Page 98 of Theirs to Desire (Club M: Boxed Set)

EPILOGUE

AVERY

Three months later…

T he sun is shining through my window when I wake up, stretching like a cat, wincing a little. We’d been especially energetic last night, and my muscles are sore. Whatever Kai and Maddox have planned at the club today, I hope it’s low-key.

I roll out of bed and clean up, wondering where the hell Kai and Maddox are. It’s December, so I doubt that they’re in the backyard. Maybe they went to get me breakfast? I hope so; I’m starving.

The last three months have been so great.

Victor is gone. He’d threatened to press assault charges against Kai, but then Nadya had stepped in, and I saw why Maddox calls her a barracuda.

She’d promised she’d leak the tape of us at dinner to the British tabloids.

“Along with the fact that you’re harassing your ex-wife about her engagement ring,” she’d added.

“You’re already a topic of gossip in London, Baron Lowell.

You’ve had one failed marriage and two broken engagements.

The British media is always intensely interested in the peerage, aren’t they? ”

Faced with the prospect of being under public scrutiny, Victor had caved. No charges were pressed, either against Kai or against me.

I guess I could have kept the ring, but I didn’t. I asked Nadya to send it to Victor’s lawyers. “I never want to see that damn thing again,” I’d told her. “He can keep it.”

My parents, as I predicted, returned the five hundred grand I’d sent them. It was never about the money for them, it was about control. Except they can never control me again. I’ve cut off contact with them, and I’m happy to say that it’s one of the best things I could have ever done.

“Up at last.” I hear the front door open, and Kai and Maddox walk in. “I tried waking you,” Kai says, “But you rolled over, pulled the blanket over your head, and told me to go away.”

My lips twitch. “How disrespectful of me. I really should get spanked for being such a bad girl. Tonight at the club? I want to try the knotted flogger.”

Maddox groans. “Avery, you’re killing me here. Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but we’re not going to the club today.”

“We aren’t?” Funny, they hadn’t said anything about it last night.

“No, I thought we’d do something different.”

Something in his tone alerts me. “Like what?”

“I thought we’d check out some houses,” Kai replies. “And maybe the three of us could buy one together?”

My pulse starts to race. “Is that your way of asking me to move in?”

“We’re not going to make it easy on you,” Maddox warns me. “You’re going to have to decorate the place. You have a great eye for color.”

Pleasure runs through me at the compliment. “You’re a world-famous photographer,” I point out. “I very much doubt I have a better eye for color than you.”

Maddox smiles at me. “Ah, but I have no experience putting down roots,” he says. “I’ve never wanted to. Until I met you. I turned down a job yesterday,” he says. “And I’m making it clear to everyone I’ve freelanced for. No more trips longer than a week.”

“That’s going to restrict you quite a bit.”

He shrugs, unperturbed. “Avery, I’ve traveled all over the world,” he says. “I don’t want to be away from you for long stretches of time. I love what I do, but I love you more.”

“Taking a leaf out of Maddox’s book, I’m going to back off work a little bit too,” Kai says. “Not too much, nothing radical. Just enough that I can come home for dinner every night. Jayla was right; life isn’t all about work.”

“She’s going to be quite smug when she finds out.

” Our friends and family had taken a little bit to get accustomed to our threesome.

For about a week, Maddox hadn’t been sure if his mother was going to talk to him again, but then she came around.

“I grew up during the sexual revolution,” she’d said to him wryly.

“I’m just going to have to get over it.”

Gage and his fiancée did break up. Knowing what I do of him, he’s probably prowling around for another heiress.

“She is,” Kai agrees ruefully. “That’s a risk I have to take. So, what do you say, Avery? Want to get dressed so we can see what’s on the market?”

I jump to my feet, anticipation dancing through me at the idea of coming back home every night to them, eating dinner together, curling up on the couch and watching TV. Just normal, boring, lazy stuff. It sounds pretty amazing. “Yes,” I beam widely. “Absolutely.”

It might have taken us ten years to piece it together, but it’s all worked out in the end.

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