by Bella Jacobs
Chapter 18
Forty minutes later, I’m still pacing back and forth in front of the now-open windows, chewing on my thumb while Rourke moves easily around the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on enough food to feed ten people. Leo is back from his run and outside on the deck filling wine glasses—two with the red stuff vampires like and one with a ridiculously expensive Cabernet Rourke brought up from the wine cellar in celebration of Eugene’s change of heart.
By tomorrow night I’ll be human again.
I should be ecstatic.
Overjoyed.
Hooves over heels.
So why do I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop? And that the shoe isn’t a shoe, but a giant steel beam suspended over my head, ready to crush me flat?
“This is good news,” I mumble, reaching the corner by the stereo and turning to pace back toward the wet bar on the other end of the room. “Great news.”
“Most excellent,” Rourke says, cutting a cucumber into tiny slivers with swift rocks of his wrist.
“And Eugene sounded normal on the phone. Reasonable even,” I continue. “So the chances that this is a trick to lure me to his office and do something terrible to me are pretty slim. And what can he do to me that he hasn’t already done? And even if he were planning something sketchy, we’re meeting after sundown so you and Leo can tag along. I’ll be completely safe.”
“As a babe in a cradle,” Rourke agrees, squeezing lemon into the pan of simmering shrimp, sending a rush of garlic-scented goodness hissing into the air.
I flop into an armchair but almost immediately jump back to my feet, the down cushion too soft for my current state. “There is literally nothing that can go wrong. Right?” I cross to the island, bracing my arms on the marble countertop as I face Rourke across a sea of cutting boards.
“Something can always go wrong,” he says pleasantly, “but we’ll be on guard. And your ex is a coward. I seriously doubt he’ll try anything while he knows he’s being watched by three people who could kill him with their bare hands.”
“Two,” I correct, snagging a cucumber slice.
“Three.” Rourke moves the shrimp pan to the other side of the stove and flips off the burner. “You’re a natural in the ring, Eliza, even without Pearl. And you can control the shifting now. Worst case scenario, if for some reason Leo and I were out of the picture, you could shift and sit on the bastard.”
“I don’t want to sit on anyone. Not even Eugene,” I say before adding in a softer voice, “and I don’t want you out of the picture.”
“We wouldn’t abandon you willingly.”
“I know, I just…” I grab another cucumber, stress-nibbling the peel as I watch Rourke mix the shrimp into angel hair pasta.
“Just?” he prompts, dressing the salad with cucumber slices and then pushing the bowl toward me.
But I’m suddenly not hungry anymore.
I sag onto the stool beside me, chin propped in my hands. “I can’t stay this way. Even though a part of me might want to.”
“And we would never ask you to stay this way,” Rourke says softly. “No matter how much we might want you to.”
I search his face, feeling more torn apart with every passing second. I can’t stay with them, but how am I ever going to leave? How am I going to walk out of here to meet Eugene tomorrow night knowing I’ll never be coming back? Not to the lighthouse and not to this moment in time, when a future with two incredible men was close enough for me to taste it?
Once I’m human, that road will be closed to me forever. Barred and gated and secured with a lock so strong there will be no busting through it.
“Why don’t you go take a bath,” Rourke says after the tension has stretched on long enough to make me feel like my stomach is crawling up my throat. “Relax. I can heat the food up when you’re ready.”
“Okay,” I whisper, sliding to the ground. With a last glance over my shoulder at Leo, who’s watching the ocean below as if he expects the answer to our problems to emerge from the dark waves, I head for the bathroom.
But the warm water and massive bathtub offer no comfort tonight. I’m too on edge, too messed up, too filled with aching and longing and pain. It hurts, what’s happening inside me. My heart feels like it’s being torn apart by Kin Born wolves, ripped and shredded and left to bleed out on the cold ground.
Alone.
All alone.
Alone forever because who could ever compare to Leo and Rourke? What man—living or undead—could hold a candle to them? To my men?
But they aren’t mine, and they never will be.
I’m crying so hard I don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. One moment, I’m a grieving girl in a half-filled bathtub. The next, I’m half a rhinoceros, shattering the antique tub, water gushing over the tile as I fill the bathroom to maximum capacity.
Chapter 19
I’ve barely had time to turn off the water and begin to take in the damage when a fist pounds on the door and Rourke shouts, “Eliza! Are you all right? What happened?”
“Bad things,” I call back, voice breaking on a sob. “Very bad.”
“Open the door.”
“I can’t,” I whimper. “It’s locked and I can’t reach the handle.”
“Stand back,” he says, hitting the door hard enough to rattle it on its hinges. “I’m coming in.”
“No, don’t!” I wail, floundering on the ground—a rhino from the waist down and a woman from the waist up. If Rourke sees me like this, like the world’s most hideous mermaid or satyr or whatever you’d call a rhino-girl hybrid, I’ll die of shame.
Even though I didn’t do this to myself. Even though I can’t help it. Even though I know he won’t judge me or hate me or laugh at me.
The door splinters open with a creak and a crunch, spilling Rourke through the opening. He freezes just inside, taking in the destruction for a beat before throwing back his head and laughing so hard it makes my back leg start to twitch, which knocks over the toilet, which makes him laugh even harder, which makes the tears pressing at the backs of my eyes spill over.
