She had left Henry Avery going on five years ago. He was a proper English gentleman with a respectable fortune, distantly related to some lord or another, so distantly that nobody could remember the noble name but everyone knew it was there somewhere and afforded him the appropriate respect. But she’d been married to him at seventeen, a deal made between Henry and her father, and though Henry was respectable and kind-natured and even handsome, she’d had no choice in the matter whatsoever. And Cressida firmly believed that without choice, there was no possibility at all of love.
She dreamed, of course, of the wedding night. Henry’s gentle, doting hands and the way he’d gingerly undone her dress. She’d been desperate for intimacy by then, though, and she found his hesitation disappointing. It was just a dress. One she would never wear again. And she was not fragile, had never been, and she wanted him to want her so badly he could not contain himself. That was the kind of desire and passion that Cressida had longed for her entire life. Henry simply was not made of such things.
Which was not to say that she had not enjoyed their sweet wedding night. Henry had been tentative and cautious in undressing her, his kisses soft and light, and once he’d had her laid naked on the bed before him, some of that caution fled.
Henry had been of middling height, with golden hair not unlike her own and fresh blue eyes. Ten years older than she was, he had some tiny lines about his eyes, and he wore a well-trimmed beard. Somewhat slight of build but not bad looking, he was neither fit nor overweight, a perfectly average specimen. She remembered watching him pull his shirt over his head, her eyes traveling the length of his torso just as his eyes scoured her nude body. He’d shucked off his trousers and she’d watched his cock rise to attention, a strange piece of anatomy that she had never seen before, but found herself fascinated by. She’d wanted to touch it, to understand it, but Henry had crawled onto the bed and eased her thighs apart, and she hadn’t known she could take any kind of control of what was happening.
He settled himself above her and did not touch her at all elsewise, or kiss her. He looked down at her for a moment, as though contemplating the rounded mounds of her breasts or the pale slope of her stomach. Her breath had thickened with anticipation and she wanted to hold on to something, but not him. She curled her fingers into the bedclothes as he reached between them, fitting the head of his cock to her entrance, and she felt a sharp pain as he pushed himself inside her that first time—but with it, a lick of delicious ecstasy. Henry grunted, thrusting himself further inside her, and then withdrawing, and then thrusting in again. His movements were not smooth or fluid, but with each slick reentry Cressida felt something curl through her stomach and begin to mount within her. By the time Henry was fucking her in earnest, she let go of the bedclothes with one hand and squeezed her own breast, head tilting back in a desperate moan.
The moan had been Henry’s undoing. He came a few seconds later, quite before she’d found her own pleasure. And then he’d collapsed atop her and fallen asleep. Cressida lay beneath him, her heart pounding in her ears, her sex throbbing for more attention, and realized in that moment that she could not stay with Henry. That she would never be satisfied by this man, or this life.
She’d waited until he was completely asleep, then rolled him off of her and got out of bed. She pulled on her dressing gown and went into the washroom, where one of the maids had left her a basin of warm water and some clean linens to bathe herself with after her first love-making, because a woman should never go to sleep without cleaning herself. But instead of cleaning herself, she’d lain down upon the washroom floor and slid a hand beneath her dressing gown, between her thighs, seeking the pleasure her husband had been unable to give her. She slipped first one curious finger into her own sex, then two, and then she discovered that delectable knot just above her own entrance. She’d had to stuff the linens into her mouth to quiet her moans and gasps. She spent the night writhing on the washroom floor, pleasuring herself again and again, wondering how many married women did the same.
It had taken a year of planning, and Cressida liked to think that she’d given Henry a year to convince her to stay. In the end, though, he simply was not enough for her and never could have been. She’d left him with no regrets at all, because she’d never grown to love him. Not the way she thought that she deserved to love, and be loved. He was a good man, but he was not a passionate man, not a dangerous man, not a man who knew what it was to really claim a woman’s heart. In Cressida’s dream, he fucked her with his eyes closed and she felt nothing at all as he came. She awoke with a start, still slumped against Kelly, the night still thick around them.
Chapter 2
Kelly did not sleep, but he was relieved when Cressida did. It gave him some time to organize his thoughts, to try and form some kind of plan. But without a firmer understanding of what the Keeper of the Jewel had told her, all of his plans turned into circle after circle that led him right back to her. To wanting simply to escape with her now that he had her. But had made so many promises to so many people, and the den needed him to be stronger than his own desires. He knew that. And yet…
Somehow Cressida had become the vessel of his own dreams, his own hopes for a better life. She had become the treasure that he sought instead of the Jewel of So Sur, no matter what he insisted to anyone else. In his own heart, he had already acknowledged it.
But he was not the vessel of her hopes and dreams, he thought. Still she reached for Reza at every turn. He tried to temper his jealousy, because it served him not at all, but still it wormed its way around inside him, blackening his heart. Especially as he watched her sleep, the shadows hanging heavy about her, and heard her breath quicken. Dreaming, he thought, about the tiger. Dreaming of his hands on her, his lips, and Kelly wondered if she ever dreamed of him instead. He wanted badly to think she did. He hated the idea that they might lie together and still she would think of damned Reza.
