Golden Binds Read online

  Golden Binds

  Laylah Roberts

  Contents

  Let’s keep in touch!

  Books by Laylah Roberts

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Excerpt from Mastered by Malone

  Excerpt from Daddy’s Sweet Girl

  Laylah Roberts

  Golden Binds

  © 2019, Laylah Roberts

  [email protected]

  laylahroberts.com

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Cover Design by: Sanja’s Covers

  Editing: Eve Arroyo

  This book was previously published in the Captivated Anthology.

  Created with Vellum

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  Books by Laylah Roberts

  Doms of Decadence

  Just for You, Sir

  Forever Yours, Sir

  For the Love of Sir

  Sinfully Yours, Sir

  Make me, Sir

  A Taste of Sir

  To Save Sir

  Sir’s Redemption

  Reveal Me, Sir

  Montana Daddies

  Daddy Bear

  Daddy’s Little Darling

  Daddy’s Naughty Darling (in the Dirty Daddies Anthology)

  Daddy’s Sweet Girl

  Daddy’s Lost Love (coming Nov, 2019)

  Haven, Texas Series

  Lila’s Loves

  Laken’s Surrender

  Saving Savannah

  Molly’s Man

  Saxon’s Soul

  Mastered by Malone

  Men of Orion

  Worlds Apart

  Cavan Gang

  Rectify

  Redemption

  Redemption Valley

  Audra’s Awakening

  Old-Fashioned Series

  An Old-Fashioned Man

  Two Old-Fashioned Men

  Her Old-Fashioned Husband

  Her Old-Fashioned Boss

  His Old-Fashioned Love

  An Old-Fashioned Christmas

  WildeSide

  Wilde

  Sinclair

  Luke

  The Hunters

  A Mate to Cherish

  A Mate to Sacrifice

  1

  “I’m going to sneak into the castle, meet Prince Charming, and live happily ever after.”

  She looked down at Roger, only managing to keep a straight face for a few seconds before snorting with laughter.

  “Yeah, you’re right. With my luck, it’s more likely I’ll be breaking into Frankenstein’s house of horrors, meeting my psycho stalker, and dying a horrible, nasty death.”

  Roger’s whiskers twitched.

  “You’re not talking me out of this,” she told the rat, who she considered her only friend. “I’m still going to do it. I’ve wanted to know what’s behind those walls for years.”

  Gigi Reynolds stared up at the castle. Dark. Imposing. Enormous. The walls were gray brick, the roof, gray slate, and the surrounding area was devoid of any greenery until you reached the forest beyond, where she lay hidden. It wasn’t really the thing of fairytales. And yet she’d been obsessed by the castle and the people who lived in it for years.

  The Bjorn brothers.

  Funny name. Strange people. Rumors had circled in Oldstown about them for years. They were reclusive. Rich. How did they get food? What did they look like? Didn’t they ever get lonely? And just how old were they?

  “Ancient. Maybe they’re dead. Maybe that’s why no one’s seen them in years. Their bodies are entombed in there. Just imagine it. They’ve been dead for years, and that place has just been sitting there, prime for the taking. It could be filled with gold or treasure.”

  And perhaps she could help herself to a little bit of that gold. Just enough to fund her freedom.

  Roger squeaked.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. How did all those signs and boobytraps get there if they’re dead. Maybe they only died recently. Come on, they must be old. And if they’re dead, they’re not going to miss a few jewels and gold, right?”

  Was it stealing if the people who owned it were deceased? Okay, so Gigi knew her morals weren’t those of an upstanding citizen, but she lived in Oldstown, which had the dubious pleasure of being the country’s most corrupt city. It was a hotspot for crime and violence and gangs.

  She should know. Her brother headed the nastiest gang in the city. Hence the reason she needed freedom.

  Her brother loved her in his own way, but he was built differently than other people. She didn’t know if he was born that way or if he’d buried his emotions out of necessity. Kind of hard to rule a gang of thugs, rapists, and murderers and then turn around and give your little sister a hug.

  She snorted.

  Yeah, that wasn’t ever going to happen.

  That wasn’t to say he wasn’t protective of her—to the point of being smothering. She had no freedom. If she hadn’t found her mother’s diary and discovered the secret of the tunnels that lay under the huge wall that surrounded her brother’s criminal dynasty, she would never have been able to leave that dubious source of safety.

  She’d been exploring those tunnels for years. Finding different exits out into the city and the forest beyond. The biggest jackpot had been discovering the one that came out close to the Bjorn castle. These woods were filled with traps and warnings to stay away. There had to be a reason they guarded their privacy so closely. And she wanted to know what it was.

  “Today’s the day. We’re going in.”

  Roger squeaked and took several steps back, burying himself under the shrubbery.

