Loved by Them: A Reverse Harem Romance (Quintessence Book 5) Read online

  Her half-wail had both men straightening in their seats. Andrei used his grip on her hand to tug her up onto her feet. Though she tried to avoid the momentum, he wouldn’t let her. His hold was inexorable as he urged her to come around the table and to sit on his lap.

  Before moving into this house, the last time she’d sat on anyone’s lap was before her mother’s death.

  She could still remember the wonderfully horrible memory.

  In the oncology unit, Natasha had one of those bandannas covering her bald head where once there’d been riotous dark gold curls. Her arms had been frail, bruised and pocked from the needle marks that came as part of her treatment, and seeing her mom’s weakness, her fragility, had made Sascha cry. Natasha had tucked Sascha onto her lap and cuddled her into a tight hug. That was the last time she’d been strong enough to hold her so fiercely.

  The memory had her stomach diving and she burrowed her face into the side of Andrei’s throat. His clutch on her was just as ferocious as her mom’s had been, and God, it felt good. Like what she needed.

  “You are nothing like her. Do you hear me?”

  His words were a low, seething hiss. She bit her lip, but nodded against him, feeling the clammy kiss of her forehead to his throat as their skin cleaved together.

  He shook her a little. “Do you, Sascha? Do you know that?”

  His urgency pulled at her, but she had to whisper, “I read the articles. She was a bloodsucker.”

  She was more than that. Janna had been the first woman they’d ever shared, and she’d used her position in their house to skim information from Devon as well as blackmail the men into keeping their proclivities secret. Bitch didn’t cut it.

  Andrei shook his head. “Janna was hungry for money, Sascha. She had nothing, was loaded with student debt, and saw an easy way out. She was one of those women who had brains and beauty, and rather than use her brains to get anywhere, she preferred to use her beauty.” He shrugged. “Each to their own.”

  “She blackmailed you,” she hissed.

  “I know she did, and she hurt us in doing so, but you aren’t her. You’re nothing like her, dammit. You make me happy. You make my heart smile. She didn’t care if I ate well or if I didn’t sleep enough. She used us for sex, and then when that became too much for her, she disappeared like we meant shit to her. Which is exactly it. We meant nothing to her. That’s not the way of it with you—you love us, and you show us that love every day. Do you hear me? Do you see the difference?” He sounded so Russian at that moment, she couldn’t bear it.

  Her hand came up to knot in his white blond hair. It was closely shorn to his head, but long enough to spill through her fingers. The silk was delicate against the digits and she held tight to yet another connection. Forging yet another bond.

  “You make me happy, and you make my heart smile,” she repeated the words, a sigh of relief escaping her as he loosened up a little underneath her.

  “Then I never want to hear you talk like that again,” he commanded, the sounds of the Baltic making his words harsher, the demand more definite somehow.

  “I don’t want you to feel trapped,” she whispered. “This changes things.”

  She didn’t have to see Sean scowl to know that was exactly what he was doing. “How does it?”

  Sascha waved blindly at the documents on the table. “How can that not change things?”

  “Does it matter to you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should it matter to us?”

  “Because I’m suddenly a fucking billionaire, Sean. How the fuck am I supposed to react? How are you supposed to?” She fisted her hands. “I want things to be how they were.”

  “They can’t be,” Andrei told her softly. “Things will never return to how they used to be, but why would you want that? How do you know that all of this didn’t have to happen, in the exact way it has, for us all to come together as we have?”

  She gulped, processed that. “Do you really believe that?”

  “I really do,” he told her softly.

  She peered at Sean who solemnly nodded. She tugged at her bottom lip with her fingers, then sucked in a breath.

  If they believed that, then she had to as well.

  Later that night, Sascha climbed into Andrei’s bed.

  She’d been sleeping in her room with Sean since her Dad arrived in London. When the news had broken about her ‘heritage,’ dubious though it was, she’d retreated to the lounge.

