The Face of Scandal

by Helena Maeve

  “He will,” Dylan said from somewhere behind them. “Next time.”

  A shiver raced through Ward. Hazel felt it as though it rippled over her own flesh and reached back to bring his lips to hers. She’d never expected to find herself in the position to comfort a lover—not with her checkered history and pernicious habit of saying the wrong thing. Then again, she hadn’t expected to want to share a lover after Malcolm’s mind games, either, but here she was.

  With her hand around his wrist, she led Ward’s fingertips down the slope of her belly, over the slick, coarse blonde hair at the apex of her thighs.

  Don’t think about next time. Think about me.

  Dylan was right. She was greedy and she was easy for them. A gentle, fluttering touch was enough to have her squirming in Ward’s lap, her nipples stabbing the air as she arched her spine. So close, so close—

  “Can’t leave you two alone for five seconds,” Dylan clucked, forcibly seizing Ward’s wrist and pulling his hand away. “Did I say you could make her come?”

  “It was implied?”

  Hazel couldn’t see his grin, but she heard it loud and clear, over the rush of adrenaline pumping in her bloodstream. She had no trouble making out Dylan’s efforts to conceal a smile. Admit it, you love us. Before she could risk her neck—or rather, her climax—on a taunt, he looped a finger around her leather collar and yanked her none too gently out of Ward’s arms. “You, too,” he said, when Ward made no move to follow them.

  “Maybe I could get a leash. You know. Next time…”

  “Maybe you could get a gag this time,” Dylan retorted. “On the bed.”

  For all his quips, Ward wasted no time flipping onto his back in the center of Dylan’s mattress. Previously pristine navy sheets contrasted beautifully with his pale skin. Hazel would’ve gladly stood by and watched him jerk off if Dylan asked her to.

  He had other ideas.

  “Straddle him,” he urged Hazel.

  “Oh, fuck yeah…” Ward laced his hands behind his head, the picture of debauchery with a crooked grin.

  It was barely a year since they’d met and Hazel decided, during the course of a tenuous first meeting, that he was too cocky and stuck-up to like. The thought of sinking onto his cock back then would’ve struck her as a cosmic joke. But there was no disguising how profoundly she reveled in the slight burst of air that escaped his lips when she eased down his stiff length.

  He didn’t rush her, though he must’ve known Hazel was loose and ready, that he couldn’t hurt her. Some hang-ups were too deeply rooted to eradicate in a year’s time.

  Hazel brought his hands to her hips, smiling shakily. “I’m really close.”

  “Hear that, old man?” Ward smirked. “Best figure out your next move fast.”

  Taunts were currency in the loft these days. Ward traded in them more readily than either Hazel or Dylan. He seemed to find it easier to challenge than to ask, or to admit he wanted to try something new.

  “You say that like it’s a given that our girl’s going to get what she wants,” Dylan mused, sliding in between Ward’s legs. He grasped Hazel’s shoulders in his delicate, long-fingered hands and unceremoniously bent her forward. “She doesn’t call the shots here.”

  Fire licked at Hazel’s veins as she fell into Ward’s arms. The brush of his chest against her aching nipples was enough to trigger a moan.

  “I’m intrigued,” Ward admitted.

  Hazel gasped out a laugh. “I’m terrified.” Don’t stop.

  Dylan knew better. He used two fingers, slicked with lube, to slide up her folds to the stretch of her cunt around Ward’s dick. On its own, the caress would’ve driven her crazy, but Dylan pressed in, working his digits in alongside Ward.

  Both of them swore, but Hazel thought she did it louder.

  “Relax for me,” Dylan said, stroking her hip. It wasn’t a request.

  They had done fists and inflatable dildos before, although Hazel hadn’t gotten much out of the latter. It was hard to opt for a plastic cock when she had two warm, slick specimens to choose from. She was lucky that her lovers knew how to fuck her with them. Those nights when they were all up for a little adult play were the highlights of Hazel’s week. She didn’t care if she had trouble sitting down the next day. Her work involved a lot of dashing around, anyway.

