if we’d had it our way, my brothers and I would’ve done the deed ourselves. Because that’s what you do to protect someone you love. And Faron truly loves his Gem.
I suppose my actions could be construed as similar based on what I did to protect Serene the night her life was in jeopardy. The night a very powerful man thought he could have her without her permission.
Without my permission.
That’s the kicker in this bizarre and twisted tale. Until that night, I hadn’t even realized that I was in love with Serene. I didn’t grasp just how deep my attraction for her really went and how far I would go to save and protect her.
With her gorgeous brown skin, luminous silver eyes, and a body that made any man in her vicinity beg to have her, there’s no question I wanted her the minute I laid eyes on her.
But I didn’t beg. I made her beg.
Which she did on her own volition many times over the past year. She begged for me while on her knees before I would fuck her mouth with my cock. Or while on her back with her legs spread wide, each ankle tied to the posts on the bed, her luscious cunt dripping with arousal as she cried out for me to take her hard.
And holy fuck, she was the best I’ve ever had. No one else since has even come marginally close to what Serene did to me. She is an ever-constant reminder of what I can’t have and it’s for her own good that things happened the way they did.
I reassured myself it wasn’t love. Love was only an illusion and didn’t exist in my world. It was simply a dark, haunting lust. A deep, passionate, spine-thrilling lust that kept her in my thoughts every waking moment of the day. And every long, sleep-deprived night without her.
Then one night the unthinkable happened and I did the only thing I could to protect her. To save her from the world I’d created for her. The world where my actions and the people I associated with finally unveiled what a monster I’d turned into.
And to redeem myself, I had to remedy the problem.
What I did to save her was the right thing - even though it caused irreparable harm and severed our connection.
Even after moving her out of the club for her own good and into a secure location as Faron’s assistant, providing her a protected workplace, she hates me for it. She no longer looks me in the eyes. And when and if she does, her silvery-luminescent gaze is filled with fiery disgust and hatred toward me.
Can I blame her?
What I did had to happen to save her from further harm. To save her life and keep her from being taken from me. Things had to be done to ensure my precious beauty would always be near.
“Hey, you got the rings I gave you?” Faron interrupts my self-loathing thoughts as he steps into the room, wearing a similar tux and a blue flower on his lapel. Weston files in behind him, looking uninterested and bored – his normal expression.
I pat my front pocket and nod. “Of course. I wouldn’t let anything happen to these precious gems.”
Faron, my older brother, looks pleased with my efforts and squeezes my shoulder. “Thanks. And how about the flask?”
Chuckling, I waggle my brows and extract the small sterling silver flask from the inside of my jacket, unscrewing the top and handing it to him.
As he takes a healthy swig, I make sure to get my jabs in now before the processional begins. “You know you still have time to back out if you’re that nervous. Or sign the prenup.”
This was a sticking point between me and Faron in the weeks leading up to this day. I was opposed to the fact that he didn’t require a prenuptial contract between him and Gemma. It made no sense to me knowing we’d built this empire as a family and now Gem could easily take it away from all of us with just the click of a pen.
It’s not that I don’t like Gem or trust her, but she’s an outsider. An American jewel thief who didn’t have a dime to her name before she met us. She lived under her criminal father’s thumb, and they’d already shown us the lengths they’d go to in order to get what they wanted. Although her father is no longer with us, the wounds are