5

WEEK THREE

There were few things Alyssa enjoyed more than a day at the spa, until now.

Making her way back to the apartment from the spa Gia had told her about the week before, Alyssa grinned at the thought. Once she would have lingered for hours at the spa. A massage, highlights in her hair, facial, the complete wax, a manicure and pedicure. It could take most of the day for a full treatment. Today, she’d limited herself to the wax, manicure, and pedicure. The rest could wait, she decided.

She had exactly an hour before Shane and Sebastian were due to pick her up and take her to the private beach they’d told her about. Sun and sand, Shane and Sebastian, and no one to see her sunbathing nude but the men who were consuming more and more of her thoughts. Not to mention making it impossible to remember there was no way they would fit if they took her fully. Well, perhaps it wasn’t that she didn’t remember so much as she was becoming desperate for the possession herself.

They were dangerous to her common sense, she decided as she neared her borrowed apartment.

Sitting on the wide stone stoop smoking a cigarette, Gregory, the neighbor directly below her, lounged on the step. He was twenty-one and living with his girlfriend, a university student from Madrid who was currently vacationing in Barcelona as well.

“Hello, Alyssa,” he greeted her, his heavily accented tone open and friendly as he disposed of the cigarette and rose to his feet.

Clad in low, loose jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt and with bare feet, he smiled at her brightly.

“Hello, Gregory.” She smiled, pausing before stepping up to make her way down the narrow walk to the back of the building and the steps leading to the deck. “Is Marissa returning today?”

His girlfriend had gone home for a few days to attend her brother’s birthday party.

“Thankfully, any moment now.” Anticipation filled his dark brown eyes. “I thought to meet her. I expect every time she goes home that her poppa will lock her in the cellar and refuse to let her return to me.”

Gregory might be smiling, but there was just a hint of serious uncertainty in his voice.

“She’s crazy about you, Gregory,” she assured him, tucking her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “She would never let her father lock her up anywhere to keep her from you.”

“Eh, fathers, you don’t know how they are here.” Lifting his hands at his sides to emphasis the claim, he gave a brief little roll of his eyes. “And Marissa’s poppa, he is crazy.”

Alyssa laughed at the declaration. “Gregory, every girl’s poppa that loves her is crazy when it comes to her leaving the nest. That never changes, either.”

Gregory grimaced at the sound of Sebastian’s car purring to the curve and parking.

“Ah, your friends have arrived,” Gregory announced. “Which one is yours?”

She gave him an innocent look. “They’re both friends.”

Gregory blinked back at her, a knowing light in his dark eyes.

“Ah, I see,” he murmured.

As Shane and Sebastian stepped to the sidewalk she turned to them with a smile. “Hi there. I’d like you to meet my neighbor…”

Shane’s expression was so hard she paused for a second. Just a second. “Shane, Sebastian, this is Gregory—”

“I’m in a hurry Alyssa,” Shane announced, gripping her arm and pulling her up the stoop. “Let’s get your things.”

Behind her, she heard Sebastian greet the young man, his voice a bit amused. Evidently he wasn’t surprised by his cousin’s behavior.

“Excuse me!” She jerked her arm from Shane’s grip, obviously catching him by surprise, because he actually let her go.

“You heard me.…”

The pain that struck at her chest surprised her. They had the power to hurt her now. A power only one person in her life had ever used in the same way, and she swore she’d never tolerate it from anyone else.

“I think the two of you should leave.” She could feel the tears gathering behind her eyes, the sense of loss tearing her apart.

She’d started the day so happy, so confident, only to now see a side of Shane she knew she could never bear to see again.

Shane stiffened; behind him she heard Sebastian mutter a curse.

“Come on, sweets, you know what a bear Shane can be.” Sebastian deserved an A for effort.

Keeping her gaze locked with Shane’s as he slowly drew the dark sunglasses off, she glimpsed a wild, primitive flash of some emotion she didn’t want to define.

“What did you say?” he asked her softly.

“I didn’t stutter, Cowboy. Leave. Until you can learn some manners I don’t want to see you again.”

“Come on, Alyssa,” Sebastian protested behind him, obviously shocked. “I was polite. Gregory, tell her I was polite.”

Gregory said nothing.

“Gregory!” Sebastian snapped. “Tell her I was polite, dammit.”

“Well, he was polite.” Gregory didn’t seem the least bit intimidated.

“Doesn’t matter,” she informed him scathingly, still staring at Shane. “Evidently you forgot to remind your cousin that I’m no man’s property, even his. Nor am I a child to be dragged away as though I’ve broken some rule. I have no desire to speak to either of you for a while.” She could feel the tears building in her eyes now, threatening to fall. “Maybe not at all.”

Before they could stop her, Alyssa ran down the narrow walk, her heart breaking.

How could he have treated her like that? To embarrass her in front of her neighbor, to attempt to make it appear she were some possession no one else could speak to?

The tears were falling before she made it to the landing, the sound of Sebastian calling her name as he moved quickly up the walk, making her add speed to her retreat.

Slamming the door closed behind her, Alyssa threw the inner latch home once she locked the doors. Twenty keys wouldn’t get them in now. The shades came down and she retreated to her bedroom, where the sobs finally broke free.

“Damn you!” she cried, throwing the small bag she’d carried on her wrist from the spa. “You don’t own me. No one owns me.”

Sebastian heard the tear-filled declaration as it drifted through the open bedroom window. The sound of her quiet sobs following it broke his heart and infuriated him.