“Don’t laugh,” I say, sniffling into the bath mat. “It’s not funny.”
“Oh, but it is, love.” He crouches beside me, gently brushing the hair from my face. “I didn’t think anything could make me laugh tonight, but I should have known better.” He cups my cheek in his hand. “You always make me laugh.”
“I ruined your bathroom,” I say with a sniff.
“I don’t care.” He pats my flank, where the rhino skin is so thick I usually wouldn’t be able to feel a gentle touch. But I do feel it, and when I look down, I see my animal body gliding back into its fully human form, leaving me naked and shivering on the soaked bathroom floor.
But Rourke doesn’t seem to mind.
“Your clothes are getting all wet,” I whisper as he pulls me into his lap.
“I don’t care about that, either,” he says, his hands skimming up and down my sides. “And I don’t care about the curse or the future or doing what other people tell me to do. Not right now. I only care that this may be my last chance to show you what you do to me. What you mean to me.”
He cups my breast. I shudder as the force of all my denied longing rises inside of me like a giant wave, threatening to destroy everything in its path.
“What about Leo?’ I ask as I thread fingers into his hair.
“I’m my own man,” he says, rising to his feet with me in his arms. “And I’m tired of waiting for permission to make love to you from anyone but you.”
I cling to his shoulders as he turns, carrying me out of the bathroom through the broken door, unable to believe this is really happening. That I’m really going to have Rourke in my bed, his hands all over me, his body moving against mine.
“So do I have it?” he asks, stopping at the end of the bed.
“Have what?’ I ask, trembling as he hugs me closer.
“Your permission, love,” he says
, his voice rough. “Your permission to make you come so hard for me you’ll never forget this night. Not if you live for another hundred years.”
I cup Rourke’s face in my hands, dragging his lips down to mine, kissing him with a passion I hope assures him that my answer is “hell, yes.”
Chapter 20
Lips fused, tongues dancing hard and deep, Rourke and I tumble onto the giant bed. The cool sheets caress my bare skin as my fingers thread through the silk of his shaggy hair, sending fresh waves of arousal dumping into my blood. His hands skim over my body, setting fires in their wake—on my swollen breasts, my tight nipples, the swell of my hip, the curve of my ass.
He curses, his grip tightening on my backside. “You’re so fucking beautiful. I want my hands, my mouth, all over you.”
“Yes, please,” I whisper against his lips, my breath catching as he cups my breast, his thumb teasing over my electric tip. “Touch me everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” His other hand teases lower, over the mound of my bottom and up again, getting close to where I ache, but not nearly close enough.
“Please,” I beg, raking my nails down his muscled back. “Touch me.”
“Touch you where, love?”
I shudder, the pulse between my legs twisting into a knot I know only he can untangle. “Touch me there.”
“Here?” He squeezes my breast again, dropping his head to flick his tongue over my nipple.
I moan, thoughts quickly becoming as tangled as the rest of me as he does it again, and then again. I writhe beneath him, my hips squirming restlessly as my thighs grow slicker, hotter. “God, yes.”
“Not God, love, but by the time I’m done, you’ll be remembering me in your prayers,” Rourke says, a hint of his Irish accent sneaking into the words. Into the lilt of his voice. Into the way his fingers finally dance across those last few inches of oh-so-intimate territory to press inside me.
And, of course, fingers can’t literally have an accent, but it feels like they do. His touch is foreign, different than anything I’ve experienced before, but in the best way. His fingers are lyrical, magical, and as he glides deeper—cursing again in soft appreciation, as if he’s never felt anything as lovely as how wet I am for him—my heart breaks open and my secrets come sighing out into the air.
“I’ve wanted this since the beginning,” I confess, melting into a puddle of bliss at the sweet friction.
“Me, too. From the second you walked into your kitchen on that first night, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you. I was supposed to be courting your best friend, ending a curse and securing the future of my people, but all I could think about was your laugh, your smile, the way you blush when you tell a dirty joke.” He nips my neck, my clavicle. “You in your swimsuit by the lake in the moonlight, in that wee skirt you wore roller skating, in those cut-off shorts the night you made banana bread, bending over to pull your muffins out of the oven with a flour handprint on your ass.” He shudders against me. “God, the muffin day… It almost killed me.”
I giggle. “Food prep fetish?”
“You fetish,” he murmurs, making my heart skip a beat. “You drive me crazy, Eliza. I want to be inside you so badly it’s tearing me apart.”
I gasp, clinging to his shoulders as he fucks me harder with his hand, my hunger roaring loud enough to make my bones tremble. “Me, too,” I breathe into his neck. “I’ve never wanted anyone, anything like this.” I’m so worked up I could come right now if I let myself.
But I don’t want to. I want to draw out this moment of almost-there, almost-together, almost-us.
Us.
