Virile (22 page)

****

Thorn cogitated. Something was terribly wrong with Adara. She couldn’t hide from him. He called his brothers and asked them to come in early, leaving the hands to complete the field work. And he thought some more. Cenna sat with their beloved at his request, although she obviously felt he should do so.

“What’s going on, Thorn?” Orion swaggered into the great room and dropped onto his favorite chair. A cloud of dust rose from his clothing and he swept off his broad brimmed hat. Despite the cover, his face was tanned and the blue eyes he shared with Kellis were startling in his sun darkened skin.

Kellis echoed Orion and sat opposite. He too was dusty and Thorn thought wryly that their woman would not be pleased when she saw the dirt they’d tracked inside, even if they’d left their boots at the door. Something ticked deep in his brain, and he reached for it but it eluded him.

“There is something wrong with Adara.”

Two big bodies were up and jostling for position in the doorway as his brothers headed out to find her. He called after them and they quieted, their movements becoming stealthy and their voices lowering. After a time, they returned and glared at him.

“How long has she been sleeping?” Kellis looked as concerned as Thorn felt, and Orion cracked his knuckles.

“Not long. Cenna will watch over her while we talk. I gave her heated nectar to soothe her upset stomach. She is slightly fevered and says her chest hurts too.” He held up his hand and Orion subsided. “I’ve already contacted the healer. He asked about her cycle.”

This time Orion cut him off. “Is she breeding?” There was a wealth of excitement in the question and Kellis bounced on the balls of his feet.

Thorn shrugged. “She hasn’t cycled since we claimed her. We would have noticed, seeing as we fucked her every day and sometimes two and three times a day. I suspect she protected herself from pregnancy because we deliberately didn’t do so. So it could be possible.”

“Her protection wore off,” Kellis speculated.

“Or we were too potent for it,” Orion added.

“Or the nectar simply circumvented it as it enhanced her immune system.
If
she is indeed breeding.” Thorn’s tone had his brothers’ attention, and the anticipation and hope faded from their faces.

He stated a fact. “Adara was alone all morning and not confined.”

Kellis shuffled in place and looked at the ceiling. “I bathed her after we…well, I bathed her and fed her from my hand. And then one of the hands called with news of an attempted outlaw breach at the south gate. You weren’t available, Thorn, meeting with that merchant, and Orion was to be back within the hour. I didn’t think it would cause any harm.”

“I got tied up with organizing the shipping of the early field harvest. The numbers didn’t tally with my records so I went out to check the storage sheds,” Orion admitted.

“And I came back early because my gut told me something was amiss.” Thorn wanted to rail at his brothers. Adara couldn’t be left to her own devices for any length of time. She was too intelligent to be left alone to think. But he had to be honest with himself and accept his own hefty share of blame. Adara hadn’t surrendered to them completely. Oh, she submitted and accepted everything they gave her and gave back everything they demanded of her, the strong and powerful woman the prophecy outlined. But she hadn’t surrendered her heart.

They all saw flashes of her deep feelings for them. The twins reciprocated verbally, proclaiming their love loudly on every recent occasion and Thorn watched as Adara visibly tried to accept it at face value. She had even said it back, but without accepting all three of them they needed to wait.
 
He knew he’d broken her to be a slave to her desires and needs yet couldn’t make himself tell her he loved her more than life itself. He was still afraid she’d arm herself with that knowledge and wield it as a finely crafted weapon against him, and then he’d soften and lose her. She would resist them all and leave, taking their hearts with her. It was fucking stupid, because she’d had his heart from the start. Why was it necessary for her to say it first? He growled under his breath.

“Thorn?” Kellis looked worried, and beneath that, fearful. He was the brother most like their mother—in tune with the more feminine side of life—and intuited Adara’s inner conflict far quicker than Thorn.

Adara had all the power and until she fully trusted them she would never fully surrender. But how to attain her full trust when they’d already deceived her?

 
“I’ll tell her my feelings tonight, if she is feeling better.” Probably easier said than done, but he’d do it.

“You don’t trust her with yourself,” Orion said shrewdly.

“I didn’t, and I realize that’s why she won’t commit—she is struggling with trust herself, and why wouldn’t she? I have shown her but need to say it.”

“We only have three days, brother.”

“I know it, Orion.” He snapped at him and instantly felt ashamed.

“If she’s breeding, she’s ours,” Kellis asserted. “The contract will be null and void, but she can’t leave us by Virile law. She can’t leave regardless—I won’t allow it.”

“And if she doesn’t surrender what hell will we be living then, Kellis? Adara bound to us against her will because of a child who is an innocent. We thought we’d planned this so perfectly,” Thorn said bitterly.

“It won’t come to that,” Orion said practically. “You’ll fess up, and she’ll reciprocate, and it’ll all work out.”

