Page 14 of Their Valentine Bride

She put her coat back on, then drove home. To celebrate she was going to have a huge lunch sent up to her apartment. As soon as she removed the outfit. It wasn’t at all a comfortable outfit to wear, certainly not conducive for anything else but standing statue-still and being admired at an art gallery.

It was a good idea for the protest though and so she had zero regrets. Especially when she was interviewed and asked what she was wearing, and she got to say it was an attempt to prove that Shlykov Industries were a bunch of prudes and that was why they were taking Cupid’s Toys down, because if they weren’t they would come down from the steel tower and face her. Since they didn’t oblige her, everyone would know they were prudes all right.

She didn’t care whether they were prudes. She needed a campaign angle and that’s the one that came up.

As soon as she entered her apartment, she laid her car keys down in the crystal bowl on her entrance table. But everything felt different in such a way that it would never feel the same again. As if her possessions had been touched by strangers and now they no longer belonged to her, but to them instead.

Her heart thudding in her chest, her legs weakened at the knees, she tentatively strode further into her apartment, not daring to let out a breath as she entered her lounge.

The shock of the sight before her was enough to warrant a heart attack.

She was right. Nothing in her beloved apartment would be the same ever again. She wouldn’t be able to be in it and experience the quiet sanctuary of home ever again. She had been invaded.

There, as if they owned the world and everything in it, including her, were the Shlykov brothers. All three of them. Damien. Leonid. Roman. And they looked pissed.

Gorgeous but pissed. She had thought that seeing them a second time, some of her awe at their profound handsomeness would have worn off.

She was wrong.

This was only the second time she had seen them in person, and every part of her body lit up in the most sensually violent way possible. Her nipples swelled and ached. Her blood ran hotter as if she were experiencing eating strawberries again. While not as annoying, she still wanted to take off her clothes and have her skin cooled with their mouths. Except that thought made her burn even hotter, hotter to the point where she was becoming achingly aware of the slickness between her thighs. That the tiny pair of silk panties she wore under the skirt was already hopelessly drenched.

It was all wrong. She should be focusing on the important things.

Mini explosions went off in her head. How did they get in? Only she had the code into her apartment. Did the building manager let them in? But no, that was impossible because, again, only she had the code to her apartment. It was based on her gran’s birthday, but the numbers were backward.

How did they get in? No one was allowed up to the penthouse. Absolutely no one. Only she and the building manager knew the code for the elevator.

“There isn’t a safe or a lock I’ve come across that I couldn’t crack,” Leonid said quietly, a half-smile on his stupidly gorgeous face as he answered her silently asked question.

It didn’t matter. That was beside the point, she screamed in her head. She was still fixating on the wrong things. They were already in her apartment. How they entered her home was futile thinking.

What she should be doing was running for her life.

She didn’t make it very far when she turned around and made a beeline for the door.

She was instantly grabbed around the waist by Roman, while Leonid, who seemed to move like magic, all slick and smooth, cordoned off her exit with his impeccable body. Damien did nothing but stand by and watch, his expression hard and cold, his demeanor quietly dangerous.

Oh boy.

“You let me go, or I’ll start screaming.” She kicked and tried to wriggle herself free from Roman’s grasp, but he held her effortlessly as if she weighed nothing and placed her in the middle of her very spacious lounge.

“You, more than anyone, should know you can scream all you want; your penthouse is soundproof.”

Crap fuck. With the door and windows closed, Leonid was right.

Her brain kept flicking neon warning signals at her that she was in grave danger. There were three pissed-off men in her apartment, who she had dragged through a very public protest where she called them names.

She had to fight. She had to get to her bedroom, lock her door, and call for help. She picked up a diamond-crusted globe, heavy enough to cause some startling damage if she could get it at one of their heads. She didn’t get very far at all.

With a fluid motion, Leonid divested her of the ornament, yanked off her coat, leaving her to stand there in her black platform boots and her tweed skirt embellished with a selection of strategically placed dildos and vibrators and even ball gags added for mood. Her tank top was decorated with nipple clamps and small butt plugs. Oh, and she had a butt plug attached to a furry tail sewn onto the back of her skirt. She looked like a sex toy work of art. But Delphinia didn’t stop there; she also tattooed little slogans onto Ansley’s skin which would wash off easily in the shower, with soap:

No place for prudes.

Fighting for the little sex shop.

And of course,Protect Cupid’s Toys from bullies.

She hated that they had each taken a moment to read the script on her skin. One of the slogans ran up her thigh, and she gasped when Leonid boldly and with great entitlement, lifted her skirt to get a better reading experience. He traced the words with his fingers and she experienced the same sensations when he had touched her when they first met. He touched things as a way of understanding them, she realized. The fact that when he touched her broke her code rattled her mind. She wasn’t a lock or a safe he could break, now she just needed to tell that to her body.

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