Ryan, Sylvia - Saved by One, Shared by Two (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  Saved by One, Shared by Two

  Survival…that’s all Julia was hoping for when she set off alone. The EMP left nothing working, and civilization crumbled rapidly. Her plan to flee to safety failed and she lay dying when Arden found her. He brought her home and saved her life.

  Julia has no choice but to wait out the winter with sweet, sexy Arden and his seductive best friend, Ben. She tries to ignore the sexual tension and constant temptation of living with the men, but eventually she gives in to each man’s seduction. When both men come to the realization that they are in love with Julia, their lifelong friendship prevents them from competing for her. So, a deal is struck between them. She will accept and love them together, or not at all.

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre

  Length: 59,696 words

  SAVED BY ONE,

  SHARED BY TWO

  Sylvia Ryan

  MENAGE AMOUR

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  ABOUT THE E-BOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED: Your non-refundable purchase of this e-book allows you to only ONE LEGAL copy for your own personal reading on your own personal computer or device. You do not have resell or distribution rights without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner of this book. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program, for free or for a fee, or as a prize in any contest. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden. If you do not want this book anymore, you must delete it from your computer.

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

  SAVED BY ONE, SHARED BY TWO

  Copyright © 2011 by Sylvia Ryan

  E-book ISBN: 1-61034-636-X

  First E-book Publication: September 2011

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Saved by One, Shared by Two by Sylvia Ryan from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Sylvia Ryan’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Ryan’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  To the only person who really knows me.

  A single nuclear weapon exploding at high altitude above the United States will produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), disabling much of our nation’s electric and mechanical infrastructure. This event would seriously impact citizens’ access to food, water, medical care, telecommunications, financial systems and transportation. Should this occur it would have irreversible effects on the country’s ability to support its population. Experts assert that nine out of ten Americans would be dead within a year due to starvation, disease and exposure.

  —Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. 2004. Executive Report.

  SAVED BY ONE,

  SHARED BY TWO

  SYLVIA RYAN

  Copyright © 2011

  Chapter 1

  This is it; I’m actually going to die here.

  Julia was not getting up. She couldn’t find the strength. That was okay with her, though. She was done even if she hadn’t fallen so violently from her bicycle. Julia’s will to live had drained from her with each passing mile of this journey. Night after night, she had forced herself to move. She forced herself to crawl out of the tall weeds where she lay hidden, damp and itchy through the daylight hours, and start her nightly struggle to survive.

  The previous night of travel had been the worst so far. Starvation and dehydration joined forces with fear and paranoia to play tricks on her mind. In the darkness, shadows on the side of the road jumped out at her like specters. The sensation of looming danger was unrelenting, and she couldn’t differentiate whether it was real or imagined. Irrational thoughts ping-ponged around in her head. She had trouble maintaining her train of thought on anything for more than an instant or two. Julia’s unchecked emotions had swelled until they rose out of her like lava from a volcano, ominous and uncontrollable. Desperation grew like a weed within her chest, and lucidity was as hard to catch as wishers floating in the breeze.

  Just an hour before, she had forced herself to move, to get up out of the culvert where she had hidden. Now she lay face down in the dirt, hoping to be found by some asshole with a gun. Then this daily struggle to survive would be completely over. It would be taken out of her hands. She wouldn’t have quit. She would have just been caught. Being attacked, robbed of her bike, and killed would be a quick, easy death, not like dying of dehydration or starvation.

  Julia tried again to pick herself up from the ground. Her muscles trembled and gave out almost immediately. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Her rambling thoughts meandered back to life before the pulse. The normalcy, the almost mind-numbing repetition of her days had been a source of dissatisfaction at the time. Now, as she lay dying, alone in the middle of the night, the memories gave her a small measure of comfort.

  She easily conjured the familiar scene that spread out before her every day on her drive in to work. The cluster of three state prisons surrounded by glinting razor wire, nestled into a rural landscape of farmland and pastures, had started almost every one of her days in the last five years.

  Julia relaxed at the ordinary memories that materialized in her scrambled mind. Sergeant Connelley, the sergeant of her Unit. Her sergeant. Every morning he waited for her outside the main entrance of the prison. Every morning he greeted her with the same words, “Good morning, Miss Costa.” His guttural, monotone voice along with his drop-dead gorgeous body was sexy as hell, and many days he was the only reason she dragged her ass out of bed in the morning.