Thorn reflected how godsdamn lucky he was. His brothers could have blamed him, and rightly so—but they hadn’t, waiting for him to come to this on his own. Orion swung his hat against his leg and more dirt boiled forth—and with it an epiphany. Shoving up from his seat Thorn strode down the hall to the study, his strides eating up the distance even as his gut begged him to slow down.

“What the fuck?” Kellis was hard on his heels, clearly having read the bad news on Thorn’s face. He and Orion stood by the desk as Thorn took down the ancient tome that held their family history—and the prophecy. The dust on its cover sported small smudges, just the size of Adara’s fingers, and there was a clean patch in the shape of a circle with splash marks all around it. A teardrop. His gut clenched.

“Adara had smudges of dirt on her thighs when I came home this morning. And her hands were dirty. She was going to shower. The only place she could have gathered that dirt was from here. You know Ronnie and Cenna never came in here, and you were always with Adara when she assisted you.”

“She was never alone in here,” Orion agreed. “So you think Adara read the prophecy?”

“It seems likely.”

“But why would that make her sick?” Orion tilted his head and stared at them both.

“Because it casts doubt on everything we’ve done and said since she came here,” Kellis explained. Thorn was feeling sick himself. “We didn’t tell her about the prophecy—it wasn’t allowed until she surrendered—and now she thinks we said what we said and did what we did so she would commit. Fulfill the prophecy and give us untold power.”

“But we wouldn’t misuse that power,” Orion protested. “We’d happily do without it. You said it yourself.”

“I clearly got the brains in the womb, you ass,” Kellis commented, throwing his hands up.

“Yeah, well, I got the bigger cock, asshole.”

“I had to hear it from her first before I put my love where my heart is,” admitted Thorn, ignoring the twins’ stupid banter, knowing it was to try and distance the mess they were in. “My reasoning was both flawed and cowardly.”

“Okay. Enough talking like a bunch of girls.” Orion never ceased to amaze Thorn—and annoy the shit out of Kellis. “Let’s look at this and figure out what Adara needs after that revelation. If she read the prophecy then it was meant to be, right? Because otherwise it’s too big a coincidence—Thorn gone, Kellis called away and me getting tied up in something that normally runs like clockwork.”

“Maybe the powers that be were getting impatient. There’s only three days left,” Kellis reminded.

Thorn thought hard. It made total sense. And it kick started them, especially him. Did he think pouring out his heart the night before the contract expired and begging Adara to marry him was really going to work? At least now he had three days.

“Okay. Here’s how we’ll do it.” The three of them discussed, dissected and reviewed the plan until their eyes crossed. In the end it was simple—they’d tell Adara they loved her and wanted to marry her. Well, the twins would reiterate what they’d been brave enough to share all along and he’d tell her. Then he’d explain her how they’d chosen her believing her hair to be black, despite the prophecy. But most of all he was going to have to grovel some. Maybe more than some.

He’d administered almost all of the punishments, corrections and reinforcements. But it was the erotic pain his inner sadist relished, only because Adara had as well. They needed one another and surely he could convince her of that absolute fact. The twins were on their own. They couldn’t imagine life without her and planned to convince her in that regard. And they could be very creative.

“I’m not taking her to the healer. Unless she is really ill. If she’s breeding we don’t need to know until we sort the rest of this out, because it will just make things more confusing for her.”

“Unless she already knows, big brother.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Wake, Mistress. And you, animal, get off this bed before the Masters find you here!” Cenna’s kind voice broke through Adara’s sluggish dreams. Not the dreams where one was engulfed by the planet, but imaginings of a full and happy life with her three men—and babies. Beautiful, sweet boy babies with black hair and green eyes, boys with blond locks and green eyes.

Pushing her wishful thinking aside she remembered why she was in bed in the middle of the day, and not fucking or serving one of those men of her dreams. Of her nightmares. She stared at Cenna who busied herself with shooing Nonnie out of the bedroom then picked up the discarded towel and began to fold it. The other woman wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“If you’re feeling well enough, Mistress, I’ve prepared a tray. And then the men would like to speak with you.”

Now aware she could smell the usually tantalizing aroma of grilled vegetables and cheese, Adara’s gorge rose and she flung herself from the bed to run to the commode. There was little to expel but her stomach continued to heave until it accepted that fact. A cool cloth draped over the nape of her neck and Cenna spoke softly, words Adara didn’t recognize.

Dragging the cloth from her neck she wiped her face and pushed up to make her way to the sink, avoiding her reflection the better not to see Cenna. Once she washed her hands and rinsed her mouth she turned and faced the old nanny.

“You knew.”

“Mistress?”

