by Laina Kenney
Grange felt more than a little wild himself.
He heard Burgess on the wire, panting and announcing his location as leaving the surveillance van and entering the kitchen, proceeding up the side stairs.
There was a cry of pain through the wire. Carolyn!
Then Nina’s voice came through.
“It is a good plan,” Nina said petulantly. “Too bad you’ll never see how good this plan is. You’ll be dead. It’s so easy to kill when you’re just ridding the world of vermin. The bird was nothing. Soon, you’ll be nothing. Isaac and Grange will be heartbroken, and I’ll be there to help them get through it. They’ll get over you soon enough.”
Nina’s voice faded out for a moment, and there was another cry of anger and pain.
“Then, when Sara dies, Dash will be mine again, and I’ll have all three men back. Back with me where they belong. They’re mine, and you know it. You’ve always known it, and you just wanted them because they were mine!”
Nina was almost screaming through the wire now, clearly a step away from losing control. They didn’t have time for finesse. The crisis was already happening.
The men rounded the corner into the upper hall at full speed. Conn pointed ahead, and Grange zeroed in on the second door. He just continued running flat out, never slowing his pace. He lowered one shoulder in a classic football tackle position, hit hard, and blasted through the solid oak door on the first try, with Isaac and Conn a bare step behind him, just as a gunshot reverberated through the room. Shards of glass were raining down on them and the smell of cordite was overpowering.
“Please, please,” he found himself chanting, as he staggered over a body. He dropped to his knees, half-blind, and hauled Carolyn, feebly struggling, against his chest. He was almost sobbing for air as he ran practiced hands over her, searching for the bullet wound. He knew he had heard a shot, and Nina had been holding a gun on his Carolyn.
Isaac was on his other side, calling her name anxiously, speaking softly to her, holding her hands to his heart.
“Carolyn, tell me where,” Grange said. “I can’t find—where are you shot?”
“I’m fine, but my ankle,” Carolyn said, moaning. “I’m fine. I haven’t been shot. The door hit her and she shot my lamp.”
Hearing her voice, seeing her clear gaze, Grange finally calmed enough to pull back a little and truly assess her condition. He was deeply thankful to see that she didn’t appear to have any bullet wounds, but there was a bruise forming on her cheek, and her formerly good ankle was swelling rapidly.
“She kept kicking my ankle,” Carolyn said. “I was rolling to take her out while she was off balance, and the door exploded. I would have had her.” It sounded like a complaint.
Grange and Isaac shared a look then they both laughed in sheer relief. If Carolyn could sit on the floor in a silk gown amid the splinters of a destroyed door and complain that the rescue had arrived a little too soon, all was right in their world.
Conn had a dazed but defiant Nina cuffed and handed off to a whistling Burgess, who had sprinted from the van and up the back stairs to take the backup position. Burgess had always disliked Nina and would no doubt be pleased to see her heading off to jail.
Grange fully expected an I-told-you-so from Burgess about hiring Nina as soon as the dust settled. And he would listen to every word without offering any defense. Burgess had been correct about Nina in every way.
As soon as Nina was escorted out, Conn turned his attention to Charlotte, who was starting to stir. His face was a study in pain, and his hand trembled when he brushed her hair back from her stark white face.
Grange exchanged glances with a startled Isaac. He shook his head sharply, but he knew that Isaac would come back to it at a later date. Isaac was like a bulldog with any kind of puzzle.
Isaac had radioed for a medic team as they barreled up the stairs, and the team carried Charlotte from the room on a stretcher, heading for the closest hospital. She had been hit over the head from behind by Nina, and the medics felt she had been unconscious for too long. She needed to be in hospital for tests.
The remaining medic started toward Carolyn.
“No hospital,” Carolyn said firmly. “I’ll submit to the medic, but I’m not going to the hospital.”
Isaac opened his mouth to protest, but subsided at a look from Grange. If the medic recommended she go to hospital, she would be going. No sense fighting about it until it was necessary.
The medic knelt down and touched her puffy ankle with gentle hands, manipulating it lightly. Carolyn bit back a moan of pain. He looked up at Grange and Isaac hovering, and shrugged.
“She needs to go to the hospital,” he said apologetically. “This will have to be x-rayed. It could be just a bad sprain, but it could just as easily have a hairline fracture.”
Carolyn sat up straighter, obviously intending to make a fuss, but Grange simply leaned down and captured her militant mouth firmly with his, effectively silencing her objection.
“Don’t fight this, baby, please,” he asked against her lips. “We need to know that you’re okay.”
Isaac brought her hand to his chest. “Please, Cara,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Get checked over so that we know there’s nothing to worry about. Please. I need to be able to breathe again.”
Carolyn looked at him then turned to Grange.
“No stretcher. No wheelchair. Help me up.” She was rapping out orders like a drill sergeant, but the men didn’t have the heart to argue.
Isaac kissed her hand, Grange took her other hand, and they helped her to stand up. They watched carefully to see if her bad ankle would support her full weight. And when she wobbled and hissed in pain, Grange swept her into his arms and carried her to the waiting van.
