Page 18 of Three Cranky SEALS and a Christmas Menace

Speaking of Todd, she left him a message of apology on his phone for her brother’s friends, telling him they were just as overprotective as Jeff. He called her back immediately. He understood and respected that, but when he asked Mercedes on a proper date, just to talk, she declined, and he wished her good luck as if he knew what was going on in her heart.

So now, Annique could have all the fun she wanted about Mercedes. She just didn’t care anymore.

Practicing a pretend smile, although it felt so forced her face started to ache, she went downstairs to greet all her happy family members, who were properly in a festive mood. All Mercedes wanted was them for Christmas.

After taking her virginity in the most sublime way ever, then bathing her, feeding her, and taking her again and again, making her come in ways she never thought possible, Mercedes hadn’texpected they would send her home. When someone called Mr. Willard arrived at the cabin to deliver something to them, they’d bundled her up and told him to drive her home. And that was it. Not even a goodbye. The last thing she wanted was for them to see her tears, so she gathered up her stuff and left.

The storm had dissipated to nothingness, except for a very light fall of snow and there wasn’t any excuse she could think of to stay. The truth was they couldn’t wait to get rid of her. They’d done what she’d asked them to do. That had been their deal, after all. She would walk right back out of their lives.

She was the one who had feelings. Not them. They were trained to have zero feelings at all. God, how was she going to go back to the girl she was before knowing what the scent of their cologne on her skin felt like? There was no going back. She knew that. Somehow, she’d known that from the first moment when they walked into the cabin. But this was how it was going to be forever and ever.

“Hey, kiddo.” Waldo Samson, her grandfather and her favorite person in the whole wide world, called her to come and sit with him by the fire. “That frown on your face. Who put it there? A boy? I’ll break his legs, I will. Just tell me who,” Waldo said seriously.

“No one put a frown on my face, Granddad,” she said giving him a bright smile.

“Harrumph,” he retorted.

“Let’s play a game before lunch is served,” she said, anything including chess to try to distract her grandad.

“I may be old, not stupid, but you’ll tell me what’s bothering you eventually.”

Before she burst out crying in front of everyone, all sixteen of her family members, to be precise, she set up the board and they got to playing.

A hush fell over the room. She glanced up at the entrance and there, dressed in bespoke suits, taking her breath away they were so incredibly good-looking, stood Holden, Waylan, and Myles. She’d never seen dressed up that way. They looked like billionaires instead of the lethal SEALs they were.

Shocked, wondering if her eyes were deserving her, she rose from her seat, knocking over the chess board.

They were real. She could feel the heat from their bodies right under her skin. Her pussy clenched, the bite marks on her backside burned, her nipples swelled, still feeling the strong pull of their mouths on her. No. What was she doing? They were here because they were Jeff’s best friends, and nothing made her brother happier than having them over. They were not here for her. Stupid, Mercedes.

Except when they strode straight toward her. Her heart threatened to skip out of her chest. They engulfed her. No one else existed in the room except her and them. What was going on?

Jeff couldn’t stop smiling. Everyone else watched on.

“Mercedes,” they each said formally. “Mr. Samson,” they turned to her grandad. “May we have a word with you?”

Chapter Fifteen

Myles

If they thought they could live their lives without her from the instant they saw her in the cabin, dressed like a siren, waiting for some turdball to come and take her virginity, they’d been fucking kidding themselves. And they knew it. They knew it the minute they saw her there.

It was a wonder they behaved civilly enough, and took an eight-hour nap instead, because if they gave into their beasts, they would have had her on her back in a flat second, prepared to keep her locked inside that cabin with them forever if that was what it would take to keep her.

Then she turned everything around on them, which was just like their Miss Hades.

Sending her away with Willard, a man they trusted with their lives, had been the easiest thing to do because they needed time to get themselves in order.

They wanted Mercedes. They wanted to marry her. They knew they were going to resign from the agency. Being away from her for one second was agony enough.

They’d waited for Holden to make that decision and he made it in an instant. Mercedes was theirs.

They’d pulled some strings, gotten themselves suits, and each of them was carrying a velvet box in their pockets.

Then they’d talked to Jeff. They’d been honest with him. All he said about it was that it was fucking time. Mercedes had been in love with them for years already, it was plainly written on her face.

Jeff would never know what that kind of admission did for them. They’d already thought about contingency plans if she said no. Well, it had only been one plan, buy an island, keep her on it, make her fall in love with them.

But then Jeff had told them the man to ask her hand in marriage was their grandfather, Waldo Samson, a British war veteran. They’d always respected the man and he them.

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