  Why Andrei?

  She didn’t know. Why choose to sleep with any of them in particular?

  Hell, why be with any of them in any particular?

  She didn’t have an internal radar that alerted her when one of them was feeling under the weather or down. She just had to go off what she saw and intuited.

  Relationships were complicated. The few she’d been in, had been fucked up from the start. She didn’t have healthy ones to look back on. Not to reminisce on or to discern the rights and wrongs of steering a partnership in a good direction. She had five relationships going on here. Five men to comfort and love. To love her and be comforted in return.

  When she’d been stuck downstairs in her pit of misery, she hadn’t forgotten that. But she hadn’t wanted to deal with it either. Somehow, not being alone had been as perilous as having the five men with her.

  For the first time, Sascha had had a chance to see what life was like without their intrusion, and she hadn’t liked it.

  Sure, they’d intruded in some ways. It was their house, after all. The food she’d chowed down, they’d paid for. The sofa she’d been vegging on? Yup, all on their dime. But they’d left her alone for the most part. Popping in here and there, but never discussing anything of import. Never bringing her news. They’d been men.

  It sounded bizarre because she was well aware they were of the male variety. But, they hadn’t been like women. Hadn’t wanted to gossip or verbally slaughter someone on her behalf. They hadn’t sat in silence with her as she watched shit T.V.

  They’d been there. A presence, but they’d left her to her own devices.

  Even now, as she thought about it, as she’d been thinking about it since Kurt had decided to end her vegging out, she realized how life could be with the five of them.

  It might not have seemed like groundbreaking stuff, but to her it was. It was a revelation.

  They were solid.

  Dependable.

  Reliable.

  Collected.

  Calming.

  Five adjectives she’d never realized she’d needed her quintet of boyfriends to epitomize, but five adjectives that meant the earth.

  They were older than her. That too had been apparent. They were serious at moments, lighthearted at others, but their humor was of a different generation—one that didn’t push her out in the dark. If anything, she understood it more.

  They weren’t men who shared memes on Facebook or funny videos on twitter. Their humor was suave. Like them. Even Devon, with his amazing capacity to say the wrong thing at the wrong time held that kind of charm about him.

  Andrei shivered next to her as she cuddled up beside him, and it dragged her from her thoughts.

  He’d been angry earlier. It was why she was here now.

  “Sascha?” he asked groggily, for the first time realizing he wasn’t alone.

  Her laugh was low. “Well, it’s not Katrin.”

  He stiffened a second, his muscles tensing, then he rolled over from his side and onto his belly. “Thank God for that,” he said, lifting an arm and resting it over her belly. With his face in the pillow, he murmured, “You were joking, weren’t you?” In the faint light of the streetlamp through the window—he never closed his curtains—she could see him lift his head and peer at her with one eye.

  Her lips twitched. “Yes.”

  “Good. Wasn’t sure of your mood,” he mumbled, half asleep once more.

  She blinked at him. Had he thought she was accusing him of something? Was that wh
y he’d been tense at her teasing?

  She hid a smile and turned her face into his shoulder. “Night.”

  He hummed under his breath and whispered something in Russian. She figured it was ‘good night’ though, so she just let herself relax into his hold.

  She wasn’t sure how long she slept, but the grim morning light woke her.

  It was going to rain. Again, she thought glumly, as she peered with squinted eyes out of the bay window.

  In the near distance, there was the park, and the branches of the trees already whipped around in a frenzy from the growing wind.

  In Tucson, she’d been awoken by blinding light in the mornings if she hadn’t closed her shades.

  Here?

  Yeah, it didn’t often work like that.

  It was half-dark, meaning it had to be past seven, but earlier than nine when it was properly light.

  At her side, Andrei was snuggling into her still. His warmth was welcome because the view from his window made her feel chilly. She cuddled into him in return, letting her foot slide against his calf.

  The thin hairs tickled her foot, making her smile lazily as she stroked him there.