He carried her right through the main hallway and past the glittering ballroom, where the dancers continued with their waltz, unaware.
Chapter 16
Carolyn shifted and gasped at the twinge of pain.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Isaac said softly, wincing right along with her as he re-bandaged her injured ankle.
The sprain wasn’t a bad one, and after two days of bed rest followed by three days on crutches, it was looking almost as good as new. It wasn’t broken and didn’t require surgery, so Carolyn was surprisingly okay with the doctors’ strict recommendations. Except for the early mornings, or when one of the guys helped her with the tension bandage, there wasn’t much pain at all anymore.
She was getting along quite well on her cane. The doctors had requested that she use one for a few days after coming off the crutches, not because of the sprain, but because of her other already weak ankle.
She had borrowed the cane from Conn yesterday since he categorically refused to use it, even though he had torn open the healing wound on his leg sprinting up the stairs with Grange and Isaac to come to her rescue. The doctors didn’t even bother with more stitches for him, just stapled the gaping flesh together and wrapped it tight, and that suited him fine.
“Charlotte was discharged this morning, and she’s at home now,” Isaac said. “Some of the agents have set up a schedule to take turns staying with her this first night home. And Conn will be supervising, of course.”
After spending five nights in hospital under close observation for a cracked skull, Charlotte would be happy to get back into her own home, Carolyn knew.
“Is she going to be okay? A cracked skull is serious. What do the doctors say?”
Isaac smiled, finishing with her ankle and leaning forward to place a lingering kiss on her bare thigh just at the bottom hem of her robe. He sat back, pulling Carolyn up into a sitting position.
“The docs told her to take it easy for a month and she immediately started griping. She wanted to get right back into the office. Then one of the docs called Conn in and told him she had to take it easy for a month. He’s watching her like a mother hawk, and if she so much as picks up a glass of water or a pill—these are her words not mine—he gives he
r proper hell in an Irish accent and makes her put it down again.”
Isaac was laughing as he said it, and Carolyn couldn’t help but laugh as well. She could just hear Charly saying something like that, and it lifted her spirits to realize that her friend would be just fine.
“What about Nina?” she asked now, and Isaac shrugged.
Her emotions regarding Nina were unpredictable, fluctuating from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. She was frustrated with herself, mostly because she had never considered Nina as a suspect. And yet, looking at the situation in hindsight, all the facts were there.
The only consolation was that none of the other agents had fingered Nina for the crimes, perhaps because they didn’t take her seriously. The only one who had seen a genuine threat in Nina was Carolyn’s mother, who had expressed no surprise at the evening’s event. The only thing that elicited any comment from Annalise Winston was that Grange must be very strong, since no one should ever have been able to single-handedly destroy a solid carved oak door with one blow. Even her father had been impressed with that, albeit unwillingly.
“Nina was denied bail,” Grange said as he came in from the kitchen with a tray of submarine sandwiches and soft drinks. “She’ll be in jail until the trial. Her lawyer has requested a psychiatric evaluation.” He placed the long wooden tray on the little coffee table and sat on the sofa beside Carolyn.
“Well, she’s crazy,” Isaac muttered. “It wouldn’t take a psychiatrist to figure that out.”
“But she’s sane enough to plan my murder and Sara’s, so she’d better go to trial,” Carolyn said, her anger surging to the forefront.
“She’ll stand trial.” Grange sounded certain, and Carolyn relaxed. “They have the tape of every threat she made to you, every nasty comment about the murders she had planned. She confessed to killing your bird and even sending that letter months ago to Martin Brent alerting him to Sara’s new address. There’s no way that she’ll be able to wiggle out of all that. Every time the DA listens to the tape, more charges pile up.”
His words gave her a sense of reassurance. If Grange wasn’t worried about the outcome, then there was nothing to be worried about.
Carolyn looked at Grange, with his black hair slightly longer than its usual military-short cut. She glanced sideways at Isaac. His bright brown eyes were lit with a deep satisfaction, his hair as unruly as ever. They were two of the most gorgeous, powerful, masculine men she had ever seen, and they were hers.
“And to think,” she said, tongue in cheek, “she went to all that trouble just to get you two back. I wonder why?”
Grange and Isaac shared a look.
“It has obviously been too long,” Grange said. “Carolyn is losing her memory.”
“Maybe we should remind her of just why a woman would crave us every hour on the hour, why she would want us back?” Isaac suggested politely, running his fingers smoothly up the inside of her thigh as Grange lowered her body into a reclining position with her head in his lap.
Carolyn loved their hands on her. She had no desire to resist.
“She wanted Dash, too,” Carolyn said, her eyes sparkling with wicked humor. “Maybe we should call Dash over and—”
“No damn way,” both men said together, and she laughed joyfully.
“This little witch is teasing us,” Grange said silkily, reaching down to palm her breasts and twisting her nipples delicately.
“She won’t need a third man,” Isaac asserted.
“We’ll keep our woman so busy pleasing us that she won’t have time to tease anyone else.”
