“I’m fine, Anatol, really.” She was lying for his sake. They were both trying so hard to make her feel better.

Smiling, she nuzzled his wet palm. Both the men had been pampering her since they’d reached the carriage. Once back in the room, they’d cleaned and dressed her hurts, called a doctor to examine her head, and then ushered her into a nice warm bath. “I’m still glad I came. At least now I know.”

“Now you know, yes, but that means you lose the comfort of the fantasy.”

“Anatol, you and your truth are not helping,” Gregorio gritted out where he sat by the fire.

“It’s all right, Gregorio,” Evangeline answered. “Anatol can’t help pointing out the truth any more than I can help feeling it. He’s right. The fantasy is gone. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing.”

Gregorio came over to stand near the tub. Whereas Anatol could easily discuss his feelings, Gregorio often had difficulties. Evangeline could tell he was struggling with it now. After watching Anatol wash her back for a moment, he knelt beside the tub and looked into her eyes. “I wish I could take it away or make it different. You didn’t deserve that.”

She reached out and touched his face with damp fingers. “Thank you, Gregorio.” Although she wasn’t really sure what she did or didn’t deserve.

“We love you very much,” he finished, emotion clouding his eyes.

Ah, sweet Joshui, they were both the best of men. In all her life, any woman’s life, could she have found better men than these? And most women, even if they were lucky to find a good man at all, never got two. Maybe the universe was making up for the lack of love she’d had growing up.

Because, oh, she did love them.

She cupped his cheek and stared into his beautiful dark eyes. “I don’t know why you love me, Gregorio. I don’t understand how I got so lucky to have you both or what it is you see in me.” He started to interrupt her, but she put her fingers over his lips and shook her head. “And I love you back.” Her eyes pricked with tears as she admitted it out loud for the first time. “More than anyone in the world, I love you both.”

Gregorio leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers. It was a deep and loving kiss, filled with the sentiment that she saw so clearly in his eyes and heard in his voice. A tear squeezed out and rolled down her cheek as she clung to him, getting his clothing wet, though he seemed not to care. He pulled her out of the bathtub and up against him. Soaking the front of his clothing, she held on to him tightly, her eyes closed.

Anatol came up on her other side and she launched herself into his arms. “I love you,” she whispered near his ear.

His arms came around her. “I know. I always knew you did. Still, say it again.”

“I love you.” Her voice broke on the words.

He let out a deep sigh, his body relaxing.

After a moment, Anatol pulled her toward the bed. She laid down and closed her eyes, exhaustion taking over.

The rustle of clothing being removed met her ears and soon both men were bracketing her, their heat keeping her warm and their presence making her feel safe.

If only it could always be this way. If only she could trust them when they told her it would last.

Their hands and mouths began to move over her flesh. Her body began to sing to life again, tingling with the awareness of her men. Clearly, they were going to do their best to make her forget the events of the day. She was more than happy to let them try. At least for a little while.

If anything had been shown to her today, it was something she’d always known. Love didn’t last and it was never unconditional. Anatol and Gregorio might love her now, but that could change in a moment. They could discover something about her that they didn’t like, or she could do something wrong. Then they would reject her and her heart would break so badly she’d never heal.

She couldn’t allow that to happen.

But as Gregorio covered her body with his and Anatol parted her thighs with a sure hand, she pushed that thought away to deal with later. Tonight she would take what these men offered her.

Take it and drown in it.

Gregorio’s mouth covered her nipple and sucked it to a sensitive, reddened peak, then moved to the other breast, while Anatol found her clit with his tongue.

She jerked, moaning, losing herself in the feel of them. Two mouths on her flesh, four hands. Her fingers twined in Gregorio’s hair as they pushed her into a state of incoherence. Anatol tongued her clit into swollen need, then stroked it with the pad of his finger. She shuddered, nearly coming.

She pushed up, rolling Anatol to his back on the mattress and straddling him. The head of his cock sank easily into her damp sex and she bit her lower lip, taking him deep inside her.

A ragged moan escaped his lips and his hands came up to cup and play with her breasts while Gregorio sought the bottle of lubricant and coated his fingers in it. She rode Anatol slowly, teasingly, while Gregorio speared inside her nether hole, up to the second knuckle.

She moaned and bucked on Anatol, all the nerves in that not often touched area of her body springing to delicious life. The sensation of having both her orifices stimulated at the same time was an indescribable, overwhelming thing. Pure pleasure.

Gregorio played until she was stretched and ready to take him. Then he coated his cock in the lubricant, straddled Anatol’s legs, and guided his cock into her rear.

She lowered her chest to Anatol’s, waiting for Gregorio to hilt inside her. As he worked his shaft in slowly, inch by slow inch, Anatol kissed her roughly, eating at her lips and spearing his tongue into her mouth while he ever so leisurely rocked his cock back and forth deep inside her cunt.

When she was filled with both of them, they began to thrust. Pleasure took her over, chased everything else away. They found a rhythm, all of them moving as one being, straining toward release and immersed in the act of giving and receiving pleasure.

Evangeline’s body tensed and her orgasm slammed into her. It was always more intense with both of them together. She cried out, her body spasming in intense pleasure. The sound and sight of her climax triggered first Anatol’s and then Gregorio’s.

They collapsed to the bed, spent, sweaty, and satisfied.

Many doors were slammed in their faces. Anatol’s new job would not be an easy one, but he knew that. By the week’s end they’d made a little progress, but time and multiple trips to the province would be necessary to make any true headway.

