Shadowing the Teacher (Perfect Pairs Book 3) (14 page)

The men jumped up, but she put her hand up. “No, please. I need to get this out, or I never will.” She took a few deeps breaths and pressed forward. This was it. Say it, or forever hold her peace. “I’m so scared that I’ll never be able to live up to the memory of Amanda, your perfect wife. I know that sounds so mean, and I don’t want to sound like a bitch but…” Her voice broke as the threat of rejection tore into her. She hated saying this, but it had to be done. “I don’t want to fall in love with you guys, only to find out you can never love anyone but her.”

Her chest was too tight, hot tears spilling from her eyes, and mucus clogged up her nose. She reached for the box of tissues, blowing her nose and wiping at her tears. This was all too much.

Kane smiled at her kindly and reached over the coffee table to take her hand.

Kane pulled her towards him and she went, while Reid silently slipped into the armchair closest to her. She hoped that was so he didn’t overwhelm her, not that she’d just pushed him into running away again.

Reid swallowed obviously, his throat working before he spoke. “You don’t have to worry about such a thing, Sam. You are our true mate, the woman made just for us. We can’t compare the two of you.”

Sam took deep breaths in through her nose and concentrated on not bursting into tears again. “So, does that mean, you ha-ave to love me?”

She sniffed as hot tears rolled down her cheeks.

Damn it!

She wiped them away as quickly as possible and focused on Reid’s smiling face.

“No, not at all. But the bond between us is there for a reason, I see that now. It’s to show us with undeniable certainty that you are meant for us. So we don’t do anything as stupid as ignoring it. We have a choice, and we know you are the one. Amanda was the past. You are our future.”

His words were perfect, and his eyes seemed to show he was being honest, but there was a lingering doubt fluttering inside her.

“Are you really sure? I mean, you left me only yesterday after we…”

Reid slipped back on to the couch with them and pulled her into his lap. He wrapped his huge arms around her, and she settled into him, sighing as the tension began to leave her body.

“Sam, I am so, very sorry about yesterday. I don’t know how to say it any other way. Not sorry about the amazing sex of course, but my response afterwards. It was selfish and stupid, and I want to make it up to you.”

She slid her arms up to his neck, digging her fingers into the huge, corded muscles there. “I do have another five days of holidays before I have to decide anything.” And she hoped that was enough time for all her jitteriness to go away.

“Perfect.” The word rolled out of him on a growl as he scooped her up into his arms and stood up.

Sam squealed and held tight to his neck. “Put me down. I’m too heavy!” She tried to push her legs against his arms, wanting to put her feet back on the solid floor. But he just laughed and tossed her up in the air as though she were a weightless baby. She properly screamed then and clung tight to his body.

“Sam. You are perfect, but I know the words are not enough. Let us show you just how perfect you are.”

They turned and walked her back to her bedroom, pushing her bag to the side as they lay her on the bed. Together they proved just how much they wanted her to stay, and what lengths they’d go to, to make sure she felt desired and loved.

Chapter Fourteen

Sam opened her lips, and Kane slipped a fork into her mouth. The sweet, hot chocolate taste spread over her tongue, and the crunch of the strawberry made her moan. Such a brilliant combination of flavors.

“God, that’s good.”

Kane chuckled, and Reid, who she was using as a seat, slipped his hands up over her breasts and began massaging and tweaking her nipples.

She giggled and wiggled on his lap, feeling the familiar heat unfurling in her belly. It had been two days since they’d proclaimed their need and want for one another, and they hadn’t left her yet. Her appetite for them had somehow increased, and her fears were melting away as fast as the chocolate they were feeding her.

Her phone began to vibrate and buzz, again. Dancing its way across the kitchen bench in her direction. She really needed to turn the blasted thing off.

“Do you need to answer that? It hasn’t stopped.” Kane grabbed her phone and frowned as he read the screen. “Bill again. Who’s that, sweetheart?”

Reid went still beneath her, his hands stilling their movements.

Her belly twisted as she imagined the messages Kane was privy to with her cell in his hand. She slipped off Reid’s lap and stepped forward, taking the offending item from Kane’s palm.

“Thanks. Um, Bill’s my ex-boyfriend. The one I was dating when I came here a few days ago. He won’t stop calling, or messaging.”

Her eyes scrolled the text messages and four missed calls. She opened the phone and had a quick read, her sigh coming out in a long breath of air. Her heart hurt seeing what he wrote. So much begging, making sure they were just on a break, that they would sort it out when she got home. Then a nastier message when he got angry she hadn’t responded.

Then it was back to begging. It was exhausting to read.

She pressed the main button and slid the turn off tab until the light dimmed on the screen.

“Did you just say ex-boyfriend?”

Kane’s voice sounded too high, and she frowned as she turned to look at him.

