My first orgasm is a flash fire, burning high and hot. As I come down, my harsh breathing mingles with the men’s. Tension radiates in the room. Heavy. Thick.
“Please,” I gasp.
Fabric rustles. Belts and pants and shirts. The bed depresses and I almost sob with relief as heat brackets me. A familiar hand guides me onto my side, my front against his, as Finn frees my wrists from the cuffs. A tug precedes the blindfold releasing. I blink at Gideon, the sharp lines of his face wolfish in the candlelight, his lips curled, eyes dark.
Finn moves against my back, a solid line of heat and muscle. He nestles his face through my hair, kisses my neck as he thrusts gently against my backside. Seeking. Asking.
I answer by lifting my leg and hooking it over Gideon’s hip. He shifts forward, sealing our bodies together. The head of his cock finds my center, dipping inside. One inch, two, then he pulls out and glides the base of his shaft against my clit.
I watch his eyes, angled over my head. I see the permission in them. And the pain. Lube slides, cold and wet, down my ass. Finn’s breath deepens against my neck, his heart thumping hard against my spine. I rock a little, welcoming him while simultaneously seeking Gideon. His reassurance. His love.
He senses my need—shares it—and lifts my chin to align our faces. “Kiss me, Deirdre,” he whispers. “Don’t stop.”
In moments I’m lost in him. The singular way we consume each other, feeding with more than lips and tongues but our very hearts and souls.
Our kiss falters only when Finn breaches my tight ring of muscles. I wince, gasping through those first moments, those first slow thrusts and withdrawals. Gideon strokes my hair, lips on my forehead. Finn is as gentle as possible, movements slow and steady, giving me time to adjust. He whispers against my neck how grateful he is. How much he loves being inside me.
Gideon rocks against me, igniting sensation along my front. My nipples, my clit, my aching center. I’m full, but still wanting. I need more. All of it.
“More,” I beg.
With a long, measured exhale, Gideon gives me what I want. Shattering pleasure followed closely by equal pain. I can’t help a whimper, a flash of real panic. They’re too much. I’m splitting apart.
“Easy, easy,” whispers Gideon. His tensed abdomen is unyielding against my breasts and stomach. A hand curls over my hip, Finn’s fingers finding my clit. Teasing it with an expert touch as he drops kisses on my neck and shoulder blades.
It takes an eternity for Gideon to bottom out inside me.
“Breathe, mon bijou. That’s it. Yes. Perfect.”
Another eternity passes before pleasure eclipses discomfort. But it does. Oh, it does. There are no words. Fullness doesn’t qualify.
Can a sensation be so much that it becomes its opposite? Because this feels like dispersion. Immersion. I dissolve in them. In us. The mingling of our scents, our gasps and cries. Roaming hands and twitching fingers, curling toes, sweat dripping, slick skin sliding and a perfect, rocking rhythm that transcends our individualities.
“Fuck, fuck,” Finn hisses against the nape of my neck, “I’m close. Can I come inside you?”
I’m too far gone to answer.
“Do it,” growls Gideon as he stills.
Finn’s grip on my hip increases, his thrusts growing harder and erratic, his breath panting and harsh. A smile of sheer pleasure slips over my mouth.
“You feel it, don’t you?” whispers Gideon against my damp forehead. “Your power?”
I nod, closing my eyes as Finn stiffens, his hips planted against my ass, his climax roaring through him. Through me. The act triggers something in Gideon. He snarls, grabbing my face until I blink open my eyes.
“You’re still mine.”
The words are almost inaudible. Guttural and primeval. I touch his face gently, nodding, and lift my chin to capture his lips. I’m barely aware of Finn’s slow withdrawal, his weight leaving the bed.
There is only Gideon, rolling onto his back to bring me above him. Firelight dances across his chest, his wild russet hair and fierce expression. My nails dance down his slick chest, leaving trails of red. He grabs my hips, tilting my pelvis down to the angle he knows brings me the most pleasure.