  “What are you doing?” he asked groggily.

  “Petting you,” she told him, her voice just as thick with sleep.

  “Like a dog?” he asked, somewhat disgustedly. “I’m not a dog.”

  “What about a cat?”

  He huffed, lifted his head to glower at her, and she realized this was the first time she’d seen him properly first thing. She’d never spent the night with him. Or Kurt for that matter.

  Guilt throbbed through her at the thought.

  Or was she making too big a deal out of this? Men were men, right? They didn’t think about things the way women did. And it wasn’t like she’d been purposely avoiding them.

  Most nights, she’d been with Devon if she’d been with anyone recently, and she knew they didn’t mind that at all because Devon’s insomnia was borderline dangerous.

  Well, to himself, but also, to the world. Some of his work was very important. With consequences that could be devastating if he wasn’t fast enough or was too tired to work on whatever was necessary.

  When he came to her bed, she knew he didn’t sleep the whole night through, but he did doze.

  She knew he did. She’d seen him sleeping, and felt as proud as a mother who’d managed to get her terrible-twos-toddler to nap after an eight hour rampage with crayons on the wall and three tantrums in the grocery store.

  Andrei, unlike Devon, didn’t appear peaceful and rested. He looked groggy and grumpy.

  But, to be honest, she quite liked that.

  He was one of the most debonair and polished men she’d ever seen. With his slicked back blond hair, perennially shaved jaw, and his wicked sharp suits? He belonged in a GQ magazine twenty-four-seven.

  Here in bed, however, it was another matter entirely. And though he was handsome when he was polished, that was nothing to him half-awake.

  His hair was all over the place. A tousled golden mess of wavy locks adorned his head like some kind of skewed crown.

  His jaw glinted in the gloomy light as his blond stubble started to come through. It was darker than she’d figured. She had even imagined him being a bit strawberry blond where his beard was concerned, but nope. His beard would be dark blond if he ever let it grow out.

  His eyes were shaded with fatigue as he squinted at her, seeming to realize she was studying him.

  “You’re gorgeous,” she pronounced after a few seconds of staring into his eyes.

  He snorted, then wrapped an arm over her belly and pulled her closer so he could press his face into the pillow and burrow the rest of it in her hair. “You are.”

  “Takes one to know one then,” she retorted, but she wasn’t too surprised that he wasn’t horrified at the sight of her without make up.

  She’d made breakfast often enough in this state. Had even cooked in front of them without brushing her damn hair, figuring they needed to get used to the sight of her au naturale as well as in full on glamor mode.

  No woman was glamorous twenty-four-seven, but men were creatures of habit. Devon, more than most. If she did something long enough, he started to believe that was how it would be forever.

  Like the time she’d changed her lipstick and he’d gawked at her in astonishment. Like no other lip color existed save for the one she wore most of the time.

  “I don’t like it,” he’d declared, making the men groan and Sawyer knock him in the side with his elbow. “Red is better than pink, Sascha. Pink reminds me of my grandmother,” he’d told her with enough earnestness that she could smile now at the memory.

  “What are you smiling about?” Andrei grumbled.

  She tilted her head to the side in surprise. “How do you know I’m smiling?”

  “Yours is not to question why,” he said sleepily. “Share the joke.”

  She snorted and rolled her eyes, long since accustomed to their coming out with weird shit and expecting her to make sense of it.

  “Remember that time I wore pink lipstick?”

  He groaned. “And Devon said you looked like his grandmother?”

  A laugh escaped her. “Yeah. That time.”

  “Jesus. I tried to kick him under the table, I swear.”

  She smirked. “I know. You were all too cute. But then, you generally are when he says some dipshit thing to rile me up.”

  He laughed, his body shaking beside her. “We’re used to it, but we know other people aren’t.”

  “I’m not other people,” she reminded him, her toes still stroking his calf.

  “No. You’re not now. You were then.”

