Three Rings and a Rose (13 page)

Ella considered pretending not to hear Shannon for a fraction of a second then decided it was better to just go along with the rambunctious redhead.

Edging her way through the crowd, Ella headed for the table where the three hellions she called friends sat eating food from red plastic plates and drinking milkshakes out of oversized clear glasses.

As she maneuvered through the maze of round tables, Ella noticed the familiar faces of her friends and family. Despite her bad mood, she felt a strong sense of “coming home,” the same sensation she always got around the people of Serenity. And by the time Ella approached Jaycee, Katie-Anne, and Shannon, she was grinning.

“Whatcha spanking my ass for, Shan?” she asked. “Did I do something good? Or did I do something very, very bad?” Shannon chuckled. The deep, rich sound reminded Ella of a sultry songbird in the late 1940s. “When aren’t you doing something bad, Ella?”

Next to Shannon, Katie-Anne paused, halting her drink in its ascent to her mouth. She snorted. “Never.” Then she immediately resumed the milkshake’s path to her mouth. Sucking her drink down
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with enough speed to give Ella brain freeze, she closed her eyes and moaned around the glass’s rim.

Jaycee rolled her eyes, obviously amused by Katie-Anne’s lusty response to her sweet treat, then nodded. “Ella’s the naughtiest of us all,” she declared with a chuckle. “Hell, she makes me look like a saint.”

“Not hardly,” Ella retorted as she grabbed a seat and dragged it out. She cringed when the bottom of the white plastic chair skidded across the pavement, but the noise didn’t deter her from being a smart mouth. “I am an angel compared to the likes of you three.” Cocking her head to the side, Shannon changed the subject abruptly. “So, what do you think
they
are talking about?” She pointed not-so-subtly over Ella’s shoulder before picking up a potato chip and popping it into her mouth.

Huh?
Curious as to who and what Shannon was suddenly talking about, Ella peeked over her shoulder. Unlike her friend, she was discreet in her actions. But that didn’t last long. As soon as she spotted the group of men gathering next to the empty building where Katie-Anne’s jewelry store used to be, she cursed colorfully with enough volume to attract the eyes of several people at the table next to them. Not that she cared about drawing attention to herself at the moment. The jitters building inside her took up too much energy to think about what everyone thought of her. “Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Katie-Anne murmured, dropping her drink on the tabletop. The glass shook from the shock of hitting the hard surface forcefully and nearly toppled over. Luckily, it didn’t.

“Our men in a huddle is a terrifying sight, indeed.” Ella rolled her eyes. She wasn’t concerned with
their
men. She was freaking out over hers. Micah and Caedon stood smack in the middle of the group, and she could tell that they weren’t playing around. There was a seriousness about their masculine faces, a tenseness in the air around them. Although, she had to admit that all the men had equally somber expressions as they turned and started
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walking in the opposite direction. All of the women appeared to be in major trouble with their counterparts.
Thank God I don’t officially
belong to Caedon or Micah. Neither of them have the right to punish
me until I do.

Ella groaned as her thoughts wandered into the sensual territory that she couldn’t keep it out of when the men she loved came to mind.

Last night, every dream she’d had included being in between Caedon and Micah’s delicious bodies. Her fantasies had been fuelled by images of their hard cocks fucking her mouth, pussy, and
her ass—

sometimes together, sometimes apart. She’d imagined Caedon watching Micah ravage her, and she’d visualized Micah watching intently while Caedon took her tenderly. But her personal favorite had been watching the two men fucking each other fiercely, their untamed bodies writhing and thrusting, their moans and groans echoing around her. Even now, her body hummed at the mere memory of her fantasies.
Fucking A. I need to get laid.

“I’m not worried,” Jaycee announced as she scooted back in her seat. She rubbed her pregnant belly like she did all the time. “Not even a little.”

Ella, Shannon, and Katie-Anne whipped their heads toward Jaycee. Each of them made a disbelieving noise. Ella gasped, the theatrical element evident to anyone with ears. If she had swooned, she wouldn’t have been any less obvious. Shannon snorted, her harsh sounding response mockery-filled. And Katie-Anne chuckled with a distinct sarcastic ring.
You’re not worried because your ass isn’t on
the line, Jaycee Elizabeth Blakemore. It’s mine that is.

Even though Ella knew Caedon and Micah didn’t
technically
have the right to treat her as theirs, she knew they believed they did. And she knew they would attend to her like she belonged to them. Hell, she also knew she would let them.
Because they belong to me, and I
belong to them. Fuck the fact that we’re not together. Fuck the fact
that we more than likely will never be together. They’re still mine. I’m
still theirs. That isn’t going to change.

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Predictably, Jaycee harrumphed. “Ella’s the one in the hot seat.

Not me.”

“Well, no shit, Sherlock,” Shannon snapped before picking up another napkin and wadding it up. She tossed it at Jaycee this time, giggling childishly when it connected with the side of her face.

“Ella’s men are going to enlist our men’s help. Damn them. They always stick together.”

“Pot, meet kettle,” Katie-Anne quipped as she ran her hand through her silken, two-toned hair. “We’re fucking super-glued to each other.”

Feeling ornery, Ella blew Katie-Anne a cheeky kiss. “I can’t imagine any other chicks I would rather be stuck like glue to. I would totally do any one of you babes.”

Katie-Anne smiled. “That’s not saying much. You would do a lot of people.”

Snorting, Ella clamped her jaw shut. She couldn’t exactly respond to that comment without incriminating herself. As the town flirt, people would be appalled to find out that she hadn’t taken a lover since Caedon. Before him, she’d been able to count her lovers on one hand and none of them had occurred after she’d met Micah.
Yep, I’m
a sucker.