“Deirdre. Fuck me.”
Not a command—a desperate plea.
One I’m compelled to answer with everything I am.
39 sloth
I spend the night between Gideon and Finn, our legs crisscrossing, my body cradled. For hours I listen to their deep, even breathing, thinking about nothing—thinking about everything. How the warmth and darkness around me reminds me of my tree-root cave, and of Gideon’s question weeks ago, “You’ve never felt safe, have you?” and Nate’s admonishment, “You’re not a one-woman army, Deirdre.”
They’re both right, but neither fact changes anything.
Even snug between the two men, I’m raw and exposed. There are moments, too, I shiver despite the heat radiating amongst us. Moments I feel like Julep is watching. Waiting to take his pound of flesh. Laughing at my momentary happiness.
Old memories surface, too, of waking up in the middle of the night, my arms around Nate, to find our enemy standing at the foot of the bed. Watching. Reveling in our captivity.
I eventually fall into a heavy sleep and wake sometime later to a tongue between my legs and another sliding into my mouth. In their tender care—their worship—I’m relieved of all thoughts. There is only feeling.
After, they fall asleep again. I slip from the bed and shower in the attached bathroom. Pull on yesterday’s clothes. Pause to breathe through stiffness, soreness, the sting between my legs, the burn of overused skin and tender nipples.
All of it a gift I don’t deserve but will gladly cherish.
Before leaving, I stand in the bedroom doorway to look at them one more time. Finn on his stomach with his arms folded beneath his head, colorful splashes of ink a canvas across his body. There’s something about him that’s alluring even in sleep—something good that calls to my damaged soul.
A call that pales in comparison to that of the man on the other side of the bed.
When my gaze veers to Gideon, a smile tugs my lips. In sleep, his features lack their usual severity but are no less beautiful for it. On his back, one arm draped over his stomach and the other still bracketed around the space where I slept, he looks younger. Peaceful. Happy.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
My heart heavy and swollen, I tiptoe across the loft and down the stairs, opening and closing the front door carefully. Out of the sound-proofed loft, the club’s music thumps a low, sensual beat through the walls.
When I turn around, I find Nate leaning against the opposite wall. My heart leaps, despite the fact I texted him twenty minutes ago to meet me if he could. I want to hug him. Hold him. But instead, I wrap my arms around my middle.
Nate attempts a smile, his eyes haunted in the hallway’s low lighting. “Dee.”
“Hey, little brother. Thanks for meeting me.”
He shrugs. “I was already here. No big deal.”
“How are you?” I ask softly.
He drags a hand through his hair, jaw clenching briefly. “Angry. Fucking scared. Confused.”
Needing to be nearer—driven by the cellular urge to protect him—I cross the hallway and lean beside him.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I begin, then blurt the rest before I lose my nerve, “I couldn’t kill him, Nate. I lied to you. This is all my fault.”
The words are bullets ripping through him. He jerks, once, twice.
“What?” A strangled whisper.
In the weeks after Nate and I escaped, I could do little but stand by while my friend succumbed to drug addiction to drown his memories. All the horrible violations of his body and soul, orchestrated by the man I said I killed. It took me almost dying—waking up in that hospital—for him to give up the drugs and seek help.
His shock and betrayal hang thick in the ai
r.
“No—you told me…” he chokes, falls silent.
“It was Marco, at the end. Not that that’s an excuse, but… he was so scared, and I couldn’t do it.” I breathe past the agony. “I wanted to tell you, so many times, but I was afraid—”
“That I’d OD.”
I nod—all the response I’m capable of.
“I… I don’t know what to say.” He turns away from me, hands anchored on his crown. “Fucking hell, Deirdre. All these years, I didn’t know I was living with a fucking guillotine over my head. He could have—any time—fuck, why are we even alive right now?”
Why?
“I don’t know.”
