by Bella Jacobs
“I’m not as fragile as you think,” I say, pressing up on tiptoe to press a kiss to Leo’s cheek, heart clutching as his breath rushes out with a soft, hungry sound.
He tilts his head, shifting his lips over mine, brushing them lightly back and forth in a teasing caress that makes my hormones stampede through my veins like a crash of charging rhinos.
“Eliza,” he whispers, my name poetry on his lips. “God, I want—”
“Fucking starving!” The door to the second bedroom crashes open, sending Leo and I leaping apart as Rourke prowls into the kitchen, bound for the fridge. “Feel like I haven’t eaten in years.” He grunts as he pulls a bag of chilled blood from the top shelf and holds it up for inspection with a wrinkled nose. “And this? This is unacceptable for anything more than a day or two. I need to see my supplier about a few cases of the good bottled stuff, Leo. And Eliza needs a proper meal.”
“You just want an excuse to cook,” Leo says, plucking another towel from the counter beside me.
“Well, I am a great cook.” Rourke’s eyebrows bob up and down as his eyes flash in my direction. “So what do you say, Eliza? Up for a run to the store in a few? I want to choose the menu from whatever’s fresh. Fresh is key.”
“Leo is going to cut my hair, but I’m game after.” I glance back to Leo. “How about you? Want to come along for the ride?”
“I’ll stay here, mind the house, give the town gossips one less new face to wonder about.” The hunger has vanished from his tone.
He seems to have recovered from our heated moment, but I’m still simmering. Sizzling. So starved for his touch that the fifteen minutes it takes for him to trim and shave my hair seems an eternity.
Every time his fingertips brush my ear, every time his breath warms my neck as he bends close, checking to make sure he’s getting the line on the shaved portion of my head just right, my heart feels like it’s going to swell right out of my rib cage.
By the time he’s finally finished, my nerve endings are on fire, my nipples are tight, and my entire body is aching for more.
Instead, he sends me to the bathroom to check out his handiwork in the mirror alone. When I return to the kitchen to tell him I love it—it’s edgy and fun and completely perfect—he’s nowhere to be found.
Rourke is alone by the window, watching the last of the pink glow of dusk fade from the horizon.
“Where’s Leo?” I try to play it cool, but even I can hear the hurt in my voice.
Rourke turns, a knowing smile curving his lips. “He went for a run on the beach, in an attempt to sweat out the urge to toss you on his bed and devour every sweet inch of you, I’m guessing.”
My cheeks heat. “Oh, well…”
“But it won’t work,” Rourke says, swaying closer. “If it were just lust, maybe, but Leo doesn’t work that way. If his dick’s interested, his heart is already invested.” He stops mere inches away, grinning down at me with a smile that’s smug, irritating, and irresistible, all at the same time.
“And what about you, Mr. Rourke? How do your heart and dick behave?”
“Oh, they don’t, love,” he says in a wicked whisper that makes my pulse quicken as he pulls me close to murmur his next words against my temple. “They don’t behave at all. But I don’t think you want them to, do you?”
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I sigh, “No, I don’t.”
“Come on, then.” He hugs me so tight my feet come off the floor. “I promise to misbehave all the way to the store and back. Make driving as difficult for you as possible.”
I laugh as he sets me down. “Leerie wouldn’t approve. She’s a big fan of safe driving.”
“And I’m a big fan of my hands all over your delicious body,” Rourke says, chasing me, giggling, down the stairs to the garage.
True to his word, he makes driving difficult, almost as difficult as getting out of the car after we’ve been making out for a good twenty minutes in the parking lot of the Coop grocery. But no matter how hot the kissing gets, all our clothes stay on and “tasting” isn’t mentioned again.
And somehow I know it won’t be, not until Leo decides on his next move.
Now that Rourke knows his friend and future co-husband is interested in me, too, things have changed. Shifted. Become simultaneously more serious and infinitely more sexy. We’re all thinking about it, no matter how vehemently we might deny it. We’re all rolling the possibility over in our minds, imagining what it might be like to be together.