Damn it, why can’t we be us? Ten days away from the world with Leo and Rourke have shown me how good we could be together. How normal and how extraordinary, all at the same time. Whether we’re sorting tiles for a game of Scrabble or doing laundry or working to blend self-defense with a touch of magic, every moment with them is special. Perfect. Home.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
So maybe I’m not the person I thought I’d be when I found forever. So what? There are worse things than being a shifter with an occasionally unpredictable, highly destructive rhino form. There is living the rest of my life without feeling the way I feel when I’m with Rourke and Leo.
Rourke’s thumb glides over my clit and I see stars and comets and other astrological phenomena streaming across the ceiling.
I want to ask him if he feels the way I feel—like we can make it work, no matter how wild things might get if my DNA goes wonky someday—but the words won’t come because he won’t stop touching me.
Taking me.
Transporting me to a world where there are no questions, only answers, and every one is his name.
“I…I can’t…” My head falls back, and my breath rushes out. “I can’t think. When you… I can’t… Oh God…”
“Then don’t think, love,” he whispers against my jaw as his wicked, wonderful fingers write poetry between my legs, proving all that other loveliness was just the opening act. “Feel. Feel what I do to you, darling girl. Fuck, you’re so wet. I can’t wait to feel you come for me.”
I cry out, back arching off the bed as I lift into his hand, my release so intense the stars burn brighter and the planets align, and for a brief, shining moment, everything makes perfect sense. I step outside of the chaos and drama and danger that’s plagued the past few weeks, and I see the truth.
I see two men who care about me. Two men who I’m already mad about, who can give me everything I need and then some. And, as long as I have the guts to stay a one-of-a-kind shifter, I can help them reclaim everything they’ve lost.
I can give their people a future, and we can give each other an eternity of love unlike anything I’ve ever imagined.
All I have to do is give up my human life.
Anxiety dumps into my bloodstream, mixing with the pleasure still humming there, and I feel so torn that when Rourke cups my face in his warm hand and asks, “What’s wrong, love?” I can’t speak right away.
But no one ever said love was going to be easy. And I’m not about to let fear steal the magic from this moment.
“Nothing’s wrong.” Pushing the confusion away, I reach between us, finding the hot, hard length of him and stroking him up and down.
His eyelids flutter in response, but he still shakes his head. “We can stop. Things don’t have to go any further tonight. I can wait until you’re ready.”
“I’m ready,” I whisper.
“Are you sure?” Rourke asks, his eyes glittering a warning. “Because if I take you, I’m going to taste you, love. I won’t be able to stop myself.” His jaw clenches. “You smell too sweet. Like summertime. Like sin. I swear, I want you flowing down my throat almost as much as I want to feel you coming on my cock.”
“I want that, too. So much.” I stroke him harder, a heady rush of power coursing through me when he groans and a slick bead of pre-cum appears at the tip of him. I swirl it around his plump head as I reach down, cupping his balls with my other hand and squeezing lightly. “I’m ready. Please, Rourke. I’m so ready for you.”
He growls, a low, hungry growl that makes my pulse spike and things low in my body wind into knots all over again.
And then Rourke is pinning my hands to the mattress and kneeing my thighs apart. And then his cock—so hot and hard and thick—is nudging at where I’m swollen, aching, dying for him. And then he’s inside me, finally inside me, stretching my inner walls until the most delicious fullness spreads throughout my entire being and the last of my defenses come tumbling down.
Being naked with a man has never felt so right, so incredible and perfect.
“Yes, oh yes,” I cry out to the rafters, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling him closer at the end of every thrust, already knowing I’m never going to get him close enough.
I want him under my skin, as close and dear as every beat of my heart.
“
Eliza. Sweet, beautiful Eliza,” he murmurs against my neck with a kiss that burns silky sweet.
But it isn’t just a kiss, I realize as bliss floods me. My nipples bead tighter and my eyes feel like they’re going to sparkle right out of my head. I’ve heard the gossip about vampire boyfriends, and how “once he bites, you don’t go back,” but I had no idea it would be like this.
Like I’ve grown a second set of nerve endings, even more sensitive than the first. Like I’m surfing a mile-high pleasure wave, wild and fearless and free. Like I’m coming where he’s kissing me at the same time as my body locks down around his thickness, my release so intense I scream his name loud enough to wake the dead.
More than loud enough to alert the very awake and very sensitive undead ears out on the deck…
I don’t mean to taunt Leo with what’s going on in here without him. I simply can’t control my mouth or stop the flood of “Yes, Rourke, God Rourke, more Rourke,” rushing out of my mouth.
But actions have consequences, even actions you haven’t thought through completely—like fucking one of your vampire almost-boyfriends while your other vampire almost-boyfriend is just two rooms away.
I know about unintended consequences better than anyone. It’s how I ended up a kiddie pageant queen when I’d rather have been hiding in my room reading fairy tales and sewing princess costumes. And how I ended up a rhinoceros after dating one douchebag too many.
So when my eyes finally dazzle open post-orgasm to see Leo standing at the foot of the bed, his eyes blazing and his bare chest as flawless and beautiful as sculpted marble in the light filtering in from the bathroom, I’m not surprised.
Or scared. Or worried. Or inclined to second-guess myself.
Because this? Rourke crying out as he comes inside me while Leo’s eyes penetrate my soul in ten different ways? This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.
At least, the best thing to happen to me yet…