“Yes. He keeps calling to try to make up with me, but I really don’t want that. Obviously. And the messages are getting pretty full on. So sad one minute and then mad the next.”

“Give me the phone and I’ll sort him out.” Reid stood also and extended his hand for the phone. Sam shook her head and shuffled quickly around the kitchen bench, hiding the phone in one of the drawers. Her belly was twisting in her body like Bill had his foot on her stomach.

“No, please. He’s just upset because I broke up with him after the wedding on the weekend. I shouldn’t have done it over the phone like that, but after meeting you two, I couldn’t help it.”

Reid’s frown began to relax, his beautiful smile stretching across his lips as he continued to look at her with a softening expression. “You broke up with your boyfriend before you came to bed with us?”

Sam cocked her head to the side. “Of course I did. I was falling in love with you two! As if I could stay in a relationship with one man and go to bed with another.”

Reid scooped her up and swung around with her. She batted at his shoulders with her fists, having as much effect as a dwarf does against a mountain. He really was amazingly big now.

“That’s great.” Kane chuckled behind her.

Sam shook her head at them. “As if I’d do that.”

“Well, we just thought you’d wait until you knew for sure.”

Sam grunted and glared at them again, a small part of her enjoying the happy looks on their faces. Although arrogant was another word she would use.

“I’m not one of those girls that will just hold onto someone for the sake of it. That wouldn’t be fair to anyone.”

The men continued to stare at her with a mixture of surprise and happiness. Seriously, these guys should know her better than that by now.

She moved over to the couch and flopped down into it. Bill’s messages had her thinking about her old world, her old life. What were people going to say when they found out she was in a relationship with two men? She’d be called crazy, or worse. What were her parents going to think?

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Kane sat down next to her and took her hand in his, Reid casually sitting down on one of the recliners chairs.

“I’m just a bit worried about what’s going to happen. I mean, this isn’t exactly normal.”

Her men chuckled. “It is for us.”

Those words had all of her insecurities flooding back in. They had lived like this before. It was normal for them. To share one woman. They’d done it before. It was nothing new or special to them.

She looked away, a lump in her throat pressing against her airway so hard she gulped and gasped as the need for air rose.

“What’s happened, Sam? I don’t understand.”

The coldness in Sam’s belly had crept outwards, causing her muscles to shake.

“Come here, sweetheart.” Kane’s voice called to her, and she moved through the haze towards him.

She blinked as the heat wrapped around her, Kane’s arms holding her in his lap. The pain in her nose spread through her face, and hot tears began streaming down her cheeks. Horrified, she held her breath and swiped at the wetness, not even sure why she was crying.

She had to make him understand. “I have never … I mean, I’m so sorry, you must think me such a slut to have jumped from one bed to another like that. I didn’t know that I was going to meet you when I came here for the wedding.”

Kane waved one of his hands at her. “A week ago you were in another relationship, and a week ago we were planning our funerals. A lot changes in a week.”

A strangled laugh rose from her throat. “That’s true. But it’s not just that, Kane. What sort of woman am I to be living like this with two men? I’m not trying to offend you. I know you’ve always had this sort of relationship, but me … I grew up believing in a marriage between only two people. This is…”

“What? Wrong? Disgusting? Unnatural?”

Each word he said hit her in the gut, and her heart gathered its courage and pushed forward a single word.

No
.

“No, it’s not that…”

“Then what is it, Sam?” Reid interjected, his voice annoyed now.

“I don’t know! I know it’s not wrong. Ashleigh and Laura do it, love it. They married two men, but I … it’s not…”

“Normal?” Kane asked.

She hung her head. It was too hard to explain how her childhood teachings and the expectations of her life had now shifted. 

“Shhh, it’s ok. You’re having a challenge of old versus new sets of values. That’s going to cause some subconscious problems.”

“Thanks for trying to understand, Kane.”

Her shoulders dropped, and the air went out of her lungs. She was still confused and exhausted.

“Always. You have the right to feel whatever you need to. A lot has changed in your life, and you haven’t had a chance to mourn that relationship either, have you?”

Sam blew her nose inelegantly and swiped at her face with the soft tissues. Kane was such a beautiful person. Instead of being mad at her, judging her, he was counseling her, supporting her. She didn’t deserve him.

“I don’t need to. He wasn’t right for me.”

She took a shuddering breath then slowly exhaled, the muscles of her shoulders aching as she let the tension go, her whole body sagging into Kane’s.

“Come here, baby.” Reid and pulled her into his arms.

“Goodness, you’re strong.” Sam chuffed out a laugh as Reid wrapped her up like she weighed nothing. Reid began nuzzling at her in an animal like way. Rubbing his head against hers and purring, butting his nose against her face and inhaling.

