Kane, Samantha - Brothers In Arms 06 (14 page)

“What are you saying?” Alecia asked in a trembling voice.

Palu looked at her. “I’m saying that if that is your only objection to continuing our affair, then it is easily removed. Hardington has misled you for his own ends.”

“Surely you can’t want to see us anymore?” Nat asked in anguish. “After what we did?”

Alecia wrapped her arms around her stomach. She’d almost forgotten how they’d betrayed him. It was unforgivable. “I’m so sorry, Palu,” she said softly. “Nat is right.

We treated you shamefully. It is within your rights to hate us for it.”

Palu came and sat next to her, hugging her tightly. She melted in his embrace. He was so strong and warm. She’d been cold to the bone for the last week without his warmth. “Now that is nonsense,” he whispered against her hair. “Hate you? I couldn’t.

Perhaps what you did was wrong, and yes, you hurt me, but I understand why you did it.” He gripped her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I have seen into your hearts, and I know how you see me, and how you treat me. You are not like the others who cannot see who I am past where I came from.”

Alecia trembled, almost afraid to believe him. “I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered. She placed her hand on his chest, right over his heart, and felt its furious pounding.

“Then take me,” Palu said quietly. He turned to include Nat. “Both of you.”

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“No.” Palu and Alecia looked at Nat in surprise. He shook his head. “No. If we are going to do this, then we are going to do it right.”

Palu gave him a crooked smile. “Well, that was the direction in which I was going.”

Nat couldn’t hold back an answering grin. But he cleared his throat. “You deserve another explanation.”

Palu turned serious at Nat’s words. “No, Nat—”

Nat cut him off. “Yes. What we did…it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair to you. But we had our reasons.”

Palu stood and walked toward Nat. “We’ve been through this already. I forgive you,” he told him, and Nat knew he meant it. But it wasn’t enough.

“Alecia lost a baby several years ago.” Palu kept his face as neutral as he could, but Nat could see the pity there. For once he didn’t resent it. He looked over at Alecia and she was looking down at her hands in her lap, biting her lip.

“I’m sorry,” Palu said, clearly trying to make them both feel better, but not sure how to do it.

Nat smiled sadly. “We were devastated.” He took a deep breath then and told Palu what they’d never told another person. “But the baby wasn’t mine.”

Palu merely tilted his head and waited. Nat truly appreciated the other man’s taciturn nature at that point. He would have hated platitudes.

“Alecia stayed true to me for the first two years of our marriage,” Nat explained, pacing behind the settee. “She never conceived.” He glanced at Palu out of the corner of his eye and saw comprehension in his eyes. “When she began to…entertain other men, after only a few months, she conceived.”

“So whatever reason is behind her inability to have a baby lies with you.” Palu sounded so cool, as if he was discussing some scientific paper. Nat nodded. “Why did she lose the baby?”

“We don’t know,” Alecia said. Her voice was strong, but the effect was ruined by a loud sniffle. “After I told Natty about the baby, I thought he’d be so angry. But he wasn’t. He wanted a child. He didn’t care whose it was.”

Nat walked over immediately and sat down next to Alecia. He took her cold hand in his. “It’s true, I didn’t care. I knew how much Alecia wanted a child, and of course her father is obsessed with it. The baby would have made things so much easier.” He cleared his throat again. “And I wanted a child, too. I wanted to be a father.”

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Alecia gripped his hand tightly. “It just wasn’t meant to be.” She shook her head as if clearing it and blew out a breath. “After, it brought us closer.” She lifted Nat’s hand and kissed it and he felt the burn in his eyes, and blinked away his tears. “I didn’t want anyone else’s baby after that. Only Nat’s.”

“Ah,” Palu said, coming over to sit opposite them. “That is why you don’t fuck other men.”

Alecia nodded. “Yes. That is why. Because, while we tell everyone I cannot conceive, the truth is I might.”

“But if it would make things easier with your father…” Palu let the thought trail off.

Nat glowered at him and wiped his eye with the back of his free hand. “I won’t make Alecia do it if she doesn’t want to. And I certainly won’t have a baby for
him
.”

