He could do it for her. He wasn’t sure if he could be as passive as Lan had been, but he could try.
“It’s not shit, Dane. It’s what you need. You were out of control all your life. I can see that. Even when you were grown, you were still at the mercy of everyone else. You need one place where you have complete and utter control, and I trust you to take care of me.”
“And you need control, too.” That was the problem with their relationship, the basic, never ending, no-solution-at-all problem. They were both damaged, and he wasn’t sure how to fix it.
She frowned at him. “Not like you mean. It’s different for me. I didn’t grow up scared the way you did. I had a great family. The sex stuff is hard for me, but being here has given me a lot of time to think. You said that how I eventually dealt with this would be the measure of what kind of woman I am.”
He remembered it like it was yesterday. He’d been standing in the background watching Alea with Piper on the evening she became the future queen. Alea had thrown a bunch of bile his way, and Piper hadn’t understood. “I said those things to Piper. You had stomped off in a blaze of rage and sequins.”
A little smile curled her mouth up. “I didn’t stomp very far. I listened.”
“You eavesdropped.” Little minx.
“Another lesson from my childhood. Dane, I listened in on a lot of things. Why do you think I was always in the garden or the hall or wherever the three of you happened to be? Because I couldn’t let myself believe you wanted me and I couldn’t really convince myself that I didn’t want you. I didn’t choose Landon. I went with the flow and made love with my men. This is the way of life in my world. I can’t set up a schedule. I can only promise that I need each of you.”
He didn’t want a schedule. God, not at all. “I guess I’m wondering why you need me. Landon is like your knight in shining armor. Cooper makes you laugh. I just seem to make you mad.”
“You make me think. You make me get off my ass and fight. I’m not dumb, Dane. You’ve been topping me from the minute we landed on this island. Oh, you put it in questions and circle it all back around so it sounds like it’s my idea, but I know what you’re doing and I need it. I think it’s what I’ve been missing for a very long time. I know I’ve pushed a lot of people away and made it hard to help me, but you’ve found a way to do it. If you want something to shelve, make it the jealousy.”
His c**k stirred because that last line had been said with a tone of perfectly intended brattiness. She knew exactly how to provoke him.
“I’ll always be possessive.” It was his nature. No amount of beat downs by his brothers had taken that away from him. He’d just gotten good at hiding what he wanted to keep and he’d gotten really f**king good at fighting dirty. But he didn’t have to with Lan and Coop. “Did they send you here?”
“I came myself. To fight the good fight, so to speak. Do you understand what we could be?”
Dane nodded. He understood and deeply desired it. “I was an ass. Forgive me.”
“Make me.”
He felt his whole body go on alert. “Do you know what you’re asking for?
“I know what I’m willing to try. Go easy on me, Sir. Landon was really big and I’m a little sore, but I want you. I want to…play.”
A haze of lust seemed to envelope him. Yeah, he could play. He could play hard and rough, but he had to be careful. “I can handle it, Lea. I’ll get the lube. I’ll go easy on you.”
She stopped, frowned. “We have lube?”
Of course. He was a Boy Scout. He’d had plans that had involved a metric shit ton of lubricant. “Yeah, baby. I’m prepared.”
Her eyes narrowed. “The waves took the condoms but not the lube?”
Fuck. He was the one who had to explain this? “Baby, the waves only took one bag. The lube was in a different duffel.” And thank god Lan had made the right call. The lube was way more important. “If it makes you feel better, he also sacrificed my favorite pair of nipple clamps which are now at the bottom of the sea.”
Her whole face flushed, but the sweetest smile came over her lips. “We have to talk about your priorities, Dane. Condoms are more important than lubricant.”
“You’re wrong.” She’d just given him an all-access pass, and he was f**king taking it. “I want you pregnant. I want to fill you up because you’re my female and I want the family only you can give me.”
He dreamed about her round and soft and full of their baby. His children would have such a different experience. They would know love and peace and joy. They would have four parents to protect them. He wanted this life. He wanted to know that if anything happened to him, his precious wife and their offspring would still be loved and protected by his brothers—brothers who would never take from him, but simply enhance his life, be by his side no matter what. He’d been dealt a shitty hand in the past, but this time he’d come up aces.
“I want that, too,” Alea said quietly. “I thought I would be married by now. I thought I would already have my husbands and I would have kids. I never wanted to wait. I wanted my happy ending”
“Your husbands are right here, Alea.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. “You don’t know everything.”
He shook his head. “I know everything I need to know, baby. I love you.”
“Right here and right now, I believe it. I don’t know that I want to leave this island. It feels like a dream. I don’t want to wake up.”