With Isaac gently insinuating his hand between her legs to discover her damp, hot folds, the mood shifted rapidly.
“I think I like the teasing,” Isaac said.
They had been so careful of her healing ankle the past five days, holding her in their bed but abstaining from sex, with the first touch Carolyn was thrown hard into the white hot whirlwind they were so easily creating.
Grange pulled the tie belt of her robe, and Isaac lifted her out of it and carried her naked into the master suite. When he placed her tenderly in the center of the huge bed, he and Grange both followed her down to feast, pressing burning, biting kisses to nipples and belly, thighs, and mons.
The men positioned her bandaged ankle with great care, placing a pillow under it and making sure it was at the very far edge of the bed. Then, while she was still feeling grateful for the care they offered, Grange captured her hands in his and lifted them to the carved bars of the headboard. And then he quickly tied them with a silk scarf.
Alarmed, Carolyn pulled at the restraint.
“Grange,” she said, “I don’t think—”
“Please, baby, don’t think,” he said. “We want to give you as much pleasure as your senses can handle. Even more. We want you to be completely overwhelmed with love.”
Carolyn wasn’t sure how having her hands tied could help with that, but if it came down to an issue of trust, there was no question.
“I trust you,” she said softly. “I trust you both.”
The men exchanged a triumphant glance, and then moved to shed their own clothing. Grange stripped quickly and efficiently, with no wasted motions as he bared his muscular body and massive, erect cock. He was beside her on the bed almost immediately, with his silver eyes locked on her body, his hot mouth already teasing and tasting her stiff nipples.
Isaac took a bit more time, his smile fierce, eyes hot, lean hips swiveling in a slow grind as he pulled off his shirt and slowly lowered the zipper on his jeans. He reached in, drew out his hard penis and pumped it once, then again, as if he couldn’t resist the temptation, while his eyes followed Grange’s lips as they traveled unhurriedly down her body.
She moaned. Damn, these men were scorching hot.
Carolyn could feel the heat rising in her blood, sizzling in her searing core. She whimpered again and again, unable to hold back the tiny sounds, the dual stimulation of Grange’s touch and Isaac’s x-rated performance taking her further than she had been before. When she tried to grab Grange’s head to make him hurry on the path to her weeping feminine flesh, she found that the scarf tying her wrists to the headboard and preventing any movement on her part just added yet another dimension to the growing inferno.
She groaned. Every time with these men was better, more exciting than the time before. She would die in these flames!
When Grange finally tongued her pulsing pussy, Isaac groaned and licked his lips, and Carolyn bucked once from a tiny orgasm.
“Oh, please,” she begged.
Isaac squeezed his cock once, hard as he came to the head of the bed. He rubbed the salty tip against her begging mouth. She licked and then sucked him deep, straining against her bonds to get closer, to take more.
Grange, his mouth shining with her juices, rose to his knees, fitted the wide, flared head of his erection to her gate, and pushed just enough to lodge there. He stopped right there, burning her, stretching her tight muscles too much and still not enough.
On the razor’s edge, she writhed around him, gasping, groaning around Isaac’s cock, trying to capture more of both men.
Isaac obliged immediately, letting her set a swift rhythm with her bobbing head, grunting as she sucked hard at the bottom of each stroke. She was loving every second of this, feeling the power of both her men inside her body at once.
Grange continued to tease her soft pussy, calling forth more wetness, making it ripple and grip at his monster cock.
“I’m—God—I’m not gonna last,” Isaac panted, sweat dripping down his face. “I’m gonna—”
Grange responded by shoving all at once, penetrating her desperate pussy in a thick invasion, bumping her cervix, stretching her hard, and holding deep. Carolyn screeched around Isaac’s leaping cock, and then swallowed as quickly as she could, trying to keep up with the seemingly endless jets of burning seed.
Grange roared, pumping fast as he came forcefully. His colossal member strafed tender
tissues with every rough pass, pushing Carolyn over the yawning precipice into a blinding, screaming freefall. He tensed impossibly, every muscle standing out in relief, until he collapsed on her, utterly spent.
When Carolyn surfaced, it could have been moments or hours later. Her ankle was still on its pillow, Grange was still lying heavily over her, and Isaac was trying to untie her bonds with one hand while his eyes were closed. He finally managed to free her, tossed the silk scarf away, and gently rubbed her reddened skin.
Just as she was starting to drift off, Grange’s voice sounded in the room, muffled slightly against her breast. “We’re not done yet.”
Carolyn snickered a little. It was all she had the energy for.
Isaac groaned happily. “What a way to go.”
THE END
http://www.sirenpublishing.com/lainakenney
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laina Kenney is a classically trained singer/instructor with a regular job and a deep love of the written word. Her family is supportive of (or perhaps just resigned to) a house full of books in every genre, with ancient history and romance taking up the majority of the space. She cheerfully admits to having a bizarre sense of humor and enough shiny accessories for any ten women. One of the greatest joys in her life is exploring the wonder of testosterone, both in prose and in person.
Also by Laina Kenney
Siren Classic: DIG Security 1: Overheated
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