Not that he didn’t understand Shane. Hell, he’d hated seeing Alyssa smile at another man, a man closer to her age, one who lived just below her. Gregory was a charming little bastard, and they knew it. All the girls had loved him before he’d moved from the quiet little town close to the De Loren lands.

Still, even Sebastian knew better than to embarrass their siren in such a way. Her sweet song could lead them to paradise, but he’d also sensed that if they hurt her, treated her unfairly in any way, then she’d make damned sure that sweet voice lashed at them like the sharpest whip.

Sliding the key from his pocket, he attempted to open the door. It unlocked, but the inner bolt had been slid in place, ensuring the key would do him little good.

He was going to kill Shane.

Turning and moving quickly down the stairs, then the narrow walk, he met his cousin at the other side before lifting his lip in an insulting snarl.

“You are a fucking moron, Cousin,” he bit out. “She secured the door. There’s no getting in.”

Shane’s expression went blank, his blue eyes darkening.

“She’ll open the fucker for me,” he decided.

“And I will call the police if you try to force her to do so,” Gregory threatened, though he was smart enough to move back from Shane as his girlfriend, Marissa, glared at both of them.

Dammit to hell. They knew both of them, and neither Shane nor Sebastian cared for Gregory. The little bastard was always getting into everyone’s business.

“And I will call Lucien,” Marissa threw the ultimate threat at them. “He would be greatly displeased, Shane Connor, to know his cousin had so insulted such a young woman. She is not yet twenty and that the two of you play your games with her is bad enough. But to treat her so is uncalled for.” She turned to Gregory. “Never try such a thing with me or I will call Poppa immediately.”

Fuck.

Marissa had overheard the confrontation, moving to Gregory as Alyssa had spat her rage at Shane. And Marissa would indeed call Lucien if she felt it was warranted.

“Don’t worry, Marissa,” Sebastian assured her, the snap in his tone drawing her gaze. “It’s going to be hard for Shane to ever speak again after I push his teeth down his throat.”

“That little shit flirts with every woman he sees.…” Shane threw his hand toward Gregory furiously.

“Not anymore he doesn’t,” Marissa came to her boyfriend’s aid as the boy in question smirked at Shane. “Not since vowing to love me he doesn’t flirt with others. Alyssa is our neighbor, Shane.” Her curvy body vibrating with anger, she clenched her fists and glared at Shane. “It is not flirting to be nice. To say hello or to be introduced to friends. You are the little shit, not my Gregory.” She linked her arm with the boy and tugged at it demandingly. “Come, Gregory, I too cannot bear to speak to him. I will check on her later and agree with her when she calls him the ass he is.”

As Marissa pulled him away Gregory threw Shane one last smug-assed grin that just irritated the fuck out of Sebastian as well.

Shane stood silent, his expression implacable as he stared back at the walk Alyssa had disappeared down.

“She is crying,” Sebastian stated, fury vibrating in his low voice. “She will not let us comfort her, and I cannot blame her. If you cannot trust her to be a woman, to smile and grow in who she is, then you cannot be trusted with any part of her.”

Shane turned to him, brooding fury building in his expression.

“I won’t leave her crying,” he bit out.

“But you will!” Sebastian snapped, all but throwing the keys to the car at him. “Leave now. Perhaps, without your ignorance to remind her of how she’s been hurt, she will at least allow me to ease her tears. Leave now.”

“Go to hell, Cousin!” Shane snapped. “I’ll sit on that fucking porch until she does come out. Then I’ll fix it.”

Sebastian followed him as he stalked to the back of the apartment. It looked like it would be a very, very long day. Because even Sebastian had gotten to know Alyssa well enough to know she was not opening that door.

But he went to the back of the apartment and onto the porch, where Shane took a place on one end of the long picnic table and Sebastian sat on the other.

When his cousin stood to move to the door he stood as well.

“Touch that door and I’ll throw you over the fucking rail,” he bit out. “Let her calm down first. Then we’ll attempt to see if she’ll forgive you enough to at least speak with me.”

Shane sat back down slowly, not because he was in the least worried about how much such a fall would hurt. No doubt it had more to do with the fact that he wasn’t pissed enough yet to push Sebastian.

They sat there silently, for more than an hour before Marissa stomped up the steps to face them once again.

“She’s gone.” Her arms crossed over her breasts as she faced them, contempt shining in her eyes. “She stopped only long enough to tell Gregory and me she had a girlfriend in Madrid and would be there for a while. I came to tell you because I don’t like you lurking out here. She did not mention telling you anything.”

Sebastian rose to his feet when Marissa turned and left the way she had come.

“She’s been climbing again,” Shane said, almost too soft to hear. “She would have had to climb from the window.”

“Find your own fucking way home,” Sebastian bit out. “I don’t even want you in my car now.”

Shane sat where he was as Sebastian left. When he heard the car roar away, he sighed heavily and stared out at the ocean.

He would have apologized to the little turd, he thought heavily, if she’d given him a chance.

Now it appeared she wouldn’t even give him a chance to beg for her forgiveness.

He frowned.

He’d never begged a woman for anything. Nothing. Shane Connor did not beg.

But he would have begged Alyssa, he realized. On his knees, his hands lifted in supplication, if she’d given him a chance. Now he was going to have to call Aunt Landra for advice. And that wasn’t going to be pleasant at all. She’d already warned him and Sebastian about hurting Alyssa and about the hell she’d rain down on them. And Aunt Landra could rain hell with no more than a look.

Fuck. Sebastian was right. He was a fucking moron.