The Gifted 2: Passions Aflame (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Cara Covington

  “Because like any secret,” Ryan said, “over time, their knowledge would have been corrupted.” Then he lifted her hand and brought it to his lips. “I don’t think they’re going to wait. I think they’re going to come at us tomorrow.”

  “Can we, the three of us, work a protection for here so we can sleep and not worry?” Jeremy asked. “You’re exhausted, baby. We all are.”

  “One of the facts you should know about our magic is that it’s a living force in its own right. When I don’t know the answer to something, I look within, and, usually, the answer is given to me.” She could have answered him, but she wanted them to know as much as possible about the gift they’d been given—just in case.

  Meghan kept silent and watched as they did just that, as they communed with their magic. She didn’t listen in. It was more as if she stood a distance off and knew they were conversing but she had no idea what was being asked or answered. She did, however, know the exact moment they left mind space and were back with her completely.

  “Huh.” Jeremy turned to face her. He propped himself up on his arm so he could look down on her. Ryan did the same.

  “Would you like to explain that?”

  She didn’t pretend to misunderstand Ryan’s question. “One of the things that Cheri noticed was that the Fortunas she dealt with couldn’t, for some reason, see her power, not just how strong it was but even that she had any at all. She said that, until she’d encountered them, she hadn’t understood the concept of male chauvinism.”

  “What does that have to do with your concern that we might not have much time to be together? That you might not have much more time to live?”

  She didn’t even consider lying to them. “It’s you they want to kill, and I think, judging by everything that happened tonight, going forward, they might think the best way to do that is to distract you by one of them attacking me.”

  “Is that so?” Jeremy asked.

  “Yes, that is so. That means, when the time comes, you have to pretend I’m not there. You need to focus on them and not let them pull that particular string. Because, while you’re trying to protect me, it might cost you your life.”

  “And while we pretend you’re not there, what will you be doing? Exactly?” Ryan met her gaze as he asked that question. Meghan had one moment to wish she hadn’t told them she couldn’t ever lie to them.

  “I thought I’d go all theatrical and distract them. They have some weird ideas about our powers. So I think I’ll turn their preconceived notions inside out and upside down. Draw their attention to me, so you’re both free to focus on them.” That was the truth. The further truth was that she would gladly sacrifice herself, if it would keep the men she loved safe.

  * * * *

  Jeremy kept his gaze fixed on Meghan’s. He was tempted—very tempted—to peek inside her mind and see what she was thinking. It was only his honor that held him back. Well, that and knowing that she hadn’t barged in on him and Ryan moments before. She’d given them their privacy. Good thing because he doubted she knew just what his magic had told him. Remembering the words now sent a chill down his spine.

  She would place herself in harm’s way to protect both you and your brother.

  It had been one more surprise to him that, when he’d actually spoken to his power, it had answered him back. Unable to resist, he slipped back inside, back into mind space to ask one more question.

  Yeah, I got that she’d sacrifice herself in a heartbeat. Any suggestions on how I should handle this situation?

  His magic remained frustratingly silent.

  “Figures.” Ryan said that out loud. Jeremy hadn’t even been aware that his brother had joined him in on that little quest.

  Meghan looked between them. “I don’t think you understand how much I love you both. I had no idea, before Cheri met her mates, that there would be danger for any of us. I never imagined there would be anyone willing to hurt, or even kill, to prevent the prophecy from coming to fruition.”

  Jeremy nodded. She would blame herself for bringing this threat on him and Ryan. “You’ve led a sheltered life, for all that you grew up in a magical place. But just as destiny is and magic is, so, too, sweetheart, evil is.” He reached down and stroked her cheek. “Little tiger, do you know that if anything happened to you, I wouldn’t want to go on living?”

  “What Jeremy just said.” Ryan raised himself up so that he was above her. “Now that we’re safe, and they can’t touch us, or even look in, we’ll make a plan for tomorrow. After.”

