Brenden looked up from the knot in the tabletop he had been tracing with his thumb. “Pissed enough to break things,” he said shortly.
Mariana put the cheese back on the plate. “Because we’re being told what to do,” she added, as she recognized the frustration she was feeling.
“Ordered about by the future,” Billy finished.
The silence fell once more. Mariana ate mechanically. She could already feel that the meal was making a difference. The knots in her stomach and chest were easing. She could think again.
But with clear thinking came resentment for the predicament they were in. She glanced at Brenden. He was back to scowling at the table top. Billy had his head turned. He was looking out the window.
“I was falling in love with both of you,” she said quietly.
Brenden’s head lifted and Billy looked at her. “‘Was’?”
“I was,” she confirmed. “But now I don’t want to give in to how I feel, because it feels like I’m playing along with…with….”
“Fate,” Brenden said softly. “My people believed in fate, in a future that was set, even though we didn’t know it.”
“Is that why you are coping with this better than us?” Billy asked.
“I don’t like it any more than you.”
“I don’t know how to think about it,” Billy confessed. “I barely know Mariana.” He gave her a small smile. “You’re a lovely woman, but I met you after I met Brenden. It didn’t occur to me to even think of you as a possible lover, because Brenden was there.” He pulled in a breath and let it out as a sigh. “And now I’m told that not only do I love you, but you’re the love of my life.” He glanced at Brenden. “Both of you.”
Another pensive silence built. They were all struggling with this. They were all dealing with resentment.
“Perhaps this was his plan,” Mariana said.
“Laszlo’s?” Brenden asked.
She nodded. “It just occurred to me that all three of us are the type of people who, if we’re told we’re to do A, with no discussion and no choice, we’ll do B instead, just because we don’t like being told what to do. It’s the principle of the thing. B could be the worst choice on the planet for us, but we’ll do it anyway, just to prove the point.”
“That we can’t be shoved around,” Billy finished. He looked at Brenden. “That’s exactly what I would do. That’s exactly what I’m feeling right now. I’m tempted to leave and never come back just because I’m being told to stay. Maybe he counted on that and he’s really trying to pull us apart. Mariana is right—we were all moving toward each other before this happened. It was probably only a matter of time.”
Brenden was frowning heavily. “We need to think this through. I don’t like being told what to do any more than you.” His gaze flickered toward Mariana, then back to Billy. “But as much as I resent it, I don’t want to give up on…us. The possibility of us.” He stopped running his thumb over the table top and laid his hand on it, the fingers spread.
Truth time, Mariana realized.
“When I first realized what he was saying, I was relieved,” Brenden said. His voice was low. “It solves every dilemma and problem in one simple solution. It gives me exactly what I want.” He hesitated. “What I thought I wanted,” he added. “Now, I don’t know.”
“We need time,” Billy said. “Time to think.”
Mariana stifled a huge yawn. The shock was passing, but the bone-deep weariness from her restless night was returning.
“And sleep,” Brenden added. “So, let’s do that. No one should leave the island. Not yet, anyway. Not until we’ve all come to a decision. Whatever decision that might be. But for now we should all do exactly what we want to do. No pressure and room to think.” He stood up. “I’ll show you where you can sleep,” he told her.
The room he showed her to was clearly a guest bedroom, for it lacked any personal items and everything was neat and clean. The floor was cool tile and soft curtains fluttered at the open windows.
The open windows bothered Mariana. “Was someone here before we arrived?”
“Staff look after the house when Cáel isn’t here. He sent a message before we arrived, warning them. We won’t be interrupted while we’re here.”
Reassured, she slept for ten hours and woke to the cool of the evening. It was dark outside and in, but somewhere in the house, she could hear Brenden and Billy talking. She dressed and went to find them.
They were on the patio, where a sea breeze laden with salt was rippling the vines overhead. A small fire burned in the fire pit. As neither of them would feel cold or heat the way she did and it was not a cold night, the fire had been lit for the atmosphere it provided. It did look inviting.