“Don’t play coy, Cenna. You knew. I understand your loyalty to the brothers. You’ve been with them for freaking
decades
I know—maybe even hundreds of years! But you’re a woman. At least I think you are.” Adara came up short. Maybe Cenna was something else in a woman’s form. She shook her head, dismissing her thoughts as being totally fanciful. It was either that or lose it completely.

“I’m a woman,” Cenna replied calmly. “A very old woman.”

“So is there no loyalty among the sisterhood, then, on Virile? Especially when there’s so few of us? You knew of the prophecy and didn’t tell me—
they
didn’t tell me—and you encouraged me to give over to them, knowing all along it was to ensure them
untold fortune
.”

“You are destined for them, Mistress.”

“Don’t. Call. Me. That. I’m their convenient toy. Won at bastra then seduced. I suppose seduction fit their code when they could have just taken what they wanted. Raped me. Better they had. All those proclamations of love to sweeten the pot...”

Something grabbed her heart and squeezed it but she managed to finish despite the pain. “Although I wouldn’t have committed if they forced me. Such a well thought out plan,” she concluded bitterly.

“You have the best of them all, Mistress. You must know that. They love you, all of them. They are as bound by the prophecy as you, but it didn’t dictate their hearts. They—”

Adara cut her off. “Look at me, Cenna.” She gestured down the length of her body. “Look at all of me.”

“I see you, Mistress,” Cenna kept speaking in a soothing tone and it made Adara crazy.

“Then you know all of that stuff about love is bunk. Look at Thorn, Orion and Kellis and consider who they’ve been with. I’m a short, dumpy piece of ass. I just happened to be gambled away by my own brother who didn’t care enough about my fate to think twice. So red hair is the deal with the prophecy—what else were those men to do?”

“Mistress, please—”

“I wonder how they could stand to look at me, let alone fuck me. But I guess people do what they have to do when there’s something in it for them.”

“You think that of us, Adara.” Thorn spoke from the doorway. “You think we enjoyed your body, made love to it and you, because we hoped to attain the benefits of the prophecy?”

He wasn’t hiding from her now. His features were twisted with disbelief—and pain—and his big hands flexed at his sides. Orion and Kellis now flanked him, and her belly clenched at the agony etched on their faces. But she wasn’t letting their emotions affect her—just how far were they planning to go with the big act? At least there was no need for her to pretend. Three days. Three, and she’d be gone and put all of this behind her. The betrayal.

Shrugging, she wearily pushed her hair away from her face. “Not sure there’s any other way to look at it, Thorn. Now the pretense is over, I want my clothes. And my own space. There’s no need for any of you to hover over me every minute and distract me. I found out your secret.”

Something withered and died inside with her words. The thought of being without them and never seeing them again felt unconscionable.

“You are in no position to make demands, agapi mou. You are here on Virile, with no way to leave without our agreement. And we won’t allow you to even make the attempt.” Thorn pushed into her space. “And no matter what you think of me, of us, you still are my heart.”

Oh, she wanted to believe him. She thrilled to both his arrogance and proclamation—she wanted this all to go away so she could stay and commit to these men. But she was so fucking
hurt
. “I want to leave tomorrow. I’m telling you, not demanding. The contract legally expired days ago.”

“You cannot, my love.” She could have sworn that tears stood in Kellis’s eyes as he stared at her with overwhelming intensity.

“You can’t keep me here, Kellis,” she tried to say reasonably, even though Orion was looking strained and worried, and was shaking his head. “I’m sorry that you’ll lose out on whatever fortune was coming your way, but I won’t fulfill it. I…” Unable to tell them that she couldn’t commit to them because it would kill her when they withdrew their affections—and their love—she contented herself with clasping her hands tightly and her mouth shut. They already had enough power over her.

“If you leave, you will die.”

Threat? A promise? Adara began to shake and glanced at all of their faces, even Cenna’s. Were they going to murder her? But there was no intent to be seen, merely sadness and resignation.

Kellis spoke again. “Visitors to Virile often sicken or die after a very few days here, Adara. The criminals who come are indeed desperate because only the strongest of them survive, and then struggle with recurring medical issues. It makes them even more desperate to track the source for our longevity and wellness.”

“How old
are
you?” It didn’t matter but she did want to know.

“Orion and I are nearer to a century in your world’s years, my love. Thorn celebrated that milestone last month, just before your arrival.”

Her knees gave out and she nearly went to them but Thorn moved with his usual swiftness and caught her up before she hit the floor. He carried her to the divan and settled her on it, holding her until she got her bearings. After tucking a light throw over her, he then sank into one of the chairs and was joined by his brothers as they took their own seats. Cenna perched on the bed.

“How is that possible?”
 
It hurt to breathe, the shock compressing her lungs.

“We partake of the nectar, Adara, distilled from our crop. It is a closely guarded secret on Virile because few female children are born so we men not only share women, we all must live longer in order to not allow our race to die out.