  “After?”

  Jeremy reached for the sheet covering her and drew it off her body. “Yes, after.” He looked to his brother. He appreciated more than he could say that Ryan had stepped back that first time with Meghan and allowed him the incredible privilege of being the one to receive the gift of Meghan’s virginity. It was something he’d needed in a way that, even now, he couldn’t put into words.

  But from the very beginning, Ryan had been the leader to his follower. Then, when Jeremy had needed it most, Ryan had stepped in to be his brother’s keeper. He still did that on occasion.

  Not this time.

  This time, Jeremy wanted to give back—to gift Ryan with what he needed—and that was, for this moment, to be the first. Ryan nodded, clearly getting the message.

  “We know there are words—sacred words—that we’ll speak when the threat is done.” Ryan caressed Meghan from the space between her breasts to her navel. “Those words we’ll say together, the three of us, when we have time to celebrate properly. But there’s something we can do now, to let you know—to let the universe know—that we’ve made our choice, Jeremy and I. We’ve both chosen to be your mates, Meghan Clark, your husbands, and to have you as our mate, our wife.”

  “We’re going to love you, little tiger, here and now, together. We’re going to become one flesh, together.”

  The light in Meghan’s eyes told him they’d surprised her. The tiny tear that escaped to track past her eye as she lay there naked and between them told him they’d pleased her.

  And when she reached for them both, when she caressed his cheek and slid her hand around his neck and drew him down, he knew that finally—finally—he’d found his forever home.

  Chapter 14

  Meghan sighed as Jeremy’s flavor seeped into her. She loved the taste of him, the heat and the heart of him that came through in his kiss. As she gave herself to the moment, as she drenched herself in him, she rejoiced in knowing that he’d be a part of her until the day she died.

  Movement on the other side of her found her easing her lips from one mate and seeking out the other. She turned her head and dove into Ryan, relishing his flavor and his passion, drawing both into her very soul.

  She’d never known how lonely she’d been all her life until she’d met these two men. Never realized there’d been a piece of her heart and her soul missing until these two chose her to be their mate.

  Now she was complete.

  But they were still three, and she needed desperately for them to be one—one heart, one mind, one body, and one soul—and one flesh, never again to be alone.

  Eventually, when they actually became mates, they’d also be one font of magic that would bind them and protect them forever.

  Ryan lifted his head, giving her as intense a look as she’d ever known. His gaze was so full of heat she swore she felt it warming every inch of her. And then Jeremy stroked her, throat to pussy. When she turned to face him, he lifted her onto his chest.

  Meghan parted her legs and wiggled so the lips of her pussy would part and drape his cock like a hot, moist blanket. The tip of his cockhead pressed against the base of her clit, and she shivered.

  It wouldn’t take much for her to come, but orgasm wasn’t the goal just now.

  “I don’t want to wear a condom anymore.” Jeremy said. “You gave me your virginity, so I know you’re safe. Ryan and I were tested a few months ago. There’s been no one for either of us since, so we both are, to
o. From now on, we want to be naked inside your pussy.”

  “Yes, please.” She had a vision, a split-second vision of a tiny baby nursing at her breast. The idea that she might soon become pregnant was the most erotic turn-on she’d ever experienced.

  Jeremy lifted her again but just a few inches. Meghan reached down and grasped his cock, placing it at the entrance of her pussy. They both sighed when he lowered her onto his shaft.

  It felt so good, having one of her men’s cocks, hot and hard, deep inside her pussy. She closed her eyes and just felt.

  Ryan was on his knees beside them. He brushed his hand down her back and then pressed. She understood his unspoken command immediately. She laid her head on Jeremy’s chest, leaving her ass as high in the air as possible. She wanted to make it as easy as she could for him to give them all what they wanted the most—connection.

  Ryan used two fingers to coat her rosebud with lube. Her nipples drew into tight pebbles, and her pussy drenched Jeremy’s cock as he massaged up and down. Pressing inward, Ryan coated her well, and Meghan moaned because doing only this much increased her arousal.

