The Barter System (51 page)

Riya was shaking her head
before he finished.  “Dad, if you want to see me when I leave this hospital, I
suggest you book a room for yourself at the hotel on Micah and Max’s block.  My
stuff isn’t there yet, but that is where I
live
.  I need to finish my
dissertation and I need to rest.  My ribs feel like they were taken out and put
back badly.”

“Riya Charlize O’Connell.” 
Oh
hell.  Here it comes.
  Her father stood at the end of her bed, hands on his
hips and a look of pure fury in his eyes.  “Young lady, you will go home to
South Florida with me where you belong.  I will not have you here, thousands of
miles away, living with not one, but two, men of questionable moral character like
some kind of cheap...”

Cutting him off with a sharp
gesture of her hand, she hissed, “Watch it, Dad.  I love you very much but you
say one more word and you’ll lose the one thing I value above all else.  My
respect.”  Riya was sitting up in her hospital bed, hands across her rib cage.

Her father looked at her
like she was a stranger.  “What on earth has happened to you, Riya?  This isn’t
you.  This behavior is nothing like the woman your mother and I raised.”

“I grew up.  If you want to
see me, you will see me in Manhattan until I can handle flying down to visit
you in Florida.  This isn’t open for discussion.  You can’t ground me, Dad.” 
She leaned back on the pillows.  “I knew you better than I knew myself.  But
I’ve learned a lot about me recently.  The biggest part being I have a lot of
Mom in me…and a lot of you.  I won’t hurt you if I can help it, but I won’t
hurt myself anymore to spare you.  I’m not stupid.  I’m not naïve.  If you know
me at all, you should know that.” 

She paused, taking a deep
breath.  “You don’t know Max and Micah, and I can imagine, as my father, you’re
probably freaking out right now.  Do you remember what you used to tell Mom
about me?  That I was going to be so much trouble it would take two men to
protect me from myself?  Well, you weren’t far wrong.  Max and Micah are
amazing.  So different and yet so similar.  Came from nothing, just like you,
and built it all from scratch.” 

There were tears in her eyes
from the pain, both physical and emotional, “They have no real family; they
grew up in an orphanage together.  They’ve seen hell, yet they aren’t bitter,
they love life.  They have busy, interesting lives and they want me to be part
of that.  Mom wouldn’t be able to choose between them for me, and I can’t
either.”  The thought of how much she wanted her mother at that instant caused
her breathing to hitch, sending her careening dangerously close to tears. 

“Mom would love how
passionate Micah is when he dances and how he loves to play.  How much Max
loves to snuggle and secretly loves chick flicks.  They are so, so very
beautiful, inside and out…and so much more than I deserve.  Mom would want me
to be happy and you being judgmental makes me miss her so much more than usual.”
 She was crying and she was furious at herself for it.  Then her crying became
sobbing and she was humiliated.

Her father’s hands came
around her, pulling her carefully to his chest while he smoothed her hair. 
“Oh, little Riya.  I miss her, too.  Every day.  I need to tell you something,
maybe it will help explain why I’m so…worried for you right now.”  He went to
his briefcase and pulled out a thick stack of 8x10 photos.  He handed them to
her and the shock slammed into her.  She started paging through them. 

A picture of Sean and Riya
at the restaurant her first night in town, smiling at each other over
candlelight.  A picture of them, obviously taken with a high-powered telephoto
lens, of them making love in the water the day they spent on his boat.  Him
kissing her on the dock in Savannah.  And her crying while she watched him go.

Then pictures of Victor the
day he came to pick her up.  Another of them on ATV’s.  Another of them naked
in the spring on his property, her nudity barely concealed.  Then at the bar,
dancing.  At the diner with Shay and Victor, and them seeing her off at the bus
station, Victor crushing her to him.

Her and Joshua at the mall,
him kissing her as she got in his car.  Their first night at the sports bar. 
At another club with his team.  Then the pool party where she and Jessica were
all over him and each other.  Her standing at the cab with him stunningly naked
in his doorway.  Her crying as she drove away.

Lucas…ah, Lucas.  Sitting
with her at the diner.  Riding horses across his range, and her holding him as
he sobbed, then kissing him.  Their camping trip with her riding him beneath
the sleeping bag under the stars, her exposed back to the camera.  Dancing and
looking completely in love.  The airport, a clear shot of her agony as she went
to her gate.  Then off again in LA where she was shell-shocked and obviously
hurting.  She and Tawny at the pool.

Then with Ricardo, meeting
at Starbucks and getting in his Jeep.  Him kissing her on his motorcycle the
first night at the club.  Several of them dancing.  Later, her going down on
him in his pool.  Then on his motorcycle in her skirt.  The major dancing that
night, a great shot of her leg being kissed while laid next to his head on the
dance floor.  The next day at his family barbeque, her leaving with Greg. 
Ricardo taking her to the airport and their final kiss in his Jeep. 

Then Max and Micah.  Their
first night at the charity event, pictures of her kissing first one, then the
other.  Dancing and laughing and loving on both men.  Her face when she got in
the limo as Micah pulled her into his lap hungrily.  The three of them
running.  Having dinner together.  Max grabbing her ass as she held Micah’s
hand and looked in shop windows on their block.  Her leaving the building their
first night going to the ménage club. 

Going into the warehouse to
speak to Bobby.  Pictures of her being taken out of the warehouse, her face
bruised and bloody, strapped to a gurney.  Unconscious and looking very
vulnerable.

