“We haven’t either,” Gaze admitted as he came to lay on her left side.
“Really?” Lexi had caught her breath by now. “But I thought the two of you were supposed to share a woman? Wasn’t that basically what you were telling me earlier? The reason you make the compounds to help a woman, er, open for you?”
“Twin Kindred are supposed to share females but we were raised on Tranq Prime as Blood Kindred, who only have one mate apiece,” Gaze told her. “And our GrandSire who raised us has some pretty strict ideas about what we should and shouldn’t do.”
“He thought it was fuckin’ perverted,” Bound said bluntly. “Two males sharing a female.” He got comfortable on Lexi’s right side as he spoke.
“That’s…kind of how my people see the idea of a female being with a male at all. Let alone two of them,” Lexi murmured. Now that her sexual need had been satiated, she could hear the little voice in her head again—the one that sounded like her mother and told her how ashamed she ought to be for what she’d done.
“Then you know what it’s like to be raised with beliefs that contradict everything you’re feeling inside,” Gaze said earnestly.
“Well, actually…” Lexi cleared her throat. “I never really felt anything about males at all until I came here to Yonnie Six. I mean, I wasn’t yearning for something I didn’t have or anything.” She shrugged. “I guess because you can’t miss something you don’t really know anything about.”
“I never yearned to share a female with Gaze until we met you, Angel,” Bound rumbled softly. “But the minute I saw you I just knew—you’re the right one for us. The only one.”
“Well that’s…very sweet of you. Uh, thank you.” Lexi wasn’t sure what to say to this declaration.
Gaze frowned at his twin.
“Brother, remember what we talked about earlier,” he said warningly.
The Dark Twin frowned back at him.
“Yeah, I know—you’re afraid we’ll scare Angel off. But I don’t think we will—I think it’s time to lay the cards on the table and tell her we want to bond her to us forever.”
“You want to…want to what?” Lexi squeaked. She had been snuggling between the two big Kindred but now she sat up and looked at them uncertainly. “Forever?”
Gaze was shaking his head but Bound went recklessly on.
“We want to form a permanent bond with you so the three of us will be together for life, Angel,” he told her. “You’ve had enough of our compounds now to take both of us—all Gaze and I would have to do is merge our shafts and fill you with our cream as we bit you at the same time. And then we’d be together forever.”
“Bound, we’re not even sure that’s possible,” the Light Twin protested. “We’re Hybrids and Pitch Bloods. The odds that Alexa is our Fated Mate and that we can bond her to us—”
“Don’t talk odds to me, Brother,” Bound growled. “You prayed and the Goddess answered. She sent us Angel for a reason—the three of us are meant to be together. It’s our fuckin’ destiny.”
“Now, hold on a minute!” Lexi held up a hand to stop him. “Nobody has asked me what I want. And I have to tell you, I just don’t think…I don’t see how a, er, permanent relationship between the three of us would work.”
“Why not?” Bound asked, frowning. “I know you don’t need money, but we can afford to support you, Angel—Gaze and I have our own shipping business you know and we do pretty well for ourselves.”
“It’s not about money, Bound, it’s about our different cultures—our way of life. Think about it—where would we live?” Lexi asked him. “I mean, we don’t want to stay here on Yonnie Six where I’d have to keep pretending I ‘own’ you two and we certainly can’t go to my home world—we’d all be outcasts. And it doesn’t sound like your home world would be any more receptive to the three of us living together and, er, ‘bonding’ than mine would.”
“Who fuckin’ cares where we live?” Bound shook his head in obvious exasperation. “The point is the three of us will be together.”
Together with two males the rest of your life? I don’t think so, Alexa—you know that isn’t right! whispered the guilty little voice in Lexi’s head. She didn’t want to let the two big Kindred go, but at the same time, she just didn’t see how she could fit them into her life.
After all, as soon as she shut down Mistress Crueltongue’s mines, she was going back to Zetta Prime to run her bakery—which she missed dreadfully. And there was no way her friends and neighbors would accept her back if she brought two males with her and declared them to be her new life partners. She’d be the neighborhood pariah—nobody would want to speak to her or buy her baked goods anymore. Everyone would be scandalized by the fact that she had taken not one but two huge males as spouses.