12. Call Us Daddy

She pulled away and stood before Desmond could kiss her again, then faced him and Bastian with her hands on her hips.

"We're not doing this again. You don't get to tease me, then turn around and tell me I'm too young for you."

They glanced at each other before Desmond spoke. "All the things we told you are true. We're over twenty years older than you, and even if things work out and we stay together, we're going to die long before you do."

Wanting to look at Desmond and Bastian while they talked, she grabbed a pillow from the futon and sat cross-legged on the floor. She had a feeling this was going to be a long conversation but wasn't sure she had it in her to convince them.

Truthfully, Tania didn't think she should try—no matter how much she wanted to. "I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and make it a moot point."

"We were also very close to your father," Bastian added, ignoring her comment.

God, Tania wished the bastard was still alive so she could bitch slap him. She'd gone months at a stretch without even thinking of Victor, and now she couldn't get rid of him. If she had to hear his name one more time…

Hey, Dad. Surprised I'm actually calling you that? Yeah, I won't do it again if you kindly fuck off and stop haunting me!

Knowing there was a reason Victor hadn't been around didn't stop her anger. Well, she wasn't angry at Victor as much as she was at Desmond and Bastian for insisting on bringing him up. It didn't seem to matter that he wasn't the man Bastian and Desmond thought he was. They put him on a pedestal anyway, and fucking would not shut up about him.

Actually, she was still pissed at Victor. Whatever he'd been doing couldn't have been important enough to make him essentially abandon her.

"I think Victor would have wanted me to be happy, but I have no idea because he wasn't around long enough for me to ask him. He also married a woman only a few years older than me, so I'd say he doesn't have a lot of room to judge our choices."

"What do you think Mandy would say?" Desmond asked.

"She'd congratulate me." Tania lifted her chin. "I still think she could have done so much better, but Mandy also chose to marry a man twenty years her senior who only stuck around long enough to get her pregnant."

"Ouch." Desmond grimaced but nodded. "Victor was one of my closest friends, but I understand where you're coming from."

"I don't think you do because you're still seeing me as a child in pigtails, which I haven't been for years." She straightened her spine and blinked back a few tears before they fell. "I get that you have baggage with Victor, but it's not mine to carry, and you shouldn't be hauling it around either. He's gone, and I refuse to let a dead man have a say over how I choose to live my life."

Bastian opened his mouth, but before he could speak, she uncrossed her legs and rose to her feet. "I've wanted you and Desmond since I was nineteen, and I mean both of you at the same time. I'm comfortable wanting you, and you have no idea how thrilled I was to learn you're bisexual and that my fantasies of being shared by my two Daddies might actually come true."

"Tania—"

"I'm not done, Bastian, and you aren't listening." she interrupted. "I've read modern romance, and I'm not talking about the books where sex happens in the dark and behind a closed door. Those don't fit me or what I want. I want all the sword-crossing goodness. I want the power exchange, and the Daddy Dom, and all the rest."

"We didn't know." Desmond glanced at Bastian, then added, "I can't believe you've thought about us sharing you."

"I think about a lot of things. One or both of you might have hypertension or high cholesterol, and you probably wear reading glasses. You won't have the recovery time of a twenty-year-old, and your fertility might be diminished. I don't give a shit if you avail yourselves of little blue pills or use toys to make me come. Do both if you want."

"Christ." Bastian glared at her. "It's like you looked at our medical records. How did you know Desmond's blood pressure is high?"

"Wild guess. Just don't color your hair like Braden and Damian do. Their dye jobs look ridiculous, and I want you just the way you are."

"Brat," Desmond muttered.

"You can't spank me for being right." She smirked, then sobered. "I also know I'll lose you when I'm in my sixties if I'm lucky enough to keep you that long. I'm aware that if we have children, our grandchildren will probably never meet their grandfathers."

She swiped at a trickle of moisture under her eye at the thought of losing them, but she needed to make them understand. People got as much time as they got, and she refused to contemplate the what-ifs when everything she'd ever wanted was within her reach—if her Daddies had the balls to accept her.

"There is one thing I will no longer do. I'm not going to argue with you anymore. I deserve better than being forced to convince you to love me. I deserve men who will ignore all the background bullshit because I'm the most important thing in their world, and I fucking deserve men who will love me as much as they love each other."

"We would be your first, honey," Bastian said. "You've barely had a chance to date other people, and it would be wrong of us to take that away from you."

They still didn't get it. She wondered if she should talk to Mandy and see if she had any advice for dealing with older men who needed to get their heads unstuck from their asses. There had to be some trick to it, but she wasn't going to fight anymore.

Without answering, she went into her bedroom and got the toys from her nightstand. Enjoying their matching looks of surprise, she ignored the twinge of embarrassment and dropped one in each of their laps. "Technically, the rabbit you're holding was my first, Bastian. I was hoping you and Desmond would be my second and third."

"What? No butt plugs?" Bastian asked, making Desmond scowl at him.

"I figured one of you would want to boldly go where no man or toy has gone before," she retorted before snatching the vibrators from them. "Look. If you and Desmond aren't willing to take a chance, forget the bullshit, and see if I'm your person, I need you to leave."

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