Mariana sat on the broad stone bench built into the wall and curled her legs up on the colorful cushions. Brenden was sprawled on a cane loveseat, to her left. Billy was sitting opposite him, on a more modern cuddle-chair that had wrapped around his shoulders and hips and was rocking him gently.
Brenden got to his feet as she settled on the cushions. He picked up a straw-covered bottle and poured a glass of colorless liquid. “Ouzo.” He held the glass out to her. “Cáel’s family label. It’s very good.” He dipped the tip of his finger into her glass, then licked it. “You won’t feel any cold after that.”
“I don’t feel cold at all,” she assured him, but sipped the ouzo anyway. It was a strong flavor, but the aftertaste was mellow. “What have you two been doing while I slept?”
“I went swimming,” Billy said. “Brenden cooked. There’s dinner waiting for you when you want it.” He grinned. “I can put a meal together when I have to, but Brenden is better at it.”
“I interrupted your conversation, just now.”
“We were talking about fate.” Brenden spread his arms along the back of the loveseat and nodded toward Billy. “The Prussians had some fancy ideas about fate and predetermination. So do the Greeks and the Romans. The philosophers wrote whole books about fate.”
“There was a twentieth-century writer who said ‘Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess and you don’t find out 'til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.”
Brenden laughed and Billy looked at her with a raised brow.
Mariana shrugged. “It seems to fit with how we’re all feeling, right now.”
Billy leaned forward. “I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to feel that I have no choice in the matter.”
“Vikings believed that fate is predetermined,” Brenden said. “That it doesn’t matter what you chose to do, or how much you try to duck your fate, your actions will all lead you inevitably to where you are supposed to be.”
“That’s horribly pessimistic,” Billy said.
“It’s freeing,” Mariana said. “If it doesn’t matter what you do, then you’re free to do what you want, because nothing you do will change the outcome.”
Billy sat back again, thought-filled. “So what version do we believe? The idea that we can change the future? Or the one that says we can’t?”
“From a time traveler perspective,” Brenden said, “we know that the future can be changed. The Agency’s primary mission is to preserve history as we know it in order to maintain future outcomes. So that gives us two choices. We can do what the future is telling us. Or we don’t do it.”
“There’s a third choice,” Mariana added. “We can do what we want.”
Billy frowned. “It has merits. Throw everything we know of the future aside and follow our guts.”
“And hearts,” Brenden added softly. His gaze flickered toward Mariana, then back to Billy. “What do you want?”
“Didn’t we already talk about this?” Billy said, rubbing at the back of his neck.
“We all talked about what we had thought we wanted before Laszlo made us think differently,” Mariana said. “Forget all of that. Forget everything. It’s just the three of us. There’s no point being coy, or worrying about what we’ll think
about what you want. Truth is the only thing that will help us now. Agreed?”
Billy dropped his hand. “Agreed,” he said flatly.
“Brenden?”
“Truth is a slippery tool at the best of times,” he said warningly.
“It’s the only tool we have for now,” Billy said. “If you want to feel like you have any control over this at all, you have to use the truth to get what you want.”
Brenden shook his head. “It will turn and bite you, but okay. Truth.” Then he smiled. “You go first.”
Billy sat for a minute, then blew out his breath. “This is hard. I want you, of course.” He looked at Mariana. “But I’m drawn to you.”
“You’re ducking the full truth,” Mariana said softly. “You don’t just want Brenden.”
His gaze dropped to the ground. “No,” he admitted, his voice low. “I love him.”
Brenden sat motionless, his gaze on Billy. She thought that perhaps Billy’s confession had not touched him at all, but then she spotted the pulse in his neck, throbbing hard. His heart was beating. He was reacting, but in typical Brenden fashion was maintaining a stone face in case someone was watching.