It has to be the two of you, she’d said.
He should have forced her to explain everything to him on the spot. He should have refused to return and get the tiger before she told him all that the Keeper of the Jewel had said. But there had been desperation on her face, need in her pale blue eyes, and he’d buckled. He thought perhaps he’d always buckle to her when she needed him. It chafed him, that knowledge. Kelly was so used to being the one who made the rules, who laid down the law. But neither Cressida nor the bloody tiger ever did what he told them to, or respected his authority. He thought perhaps they were more suited to each other after all. And then he hated himself for thinking as much.
It has to be the two of you.
That included him. Him and Reza. He wondered if perhaps they were meant to fight to the death for the jewel. And then he wondered if he could have actually killed Reza with Cressida looking on, if he could have murdered her heart right there before her eyes. She would never love him then. She’d probably hate him more than she ever would have loved him. Probably she’d try to kill him too, on top of it all. If it came to that, he had no idea what he would do. He tried to plan for it, tried to get his thoughts together, his logic and his cool intellect instead of his fierce attachment to her, but he failed. And so, again, his thoughts circled back to her. Inevitably, as they always did. Damned woman. Damned tiger. Damn him.
When she came awake, he shifted slightly, looking down at her face as she lifted her head from his shoulder, blinking sleepily.
“All right?” he asked her softly.
She nodded. “Fine. Is Reza back?”
“Not yet. It’s only been a few hours. The hike to the beach and back took us longer.”
“He’ll be back soon,” she predicted. “He moves faster through the jungle on his own.”
“Cress, what did the Keeper tell you? About us?” He watched her face closely now, watched her brow furrow and her mouth curve towards a frown.
“I want to tell you both together,” she said.
He gritted his teeth. “That a
wful?”
“No.” She looked up at him, and in her eyes he thought he saw a glimmer of hope. Of...anticipation? She smiled a little. “No, it’s not awful, Kelly. But I want you both to hear it at once. We’ll figure it out together.”
“Your tiger isn’t exactly one for playing well with others,” he muttered, looking away. The jungle around them still buzzed and swirled with life, in varying shades of evergreen and brown, its brightness muted by night but never quieted.
“Either we do this together or we don’t do it at all,” Cressida said firmly. “He’ll have to make the choice, the same as you and me.”
“Ah, so it’s a choice, is it?” He wondered how much he truly had a choice in all this.
“Yes,” she insisted. “Yes, it is a choice.”
There was a strange quality to her voice when she said it, one he couldn’t understand immediately. The way word choice left her tongue, a richness and gravity to it, as though she’d hung all their futures on it. Kelly knew that Cressida favored freedom above all else, of course, and he supposed it made sense that she should put such emphasis on what they chose between them. But he also knew that he had already chosen her, and would never choose another, ever again.
He took his arm from about her. “I’ll find us some food.”
But as he started to his feet, there was a rustle of underbrush nearby. Cressida bolted up beside him, drawing the rapier from her hip, and Kelly realized with a curse that he’d dropped his rapier and pistol back by the village with his other clothes when he’d shifted into his bear skin. All the weapons they had left were his claws and fangs and her sword.
A tiger emerged from between two bushes, however, and after a tense moment of staring at each other, the great cat lowered its head. Reza.
Chapter 3
Reza had made the best time he could leading two bears, one of whom was wounded, to the beach. He’d stayed and listened to Cort, once he’d changed back into his man skin, explain to those waiting there what all had befallen them. Fortunately, it seemed like repairs to the ship were happening apace and that she would be ready to sail again soon. Reza did not stay to explain to the pirates that, in all likelihood, their captain and his lady pirate and Reza himself would not make it out of the jungle alive. His tribe would be hunting them now.
On his way back to where he’d left them, he risked skirting closer to the village to find out what was happening there, and it was just as he’d expected. A hunting party was forming. He could not get close enough to discover what might have befallen Kamala, which made him furious and terrified at once. Nor could he determine where Prija was, if she was safe, or if she had somehow been blamed for his escape. Surely Sajja and Chaiya would not punish her for his actions.
It took a great deal of willpower for him to leave without knowing anything of the girls’ circumstances, but he’d promised Cressida he would go with her. He’d made the choice already. Now his only goal had to be getting Kelly and Cressida to leave the island, if the three of them stood any chance at all of surviving. She’d come back for him. That must have meant she loved him. And he’d gone with her. He knew that meant he loved her more than he loved his tribe, more than he loved his home. Perhaps he could convince them to take Kamala and Prija too. Perhaps he could still save what was left of his family.
He emerged from the jungle into their little cluster by the great tree where he’d left Cressida and Kelly, his heart a complicated knot when he saw them. Kelly with her arm about Cressida. Cressida looking at him with such hope on her face. What did she hope for? How could she look at Kelly like that when she’d come back for him? What madness had befallen them all that they found themselves here, impossibly intertwined, Kelly and Reza constantly in orbit around Cressida, and she the very center now of both their worlds. She didn’t seem to understand the power she held over them both.