  “Come on, you’re not letting me go in on my own, are you?”

  All she could see were his nose and whiskers.

  “You’re a big wimp, you know that? You’re supposed to be my backup. My partner in crime.”

  He didn’t move. She sighed. “Fine. Stay here. I’m not sharing any of the gold anyway.”

  Okay, so he probably wasn’t much interested in the gold, seeing as he was a rat, but she was feeling some hesitation about her plan. It had seemed so easy when she’d come up with it in the safety of her bedroom. Sneak up to the castle. Climb the wall. Pick the lock on the door. Walk on in and steal some gold. Done.

  Simple, right?

  As her brother liked to say, the simple plans were the best. Get too elaborate and you usually ended up having to shoot someone.

  Of course, he always smiled after he said that. Which led her to think he didn’t think shooting someone was too much of a hardship. Like she’d said, Carlin was wired differently than most people.

  Sometimes he terrified her. Other times he pissed her off. But she always loved him. Damn that was kind of screwed up.

  “All right then. Stay here. I’
ll be back in a couple of hours—with the gold.”

  She needed a new life. One away from Oldstown and the constant danger she lived in. Just a simple life. House by the lake, swimming pool, spa, and a cabana boy with rippling abs.

  Was that too much to ask for?

  Not that she’d know what to do with the cabana boy. She wasn’t exactly experienced. At anything. There wasn’t a man brave enough or stupid enough to try and touch Carlin Blake’s baby sister. She was twenty-two years old and she’d never even been kissed.

  Shaking off those depressing thoughts—she could worry over the sad state of her non-existent love life later, Gigi moved silently towards the castle. And her freedom.

  * * *

  Garret Bjorn was bored out of his mind.

  At over two hundred years, he’d lived through famine, wars, and endless, crappy reality TV shows. Enough was enough.

  How much longer could a man be expected to wait? He had needs. Okay, he could sneak into Oldstown and find someone to ease those needs, but that was starting to feel less and less satisfying. He was no longer a young hundred-year-old who thought with his dick. He wanted something more.

  Something real.

  Young, stupid Garret would have run, terrified at the word commitment. Why commit yourself to one female when you could have a different one each night?

  But it all came too easy to him. There wasn’t even a chase. All he had to do was look at a female and she fell all over him. Sometimes he didn’t even need to do that. Lately, he’d had to fend them off. Since when had females become so aggressive? He’d preferred it when he was the one who made all the moves.

  There had been one female the other night who’d had her hand down his pants and around his dick before he’d even managed to set down his beer. He shuddered at the memory as he stepped into his oldest brother’s inner sanctum.

  His bathroom.

  “We need to find her.” The door slammed against the wall, and Joseph turned from where he’d been shaving in front of the mirror.

  “I’m in the bathroom,” Joe snarled.

  “We’ve lived together for over two hundred years. I know this is your bathroom.”

  “Then you also know I come here to get some fucking privacy. Get out.”

  * * *

  Joseph Bjorn glared at his youngest brother. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. His shirt was only half-tucked into his ripped jeans and was that a damn hickey on his neck? His little brother needed to grow up. He was sowing wild oats long after he should have settled down and found his calling. As Joe and Sawyer had.

  Joe was good with numbers. He’d made them a small fortune playing the stock market. Of course, they’d already had an enormous fortune built up over thousands of years from Bjorn relatives. Still, it gave him satisfaction to add to it for future generations.

  Sawyer was an inventor. They didn’t see him for days, sometimes weeks, at a time when he was working on a project.

  While Garret, he was a . . . well, at best you might call him a charming rogue. At worst, a man whore. All depended on how a person was feeling at the time. And right now, Joe was feeling pretty damned pissed off.

  Living together as long as they had started to wear on the nerves after a while. It also meant that there was very little that managed to stay private. Bathrooms were supposed to be private.

  There were some lines a man just had to draw, right?

  “Get out of here, Garret,” he rumbled when the other man showed no signs of leaving.

  “Why? Not like you’re on the toilet or anything. You’re shaving. For probably the twentieth time today.”

  “If I used the toilet would you go away?”

  Garret just waved his hand dismissively and started pacing up and down the huge bathroom. The floor and walls were tiled in marble imported from Italy and the enormous shower could fit five people—maybe a sixth, if you were good friends.

  And Joe knew that for a fact. He’d sowed a few wild oats in his own youth. But that was years ago now. He’d grown up. Matured.

  Garret had not.

  “I’m bored.”

  “You’re always bored. You need a job.”

  “What? Like you? Hunched over your computer all day, looking over your stocks and bonds. Yeah, sounds exciting. Or maybe I should be like Sawyer, stuck in that lab of his for weeks on end. Last time he came out, he stank so badly I had to burn his clothes.”