Mariana finished the shot of ouzo. For courage. “I keep confusing you, Billy, with Laszlo. You’re the same person, but you’re not the Laszlo I know. Yet you act and sound the same…it’s disorienting, because I was falling in love with him. So I want you…and I love Brenden.”
Brenden’s gaze speared her. His dark eyes seemed to be saying something, but he didn’t speak.
Mariana stared back at him steadily. “So now the truth is out there. No one is bleeding yet. It’s your turn.”
“I don’t know what I want.” Brenden’s voice was low, his gaze on her. “I have avoided entanglements….” He blew out his breath. “I’ve avoided love,” he said flatly. “For years. Millennia. It’s too painful. Too…fleeting. So I just stopped. I knew, I think, in here—” and he pressed his knuckles against his chest, “that you were a danger.”
“You treated me like the enemy,” Mariana pointed out.
“You were.” He drew in another breath. It was unsteady. “I didn’t know until you kissed me that it was already too late. And Billy caught me by surprise, too. I had my guard up, but I wasn’t expecting to be hit from that direction.…”
“You fear love,” Billy said.
Brenden closed his eyes. “I thought I was avoiding human complications…but in the end it’s love I don’t want. Didn’t want.” Like Billy, he kept his gaze on the dancing flames of the fire. “Still don’t want,” he muttered. “Except Laszlo has me half-convinced it’s too late.”
Mariana shook her head. “So even what we want is tainted by knowing the future.”
Another of the painful, thick silences settled over them. Brenden and Billy stared at the fire. Mariana got up and poured herself another ouzo, to give herself something to do.
Billy stirred and looked at them. “Maybe we’re coming at this the wrong way. We keep trying to figure this out intellectually.”
“Because feelings are such a great guide,” Brenden said dryly.
“What about figuring it out physically?”
Brenden raised a brow. “You want to bed Mariana that badly?”
Billy shook his head. “I want to kiss her that badly. I haven’t, yet. She’s kissed me, but that was Laszlo. I have no idea what it will be like to kiss her. I have no doubt that it will be good. But if we can’t figure out what we want until we actually know what our options are.” His gaze locked with Brenden’s. “You’re one step ahead of me there.”
“And again, I repeat—she kissed me,” Brenden growled.
“At first,” Mariana added.
Billy grinned. “Tell me you didn’t enjoy it,” he dared Brenden.
“Of course I fucking enjoyed it!” Brenden flared. “I pulled her into my office yesterday morning with every intention of bending her over and picking up where she had left off…and you were ten feet away! I don’t trust myself with Mariana.”
“Because I’m merely human,” Mariana finished. Hurt touched her.
Brenden didn’t just look at her, he turned his whole body to face her. “Because you’re you!” he growled. “You’re human, but you’re incredibly smart, sexy and when you leave a room I can still smell you on my skin—for hours after—and it drives me crazy. I love the way your hips move when you walk. I love your hair now you’ve let it grow longer. I love that you were hauled into the agency and dumped in the middle of a bunch of overbearing, self-centered vampires and you held your own. You’ve changed. You’ve grown into this incredibly strong, efficient woman, the person who really keeps the agency on the rails. And throughout everything that we’ve pushed you into—all the time jumping, hiding out in the past, writing books and keeping stubborn vampires in line—in that whole time you have never once compromised your ideals. You still believe that vampires are good, that they’re worth fighting for. You stood up in front of the entire world and said so. I’ve lived hundreds of lives longer than you and I can stop a rampaging soldier in his tracks, but I don’t have the sort of courage you have. Christ above, I can’t even speak of love without hyperventilating.”
His gaze skittered away and returned to the flames.
“That sounded like a pretty decent declaration of love to me,” Billy said softly.
Brenden dropped his head into his hands, hiding his face.
“I think you should kiss me,” Mariana said. “In front of Billy, right here and right now. You need to know what you feel.”
Brenden lifted his head. “I know what I feel,” he said roughly.
