Golden Binds

At over two hundred years, he’d lived through famine, wars, and endless, crappy reality TV shows. Enough was enough.

How much longer could a man be expected to wait? He had needs. Okay, he could sneak into Oldstown and find someone to ease those needs, but that was starting to feel less and less satisfying. He was no longer a young hundred-year-old who thought with his dick. He wanted something more.

Something real.

Young, stupid Garret would have run, terrified at the word commitment. Why commit yourself to one female when you could have a different one each night?

But it all came too easy to him. There wasn’t even a chase. All he had to do was look at a female and she fell all over him. Sometimes he didn’t even need to do that. Lately, he’d had to fend them off. Since when had females become so aggressive? He’d preferred it when he was the one who made all the moves.

There had been one female the other night who’d had her hand down his pants and around his dick before he’d even managed to set down his beer. He shuddered at the memory as he stepped into his oldest brother’s inner sanctum.

His bathroom.

“We need to find her.” The door slammed against the wall, and Joseph turned from where he’d been shaving in front of the mirror.

“I’m in the bathroom,” Joe snarled.

“We’ve lived together for over two hundred years. I know this is your bathroom.”

“Then you also know I come here to get some fucking privacy. Get out.”

* * *

Joseph Bjorn glared at his youngest brother. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. His shirt was only half-tucked into his ripped jeans and was that a damn hickey on his neck? His little brother needed to grow up. He was sowing wild oats long after he should have settled down and found his calling. As Joe and Sawyer had.

Joe was good with numbers. He’d made them a small fortune playing the stock market. Of course, they’d already had an enormous fortune built up over thousands of years from Bjorn relatives. Still, it gave him satisfaction to add to it for future generations.

Sawyer was an inventor. They didn’t see him for days, sometimes weeks, at a time when he was working on a project.

While Garret, he was a . . . well, at best you might call him a charming rogue. At worst, a man whore. All depended on how a person was feeling at the time. And right now, Joe was feeling pretty damned pissed off.

Living together as long as they had started to wear on the nerves after a while. It also meant that there was very little that managed to stay private. Bathrooms were supposed to be private.

There were some lines a man just had to draw, right?

“Get out of here, Garret,” he rumbled when the other man showed no signs of leaving.

“Why? Not like you’re on the toilet or anything. You’re shaving. For probably the twentieth time today.”

“If I used the toilet would you go away?”

Garret just waved his hand dismissively and started pacing up and down the huge bathroom. The floor and walls were tiled in marble imported from Italy and the enormous shower could fit five people—maybe a sixth, if you were good friends.

And Joe knew that for a fact. He’d sowed a few wild oats in his own youth. But that was years ago now. He’d grown up. Matured.

Garret had not.

“I’m bored.”

“You’re always bored. You need a job.”

“What? Like you? Hunched over your computer all day, looking over your stocks and bonds. Yeah, sounds exciting. Or maybe I should be like Sawyer, stuck in that lab of his for weeks on end. Last time he came out, he stank so badly I had to burn his clothes.”

“You could have done it outside! The west wing still smells like smoke.”

Garret shrugged. “Details. Not important.”

Joe grumbled under his breath. His brother could have set the whole castle on fire and he just shrugged it off. That was Garret. Not a care in the world for anyone or anything.