  After a minute or so in which Hazel was sure Ward had stopped breathing, Dylan eased his fingers free. He pressed his chest to her back, leaning to nuzzle at her ear. “Ward and I are going to fuck you. Together. You can come if you want.”

  “If I can,” Hazel panted, only half-joking. She was keenly aware of the stretch, of Ward thrusting into her with small, aborted movements.

  Dylan gave her a moment to make up her mind. She knew the magic word to make everything stop. She didn’t say it.

  She had only herself to blame for the slow, agonizing sensation of Dylan working his cock inside her alongside Ward’s. It was a tight fit, neither of them average, and her vaginal walls pulled tautly around them, straining to accommodate their combined girth.

  Ward kissed her ear, her cheek, whatever parts of her he could reach. His voice was a litany of unearned praise reminding her how good she was to them, how beautiful she looked right now. Dylan slid back until only the head of his erection remained inside Hazel, and pumped his hips forward again, giving away the lie of that last compliment.

  Hazel locked her elbows as she propped herself up. “Oh, sweet fuck.”

  “Too much?” Ward asked.

  He seemed sympathetic to her plight, but that impression might have been colored by the blur of tears obscuring Hazel’s vision. She shook her head frantically. It was just the right amount of pain and pleasure, the precise harmony between desire and discomfort to help take her out of her head.

  As Dylan picked up the pace, rubbing against Ward’s cock as well as her tight channel, Hazel lost herself to the cadence of their slapping flesh, thrilled by the echo of skin on skin, of groans rising in pitch as her boys chased their own need.

  Ward dug fingers into her hips, holding her to him as he choked off a moan. She knew he was coming before he thrust up, once and violently, spilling warm into her. The tendons in his neck stood out in the hellish orange afternoon glow as he arched his head into the pillows and surrendered.

  Hazel ducked her head and bit down at the joint of neck and shoulder, riding him through his orgasm as her own built and built. Her cunt clutched at his spent length and Dylan’s relentless erection, until she could take no more. Pleasure swelled, then ebbed, then swelled again, an endless undertow tugging her down whenever she thought she was about to surface.

  Some of that she blamed on Dylan, who fucked her through each quaking shiver—methodically, at first, then with less and less control, his rhythm falling apart in those winded, gasping moments before he followed suit.

  Boneless and glossy with perspiration, Hazel climbed off Ward as soon as Dylan would give her the space to move. She made it to one side of the mattress and no farther before her elbows gave out.

  “Fuck me,” she surmised, with great emphasis.

  “Indeed,” Dylan agreed.

  Ward was the dividing line between them, his ribcage rising and falling like a bellows that periodically concealed Dylan from Hazel’s single open eye.

  It wasn’t only once she’d rolled over that she saw the tangle of their clothes scattered over the bedroom floor and the books spilled from the bedside table—her books, from school. Dylan’s mystery novels lay on the other side of the bed, as well as in Ward’s room, strewn around wherever the three of them decided to make their bed for the night. The wreckage was familiar, safe.

  Hazel ran a hand down her belly to cup her throbbing pussy. She could still feel them inside her, thick and warm, hers in every way that mattered. She couldn’t remember why she’d ever harbored insecurities over this. A sense of contentment settled over her, stretching into the pleasurable afterglow as she listened to Ward and Dylan kiss.
/>   She joined them after a moment, trading caresses and easy laughs as they all came down from their shared high.

  “We still on for dinner at your folks’?” Hazel wondered as she propped herself up on her elbow.

  Dylan nodded into the curve of Ward’s pectoral before pressing teeth into flushed skin.

  “Shouldn’t we start getting ready?”

  “Soon,” Ward decided, and pulled her down into the tangle of limbs and kisses and wandering hands that seemed to come so naturally after a good fuck.

  Hazel extricated herself after a while and grabbed her peignoir from the ottoman at the foot of the bed. At least that hadn’t been trampled during their romp. “I’m making coffee,” she announced. “Try not to share the shower. You know what happens when you do.”

  “Gets so much more enjoyable?” Ward quipped.

  The echo of their play-wrestling trailed her out of the bedroom.