“Kiss me for no other reason than you want to,” Mariana said. “No guilt, no worry about what Billy will think. Kiss me and see how you feel after that.”
For a moment, she thought he was going to continue to resist her, that she wasn’t enough to overcome his long, long life of hurts and disappointments and loneliness. But then he pushed himself out of the chair and leaned toward her and his lips pressed against hers.
Thought stopped. Time stopped.
She had thought the kiss could not possibly be as good as the first, especially if she was aware of a third person watching them. She had assumed that having Billy watch them kiss would make her feel awkward.
But awkward was the last thing she felt. There was a freedom in having Billy know it all, that the kiss was purely and simply a kiss, that she was free to enjoy for what it was—and it was heavenly.
Brenden pulled her closer, until their bodies were straining against each other. He was hot—human hot. She could feel his heart against her chest, pounding hard. He ended the kiss by slowly drawing away from her mouth, as if he was as reluctant as her to finish it. He was breathing hard and he looked into her eyes. Mariana didn’t want the moment to end.
“Wow!” Billy breathed, next to them.
She blinked as Brenden put her back on her feet and moved to his seat.
Billy gave a small cough. “I never considered myself a voyeur…until now.”
Mariana made her legs move. She walked over to Billy’s chair and leaned down slowly, telegraphing her intentions so that he had all the time in the world to move, or protest, or stop this. Then she kissed him.
It was like kissing Laszlo as it should have been, but there was a difference in quality. This time there was no hesitation. No doubt. An absence of second guessing herself and her motives. She wanted to kiss Billy, so she was.
There was a delicious wickedness to kissing him knowing that Brenden was watching.
Then Billy groaned and pulled her down into his lap, barely breaking the kiss. The chair adjusted around them, his arm pulled her up hard against his chest and he kissed her with a heated intensity that stole her breath and made her heart thunder. Her body tightened and she realized that she was clinging to Billy with all her strength, trying to draw him closer.
Billy’s mouth lifted from hers, then he pressed his lips against hers once
more. Then another. Hard, hungry touches.
If there was a single word that encompassed Billy, that would be it—hardness. Strength, too. Not just physical strength. There was a plasteel core in him that had endured heartbreak and disappointment and left him still optimistic about the future—hopeful enough to fall in love one more time.
Mariana rested her hand against his chest and felt the frantic beat of his heart.
Billy pushed her hair off her face and back over her shoulder with a soft brush of his hand. He looked puzzled. “From one kiss?” he asked.
“From one kiss, what?” Brenden demanded.
Mariana jumped. For a moment, she had forgotten he was there.
Billy’s arm tightened around her. “I want her as much as I want you. Two minutes ago, I didn’t understand your obsession. Now, I do.”
Mariana tried to sit up. “Now you must kiss Brenden,” she said.
“Not if I have to let you go.”
“I can fix that,” Brenden said, his voice back to the low growl. He moved around the fire and dropped to his knees in front of the chair, close enough that his stomach brushed Mariana’s elbow. He rested his big hand on her waist, then leaned over her and kissed Billy.
Hot pleasure fizzled through her as she watched their mouths move together from this very intimate vantage point.
Then Brenden groaned, the sound rumbling in his chest, right next to her. Mariana caught her breath and held it, as her excitement leapt to an even higher plane. She wriggled in Billy’s arm, unable to stay still. She wanted more, but she wanted to watch them together like this. It was an exquisite torment. They both had a hand resting on her and she wanted their hands to move, to stroke her.
Brenden tore his mouth away from Billy’s and looked down at her. His dark eyes were narrowed. Sleepy. “Anyone would think you liked that.”
“And they would be right.” Her voice was as rough as his.
Silence. This time it was filled with a taut waiting.
“Much more of this,” Billy said, “and I won’t be able to stop.”
“Don’t stop,” Mariana begged.
Billy looked at Brenden. “Do we stop?”
Spartan Resistance Page 29