“I understand.” Palu’s voice was filled with compassion, and Alecia’s hand tightened on his again. “I will respect your boundaries, both of you. I will not ask of you anything that you don’t wish to give in this relationship. I understand that first there are the two of you.”

Nat shook his head, appalled that Palu misunderstood so badly. “No, no that isn’t what I’m telling you.” Now Palu looked confused. Nat wanted to tell him how he felt, but it was too soon. Palu hadn’t indicated he wanted more than an affair.

“Alecia and I wish to leave England,” Nat said. “We want to have a life somewhere else, far from her father and what is expected of us, and far from our past.” He shook his head, not happy with his explanation. “We will have children, and a family, but not here.”

“I see,” Palu said. “So you are telling me this to make me understand why you tried to use me against Alecia’s father.”

“Yes.” Alecia looked at him beseechingly. “I know it was foolhardy and despicable, but we are desperate. Please do not judge us too harshly.”

“When we took you to Colby’s…” Nat paused and blew out a pained, embarrassed breath, “I knew it wouldn’t work. Unfortunately, I know him too well.” He made himself look directly at Palu as he spoke. “I was also trying to distance myself from you.” He made a circular motion. “From us and what was happening.”

Palu looked at them warily.

“I knew it wouldn’t work, as well,” Alecia added quietly. “But it seems that every month we come up with some new, equally stupid idea to force the money out of him.”

She bit her lip, but then straightened her back and licked her lips. “I, too, was afraid of making too much of our brief affair, because I thought that it would drive Nat and me apart again.” She turned to look at Nat with such love that his heart swelled in his chest.

“I will not lose him again.” She looked back at Palu. “But this is what we both want.”

“Is it?” Palu asked quietly.

Alecia’s silence made Nat turn to look at her. What he found in her face was unsettling.

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Alecia wouldn’t look at Nat. She kept her gaze focused on Palu. “Is it what I want?”

she asked quietly, but in a firm voice that made her proud. “Yes, for the first time in a very long time, yes.”

“Alecia?” Nat spoke from beside her, and she could sense his confusion and alarm.

She turned to him. “Oh, Natty, admit it. The men we’ve brought to our bed have left us both unsatisfied. And I think the main reason for that is…me.” She sighed and turned away, biting her lip hard. “I love being with you, Nat, and I love to watch you with other men, but I never truly wanted any of them. When I touched them, or let them touch me, it was all about making you happy.”

“Alecia, no,” Nat gasped, horrified. “What have I made you do?”

Alecia let out a weak little laugh. “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. I wasn’t destroyed by the experiences, by any means.” She squeezed his hand. “As I said, I loved watching you with them. And you have always made certain that I found a great deal of pleasure in the encounters. But the pleasure there was in what you and I did together, and had very little to do with whomever happened to be sharing our bed.” She licked her lips and felt the blush staining her cheeks, but pushed forward, determined to be open about things at last. “I’ve never really wanted another man.” She turned to look at Palu, thrilled again at his tall, dark, commanding presence, and by her secret knowledge of the inked designs under his fashionable gentleman’s attire. She was aroused by the memory of his thick cock, and how he kissed, and what he and Alecia had done to Nat.

“Until Palu,” she whispered. “For the first time I know what this could be, what we’ve only played at before.” She paused and watched Palu’s eyes darken with secret knowledge of her, too. “And I want him. I want us.”

She stood and moved away from Nat. She knew that Nat was hesitant to talk of their feelings. So was she. She knew Palu cared for them. That was his nature. She was sure he wouldn’t be here if that weren’t the case. But love, and all that love would mean for the three of them? She and Nat had discussed their friends’ relationships before and how hard and painful it must be for them to deny one love while acknowledging another. They’d vowed they didn’t want it. And now here they were, in love with Palu.

She feared rejection, but she also feared causing him more hurt. Yet she didn’t want to enter into a full-fledged affair without revealing what she wanted, and to a certain extent, how she felt.

“I fell in love with Nat the first time I saw him.” Nat was staring at her, myriad emotions flashing across his expressive, beautiful face. Palu, on the other hand, was watching her with a closed look. How amazing he was with his ability to hide or reveal his feelings in his arresting face at will. “I was only seventeen when we first met. The differences between a seventeen-year-old girl, barely introduced in society, and an eighteen-year-old boy are enormous, by the way.” She smiled at the memory. “But Nat was so handsome, and lively, and witty, and oh, so intelligent,” she told Palu fervently.