“Vamvaki is a miracle plant. The seeds are soaked to provide the essence for the life prolonging nectar, the chaff is woven into clothing, the actual stalk becomes a dense, incredibly strong, lightweight—”

Enough of the agricultural lesson! Adara knew all of that, even about the seeds—except for the life prolonging part. “I’ve been drinking that stuff since I got here. So that means I’m going to live longer and not have serious medical problems?”

Orion nodded solemnly. “Exactly so.”

“But you said I’d die.”

“While Virile embraces you, your planet will not. In fact, it will reject you as an alien species. It is why we rarely travel.”

Holy shit. Holy shit. They’d transformed her into a Virilian without asking. They were so fucking determined to keep her here they effectively poisoned her against moving home. Home. Her planet was no longer her home. Sammy and her work were there. A thought struck her.

“Your parents were travelling when they…they weren’t on Virile.” She heard the accusation in her voice but was desperately hoping there was some way around this rejection thing.

“We travel for very short periods of time, my sweet. It is carefully planned.”

Godsdamned plans. “You took away my choice when you administered that stuff without asking me.” Rage thrummed in her veins and she longed for that weapon Thorn had showed her how to use that first day of the rest of her life on this fucking planet.

“We did, agapi mou, as we determined other of your choices. It is simple. You are ours and destiny has spoken. And we couldn’t allow you to become ill and die. Losing you is unthinkable.” Thorn fixed her with the same look he used the day she’d tried to negotiate with the outlaws—it all came down to that first day. The look scared her to death and her pussy flooded right along with her fear. Twisted.

“We knew you were ours before you arrived with that incredible red mane blazing in the sunlight. The image your brother had depicted dark hair, Adara. Dark hair—and we saw your sweet face and were among the fallen.”

It was nearly too much to take in. She recalled the picture again. The beach, and a sudden shower forced them under the cover of picnic shelter. She didn’t have time to pull her towel around her before Elliot snapped the shot—and she didn’t have time to stand tall and suck her belly in either. But her hair. Wet from the sea, it could have photographed black in the deep shade of the shelter. The thing inside—the thing she thought had died flared slightly back to life. Hope.

“So you fell in love with a picture.” That seemed insane, and hope began to flicker out.

“We did, and though I’m the practical one, my sweet, I didn’t question it. And when we learned you were a redhead—”

“Bonus,” she said dryly. “The love of your life
and
fulfilling that godsdamned prophecy. Too bad you didn’t get a submissive in all of this, because I’m not going to let you walk all over me. You should have told me about the prophecy. Now I’m stuck on Virile until I can find a way to mitigate the effects of what you force fed me without asking.”

“If we told you, your life would have been forfeit. The prophets exist, Adara. Your dream and the sand—”

“Don’t keep reminding me! What, do you think I’ve forgotten? I’m still freaked—and now you’re saying they’ll kill me?”

It was Kellis’s turn to shrug. “It is written that if you refuse to surrender and commit to us your life is forfeit. That is not happening.”

“Maybe that’s life as I knew it, Kellis. Because that’s forfeit. Where will I go now?” She ignored the little, hopeful voice suggesting she stay right where she was and tell them she loved them even if she wanted to kill them. After all, they owed her big time and she could take advantage of it. Maybe tie Thorn to the bed and torment him…

Gods! Her pussy was thinking instead of her brain. So they’d fallen in love with her like in some kind of fairy tale, and had decided to keep her no matter what. She cautiously decided to believe that because the alternative…her emotions were up and down and her hormones were now dictating to her. Maybe she should stay and trust a little—like she had any choice. Those godsdamned men and her choices.

“I’m not submissive.” She wouldn’t be that easy.

“There are those who, once introduced to submission, find they like it, even if they believe it is without choice. It makes for a more difficult transition, but the desire in the heart is there. And that desire was written in your eyes.” Ever practical Orion stated their case.

Thorn was still giving her that look, but something more tender glazed his eyes. He spoke firmly. “We know what is best for you, Adara. The fantasy you had to run your family business is just that, a fantasy. There is really nothing for you on your world. You had to find something to fulfill you until your brother so fortuitously landed here. You were merely marking time. We believe our prophecy that strongly.

“You need husbands who love you more than life itself, and children to bear and love and raise. You can utilize your education here with Orion and inspire our workers when you walk the yard with Kellis. But your destiny is with us. And, agapi mou, we don’t care about the prophecy—you are riches enough for us.”

“Say it.” She didn’t bother to embellish. He knew what she wanted to hear—needed to hear.

“I love you, Adara, my heart. I loved you the instant I laid eyes on your image. We bound you with the contract immediately, and I waited those days in anguish, fearing you wouldn’t arrive. I will love you forever.”