  She conceded that with a bow of her head, her lips curving in a rueful smile that spoke of how true those words were. “Remember when he told me to have tripe to replenish the blood I lost on my period?”

  “We’re very lucky you didn’t walk out the door right then and there.”

  A laugh left her. “He’s adorable. Even when he’s rude.”

  “Good fucking thing he is,” he said gravelly, raw enough that she realized he meant every word. Wasn’t just saying it in a trite way.

  She placed her hand atop the forearm he’d laid on her belly. “I wouldn’t say you were a romantic man, Andrei,” she said carefully.

  He chuckled. “Is that a complaint, query, or a statement?”

  She grinned, amused by his take on her remark. “More like a statement.”

  “Okay, so I can relax?”

  “You can relax,” she teased. “I just meant, I wouldn’t say you were overly romantic, but this… us… don’t you think it feels like fate?”

  He went quiet for a second, then he leaned up on his elbow. His eyes were a moody green, shifting a little so they seemed almost turquoise, and she was swept away in them. Caught up in his glance.

  A shudder swept through her, and she turned into him fully. With a wish, she magically blinked her clothes away, needing to feel all of him against her. But then when reality carried on, her clothes still on her, she burrowed into his arms.

  He only wore briefs, so her face smushed against gorgeous muscle with no T-shirt interrupting. He smelled like her man. And as pathetic as that sounded, it was the truth.

  She pressed her mouth to his collarbone and dotted open kisses along the hard line. Her tongue peeped out and trailed along too, tasting him, loving the flavor that burst on her taste buds—him. One-hundred percent Andrei.

  She wriggled against him, slipping her hands down to grab his cock and hold it firmly in her grasp.

  He moaned, but stayed still, and she smiled, loving that he was lying back in a sleepy haze, letting her maul him like this.

  Her fingers tightened around him a second before they slipped underneath the elastic of his boxers and touched skin.

  He let out a hiss, one that had victory flushing through her. She whispered, “I need you, Andrei. I always need you.”

 
Where the words came from, she didn’t know. But she meant them. She meant every single one of them.

  She let her tongue trail down, arching her back so she could flicker it over his nipple. It was already puckered from the brush of morning air, so she nibbled on it delicately, adoring the texture against her lips and tongue.

  With one hand gripping his shaft, not moving it, not directing him just holding him firmly, with the other, she splayed her fingers against his muscles, gently pressing and massaging as she went.

  He shuddered when she moved around to grab his butt and used her hold to pull him closer against her.

  “Do you need me?” she asked, and with any other man—save her five—she’d have felt desperate. Like a pathetic woman needing reassurance.

  But this was rhetorical.

  They needed her. She knew that. Sometimes, the lines were blurred in her head. Sometimes, she got confused and had to have a reckoning, but she knew they needed her as much as she needed them.

  The five of them would always be bound together in ways that would forever exclude her, but she was another tie, another reason to keep them united forever. A woman who would never try to break them apart, to tear their connections asunder. In that, she was what bound them together, she knew, and she loved being at the center of their world.

  With a shiver at the delicious thought, she murmured, “I want you inside me.”

  At her words, he tugged her closer and rolled onto his back. His eyes were still sleepy, the lids heavy as he peered at her through the morning gloom. “Have me,” he ordered.

  A naughty smile played about her lips. “You willing to lie back and think of England?”

  He pondered that a second. “How about I think of Russia?”

  She snorted, slapped her free hand to his belly and squeezed his cock harder. When he groaned, she retorted, “Ha Ha. Very funny.”

  She spread her legs, grateful she wore a long t-shirt to cover herself and not PJ bottoms. The panties were in the way, but they could work with what she wanted to do.

  Straddling him, her knees pinning their way to her hips, she pulled his cock out from under his boxers and pressed it to her core. “Shit, you’re hot,” he said with a hiss when she cocked a brow at him in confusion after he mumbled something in Russian.