Page 90 of Tempted By her Daddies

“If I do, are you going to try to leave?” Alexei asked.

“Am I not allowed to leave?” she challenged.

“No,” Alexei said.

“Yes,” Roman said at the same time.

Salem sighed. “Of course you are. No one is keeping you prisoner.”

Alexei opened his mouth and Salem reached over and put his hand over it.

“Ew.” Salem snatched his hand back with a look of horror. “Did you just lick my hand?”

“You’re lucky I didn’t bite it.”

“I think I would have preferred it,” Salem muttered, wiping his hand on his pants.

“I don’t think she should be allowed to leave. It’s not safe out there without us. What if someone attacks her? Hmm?”

“If anyone attacks me, I will chop off their balls and tongue and feed them to the pigeons,” she told him.

Alexei grinned. “Good girl.”

“Alexei, could you go get another ice pack?” Salem asked. “This one is melted. Please. We do not want her foot to start swelling again.”

To her surprise, Alexei grumbled but deposited her onto Salem’s lap as he got up and stomped out.

Roman took his place. “Ignore Alexei. He’s . . .”

“Nuts?” she suggested.

“Possessive,” Salem said. “And overly protective. I can be as well. But when Alexei lays claim to someone, well . . . they become his. Whether they want to or not.”

“That’s kind of what happened with us.” Roman smiled. “He still won’t let me drive after I drove with him in the car once. He claims that I drive like a biopic grandpa with a drinking problem. I’m really not sure what that means. But when we got home, he hid all the keys to my car. Of course, he doesn’t realize that I have copies. And that I just sneak out when he’s not here.”

“We all have to make allowances for each other’s, uh, quirks. However, that doesn’t mean that anyone gets to take your freedom or boss you around. Too much,” Salem added as an apparent afterthought.

Right. She was having trouble believing the bossing her around part. It seems these guys were made that way.

Especially Salem and Alexei.

“There will be some things we might need from you. Like not touching other people around Alexei. Is that a good compromise?” Salem asked.

She turned to see Alexei standing in the doorway. He nodded with a grunt. “No touching anyone else but these two when I’m away.”

“Unless in an emergency or it’s a child,” Roman said. “Or family.”

“Let me think about that for a moment,” Alexei muttered as he walked over to put a new ice pack on her foot.

Dear Lord.

Surely, he couldn’t be jealous of her touching a child.

“For me, it’s about control. Sometimes, I might need it more than others,” Salem told her. “When everything else is chaos, I need a space where I feel I can control everything. If you can handle that.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

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