At the tender age of eighteen, Ella had discovered that her heart had a link to her pussy, an evil connection that kept her perpetually aroused without a hope of getting it assuaged by a man. If it weren’t for her orange vibrator, Fred, and her blue butt plug, Barney, she would die a horrific, abstinence-related death.
Oh the horror!

“She has you there, Ella.” Jaycee said. “You’ve probably been out on more dates than all of three of us”—she paused to indicate each of the girls at the table—“combined.”

Yet again, Ella kept her mouth shut.
Let them think what they
want about my love life. I’d rather be the scandalous harlot than the
pitiful spinster.
By technicality, Jaycee was correct anyway. Ella went out every Friday night on what people thought were dates in one of
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the larger towns around Serenity. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

She drove sixty-nine miles to the tiny Bohemian town, Luscious, where she spent the evening with her brother and his three best friends.
His three very handsome, extremely sexy, and insanely hot
gay best friends.

Even Micah wasn’t aware that her weekly jaunts to the tiny artistic community were for a night of sibling revelry.
I do have my
pride, after all.
She preferred that he believed she went on a string of casual dates.
Because I’m embarrassed to admit the fucking truth to
him.

Her thought gave her pause, and she shook her head as she realized that she was being unfair to Micah.
Fuck, I’m pissed because
he couldn’t admit the truth to me. But I’m doing the same thing to
him. Hypocrite much?

When Ella continued her silence, Jaycee piped up. “So…Since our friend here won’t share the dirty details of her love life, what’s the plan?”

Jaycee’s question came out of nowhere, blindsiding Ella. The other girls seemed disconcerted as well. Going from trying to figure out what the men were talking about to what they were going to do in retaliation was quite a leap. Then again, this was Jaycee, Shannon, and Katie-Anne.
The heathens.

“Um, J,” Shannon said. “We don’t even know exactly what’s up with them. How are we going to come up with a scheme if we don’t know what we’re going up against? Besides, we are totally outnumbered.”

With a careless shrug, Katie-Anne examined her nails as though she were bored. But the smirk she attempted to hide gave her away.

Finally giving in, she grinned and muttered, “Since when has that ever stopped us?”

Jaycee twirled a curl around her index finger as she stared off in the distance with a thoughtful expression on her face. “This is just the kind of game we like to play. God knows, we’ve all been on good
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behavior for the past few months. I would hate for the men to get some misguided notion that they tamed us.” Shannon nodded enthusiastically. “This is true. They might actually believe we are good girls. We can’t have that.”

“Girls, I think it’s high time we remind our men what we’re made of,” Katie-Anne announced. “And I think I have just the plan to do it.”

“Ohhh, I want to hear this. Drumroll please,” Shannon said. Using her hands, she beat on the table, mimicking the sound of a drumroll.

When neither Jaycee nor Ella followed her lead, she scowled at them.

Chuckling, Ella joined Shannon. Then Jaycee chimed in shortly after that. As soon as they all had a rhythm going, Katie-Anne grinned. “I think we need to play a game of Truth or Dare
.
” Ella’s heart stopped. She couldn’t breathe. Her mind didn’t work.

It was as though she’d ceased to exist inside her own body, as though she were standing outside of it looking back in.

Fuck.
Her friends weren’t planning to help her with the men. She had no illusion about that. They were going to use the game to be matchmakers with
her
, just like they had been with each other.

Jaycee, Shannon, and Katie-Anne’s version of Truth or Dare had become legendary around Serenity because of its success rate. So in a lot of ways, the odds were in Ella’s favor. Not that she placed much faith in statistics. The drunken pact to play Truth or Dare had been initiated to shake up the monotony in their lives but concluded with all three women in the arms of their men.

Since the game had been finished, every single woman in town wanted to play. But Jaycee, Shannon, and Katie-Anne had sworn the game was over and done with.
Obviously not.

“Why?” Ella inquired, her curiosity taking control of her brain.

She plucked a grape off Shannon’s plate and popped it into her mouth then chewed it up. Swallowing, she went on. “You three have refused to play with anyone but each other. Why me? Why now? Give me one damn good reason, and I’ll play.”

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Ella didn’t say it to them, but she would probably play even if they didn’t give her a reason. Despite her fears of getting hurt, she was honored they wanted to include her. Obviously, she didn’t understand their logic. However, for some reason, she felt special.

Besides, she wasn’t one to back down from a challenge—no matter what it was. Her willingness to live life to the fullest often put her in uncomfortable situations. But she still closed her eyes and jumped in.
Looks like I’m about to take the biggest risk to date.
And that was saying something. She’d bungee-jumped, skydived, flown a helicopter, and tried pretty much any adrenaline rush activity she could find. However, none of them had a thing on the adrenaline currently diluting the blood in her veins.

“Because you’re one of us now.”

Shannon’s matter-of-fact statement caught Ella off guard.
Well,
shit. Doesn’t that take the wind out of my sails?
Ella didn’t exactly now how to respond. Her insides were all gooey—in a weird, girlie way that she wasn’t used to. Up until she started hanging out with them, Ella was all about having guy friends. Generally, they were gay guy friends. So this was a whole new world and damned if she didn’t adore every second of it.

“All right, I’m in.”

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Caedon stalked through the boisterous crowd with one thing on his mind—getting through the next half hour. He wanted nothing more than to move past this meeting. His nerves were frayed, and he was ready for their true plan to be set in motion. He didn’t feel like dealing with this inane test. Not when he had so much at stake.

At Caedon’s side, Micah seemed as tightly wound as he was. His face was set in stone as though he’d been carved by a master artisan—