  The loft hadn’t changed much over the past months. It was still minimalist and austere—an apartment designed to suit the tastes and needs of two bachelors. But now the walk-in wardrobes concealed handbags and kitten heels as well as Ward’s impressive collection of leather belts. Dylan’s pantry made room for the brand of cereal Hazel liked best. She had infiltrated their domain so thoroughly that sometimes it felt as if she’d always lived here.

  Only right, Hazel told herself as she loaded up the espresso machine. She paid half the bills, while Ward got used to being their kept man for a while. It was a better deal than having him pull his weight by struggling to hold together a moribund company.

  He was happier now. They all were.

  Hazel snagged her phone off the kitchen island while she waited for her coffee to brew. The video app loaded at a touch. She checked it less and less these days, but still religiously enough for Dylan to lovingly dub it her habit. Hazel smiled. It was too easy. Without sound, she didn’t have to worry about headphones and the small screen made it perfect to load up her own little home movie in waiting rooms and restaurants, while she idled in line at the DMV or in a coffee shop.

  She hit the play button.

  On a windy ledge in the Santa Monica Mountains, Malcolm sauntered cockily into frame. Like Hazel six years earlier, he didn’t yet know that the whole world was watching.

  Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:

  Wild After Dark: Beyond the Poison Chalice

  Helena Maeve

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Along the river, the fires had finally burned down to timid, smoky wisps rising little by little into the night sky. If I strained my eyes, I could pick out the bodies arranged like soldiers at the foot of the arch. Only char and silver buckles remained. I’d been thorough this time. No runaways to call for reinforcements, no lapses of judgment to come back and bite me in the ass. Mercy was costly.

  As I smoothed a pleat in my camel-hair coat, my fingers caught on a rough, murky patch. I wrinkled my nose. Blood washed out, but still. I stood violently, my boots pelting the concrete a hundred feet below with a rain of loose pebbles. It served me right for wearing my favorite coat on the job.

  I made a mental note to keep an eye for some of that witch-hazel soap at the market come Sunday night. Maybe washing powder, assuming I found any. I kicked up from the ledge, landing in a barrel roll from which I rose smoothly, if a little dusty.

  The Mom and Pop stores had gone bust decades ago, yet still I picked my way over their rooftops like a ghost. A whole five hundred people slept below, some underground, most not. I kept the streets clear, didn’t make a fuss when my fee was late, and we all went on pretending the quarter was naturally more peaceful than all surrounding boroughs—all except the south side.

  Most of us tried not to dwell on what went on in the south side if we could help it.

  I crept down at the end of the block, grabbing hold of a gutter to slow my descent before I hit the ground. My landing was smooth and silent, like a gust of wind rippling across the concrete. I blew a strand of blonde hair out of my eyes as I stalked across the potholed tarmac.

  A faint breeze was blowing in from the north, ferrying in the blessed chill of winter. I was looking forward to the long-delayed snows. Humans generally lost their appetite for conquest in glacial weather. Long nights kept them cloistered in well-defended strongholds, provisions aplenty to shield them from itinerants of my kind. Bad weather heralded peace, for the most part.

  My smile soured at the notion. I had no grounds to complain, but we should have found better ways to grow our numbers by now.

  The next fork in the road presented a range of options. A left would take me to the roadhouse by the Mississippi and open the door to Antwan’s bottomless supply of moonshine. I’d curl up in the back of the bar and let him tell me about his day until the first blades of sunshine crept through the window. Or I could take a right and make for the nearest manhole. A splash of pink-and-green graffiti on the grille of an ancient bakery invited me to renounce the Devil, which was no choice at all, seeing as I was purportedly cut from the same cloth.

  The humans I’d recently dispatched certainly believed so. They hurled slurs like silver bullets, all equally ineffective.

  I slowed my steps. Echoes drifted from across the street, bearing the feeble sounds of a struggle. None of my business. The last time I’d interrupted what I assumed was a werewolf getting a little handsy with a new pack initiate, I’d nearly lost a limb.

  I made to continue my journey to Antwan’s, already fantasizing about the sharp burn of homemade liquor as it slid down my throat.