He smiled at her, encouraging her to go on.

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“I never thought he’d care for me,” she said, pulling back the curtain to look out on a late afternoon suddenly warm, with deep purple skies falling into an early sunset. “I was young and stupid and gauche. The only child of an enormously wealthy, indulgent, mannerless merchant thrust upon the upper classes.”

“You were never gauche,” Nat said dryly, and when Alecia let the curtain drop and turned back to them she was relieved to see Nat had regained his humor and equilibrium. “You knew just how to flirt with a man.”

Alecia laughed. “If I did, I didn’t know it. Perhaps it was only with you.”

Nat’s eyes were warm as he smiled. “It would be nice to think so.”

Alecia wagged a finger at him. “But don’t mislead Palu, Nat. You had no time for me, nor the inclination to make any. You were very much enamored of your string of lovers.”

Nat sighed. “Yes, I was. I was the immature one. I married Alecia for her money, and to make my father happy. Have no illusions about me. I found her tolerable, and attractive, and I figured we would rub along well. But I was not in love.” He grinned ruefully at Alecia. “I’m sorry, my love.”

For some reason his confession of the truth relieved her rather than upset her. She had been there, no amount of lies or rosy recollections could change the past they both knew. “Don’t be sorry. That is certainly more than many women get from their spouses.” She turned to Palu, loathe to tell him the rest, but determined.

“Nat was right. We had no idea what to do in bed together.” She snorted with laughter at some of the memories. “He was completely mystified by the female anatomy, and I the male.”

Nat blushed. “I had the basics, I believe.”

Alecia bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I stand corrected. You did indeed know where to put what.”

Nat suddenly laughed. “That is about all I knew. What a terrible disappointment I must have been to you.”

Alecia shook her head. “No, you weren’t. I was just so happy that you would visit my bed at all. I had no idea what I was missing.”

She looked at Palu. “Nothing to say?”

He shook his head with an amused grin. “No. I’m enjoying the story.”

“Hmm,” Alecia said as she walked over and sat again, this time next to Palu. He turned to her. “Perhaps you won’t enjoy this part.” She took a deep breath. “I began to have sexual relations with other men after I caught Nat with one of his paramours, at a party we were attending separately. I went in search of him, and I found him fucking a mutual acquaintance in the library.” She turned to a red-faced Nat with a wry look. “He has since refrained from such public assignations.” She turned back to Palu and her voice became a little dreamy. “But he was magnificent. The look on his face, his cock so hard, the erotic things he was saying to the man beneath him as he rode him so hard 76

Love in Exile

and deep. When he came he threw back his head and he whimpered, and the other man cried out his name as he spent on the Aubusson.” She smiled crookedly. “In the middle of his peak, Nat looked over and saw me, but he couldn’t stop. And I knew then that I wanted that. I wanted that kind of passion, passion that Nat was clearly reserving for others and not for me.”

“Alecia—” Nat began, but she cut him off.

“Uh, uh, uh,” she said, ticking her finger back and forth. “It’s my turn.”

Palu chuckled beside her. “Getting some of your own back?” he teased.

Alecia smiled grimly. “Yes, today and then, too. I walked right out, seduced the first man I came upon in the hallway, and cuckolded my husband in the stables that very night.”

Palu took her hand. “Did you find the passion you were seeking?”

Alecia laughed bitterly. “Oh no. I found that men have even less passion for a woman of easy virtue than they do for their wives. I was swived in the hay, and abandoned without so much as a ‘thank you’ as soon as he came. And as usual, I was left aching.” She looked away, ashamed. “And so I tried again, with another man. And then again, and yet again.”

Palu squeezed her hand. “And you?” he asked Nat quietly. “How did this make you feel?”

Nat shrugged. “What could I say? I was doing the same. It became almost a joke among my friends, to see who could fuck the most people in the shortest span of time, me or Alecia.” He looked chagrined, and Alecia gave him the smile that said she understood. He returned it.

“And then, Simon?” Palu asked.