Yes, it had been a spur-of-the-moment thing to try and seduce them. To offer them her body in exchange for keeping Marjorie’s shop from being destroyed. She had been unprepared, which explained a little why they refused her. Had she put her customary amount of effort into it, they would never have stood a chance and would be eating from the palm of her hand at that very minute, begging her to seduce them.
Also, was she really thinking about three men in a sexual way? Yes, she was but only because it was in her subconscious after Bethy and her bucket list story. She was projecting and falsely at that too. Although her tiny truth voice popped in to tell her if she had to make a choice and pick only one of them, she wouldn’t be able to.
Arggh.
What was she doing?
She didn’t have the time for that kind of thinking.
It was just as well they didn’t like her enough to want to be seduced by her because, well, now, after some stern talking to herself, the same could be said for her about them. Pfft. She might have been tossed off her six-inch heels at first sight of them—she was only human after all—but that wasn’t going to happen again. No more surprises for her.
One of the first things she had done since walking in her door after she discarded the animal print dress, was she took a long shower, smothered her skin in a soothing lotion, then donned nothing but a thin kimono—which did nothing more than whisper against her skin, still a little sensitive from the reaction she'd had to strawberries—had been to do an online search on them. What Josh had said seemed to niggle a little.
But regarding her reaction to the strawberries, she realized it could have been worse. What if she had the kind of reaction to the berries where she could have blown up like a puffer fish and exploded all over them. In hindsight, it might have served them right if that had happened.
They hadn’t even taken the time to introduce themselves to her. Okay, so maybe she hadn’t given them the time to, what with her shock of discovering it was a sex shop and then her reaction to the strawberries, but clearly they seemed to know who she was. They met with her apparently out of respect for her father.
She could have easily enlisted his help; that would have certainly leveled out the playing field, but she wasn’t the kind of person to take her problems elsewhere. She wasn’t going to bother her parents while they were on their romantic holiday. She could totally handle the situation. Without anyone’s help. She was quite capable of taking on the Shlykov brothers by herself and winning.
Her internet search turned up sparse information about them and their personal lives, which was a bit suspicious. Except for them being the young billionaires behind the running of Shlykov Industries, which included several business interests from mining to manufacturing, there was nothing else. It was almost as if they swept the internet regularly and cleared it of any personal information. She did discover their names though.
The oldest brother was Damien, while Leonid and Roman were closer in age.
Damien. Leonid. Roman.
Quintessentially Russian. Quintessentially also property bullies. And maybe even Mafia.
Maybe she should be a little afraid. Maybe even a lot afraid. What if what she had planned backfired horribly on her and they remained untouched. But she wasn’t a coward, either, and she had to try everything in her power to save Marjorie’s sex shop.
She planned to make the whole thing a public interest event, so if something were to happen to her, they’d know where to look.Oh heck. For all the pristine veneer they showed on the outside it would have been impossible for her not to have detected the edge of a threat in their demeanors. Of ruthlessness. Of fearlessness. They radiated an aura tinged with darkness and danger, and something told her to step back.
What was she doing?
It wasn’t in her nature to think before she acted. It was Josh messing with her head. That’s not who she was. She was someone driven by passion and not fear. Her life would be very boring if she weren’t constantly dealing with the consequences of her actions.And the Shlykov brothers were not the exception to the rule either.
After downing her cheese and fruit, she grabbed a bag of cookies, popped a couple into her mouth to properly quieten the grumble in her tummy, then headed toward her bedroom.
She needed her beauty sleep and to help keep her wits about her if she was going to pull it off the next day.Everything was in place and the Shlykov brothers had no idea what they were in store for.
No one messed with Ansley King and the people she loved.
But for all her good intentions to have a restful sleep, she found herself awake half the night and the other half jerking awake from bizarre dreams.
Maybe she needed to lose her virginity quicker than she had set her reminder. She had never had any sexual dreams before, but now her subconscious was consumed with three gorgeous faces, their hands touching her naked body, parting her legs, licking her folds, entering her while she was cocooned in the middle of them.
It was a nightmare, she decided. A weird kind of nightmare sex dream.
Chapter Seven
Oh boy. Here goes everything.
Her whole body draped in a trench coat, Ansley glanced at the odd one hundred or so people she had conscripted for the event before she turned her attention back up at the ginormous building before her.
Shlykov Industries.
The skyscraper was by far the biggest and most beautiful building around, and Ansley had always thought that. But now she knew that the owners were heartless, money-grabbing schmucks, and it was time the world knew about them.
She hoped it would take only this one time for them to change their minds and leave Marjorie’s sex shop alone. But if not, she had contingency plans in place, and she wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger on all of them. Her whole approach was based on a hierarchy of stunts, and each time she would up the ante and make them look worse and worse each time.