“You remind me so much of a cat when you do that.”

Reid lifted his head and grinned down at her. “And I wish I could give you a tongue bath right now.”

He turned and licked her cheek, the sensation like wet sandpaper against her sensitive skin.

“Argh!” She giggled and moved her face away while he slid his tongue into her ear, goosebumps breaking out across her arms.

“Hmm, that feels good.” She melted into his embrace, a weird numbness invading her brain. She’d deal with the other stuff later.

“We should talk for a minute before you whisk her off to bed again, Reid.” Kane’s calm voice made her belly tighten.

No, we shouldn’t.

She grabbed for Reid’s big arms, loving the feel of the muscles beneath her palms. Her arms still trembled and her belly felt sick, but she needed them now.

“It’s fine, Kane. Reid’s right, Bill is nothing to worry about.” She cupped Reid’s cheek and smiled at him. “Can you make me forget everything?”

Reid swung her up in his arms, and they moved to the bedroom, her men loving her in a way that made everything else disappear.

****

Kane pulled himself out of Sam’s bed and moved to the kitchen to make himself a coffee. He had a strange sense of unease invading his gut, and he didn’t like to ignore those feelings.

He put the kettle on and pulled his wallet over to him from where it rested against the fruit bowl. His hands shook as he opened it, a photo of Amanda on their wedding day, beaming back at him from the plastic insert where his license should go.

He slid the photo out and held it in his hand, waiting for the response he normally got from looking at a photo of his wife. Grief, pain, twisting of his gut and pounding of his heart.

But there was none of that. Just a slight increase in his pulse, and awareness of her and who she had been to them. A tightening around his chest, mostly in the knowledge that they would finally be putting her memory to rest.

“You couldn’t sleep either?” Sam’s voice filled the kitchen, and he jumped high, squashing the photo in his hand as heat filled his cheeks.

He turned and smiled at his mate, his heart now racing with the guilt of being caught gazing at his old love. What would Sam think if she recognized the photo?

“Nope. You want a coffee, too?”

She shook her head, grabbing a glass from the dish rack and filling it with water. “Just water for me. I lose so much fluid during a session with you guys I’m surprised I’m not constantly dehydrated.”

He laughed and nodded, totally agreeing with her. Their lovemaking sessions were a workout and a half. “I’m surprised you aren’t either. We better start putting bottles of water by the bed. Reid’s surely going to pass out one day. He sweats enough for all three of us.”

Sam chuckled, the sound not quite as vibrant as it had been the day before. Her laugh had dulled, as had her eyes, her posture. She’d been so beautiful the past few days with them. Free, and easy with her affection and love. He hated the fact that her dumb ex had ruined that for her.

“Something up, Sam?”

She looked directly at him, her green eyes wide and searching.

Then her gaze dropped, and she sat down onto one of the barstools. “How’d you know?”

Kane shrugged. Lots of reasons, his connection to her and his many years of reading people only two of them. “Your posture for one.”

She shrugged with one luscious shoulder and looked towards the large kitchen window. “Lots of things going through my head is all. What were you looking at when I came into the room? A photo?”

Damn, she must have seen more than he’d realized.

Now, to lie, or not to lie. His brain raced with the question.

“Ah, I thought it was a good idea to clean out my wallet of Amanda’s photo. She really doesn’t belong there anymore.”

She swallowed obviously, her throat working as her eyes searched his. “Can I see the photo?”

He resisted the urge to tear the photo into a thousand pieces so she couldn’t see it. Terrified of how she would react, he slowly unraveled the scrunched square, pressing it flat and handing it to her.

Women were unpredictable in most areas of life, but jealousy over Amanda’s role in their life was a pretty easy call to make. Not helped by the fact that aesthetically, she was quite stunning.

“She’s very beautiful … and thin.”

Sam’s voice was flat as she stared at the picture a moment longer, then pushed it back towards him.

He picked it up and deliberately ripped it into two pieces and threw it into the nearby trash bin.

“She was, and she knew it. Unfortunately, vanity was a major flaw with her. Not something I miss, at all.”

Sam nodded her head but didn’t lift her eyes as she stared at the bench.

“Hey, you know that no matter what—we’ll always make this relationship work, Sam. Whatever you need from us, we can do. I know our relationship is unorthodox, but we won’t ever give up on making you happy.”

Something he knew from living with his wife. They’d been away from their family and other triad groupings. Most of the time they’d told people he was the husband and Reid was his older bachelor brother. They’d wanted to fit into their town, but it had been hard to hide such an important part of their lives. Especially for Reid.

She nodded slowly, her eyes unfocused as she agreed with him. “Ok.”

He took a deep breath, not too sure which way to go with this. Push her to discuss it, face their issue? Or comfort her some more?