  Now she was preparing to die, and the sergeant was the only regret that came to mind. She had steered clear, despite her burning feelings for him, because he was her subordinate.<
br />
  That had been a mistake.

  Near dawn, a bird chirping nearby brought Julia out of her disjointed memories. She was dying, and that rodent with wings was singing right in her ear. Birds had no instinct for the mood of a place. They sang at the prison, too. In the warmer months, their song was the theme music during her five minute walk among hundreds of inmates across the compound to her unit. It was the soundtrack to the guilty pleasure and adrenaline rush of having so many pairs of eyes on her.

  The birdsong was always replaced by mewing sounds as she neared the entrance of her unit. Between themselves, the inmates called her kitten. The mewing was their warning to each other of her arrival. The meows skipped from man to man spreading like tentacles from the entrance to all four corners of the huge housing unit. She figured it took less than a minute for all of the inmates to know she was there.

  Julia opened her eyes. The sun was up. And still, that fucking bird was singing.

  Julia began to cry silent tears.

  It’s been two weeks, maybe more, since her last normal day. At the beginning, right after the pulse, she thought she could survive longer and cover more miles. Now she conceded that she would never make it to John, but if he knew how far she had gotten, he still would have been proud of her. She made a good assessment of the crisis. She’d identified the pulse right away. She had tried her hardest to survive and make it to him.

  But now, it was over. She couldn’t do it anymore. She was wasted away. Nobody would ever know what had happened to her. She was going to die here, alone.

  The cool dirt felt nice against her cheek. Her tears made wet pools in the earth underneath her face.

  It’s over. Julia smiled and welcomed her death.

  * * * *

  Arden saw the body facedown in the dirt, arms and legs splayed in different directions like a rag doll that had been tossed carelessly to the floor. He scanned the area for other people. He neither saw nor heard any. Ten feet away, the deformed skeleton of a bicycle lay on its side.

  He stepped closer to the figure. He thought the form was a child at first, but as he got a better look, he realized it was a woman. He crouched down next to her and checked her neck for a pulse. He found a faint beat and then slowly rolled her over.

  His heart lurched. She looked hurt. Blood and dirt were all over her face and clothes. This woman had been through hell.

  Arden picked her up. Good Lord, she was weightless, floating within the circle of his arms. With long-legged strides, he easily carried her the half mile back to his house. He took her right up the stairs to what used to be his parents’ room.

  Arden paused next to the bed and surveyed her. She was filthy from head to toe, every square inch of her caked with hardened mud and dirt. She had burrs in her hair and stuck to some of her clothes. He didn’t want to put her on the beautiful quilt his mother had made years before. With a curse, he set her on the floor and propped her against a chair. He walked down the hall to the linen closet and pulled an old sheet from the bottom of the neatly folded stack. Going back into his parents’ room, he spread the sheet out over the quilt, picked her up, and sat her on it.

  Arden gently removed a backpack still strapped to the woman’s back and laid her down.

  He started by looking for injuries. Tenderly, he pulled off her T-shirt and then undressed the rest of her. He was horrified by her emaciated form. Her ribs and hip bones jutted out beneath her skin. She was covered with hundreds of insect bites that seeped with infection. Her lips were dry and cracked from dehydration. He found some bruising and swelling on her face and rib area, but no severe injuries were apparent.

  Leaving her on the bed, Arden went to the well, pumped water into a clean bucket, and grabbed a washrag. Soaking the washrag in the cool water, he brought it to her mouth and dripped some in. He wet her lips and waited for her to swallow the little water that made it into her. He did this for a long time, not really knowing how much she was getting, because he gave her so little at a time.

  When Arden thought she’d had enough, he began cleaning her. He washed her face first, paying special attention to the dark purple bruises that almost completely covered the left side of her face. Dried blood was caked under her nose and smeared over the bruises. It looked like she’d had a bloody nose, because her skin didn’t have any open wounds.

  After her face, Arden meticulously cleaned and rinsed her entire body. He paid special attention to the infected insect bites, making sure he cleaned any ooze out of them that he could. He gently rolled her and searched to make sure he hadn’t missed anything and then applied antibiotic ointment to every individual infected bite.