Together for more than a night or a week in a romantic lighthouse.
Together as three people bound for life.
It’s crazy—I barely know them, at least in this way. We’ve always been just friends.
But as the days pass in a blur of self-defense training on the beach with Rourke, learning how to kick ass with Pearl with Leo, and playing so many board games with the pair of them that I start dreaming about Scrabble tiles and zooming around town in the tiny silver Monopoly car, it quickly becomes clear that “just friends” isn’t a phrase that applies to us anymore.
Rourke’s hand on my shoulder as he teaches me how to fight off an attacker who approaches from behind, Leo’s arms around me as he adjusts my grip on Pearl’s handle, that moment in the early evening when we’re all bumping against each other in the kitchen as they warm up a glass of O negative and I fix coffee before heading out to the deck to practice my ballet routine—all of it combines to leave me in a state of near constant arousal.
I drift around the lighthouse simmering, a pot about to boil over and make a mess on the stove.
It is a mess, this situation.
I can’t stay a rhinoceros forever, and Leo and Rourke can’t choose a normal woman, no matter how much they might want to. Our paths are destined to diverge, most likely sooner rather than later.
I know this, but it doesn’t stop me from letting Rourke steal a kiss after he pins me to the sand for the hundredth time. It doesn’t stop me from running naked into the ocean with Leo in celebration the day our “shifting practice” finally sees me slipping in and out of my rhino skin at will. The waves are freezing, but I’m so hot from Leo’s gaze raking up and down my body I barely feel it.
I want him so much it hurts, but Leo only looks, flirts, and occasionally steals a relatively chaste kiss. He doesn’t touch, let alone throw me on the bed and ravage me the way I fantasize about every morning as I struggle to fall asleep.
By the time we enter our second week of hiding, bringing me within spitting distance of the first day of the Miss U.S. Pageant, the sexual frustration is starting to drive me crazy.
I reach out to Leerie again—needing best-friend advice in a major way—but my texts continue to bounce, and I can’t be sure my emails are getting through, either. According to Rourke, Fairy is behind the times when it comes to cell towers and internet connectivity. Leerie is out of pocket and so am I, trapped in this limbo world where real life seems like fantasy and impossible things feel more possible with every passing day.
If I don’t get back to my normal life soon, I’m going to be in trouble.
Big trouble.
Double trouble…
Chapter 17
Foreplay used to be something my girlfriends and I complained about a lack of, sick of men who thought a few kisses and a quick pit stop at second base were enough to justify sliding into home.
Where was the romance? The sense of anticipation? The commitment to ensuring we were sufficiently excited that sex is comfortable, let alone pleasurable?
If you’d asked me back then, I would have insisted that I’d never be able to get enough foreplay.
Now, it’s killing me.
Literally. It feels like I might die from frustrated longing.
It was bad enough last week, but the last few days things have gotten even worse, the tension ramping up until it feels like both Leo and Rourke have made it their mission in life to get me turned on and leave me idling, desperate for someone to press the gas pedal alr
eady.
At this point, I swear, I would sell my soul to be taken—hard and fast—up against a wall.
“Or sell a limb. At least a kidney,” I mumble, unaware I’ve spoken aloud until Leo nudges my elbow and asks, “What’s that?” raising his voice to be heard over the din at the bar. Ladies night at the Clam Shack is apparently quite the draw for the locals.
“Nothing.” I force a smile as Leo draws me close, presumably to make more room for the man ordering a drink behind me. But at this point, I’m not entirely sure that he isn’t just torturing me for the fun of it.
He and Rourke both.
No sooner has Leo gathered me to his chest than Rourke is suddenly behind me, hand resting on the curve of my hip, making my blood rush as he sets his empty glass on the bar. “Another round? Or are we ready to head home and start supper for Eliza?”
“Home,” Leo says as I nod my agreement, already too dizzy with longing to waste energy on useless words.