When she looked at him, and recognized him, Reza felt his heart swell again for her. Whatever doubts crept into his mind when they were apart, just the very sight of her banished them completely. Such a danger. Such a thrill. A bloody hunt of a very different kind.
“Your back,” she said, smiling in the darkness.
Kelly nodded to him and then twisted to pick up the remaining satchel, pulling out a pair of trousers. He tossed them to land at Reza’s paws.
“We need to talk,” Cressida said. “The three of us.”
With a rumbling sigh, Reza bowed his head and began to shift back into his man skin, the tiger raging in his soul fading away.
Chapter 4
Once Reza was dressed, he led Cressida and Kelly deeper into the jungle. He told them there was a safer place than where they were, and Kelly agreed that safer was better, so Cressida held off for a little longer explaining to them what the Keeper had said. Eventually, Reza paused at a wall of overgrown vines and pushed a handful of them aside, revealing a cavern. Cressida thought they must have been on their way up the mountain again, just from a different side. It felt less foreign now that they had Reza as a guide.
The cavern was not large. Moss and mushrooms sprouted in between cracks in the stone of the mountain’s hide, and here and there a few tiny, brightly colored flowers were bursting up alongside them. It was dark, and damp, not unlike the rest of the jungle around them, but there were stones to sit upon, and Kelly pulled what clothes remained in the satchel and spread them out across the leaves and dirt on the floor of the cave. The longer Cressida sat, the more her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and eventually she could see both Reza and Kelly well enough. Well enough to see the looks of trepidation and worry they shared.
“All right,” Reza said after a moment. “Explain to me why we’re still on the island and not sailing away, like sane people.”
“We haven’t got the jewel yet,” Kelly muttered.
“Damn the jewel,” Reza hissed. “Coming here was a mistake. I told you it was a mistake, if you recall, months ago. The jewel isn’t worth it. We should leave while we still can. They’ll be hunting us.”
“The jewel is worth it,” Cressida said. They both looked at her. “It is. The Keeper of the Jewel said that it would set us free. Set me free. I believe her. But only the three of us can claim it. Together.”
“And why is that?” Kelly asked. She heard a lilt of suspicion in his voice.
Cressida inhaled, looking between them, and exhaled. She knew that this was the moment. There was no turning back from this. Once she said it, she could never take it back. And she knew that she might lose them both, but the hope of having them both was so much stronger than the fear. And Cressida had never shied back from fear. This was her choice. And then they would have their own.
“Because I’m in love with you both,” she finally told them.
The air in the cavern seemed to still. She could no longer hear the buzz of the insects or the drip and trickle of the small stream at the back of the cave. What breeze there had been before had fled, and Cressida felt very warm, hot, her heart pounding in her ears as she watched the two of them process what she’d said and waited for one of them, either of them, to speak first.
Then she got tired of waiting.
“The Keeper told me that only a human in love with two alpha shifters, who love her back, could claim the jewel,” she explained. “I love you both; I am in love with you both. If you love me back, we can get the jewel.”
Kelly drew in a breath. “That’s it? That’s all?”
“Of course it is,” Reza said darkly.
“No,” Cressida sighed. “That isn’t all. You both have to mark me, as proof.”
If Cressida thought the air had gone still before, now it positively dried up. Reza shot to his feet, prowling towards the back of the cavern and then returning, only to turn around and prowl back again, pacing. She couldn’t see his face. Was he furious?
Kelly stayed in his seat, but his shoulders slumped defeatedly. “Reza is right,” he murmured. “Cress, we should go.”
&nb
sp; “What?” She stared at him. “Why? I don’t understand. Why would we give up now?” She got to her feet. Reza stopped pacing, head turned to look at her. “Do you love me?”
She looked from one man to the other. She stood there holding her heart out to the both of them, and neither one of them was coming forward to take it. Had she been so wrong about them? Had she been so blind? She could have almost forgiven Kelly for rebuffing her; he’d always been so changeable. But Reza? Had she just convinced herself that he loved her?
“Say something,” she begged them. “Dammit, say something.”
Kelly sighed. “I love you,” he murmured. “Cress, I do love you. That doesn’t make any of this possible, though.”
Before she could even catch her breath, Reza said, “I too love you. But Kelly is right.”
She felt like she was going insane. Both of these men proclaimed to love her and also that it didn’t matter? Then, instead of insane, she felt furious.
“What is wrong with the two of you?” she snapped. “Is this jealousy? Fear? How could you claim to love me and say, in the same bloody breath, that it’s impossible? You love me, I love you, we could make it possible! That’s what you do when you’re in love!”
Reza hissed. “That is not what alphas do, Cressida.”
“Well, alphas are bloody cowards!” Cressida shouted.
Kelly put up his hands. “Stop,” he said. “Cressida, sit down. We’ll explain. Stop shouting. And you, cat, stop hissing. She needs to understand. We’ll never leave this damned cave until she understands.”
Alphas of Black Fortune (Complete Boxed Set) Page 15
