Boy, had he been wrong. Lila had always tried to mimic them, wanting to do exactly what they did. They’d often found themselves having to hold her back. She hadn’t been a typical kid. She’d been way more mature and well-behaved than any seven-year-old should be.
“Jesus, this is where she’s been living?” Trace muttered to Colin, running his hand over his shaven head. They worked together, packing up her stuff. “I thought the neighborhood was bad enough, but this apartment is the pits.”
“It’s all I could afford,” she defended, opening her eyes tiredly. She coughed.
“So we can see. No wonder you’ve been sick. Sleeping on a mattress on the floor in a damp apartment isn’t healthy. You’re lighter than a cloud and twice as pale,” Colin said with a glare.
“Jeez, you guys are all compliments,” she told them.
Colin held back his grin, not wanting to encourage her sarcastic tone. By now, he and Trace had packed most of her stuff.
“Lila, we need to talk to you about something before we go back to Haven.” Colin crouched down in front of her, raising her face up so she was looking at him. He needed to make sure she fully understood what he was about to tell her.
“You understand that if you come back to Haven with us and you neglect to tell us that you need us or you place yourself in harm’s way, then we will discipline you. You grew up in Haven, you know how this works. If you disobey us, lie to us, fail to call us when you need us then you will face the consequences.”
“You-you’d spank me?” she asked in such a soft, tremulous voice that he felt his heart melting. But he couldn’t back away, it was too important. At the core of their community was the belief that their women were to be cherished and protected at all costs.
There were a number of ménage relationships in Haven, so Gavin, Trace and Colin knew that their interest in Lila wouldn’t be seen as unusual. Their greatest resistance would likely come from Lila herself. But that was something to worry about later. First, they had to get her home.
“Yes, baby, we wouldn’t hesitate to spank your butt if you put yourself in harm’s way or risked your health.”
She blushed, her fingers playing with the bed covers. “But I’m a grown woman,” she protested weakly.
Trace crouched down and cupped her cheeks between his palms. “You’ll be safe; you’ll be cared for and protected. Trust us to take care of you. This isn’t about who is stronger or older, or some ego trip. We care about you and you know we would never harm you. But if you put yourself at risk, then we won’t hesitate in making sure you think twice before doing anything like that again. Understand?”
Lila stared at Trace, and Colin could see the shock on her face. Didn’t she know how much she meant to them? Maybe not, and it wasn’t as though they’d ever told her. But that would soon change.
She looked at them both for a long moment before nodding. “Okay, I understand.”
A surge of relief ran through Colin, and, leaving Trace to grab the bags, he lifted her up into his arms.
“Let me down, Colin!” she demanded, wriggling.
“No,” he told her. “If I let you down you might disappear on me.” She only came home twice in the last year and before that she was in college. He needed her close, to reassure himself that she was really in his arms.
She was theirs. Whether she knew it or not.
“Stop wriggling,” he ordered firmly. “I’m not letting you go.” Not ever.
Leaning down, he kissed her on the forehead as Trace prowled around the small, run-down apartment, looking for anything they’d missed. This place wasn’t fit for their dogs, let alone the woman who would be their wife.
Surprisingly, it was also kind of messy. Lila had always been a bit of a neat-freak, but there were clothes scattered around the place, a dirty coffee cup on the bench, and some papers thrown on the small bench she obviously used as a table, most of them overdue bills. He looked at Trace, then nodded his head at them. Trace gathered them up. They’d take care of them later.
“These walls are damp,” Trace stated, pulling his hand off the wall.
Colin scowled. No wonder she was sick. “How long you had this infection, Lila?” he asked.
She shrugged, her eyes closed as she rested against his chest. “A few weeks.”
Hmm, that seemed a long time to be sick with a simple virus.
“I’m fine now.”
“Yeah you look real fine,” Colin answered her. “Let’s hurry, so we can get you home where we can take proper care of you.”
Trace looked down at the small woman nearly asleep in Colin’s arms. She might be twenty-three, but she was so tiny and vulnerable-looking that she could have passed for younger. God, he loved her. He’d loved her for a long time, his feelings towards her not the least bit brotherly. He’d felt guilty about that for a long time, until he’d realized that Gavin and Colin felt the same.
The three of them had decided long ago that they wanted to share the same woman. Not conventional, but then they’d never been overly concerned with what others thought. And it wasn’t like they would be the only ménage relationship in Haven. The three of them had built a strong brotherhood when they’d banded together in the foster home and none of them could really stand the idea of living apart.