She went through them several
times.  And the reality of the violation hit her like a train crash.  “You’ve
had me followed since day one.  You had someone
watching
me,
spying
on me, during the most intimate moments of my entire life.”  The pain, for
herself and her subjects, was almost unbearable.  “This was
private
,
personal, much of it
painful
, Dad!  Most of it wasn’t my own pain.  You
violated these men in a way I never would have.  You had no right! 

“You know what?  I must look
like nothing more than a whore to you.  You didn’t hear the conversations I had
with these men.  Almost every shot is sexual and I did have sex with all of
them.  I won’t apologize for it and I won’t allow you to make me feel cheap
because of it.  But breaking it down to all sex is so narrow-minded, it is
likely the reason I would have never trusted you enough to talk to you about my
dissertation. 

“You don’t know how it hurt
to leave each one…for different reasons.  With Sean, he reminded me of you. 
How closed off you are to reality since Mom’s death.  Victor showed me kindness
and gentleness I’d never known before.  He made love to me for hours just for
doing something nice for him, he was that unaccustomed to kindness.  Joshua
with his youth and vitality who just needed to find himself and know his goals
weren’t ‘gay’.  Lucas, well, he touched me the most, carrying so much guilt. 
Considering suicide, refusing even the smallest gestures of intimacy.  Who told
me he loved me but had to let me go…because I had more to do with my life. 
Ricardo, so passionately in love with his ex-wife he’d been unable to move
forward.  He needed her…and didn’t realize she needed him, too. 

“And then Max and Micah,
who’ve shared everything their entire lives, searching for a woman they could
love together.  They’re the strongest men I know…a strange and wonderful
combination of each aspect of the other men that I loved.  A lot like you, kind
and giving, sexual and vital, committed men of their word, passionate about
life…all the things I wanted I’ve found.  Two men who want me to love them
both.  Who are giving me so much of their hearts, it’s soothing the pieces I
left behind with the others.

“They want
nothing
from me.  They know more about me than you do, almost as much as Tawny.  And
they accept me.  But you know what, Dad?  The one thing I will never regret was
doing this project, meeting each and every one of these men, even Bobby,
because I now understand aspects of men I never really knew existed.” 

She held up the pictures,
“Thank you for these pictures.  I’ll never forget these moments.  Each of them
formed me into the woman I am now.  I’ll never settle, devalue myself, or say
no when I really mean yes…ever again.  I’m going to love those two men with
every single piece of myself for as long as they’ll have me.  If you want to
hate me for that, I’m sorry, but you’ll miss out on a lot of my life.” 

Riya swallowed past the lump
in her throat.  “Right now, you should go back to Florida and give me some time
to forgive you for trying to hurt me and scare me into doing what you wanted. 
I love you, Dad, unconditionally…I need the same from you.” 

He turned, walking shakily
to the door where Max and Micah stood on the other side listening.  At the last
minute, he said, “I love you, Riya…I’ll call you.” 

When she lost sight of him,
she lost her mind.

She was shaking and crying
and trying to get all the damn wires off her body when Max lifted her into his
arms and Micah held her hands, keeping her from hurting herself. 

They let her cry it all out,
the pain and confusion of the last several weeks, the heartaches she’d
subjected herself to, the possible loss of her father in her life.  They held
her and kissed her and stroked her hair and back. 

Then they took her home.

Chapter
Twenty-Four

Riya sat in the office her
men had created for her just off the kitchen.  They wanted her to have a
beautiful room to work in with a gorgeous Manhattan view on the other side of
the glass. 

She’d been working day in
and day out for weeks.  At night, they’d carry her to bed and snuggle her as
she slept.  Her ribs were finally healing enough for her to get up and down the
stairs without stopping for a break. 

For the first two weeks, one
of them had always been home with her.  When she’d assured them she was fine,
they started going back to work and she realized what they’d meant when they
explained their schedules. 

She accepted no visitors,
made no calls.  All day, she outlined, typed, and edited her dissertation.  At
night, she would cook for them and listen to the stories about their day.  Most
days, she didn’t have her own chair, one of them usually held her in their
lap.  If she was in a chair, she had to sit between them so one or both could
constantly touch her. 

She wouldn’t go out at all
until the bruises healed.  She said that was all they’d need was gossip that they
were smacking her around.  She wore leggings and soft sweaters that didn’t
cling to her torso with thick socks and told them she couldn’t wait to wear
pretty clothes again.  They always quieted her with kisses when she mentioned
it. 

The guys in the lobby were
told she’d been in a car accident.  A drugged out musician wearing combat boots
apparently looked exactly like a car accident.  No one questioned it. 

When her darlings went back
to work, Carlo and Henry were on call if she had any issues in the apartment. 
Rodney was instructed to take her anywhere she wanted.  When they realized she
wasn’t leaving the house, they told Rodney to bring her anything she might
need.  Usually, she’d have him bring up bagels and coffee, making him sit with
her so she had a friendly face to talk to.

She’d gotten so many emails
from her subjects and their girlfriends wanting to know where she was and if
she was alright.  She didn’t tell anyone what had happened.  She couldn’t deal
with it.  She put an out-of-office reply on her email that told everyone she
was working on her dissertation and she’d get back as soon as she could.

Ricardo and Malina showed up
first.  When he hadn’t heard from her around Thanksgiving and couldn’t get her
on the phone, he began searching police databases until he found the report on
her attack.  He and Malina were on a plane to New York the next day.