  A growl cleaved the silence of the night. I stopped in my tracks.

  Once, I would’ve had to watch out for cars zooming along the streets like motorized arrowheads, red-eyed humans clutching their steering wheels and seeing nothing. No more. I’d cleared the streets of troublemakers a long time ago. Antwan’s people should’ve known better.

  I tracked the racket into the shadows. My eyes adjusted quickly, but still I registered the scene in a series of flashes, like snapshots from a movie.

  Two bloodsuckers ganging up on a lone wolf. Click. Blood smeared on his collar and staining the front of his checkered shirt. Click. The fetid scent of human fear wafting in the air like a white flag. Click. The human himself, backed into a corner, his blown-open eyes darting nervously in the low light.

  Here was trouble.

  I greeted the scent of an impending brawl with a scrape of my boot against the pavement. Four pairs of eyes zeroed on me with a mixture of disbelief and hostility.

  No one is ever pleased to see me, why is that? It was almost enough to hurt my feelings.

  “Well, this is awkward,” I drawled. “I thought we agreed all territorial squabbles go through me.”

  I recognized the vampires. One of them overnighted two dead-ends away from my place. His appetite for skinny white wolves had thrust him onto my radar before, yet his name escaped me.

  “Claudia,” snarled his companion, a redhead with Pippi Longstocking tresses. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “You don’t say… Should I wait until Antwan stakes you both before I take an interest?”

  I wasn’t in the mood to put up with property disputes and the alpha of the local pack was gallingly intransigent when it came to blood debts. For the most part, we saw eye-to-eye. My schedule was nailed to every door—Wednesdays were tribunal days at his bar. Every other day of the week, residents of the quarter were kindly requested to keep their fangs, claws and tomahawks sheathed, and leave me to my job.

  “Oh, come on,” the redhead sneered. “Phil and I can take him.”

  “Yeah, it’s not fucking fair to jump in at the eleventh hour and claim the prize!”

  I swept a glance over the foursome. “Prize?”

  Phil grinned at me, eyes glazed with bloodlust. “Can’t you smell him?” He jerked his blond head toward the human.

  I scented the air. At first the refuse from a nearby dumpster made it difficult to
detect anything more than rotten meat and raw sewage. Then I inhaled a perfume at once sweet and dark, like sandalwood and mint—like spring mornings back when I could still enjoy them topside.

  It was intoxicating.

  “What is that?”

  “I know, right?” Phil fitfully raked a hand through corn-silk hair. He was all but bounding with excitement. “I found him, so I get dibs.”

  The werewolf had planted himself between the wide-eyed human and us. He growled when Phil swayed forward. “One more step and I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”

  Shadow gave way to a hirsute visage and glowing red eyes. I had no doubt there was sincerity behind the threat, but the wolf was outnumbered. The odds were not in his favor no matter how good a fighter he was.

  “Idiot,” Phil’s ginger-haired companion scoffed. “Don’t you know who this is?” It took me a moment to notice that she was pointing at me.

  Phil picked up the jeer. “Yeah, doesn’t the name Salizar mean anything to you?”

  “Salizar is a man,” the wolf rumbled, his voice deep and husky, like he’d been doing a lot of shouting lately.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” Phil followed the snarl with a spirited handclap. “Even better! Antwan won’t be on my case when you die.”

  I felt the air stir around him a fraction of a second before he leaped. The wolf dug his heels into the asphalt, bracing for a blow that never came.

  Phil crashed into the brick wall like a sack of potatoes, shaking a few slabs loose as he hit the ground. He hadn’t noticed me snatch a hand around his nape and hurl him aside until he was airborne. He looked confused when he landed. His little friend snarled at me, baring fangs.

  “If you know what’s good for you,” I breathed, “you’ll take Phil and get lost.” I seldom bothered with warnings.

  My young adversary didn’t seem to appreciate the courtesy. She came at me as if in slow motion. I had plenty of time to duck and clobber her over the head with an elbow. Tendrils of pain snaked up my arm to kindle in my skull even as I heard hers creak.