  “You could have done it outside! The west wing still smells like smoke.”

  Garret shrugged. “Details. Not important.”

  Joe grumbled under his breath. His brother could have set the whole castle on fire and he just shrugged it off. That was Garret. Not a care in the world for anyone or anything.

  At least up until now he’d obeyed the unspoken bathroom rule. Joe sighed. This was his last sanctuary. The place where he could go to get away from his gregarious, sometimes foolish youngest brother and his cantankerous, sullen middle brother and just be alone for a few minutes.

  Now he’d have to put a damn lock on the door.

  “I want to find her.”

  “What?”

  Joe had turned back to finish shaving. He didn’t shave that often, did he? Well, if he did there was nothing wrong with grooming. His brothers should try it once in a while.

  Joe straightened his tie and put his razor neatly away then glanced around his bathroom. Nothing out of place. Except for his lazy-ass brother.

  “If you’re telling me you’re going to be a private detective again—”

  Garret waved his hand again. “No, I told you, I learned my lesson after Lola.” His face turned dreamy. “It was worth it, though. She had legs that went on forever and boobs a man could really get lost in.”

  “Garret, you ought to learn some respect!”

  “What? It was just the truth. Everyone knows about Leggy Lola and her luscious— “

  “Garret!”

  His brother sighed and shook his head. “You’ve got to get out more often, bro. You’re turning into a real grump. You’re reclusive. Not as much as Sawyer, granted. But then I think we can all agree it’s best Sawyer isn’t let lose in the general population.”

  Yes, that was something they could definitely agree on.

  Sawyer wasn’t exactly sociable. He didn’t really have manners, or social skills or a filter. Nope, it was best Sawyer was kept away from people.

  “Her husband hired you to follow her and see if she was cheating on him then you slept with her!”

  Garret grinned. “Like I said, I wasn’t a very good private investigator.”

  “Do things like marriage vows mean nothing to you?”

  “Her husband was an asshole. He was verbally abusive. Lola wanted out.”

  And Joe knew Garret had helped her get out. He might not be able to keep it in his pants, but at heart he was a soft touch for a woman in trouble.

  “So now you want to find Lola?”

  “What? Lola? No, she was hot and all but she wasn’t our mate.”

  Joseph paused. Stared at Garret. “What?”

  “She wasn’t our mate. I mean, I assume I’d know if she was, right? We’d all feel it. Feel something towards her. That’s what the legend says.”

  The legend had been passed down through the generations. There were only ever boys born to the Bjorn men. And always three brothers who would share one mate. Legend had it that their mate would find them. That no obstacle, no barrier would keep her from their side. And when they were united, their inner bears would be set free. It was a strange life, living in a half-state. They could feel their other half, at times it seemed like a living, breathing beast inside them. But a beast that was kept under tight rein. Locked in these human bodies.

  “She’s supposed to find us,” Joe pointed out.

  “Well, I’m getting tired of waiting for this mystery woman to knock on our front door. So, I’m going to find her.”

  Joe sighed. A long, drawn out affair. “That’s not the w
ay it works, and you know it. You can’t just rewrite the legend.”

  “It’s a new era, Joe. How many wars have we seen? How much famine, drought, destruction have we lived through? And through it all, we’ve done it alone.”

  “I thought you liked living the bachelor life. Won’t a mate cramp your style?”

  In truth, Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to find their mate. Or more accurately for her to discover them. He’d lived a long time with just his brothers. They bore his personality quirks with, well . . . patience wasn’t the word he’d use, but they were used to him. Or perhaps they just put up with him.

  Over the years, he’d probably become a bit stuck in his ways. But when you lived as long as he did, routine was something that became ingrained. Besides, it wasn’t like the two of them weren’t without their own quirks.

  And that was putting it nicely.

  “She’ll only cramp it if she’s a complete bore.”

  Joseph’s temper stirred. When it came to work, he was cool and calm. But when it came to his life outside business, his control over his temper became a little more frayed.

  “You’d break your vows? You would attempt to cheat on our mate?”

  He said attempt because he didn’t know if it was possible to cheat on a mate. As far as he knew it had never been done.

  Garret’s eyes widened. Then his face darkened. He didn’t have much of a temper, but when he did lose it, it was a hell of a sight to see.

  “Of course, I won’t cheat on her. I’d never sleep with someone else. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun. If I had the urge to let loose in town, I’d take her with me.”

  “You would not!” Joseph roared.

  Before he knew it, he had Garret by his neck, pinned to the slick marble walls. “You will treat our mate with respect. You will not take her off on one of your adventures. You will not expose her to danger in any sort of way. You will care for her as though she were the most delicate, fragile creature on the planet.”