Nate spins and grabs my shoulders roughly. I don’t resist. I deserve his rage. His loathing.
“You faked his death certificate. You kept this from me for a motherfucking decade. And now what? Now you’re going to martyr yourself out of guilt?”
My laugh sounds like a sob. “I guess so, yes. He wants me. Only me. Marco is gone, Nate. It’s just Julep now. If I go to him, you’ll be safe.”
Nate freezes. “You’ve talked to him. Jesus. Don’t be naive, Deirdre, there’s no way he’s going to forget about me. I’m the one who stole all the money.”
“Money I told you where to find.”
The wrapped stacks of cash were stored under a floorboard in Julep’s bedroom, which was always locked. But during the times I was locked inside with him, he didn’t bother hiding the location from me. Above everything else, he was confident in my dependence. My powerlessness.
Nate shakes me hard. “Stop trying to protect me! Just stop! You’re not my fucking mother or my fucking sister. Especially not since you were the only goddamn thing that kept me sane those four years.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, clutching his arms. A sob tears free. “Nate, please. I can’t lose you.”
Anger drains from him with a full-body shudder. His arms close around me. We hold each other up in the midst of falling under the weight of our lives.
“Let me help you,” he whispers in my hair, voice thick with tears. “I’m not some scared little boy anymore.”
I lift my face and see the fear and love in his eyes, the depth of our bond that transcends all others. I kiss his throat, his jaw, and finally his lips. He sighs, returning my chaste affection. There’s no lust between us, just a sweet echo of two kids who survived hell together.
“You’re the bravest person I know,” I tell him. “Much braver than me. All these years, you’ve been living life, tackling it with courage and grace, while I’ve been pretending. I’m done with this farce. I’m going to make this right, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to try this life thing again.”
“You’re going to kill him?” he whispers, scanning my face.
I nod. Or die trying.
“What about Gideon?”
Pain thumps through my chest. “He’ll be all right. He’ll… understand.”
Maybe someday.
Nate watches me, expression grave. At length, he sighs, arms releasing from my shoulders.
“Do you remember the night we met?” he asks, then continues without waiting for an answer, “I’ll never forget it. I woke up with this tiny, fierce, dirt-streaked girl with knotted hair and a mouth like a sailor standing over me, waving a knife and screaming at some rough-looking dude.”
A smile twitches my mouth. “He tried to touch you while you were sleeping. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Nate’s thumb grazes the tears on my cheek. “Because there was no one who stopped it from happening to you, was there?”
“No,” I whisper, careful to not think of what happened after. The proof that in some twisted way, my stepfather had loved me, exacting terrible vengeance on my behalf.
“We’ve survived some real fucked-up shit, haven’t we?”
I laugh hoarsely. “Yes, we have.”
“Do you know why I think we’re still here, Dee? Because despite everything we went through, all the physical and emotional abuse and victimization when we were young, we have something to offer the world. Something unique. We understand true suffering. I wish you believed that it means we deserve to know true happiness.”
Gideon…
“Maybe someday,” I whisper and kiss Nate’s cheek a final time. “You’ll see me again. I promise.”
“I know,” he whispers back. “Your mom was wrong. You’re God’s creature, not the Devil’s. And there’s no way you’ve been brought this far to fall.”
My brows lift in surprise. “You really believe that?”
He nods. “You’re an angel. My angel—which means you’re a full-on badass bitch with flaming wings and a glowing sword.”
When our laughter fades, he adds, “But promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“When the time comes, don’t do it for me or even you. Do it for the kids who didn’t survive like we did.”
With a final graze of his lips across my forehead, he walks away, fading into the shadows of the hallway. A door opens and closes, and I’m alone again, my blood screaming for vengeance and my heart breaking for the life that might have been.
As I pass the door to the loft, I glance up, toward where they sleep.
Where he sleeps.
I continue on, slipping silently through the back door into the night.
Goodbye, Gideon.
