enjoyment.

Nicholas loved me. Reed worshiped me. And Max?

“You’re a bad influence on him,” I said.

Max loomed. The shadows in the room followed. “Think I’m corrupting my little brother?”

Reed rubbed his finger over the softness hidden beneath the panties. My voice trembled with the delicious shiver. He grinned.

“I think your little brother knows what he’s doing,” I whispered.

“I think he’s curious to see what you can handle.” Max tightened his grip on my neck. “And what he can do.”

Uh-oh
.

It had been days since my stepbrothers last frightened me. I allied with them, but the trust was slow to grow, earned more within their arms than how they protected me with my clothes on. Max liked crumbling my defenses, but no Bennett deserved the delight in rattling me.

“Shouldn’t you let Reed decide what he wants?” I asked.

The dimple returned, every bit as dangerous as the flogger in Max’s pocket. My brothers didn’t answer. I arched an eyebrow.

“Shouldn’t
I
decide how to be taken?”

It was rare for Max to laugh. He pushed Reed aside and flipped me over, pressing my tummy into the table. The dress rose high over my hips. Max twisted his fingers in my panties.

I didn’t dare move.

I didn’t push him away.

I wasn’t sure I wanted him to release me.

“Nick’s been feeding you fairy tales, baby,” Max warned. “There’s no friendship in our bedrooms. You are ours to take now, and you should thank us for every fucking thrust.” He ripped my panties down. His caress wasn’t as soft as Reed’s. It never would be, and I couldn’t imagine a moment spent with Max that wouldn’t be fraught with violence and lust. “Remember. We’re doing this to save your life.”

“You enjoy it,” I said.

Max didn’t need to touch me to prove it. “So do you.”

“Then why not offer me a choice? Afraid I wouldn’t give in?”

Max’s hands roamed. He traced over my slit. I met Reed’s gaze as Max’s fingers slipped within my tightness. Reed grinned.

“You’ll never just
give in
, baby. You’ll always fight us. And I know why.”

I couldn’t speak, not as his touch ground against my slickness and revealed just how much I enjoyed his torment.

“You think we’ll actually succeed,” Max said. “You think we’ll put a little Bennett baby in that tummy and steal away all your precious land and fortune.”

I laughed. Their fantasy hadn’t even crossed my mind.

“Maybe. But you know you’ll fail. No baby. No company.” I arched. “I doubt you want it anymore.”

“Oh?”

I met Reed’s stare. “Why get me pregnant when you could just fuck me all day, every day? This way, you can molest me without consequence.”

Max snickered. “It’s not molesting if you’re pushing back, baby.”

Reed’s breathing roughened into a pant. I sunk my teeth into my pouting bottom lip.  Max kicked my legs out wide as he leaned close. He spoke to Reed though the threat clenched everything inside me in a sudden heat.

“She won’t break if you get a little rough,” Max said.

His hand tangled in my hair to arch me to him. The bite of pain was nothing compared to what he could do with a flogger, but he hadn’t indulged in that part of his deviancy.

Yet.

No way was I getting out of this unscathed.

“Sarah knows how to submit, don’t you, baby?”

I accidentally rocked against the hardness in his trousers. “You’d think.”

“Need some proof?”

Yes. About eight and a half inches of it. His fingers weren’t enough, and neither were the layers of material separating us. Max wove me so easily into his will, but I flushed as I realized just how much of my secrets I revealed to Reed.