  “You really love that,” Jeremy said.

  She heard the wonder in his voice. “Yes, I really do. It gets me so horny.” Unable to resist the urge, she used her inner muscles to squeeze his cock.

  “Little tiger, you have such amazing muscle control. I love when you do that.”

  Meghan grinned and repeated the gesture. In the next instant she gasped. Ryan had moved and was pressing his condom-covered cock against her anus. He leaned over her, his entire body behind the pressure of his cock seeking entry to her body as he began to penetrate her rosebud.

  Hot, hungry burning morphed, as it had before, into hot, hungry pain. There was something about this pain that seemed to reach out to all her erogenous zones at the same time. Only this time, it was even more than that.

  A hum of energy, exciting, tantalizing, started deep, deep inside her body. She imagined a passion center, even more potent than her G-spot, which began to glow with the first spark of arousal. As Ryan’s cock breached her sphincter, as he began to sink into her ass, that passion center became hotter, deeper, and more thrilling than anything she’d ever even imagined.

  “My God.” Ryan’s tone spoke of sexual excitement and wonder. “Do you feel that?”

  “Hot holy hell.” Jeremy’s libido-laced tone told her he, too, was experiencing the wonder of this moment.

  “I feel...I feel...” Meghan couldn’t put the sensation into words. Every nerve ending in her body, every breath of air, every drop of blood, began to rejoice in the sensation of being completely full of her mate’s cocks. Then when they began to move, slow and steady, in and out and so perfectly coordinated, Meghan could only absorb the thrill of their thrusting and the pleasure of their penetration. They ensured that she remained full of at least one lover at all times as they moved to the music of the magic within them.

  Then the world fell away and they were only the three, and only the one. Light and music surrounded them as their powers shimmered and danced, three beautiful pallets of color—blue, green, and white-pink opal—came alive and rejoiced and nearly, nearly, touched.

  It happened in an instant, that rush and leap and then the amazing, enthralling eruption of ecstasy. Rapture flooded and flowed through them, from her men into her and from her back to them. On and on the climax pulsed, taking them to a place so sacred that reverence permeated every atom of the air surrounding them. The pulsing cocks in her body spent the last of their heated jism inside her. She shivered with pleasure because fiery, liquid heat—condom covered against her ass and silky and seeping inside her pussy—teased the end of her bliss, an additional little orgasmic “pop” that zapped the last of her strength.

  “Meghan.” Ryan’s lips brushed her shoulder, his tone worshipful. He tented her, his heat now hers, as he fought for breath.

  “I love you both so much.” She placed a kiss on Jeremy’s chest and then turned her head so she could just see Ryan, still tenting her and struggling for breath. “You’ve made me whole. Thank you.”

  Jeremy’s hands caressed her head and her back, and his fingers combed through her hair. “You’ve done that and more for us, love. You, Meghan Clark, are the answer to every question we have ever asked and the destination of every journey we’ve ever undertaken.”

  “As long as we have each other, no one can hurt us.” Hot breath bathed those words into the flesh of her neck.

  Meghan sighed as Ryan’s words wrapped her in comfort. Sleep beckoned, drawing her down into its depths.

  Sated, she slept.

  * * * *

  “They won’t turn away from the path they’ve chosen. In truth, Roman, their choice was made a long time ago.”

  Roman lounged against the wall beside the window, his hands comfortably in his jeans pockets, his body relaxed in the familiar environment. His gaze looked out into the night. He could see through the darkness to the manicured lawns that stretched out in all directions from this small, very well guarded house in the middle of a large tract of land.

  The guards were at their posts, their gazes fixed on their security monitors that showed them their charge—their prisoner—slept soundly. It was, after all, the middle of the night.

  But the guards were all non-powered humans and the technology they used very easy to overcome—for himself, and for the person he visited.

