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Part Two
12
Two years, three weeks, and six days and oh, about twelve hours, give or take a few. Math was Shane’s area of expertise, not his. Sebastian knew it had been too fucking long, though. And his siren had grown only more beautiful.
Two years after Summer’s demand that they give Alyssa time to heal, to fight back from the attack and the weakened condition it had left her in, her father’s lover and soon-to-be fiancée, Landra Collier was hosting his fifty-fourth birthday party. God love Aunt Landra’s heart. His aunt ensured Alyssa had to stay in one place for a few hours tonight anyway. Something she hadn’t done at any of the other parties he’d tried to corner her at over the past weeks. She ignored their phone calls, their texts, and refused to see them. And catching her at a party proved impossible.
Sebastian had waited, though. The gifts were presented, the cake was cut, and now everyone was enjoying champagne, dancing, and a jovial atmosphere sure to be the talk of the town come morning. For Sebastian, it was the first chance to approach Alyssa since he and Shane had been forced away from her eight years before.
His siren. God help him, he missed her.
Tonight, she was wearing black rather than the icy, pale, almost white blue she’d worn the first time they’d seen her.
Little sleeves trailed just off her shoulder, gathered, and led to the low-cut back. Her full, beautiful breasts rose above the snug material cupping her like a lover’s hand from breast to hip, where it flared out in yards of material. Behind her, the flow of the dress was gathered just slightly above that pretty ass before falling into a train that trailed behind her a good twelve to fourteen inches. In front, the material whispered to the floor, giving just a glimpse of the toes of her matching four-inch heels.
Diamonds and a single sapphire gleamed between the tempting mounds of her breasts and she wore no other jewelry. Not in her hair or in her pretty ears.
Sebastian made a note to have Shane take the rest of the collection from the De Lorens’ safe and bring it back with him. Pretty diamond and sapphire drops for her hair and around her wrist. The engagement ring he and Shane had had made and pretty earrings.
The rest of the jewelry carried the same theme. A single sapphire protected by two diamonds. The siren protected by them. By their promise.
Always bound, they’d promised her.
Since the night they’d been forced to leave her with Summer two years before, one of them had always watched over her. She was never left without protection, never allowed to be at risk again.
Watching her move now, the feminine shift of hips and rear, he gave a little sigh. His cock was so damned hard it was like iron trying to bust the zipper of his tuxedo slacks.
Eight years. It had been eight years since he’d allowed himself to face her. At least while she was conscious. Eight years since he’d dared to consider approaching her. For six of those years, to do so would have been meant a punishment she would have never recovered from, one he and Shane would have carried the guilt of. For the past two years Sebastian had simply watched her from afar, the changes in her more unsettling than he wanted to admit.
Those changes in personality and behavior were so striking, it was as though he’d never known her. Never touched her or heard her cries of pleasure. They were changes he knew hadn’t occurred without trauma. And now he wondered how he’d managed to stay away from her in the past two years, let alone the full eight. Kept from coming to her, from touching her, loving her, hearing her cries of ecstasy as he and Shane possessed her.
The pleasure they found with her was like nothing they had ever known. It was like being part of a storm, part of ecstasy itself.
She wasn’t the same girl they’d lost themselves to in Barcelona, though. The laughing, sensual young woman in those damned frilly skirts and little sleeveless shirts, her feet bare, her long hair tangled around her face, was gone.
Or naked, perspiration glistening across sun-kissed flesh as she stared at them, crying out her pleasure.
No, she wasn’t the same woman.
This woman moved with restraint. There was none of the promise of passion, and wild pleasure was nowhere in sight. It was deeply hidden, sensed now rather than felt.
Her thick, heavy fall of ash-blond hair that would have fallen to just below her shoulders. Now it was upswept and pinned into artful disarray. Little curls and precisely pulled strands of the multi-hued strands trailed along her neck and the side of her face. Finely arched brows swept over icy gray eyes. Eyes the color of winter clouds, darkened and filled with an oncoming storm.
Lithe, graceful, enchanting. And untouchable. Restrained, careful, without the passion and love for adventure that had filled her that summer in Spain.
Every look, from her perfectly composed expression, her chilly gaze, and her proud posture spelled untouchable. Unapproachable.
The Ice Princess was merely taking a stroll among her subjects and they dare not attempt to even touch the hem of her gown for fear of retribution. Or of frostbite.
The fanciful thought had a scowl pulling at his brow. Alyssa wasn’t icy. She wasn’t uncaring or without emotion. The woman he watched now was the same woman they’d warmed two years ago, the same one whose innocence they’d taken, but the heart of that woman was so carefully frozen now that reaching it was only done when she dreamed.
How they did it, how they’d known her pain, her fears, for the past eight years he didn’t always understand.
His grandfather called it being soul bound. Some lucky men of the De Loren line knew a love that flowed so deep, so strong, that their souls would meld with their women’s. Fernando De Loren had been confused how two of his grandsons had soul-bound the same woman, but he’d been certain the bond was there.
What Sebastian knew was the bond between Alyssa and him was unbroken. Just as the bond she and Shane shared had remained strong, steady.