Evangeline managed to take a positive step forward in the city, ironically enough, by securing a dressmaker there who loved the collection of designs she’d brought and wanted to stock them in her store.

After Gregorio and Anatol had done all they could do, they boarded the train once again and undertook the long journey back to Milzyr.

She was happy to be leaving Malbask. This city would always be a place of grief for her. She hoped any business dealings she would have in the future could be accomplished through wire communication and long-distance delivery.

On the way back she stared out the window at the passing scenery and didn’t say much, though she caught the occasional looks of concern that Gregorio and Anatol shared. She’d done all she could to insulate them from her emotional turmoil. They didn’t deserve to suffer it. It was hers and hers alone. She could wish all day that the situation might be different, but wishing to change a truth was like blowing a feather at a boulder.

“Evangeline?”

She turned her head to find both of her beautiful, perfect, strong, loving men looking at her. Would that she could keep them forever. She smiled. “I’m fine.” Then she turned back to looking out the window.

“You’re not fine, Evangeline.” Anatol’s voice sounded hard. “Have you forgotten the flip side of my gift? I can see your lies very well.”

She sighed and looked into her lap. “Nothing lasts. Nothing is forever.” She paused and swallowed hard. “If my parents didn’t want me, how can I believe that anyone else will want me? The pain—” she broke off. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It’s physical as well as emotional. I’m afraid that if I lose you two that it would kill me.”

“You’re not going to lose us.” Anatol came to sit beside her, drawing her into his arms and burying his nose in her hair as if she were going bolt away and leave him forever. “You will never lose us, Evangeline.”

Gregorio came down on his knees in front of her. “You are ours, Evangeline. Do you hear me?” Gregorio’s rough voice rasped over her and made her shiver. “The only way you’ll lose us is if you leave us. And you can’t leave us. Not now. Not ever. We belong together—the three of us. We’ll make it work.”

She shook her head and tried to speak, but found she had no words.

Anatol let Gregorio haul her down into his lap. He sat on the floor of the car cradling her.

“You don’t understand.” A tear dripped off her cheek. “Not even I understand. You scare me, both of you. All I’ve ever had in my life was myself to rely on. Now you’re here, two of you, and—”

“But that’s a good thing, Evangeline. Why should that scare you? Yes, we’re here for you. Yes, we’ll support you. We love you.”

Her fingers tightened in Gregorio’s shirt and she gritted her teeth for a moment. “And I’m in love with you, too, you and Anatol, both. What if I completely lose myself in you, invest all this emotion in you, and you leave me? What if you fall out of love with me, but I stay in love with you? What if—”

He pressed his lips to hers to stop the rest of her words. “That won’t happen, Evangeline, because we’re both already invested completely in you. We belong to one another now. If one of us hurts, the others hurt. We’re connected.”

She sagged against him, wanting to bathe in that sentiment.

“What-ifs will kill you, my darling,” he murmured against her mouth. “Just let go of those and trust your emotions.”

“But that’s the thing, Gregorio. Emotion is new for me. It’s hard for me to trust it.”

He took her hand and placed it on his chest. “Then trust me. Trust Anatol.”

She closed her eyes and melted against him. She wished she could.

They took the steam transport back to the city in almost near silence, the weight of her grief holding all of them down. Anatol might have been able to see the truth of things, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t, too. Right now she could see into the truth of this situation quite well—crystal clear. She didn’t like what she saw, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Love wasn’t enough.

It couldn’t protect her against what had happened back on her family’s farm. In fact, it made it worse. Love crushed when it was rejected. Hope pierced more surely than a sword when it was disappointed. She couldn’t withstand anything like what she’d endured on the steps of that farmhouse again. Not from Anatol and Gregorio.

And it was inevitable, wasn’t it?

She hadn’t been enough for her parents. So she couldn’t be enough for Anatol and Gregorio. Not for forever. Eventually, as she grew more and more attached and dependent on them, they would grow further apart from her. Eventually she would be on her knees somewhere alone, suffering the gut-wrenching pangs of rejection and love lost, only ten times worse than what she’d experienced at her parents’ hands.

If she didn’t get out now, before she slipped even further in love with them both, that would be her fate.

Every moment she spent with them, she slipped further.

They made it back to Gregorio’s house shrouded in a sense of sorrowfulness so thick that most people instinctively got out of their way on the street. As the moon shone overhead, they entered the town house and were greeted by a welcome late dinner of lamb and steamed vegetables. The servants had affected a feel of cozy joy in the house, something she couldn’t share in. Not tonight.

After dinner Evangeline opted to sleep in a guest room alone, complaining of a bad headache. She exchanged lingering kisses with her beautiful men and then entered her room for the night, closing the door behind her.

As soon as the door closed and she was alone, she leaned up against the back of it and closed her eyes, feeling the grief of what she was about to do. She couldn’t stay here with them. She couldn’t risk another tearing injury to her soul when they rejected her. They deserved better than her. They deserved a woman who could love them with all she was, without pain and confusion, and without reservation. She was not that woman. That meant she had to get out of here while she could—it was better for all of them.

She waited until she was sure that the men had gone to sleep in their respective rooms and the town house was quiet with the heaviness of rest after a long, exhausting journey. Then she packed a bag with only the clothing items she’d had when she’d come here and she stepped out into the hallway.

Every step she took down the gorgeous runner rug of the corridor, every move she made as she traveled down the stairs to the front door, she did with total in-the-moment consciousness, wanting to absorb this place into herself and keep it with her for the lonely nights ahead when she would remember this time and think about could-have-beens. Could-have-beens were so much better than reality.

She had only one place to go.