  “Vincente and Emilio were given several opportunities to turn away from the course they’d chosen.” Roman said. “I know that Mario and Pietro have been given the same chance already—and will receive yet another one, tomorrow, from the three. Even knowing that they can no longer accomplish the mission that Father sent them on, they refuse to withdraw. I’m afraid they will meet a similar end as our eldest brothers.”

  “If they do, it is the result of the choices they’ve already made. You know that. It’s not on you.”

  “Isn’t it? Did they make those choices, really? Or are they being played, being goaded into taking these final steps into the flames instead of turning away toward safety?” Roman recalled when Father had shown them all that newspaper article about Meghan Clark—how he’d not only created it himself, Roman had discovered, but totally misrepresented the facts.

  The old man stayed silent for a time. Roman looked over to him and marveled at the physical and moral differences between this man, and his twin. While they’d been identical at birth, and identical through all of their adolescent years, now the divergence between them was stark.

  Roman thought it the height of irony that the one deemed crazy was completely sane while the one believed sane had, in fact, fallen into the depths of madness years before.

  “I suspect you may have the right of it. For years, Gregor has groomed his sons to seek the prize of his favor. He’s filled their heads and their hearts with lies, and molded them into the men they’ve become. Is he strong enough to use his power from here to override their will? To press Mario and Pietro to carry on without their being aware of him doing so? I would have said no, but I have to admit that, in truth, I don’t know the answer to that. He believes he drained me of my magic, and he did, but only temporarily. My power no more left me forever than it became his forever. In fact, it never became his at all.”

  “He’s not left his home office since Mario and Pietro departed for North Carolina.” Roman frowned. “I know he’s procured a few old spell books over the years, as well as having amassed several amulets, some with historical significance but none with any real magic.”

  “Yes, he’s been obsessed for a long time, trying to make more of the power he was born with, trying to enhance his own abilities. In the beginning, he had some success. But madness has been taking more and more of his mind, and madness, as it will, distorts the magic.”

  “That which was steel gray inside him has become darker, most notably in the last year. Father’s power is nearly black with the rot of evil.”

  “So,
he might very well be blinding his own sons to the dangers they face. And you, Roman? Looking, I can see that you’ve made peace with the events of last month.”

  “I regret the necessity for my actions but not my actions themselves. There is more at stake here than the lives of a handful of people.” He looked down for a moment and then turned to face the older man. “We are all of us governed by the choices we make in this life. Be we Warlocks or what Father erroneously calls mortals—or even the Gifted—we all earn our own rewards, or our own punishments.”

  “Yes.” The old man sighed. “And I know you will continue to do what you must. I regret that it’s you who must answer the call of destiny in this way.”

  “I’ve always known the flavor of my future, if not the actual meat of it.” He walked over and took the chair that was identical to the one already occupied. A wave of his hand produced a pot of fresh coffee and a bottle of liqueur.

  “Ah, thank you.” The old man used his own magic to pour out three quarters of a cup of strong black coffee in each mug and a healthy portion of the Drambuie to season it.

  Roman took a moment to drink some of the steaming beverage. He nodded, and their surroundings changed, the décor now more rustic and more comfortable. He’d brought them to the old crofter’s cottage on a parcel of land he owned in Scotland. The peat fire burned softly, and the scent of it mixed with the aroma of coffee and liquor.

  “Very nice, thank you. I quite like this place of yours.”

  “I know you do. Would you like to stay here this time?”

  “Not quite yet. But once this latest ‘mission’ your brothers are on fails then, yes, please. I think it’s time for me to gain a little bit of my independence back—and maybe a measure of inner peace, as well.”

  “I think so too, Uncle Remis. He won’t find you. I won’t let him.”

  “I know you won’t. It isn’t me he has to face in the end, in any event. I’m sorry for that too, Roman. In fact, that is my one true regret.” Remis Fortuna sighed. “Your father is my twin. It should be my responsibility to face him.”