  When he was done, Arden slid her underneath the quilt. He filled a pitcher of fresh water from the well and placed the pitcher and a glass on the night table, then sat on the edge of the bed and tried again to hydrate her with a clean wet washrag.

  That was all he could do, for now. She looked a little better cleaned up. Arden surveyed her gray skin, ragged lips, bruises, bites, and the slow rise and fall of her chest underneath the quilt.

  He touched her hair, brushing it away from her face. When he looked at her, his heart twisted. He felt an overwhelming need to care for her. To protect her.

  Arden didn’t want to leave her for long, but he picked up her dirty clothes and backpack and left her to sleep. Down on the first floor, he unzipped her little black leather backpack and dumped the contents out on the kitchen table. He picked up the Ohio driver’s license. Julia Costa, thirty years old. She was beautiful in her picture, with large brown eyes and full lips. He scanned the address. Grafton. He knew the city. It was the one with the prisons, easily over fifty miles away.

  He picked up a folded, crinkled, and worn map. The routes she had marked were so zigzagged that it looked like someone with ADHD mapped the trip for her. She had traveled significantly more than the fifty miles it should have taken her to get there.

  He went through the rest of the contents. Not much—a toiletry kit, water bottle, two keys, some cash, socks, a dress, a pen, and a CVS bag with a prescription in it.

  As he went to put the contents back into the pack, he noticed that it was a little too heavy for an empty bag. He turned it over and found a zipper around the bottom. Inside the bottom compartment was a book, a romance novel. Not something he would have picked, but the place was lacking for entertainment lately. He refilled the contents of the bag then grabbed the novel and some canned food for dinner. He read the evening away by candlelight, sitting next to Julia’s bed, waiting for her to wake up.

  The novel was a big mistake. Arden shook his head as he sat wide awake that night. Damn, he was worked up and a little ashamed of himself. He had not been turned-on at the time, but now, after that damn book, he mentally reviewed his afternoon with the naked Julia. He thought about her feather-weight, pixie-small body. She had a small, circular tattoo of a half sun, half moon about six inches below her belly button. Her pussy was hairless, and so, so pretty. His cock hardened just thinking about it. It’s been a while—too long.

  Arden spent most of the night awake and a big chunk of the next day worried that Julia wouldn’t make it. He continued to hydrate her and talked to her softly, encouraging her to wake up. He studied her for any movement or changes of expression. After spending so many hours caring for this sleeping, girl-sized woman, he grew attached to her. He shook his head at himself. He felt a fierce possessiveness toward her before she even woke up.

  * * * *

  Julia’s first moments of consciousness were confusing. It took her some time to remember the nightmare of the last…couple of weeks?

  Her throat was gravel, swollen, as though it had been stuffed with a shag rug. Her head played its own personal drum solo, and she felt dizzy, shaky.

  Looking around, Julia slowly took in the room—all flower wallpaper and farmhouse furniture. It was a bright, sunny day outside, and the sheers on the windows floated back and forth in the breeze.

  She caught sight of the
water pitcher and glass on the bedside table and tried to sit up to reach for it. She couldn’t do it. Her right arm collapsed under her weight as she leaned over and tried to reach it with her left hand. She lay there, arm outstretched, looking at the pitcher of water as unconsciousness overtook her again.

  The next time Julia woke, it was dark, very dark, but she oriented herself more quickly than the last time and looked again for the water. Her body was right next to the night table this time, and the glass was already half filled for her. She grabbed for the glass and was surprised at how difficult it was to grip it correctly in her hands, but she drank, and oh mama, was it good. She wanted more but needed to readjust herself before she could even think about pouring.

  She turned her body slowly and caught sight of a figure sitting in a chair by the window. She stilled. It was a man. He was motionless except for his deep, steady breathing. Sleeping. It was too dark to make out his features.

  She carefully poured more water and, with shaky hands, drank again. When she was done, she replaced the glass on the table and closed her eyes.

  I didn’t make it. She let that thought sink in. What now? There was a part of her that wished she had just died. She had nowhere to go. She would never make it to John. Hell, it had been so long, she didn’t even know if he was still at the National Guard base. The thought of continuing her trek to find her brother was disheartening. She felt defeated, physically and emotionally.