“Good.” Rourke holds up his now empty flask. “Because I’m out of secret extra-bloody bloody Mary mix. Almost out of the bottled stuff at home, too. If we stay much longer, I’ll have to fetch another case from my supplier.”
“I’m meeting with Jamal in the morning.” Leo’s arm loops around my waist, keeping me close as we sway toward the exit. “He thinks he’s figured out who was behind the attempt on our lives, but he didn’t want to risk that kind of conversation on the phone. You never know who’s listening at the castle.”
“The walls have ears,” Rourke agrees, patting my bottom before he reaches for the door leading out to the parking lot, sending another jolt of awareness surging through my already-frayed nerve endings. “Literally,” he adds with a meaningful glance my way. “There’s a room in the tower covered with ears nailed to the walls. Gloria used to keep them as trophies, back before whacking off pieces of your prisoners before sending them back to their people became socially unacceptable.”
I shiver, even though the sea air outside is warm tonight. “She seemed so nice when I met her. It’s hard to imagine her being so…”
“Ear thirsty?” Rourke grins, pinching my cheek when I stick out my tongue.
“Stop,” I order, pulling away from Leo as we reach the car. “No more touching me.”
“But you’re so cute when your cheeks are flushed from too much whiskey,” Rourke says, swaying closer. “And you smell so sweet with a little honey and peat in your blood.”
“Fine, then no touching until we get home.” I wrap my arms around his neck. He presses a kiss to my cheek while Leo circles around to the other side of the car, pretending not to notice.
“How much longer can this go on?” I hiss beneath my breath, pleading eyes boring into Rourke’s.
“Until he decides to stop fighting himself and give in to the inevitable,” Rourke whispers, squeezing my ass in his big hands. “But until then, the anticipation is fucking delicious, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t,” I snap, refusing to smile when he slaps my bottom and laughs that ridiculously infectious laugh of his.
“Just wait, love.” Rourke winks as he releases me, reaching for the back door. “We’ll be worth the wait. I promise you that.”
But that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried that something is going to happen to derail this seemingly inevitable collision, that I’m never going to know what it’s like to be with one of these amazing men, let alone both of them.
That’s what I want. Both of them.
Together.
At the same time.
I can’t hide it from myself—or them—anymore. Promising myself to someone, anyone, even two people I care for as much as I care for Leo and Rourke, still scares the shit out of me, but I would very much like to roll around naked in bed with them for a few weeks and at least consider forever as an option.
Truth be told, I’m already considering it.
I could end their curse, and this isn’t just lust for me. It never was. It’s about these two people, my dear friends who, in just a little over a week, have made the lighthouse at the end of Sea Breeze Drive feel like home.
As I pull into the parking garage, my heartbeat slows and my heart fills with a rush of cozy warmth just like it did when I would swing through the cottage door after work and find Leerie at the stove making popcorn for a midnight movie.
“Pasta or stir fry?” Rourke asks as we ride the elevator up to the main floor.
“I can just heat up leftovers.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Rourke’s nose wrinkles, as if I’ve suggested opening a can of dog food for dinner.
“Seriously,” I say with a laugh. “Leftovers are fine. I love leftovers. It’s silly for you to go to all the trouble of cooking every night when I’m the only one eating.”
“Shut up,” Rourke says. “Seriously, shut that pretty mouth of yours before you make me angry. Pasta or stir fry? Answer now, or I’m going to choose for you.”
“Pasta,” Leo pipes up from my other side. “I like the way she smells after she’s eaten garlic.”
I turn to him, cheeks flushing. “Oh God, is it bad? The garlic stink? I had a friend in high school who reeked every time she ate anything with onions in it.”
“I don’t believe I said anything about a stink,” Leo says as the elevator doors slide open. He takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine as he steps out into the small foyer. “I said I like it.” He leans down, bringing his nose to linger above my neck as he inhales, setting off a hormone explosion, easily the fifth or sixth tonight. “It makes you smell like salt and earth and…”
“And?” I ask, my voice breathy.