Epilogue
For the thousandth time in the last hour, my gaze wanders over the crowd to the doors of the gallery. A beautiful, dark-haired woman steps inside, followed closely by a man with his hand on her back. They’re laughing, the intimate sound squeezing my gut.
It’s not her, of course.
She’s not coming.
I knew it the second I woke up this morning and she wasn’t there. Hell, I knew it last night when she told me she’d be here, that she wasn’t leaving yet. She’s a good liar, but I’ve always seen right through her.
And yet, and yet, despite knowing she’s not coming, accepting it has been an entirely different challenge.
Believing it.
Understanding it.
The longest distance in the world is the eighteen inches between the head and the heart, and my heart is a stubborn fucker that tells me she wouldn’t just cut and run. That she loves me. Needs me. That we belong to each other.
So I keep looking for her.
Hoping for the impossible.
“Hey, man, how are you holding up?”
With effort, I turn my gaze from the door to Finn. “I’m fine.”
The concern in his eyes makes me want to punch something. Possibly him. God, that would feel good right now. Last night wasn’t a mistake—my head has long since rejected that sort of binary thinking—but the memories are nevertheless fresh. His hands on her. His cock inside her. Nor can I help the slithering thought that what might be the last intimacy I ever share with Deirdre included someone else.
The room swims, and I feel like throwing up.
“What are you going to do?”
I focus on my friend. One of my oldest, unquestioningly my best. We’ve been through some serious shit together. Broken hearts, broken bones, broken dreams…
He knows me well enough not to offer excuses for her absence, like traffic. Fucking traffic. Up until an hour ago, I’d clung to that very idea. She was stuck on the 405. Got caught behind an accident. Someone rear-ended her.
And the reason her phone goes straight to voicemail? She forgot to charge it. Definitely not the more plausible explanation: she chucked it out of a car window going eighty miles per hour out of town. Or she simply threw it in the trash.
Yeah, she’s gone.
I lift my flute of expensive champagne and down it in two swallows.
“There’s nothing to do,” I finally answer Finn. “Deirdre is perfectly capable of making her own decisions. She wanted to leave, so she left. That’s the way it is.”
“You could go after her.”
Darkness coils i
n my gut, winds around my spine. Finn recognizes my expression and lifts his hands in surrender.
“I just think… I know she’s different than the women you’ve dated. You’re different with her. You match, Gid. She might be worth taking a risk for.”
Bitterness coats my tongue. “I’m not that guy. The one who runs after the girl to change her mind.”
He knows this. And he knows why—because I had a front row seat to my father ignoring my mother’s last wishes. She wanted to stay in the hospital. She was fragile. Scared to leave. But he convinced her with false promises, wooed her with a fantasy of a new life.
She caved. She died.
Can I convince Deirdre to come back? Maybe. But I can’t convince her to not be afraid.
Only she can do that.
“Deirdre understands,” I mutter, my eyes sliding once again to the door.
Empty.
Finn’s voice lowers to a hum, “Does she know why?”
I nod, my throat thick. “I told her.”
Finn’s the only other person—besides my father and the assholes who helped him cover everything up—who knows that my mother didn’t die in a car accident but committed suicide. Not even my ex-wife knows the truth.
Finn’s brow furrows, his eyes filling with sympathy. I really want to punch him.
“I knew she was important to you, but I didn’t know—”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
In my periphery, I see the sharks circling, closer and closer—art collectors, private buyers, reporters, hungry young artists. Until now, they’ve been kept at bay by my surly expression, but it’s losing potency as the night wears on and bloodstreams dilute with alcohol.
Everyone’s on fire for the Seven Sins paintings. They’ve been ahhing and oohing since the doors opened. Men look at me like they want to kill me and take my skin. Women look at me like they want to ride me raw. Everyone, regardless of motivation, looks at me with hunger.
Art of Sin: Illusions Duet : Book One Page 17