“And other things.” He pulls back, holding my gaze. My breath comes faster as he adds, “Things it’s impolite to mention in public.”
I’m about to remind him that we’re not in public—we’re in our home all alone except for Rourke, who is already bustling about in the kitchen, pulling ingredients from the fridge—when my phone screams at me from my purse.
Literally screams, like a beauty queen who just got an armpit wax.
I jump, and my eyes fly wide. “That’s Eugene’s ring,” I say, frozen with a mixture of terror and hope.
“Then answer it,” Leo says, gesturing urgently toward my purse.
“Right, right. Answering!” I rip open the zipper with trembling hands and fumble the phone from the side pocket, tapping the speaker button to make sure Leo and Rourke don’t miss a second of this unexpected new development. “I’m here, Eugene. I really hope this is the call I’ve been waiting for.”
“Hey, Eliza,” he says, clearing his throat for a long, awkward moment that makes me want to reach through the screen and shake him. Couldn’t he have taken care of his hemming and hawing before he dialed the phone? “Yeah, I think it’s time.”
“Time to turn me back into a normal person?” I ask, heart jerking as fear and hope wrestle near my lungs.
“Time to put your DNA back the way it was before, yes. I know the pageant stuff starts in a few days. Probably best if you’re human for all of that.”
I bite my lip, fighting the urge to squeal with happiness. Instead, I force the smile from my face and say in a remarkably calm voice, “Thank you. I appreciate that, Eugene. When would you like to meet?”
“Tomorrow at seven p.m. at my office at the university. We’ll rock it out after I’m finished with advisor hours and before I have to be downtown for that modern art gala thing at eight.”
My brows pull together as I shoot Leo a worried look. “Will that be enough time?”
“Oh yeah, totally,” Eugene says. “We’ll have time to get you fully human and still grab a salad from the cafeteria after for dinner if you want.”
I roll my eyes. As if I’m ever sharing a meal with that man again. But I’m all about keeping him happy until I’m back to normal so I say, “Um, yeah, maybe. Sure.”
“Though, on second thought, you might not be hungry.” He pauses before adding in
a reluctant tone, “There will be some pain this time. No way to avoid it, really. The more you mess with the code, the more uncomfortable it gets.”
Leo scowls at the phone as I ask, “How uncomfortable are we talking?”
“Minor burn uncomfortable,” Eugene says, “maybe a little worse. But like I said, there’s no avoiding it. Unless you want to stay a rhino-girl. Though, I honestly wouldn’t recommend that. We don’t know enough about the long-term effects of extreme DNA modification. There’s not enough data for me to promise you won’t wake up one morning with a rhino foot and never be able to change it back again, you know?”
“Right. And no, I don’t want to stay a shifter.” I shake my head, ignoring the sharp tug of regret at the back of my thoughts.
I can’t stay a rhinoceros, not even for Leo and Rourke.
Yes, I’ve mostly learned to control the shifting now, but my rhino skin is never going to be a place I enjoy being. That body isn’t something I chose. It was a punishment, forced on me by a man who wanted to hurt and humiliate me. And as much as I enjoy having a little extra weight to throw around when I need it, I don’t want to be a supernatural creature or a superhero.
I just want to be Eliza, a human woman making her human dreams come true without having to worry about the long-term consequences of being a science experiment gone wrong.
So I promise to meet Eugene tomorrow and end the call.
I pull in a breath, intending to ask Leo what he thinks about Eugene’s sudden change of heart, but when I look up, the foyer is empty. I move into the combination living room and kitchen, but there’s no sign of him there, either.
“He went for a run,” Rourke says softly. “And for once, I can’t really blame him.”
I nod, swallowing past the lump in my throat. I can’t blame him, either, but running isn’t going to help.
None of us can run from this. We just have to play the shitty cards Fate dealt us and hope the pain won’t be too bad. That it will fade with time.
That it won’t last the forever we aren’t free to promise each other.
