Blacke and Blue

by Fiona Blackthorne

  “So, is that what you two are?” Her voice was curious but still wary.

  “Yeah,” Ian rubbed the back of his neck. “After Ger was born, Mom went to Elkville to have me. I could leave Blue Moon, and I did go to college out of state because, well, it’s complicated and has to do with the fact that now the state tracks graduation rates and college attendance and all that. We can’t afford to draw attention to Blue Moon by being too different than any other town.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  Ian’s gaze flickered up at Ger and he smiled, and Ger felt the force of his brother’s love and loyalty hit him like a blast of sunlight.

  “Because, Trisha,” Ian replied. “This is my home, and Ger is my family.”

  Ger reached out and stroked Trisha’s cheek, the movement freeing the hot tears that had gathered in her eyes, and he was glad to be the one to wipe them away.

  “Wait,” she hiccupped, and he pulled back, knowing she needed space for her sanity and dignity to process everything, and somehow deeply satisfied to know that he already understood their woman so well.

  “I just need to think for a minute,” she said, and Ger smiled inwardly. “I mean, I know what I saw last night, and I’m starting to accept that I just saw Ger and the other guys, uh, shift into wolves. The whole demon thing though is…”

  “Completely bizarre,” Ian finished for her, nodding. “And, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe it, not just yet. You don’t have to believe it ever if you don’t want to. But, that’s the explanation of why and how Ger and the others change into wolves.”

  “Um, and the thing about the full moon?” Trisha asked. “Silver being lethal? All that stuff?”

  Ger laughed and kissed Trisha’s hair. “We have full control of our abilities at all times. The full moon comes and goes, but we don’t change because of it. Our existence was tied to the presence of the demons. Though, it’s odd that now they are gone we still can change to wolves.”

  Ian got up and walked over to his clothes. “Ava, Grace, and Doctor Nasir are working on that. Last I heard, they think it might be because the shifting is somehow biological, maybe bound to the DNA. So, unless the DNA changes, you won’t change. You’ll stay a shifter.”

  “Gives whole new meaning to the term ‘gene therapy,’” Trisha said wryly, leaning her head on Ger’s shoulder and sighing.

  Without thinking, he wrapped his arms around her, thanking God for the chance to experience her warm skin and soft form tucked against him once more. His hands roamed the lines of her bare back, lingering in the curve where waist turned to hip before sliding down to run his fingertips over the soft roundness of her bottom.

  He felt the slight shiver of her body against him, and he kissed the tender spot behind her ear where neck and jaw met. This time, she rewarded him with a quick gasp, and he grinned against her skin.

  His free hand tugged the sheet down from her breasts, caressing them and cupping them each in his hand to feel their weight. The shift of Trisha’s hips against the mattress told him she was becoming aroused. He looked over to Ian, only to find that his brother had slipped out of the room. Gratitude ran warm and deep in his blood at Ian’s thoughtfulness at giving him time alone with her, to love her, to heal with her. He’d make sure Ian had the same chance. Soon.

  He caught a glimpse of the way she bit into her bottom lip as he thumbed her nipples, first one, then the other, bringing them to a stiff little stand. Her thighs parted slightly, and he had to resist the urge to slip his fingers into her and play with her clit. No, in this pure morning light, he would take her slowly and show her without words what he was so grateful to have after coming so close to losing it.

  Gently, he lowered her down onto her back and kissed her lips tenderly. God, everything about her was so soft! She was so soft and fragile in this moment. The vulnerability and unshed tears in her eyes tore at his heart even as it healed him. He would never betray that trust. He would never again hold secrets from her. He would show her that his respect and love for her knew no limit, no sacrifice too much, no pleasure too small.

  In a moment of silence and stillness, he sought to tell her this with his eyes, looking deep into her clear gaze and even searching deeper in the black of her pupil for her soul. She blinked, and the tears spilled over, running down the sides of her temples to land in perfect little drops against her hair on the pillow.

  “I love you,” she whispered hoarsely.

  And that was all it took.

  His heart expanded until he didn’t know how his body could hold it. He slid into her wetness, the heat welcoming him home, and the tightness telling him how much he belonged there.

  Slowly, oh so slowly, he swung in and out of her. The extended sensation of friction was almost his undoing, but he gritted his teeth and focused on her. He snaked his hand between them and softly brushed his callused thumb against her clit. A series of quick, gentle downward strokes against the nub had her writhing and crying out beneath him, the undulation of her hips doing amazing things to the way her pussy clenched around him.

  Through his own shimmering, distorted heat haze of passion, he watched as Trisha flung her arms out to the side and threw her head back. The wolf in him panted with desire at the sight of her bared neck. The man in him swelled with pride at his sweet dominance of her. She was so free in that moment, so vulnerable yet invincible, forever protected by his love and strength that she could finally be completely herself, soul-bared and safe.

  Moving steadily with her hips, Ger picked a path of kisses snaking between her breasts and up the side of her neck. He dropped his lips onto hers, pausing to hiss as he fought to hold back when she squeezed him with her inner walls. Her eyes flew open at the sound, and suddenly, he was drowning in blue.

  He kissed her again, keeping his eyes open and fixed on hers, rapidly losing the ability to think and quickly thereafter the desire to go slowly when she wrapped her arms and legs around him.

  He quickened the strokes of his cock and the strokes of his finger, and she came against him, her body bowing and tightening against him. He thrust hard and felt the instant of blind nothingness as ecstasy pulsed through him, emptying himself into her.

  Trisha’s light chuckle roused him from the stupor of pleasure and love he was drifting in as he supported his weight above her on his elbows. He lazily opened his eyes and grinned at her. She quirked an eyebrow.

  “Can I have my coffee now?” she teased.

  Ger grinned wider. He was never one to argue with perfection.

  Chapter 27

  Trisha gritted her teeth at the matching knowing grins that greeted her when she came down the stairs with Ger a while later. Maria and Ian looked as if their faces would split if they smiled any wider.

  Thankfully, there was no addition to the body count that morning because Ian silently handed Trisha her coffee and turned back to Maria.

  “How did everyone do last night?” he asked.

  “I think they were all fine,” she replied, shrugging and slicing a thick, round loaf of bread that smelled warm and freshly baked. “Though, I believe Declan stayed with the little one, Marguerite. Sean said he would, but Robert, how do you say, put the ‘kibosh’ on that, saying Sean was too rambunctious.”

  “How is Robert?” Ger asked, and Trisha heard the tremor of real concern and gratitude in his voice.

  “He looks pale,” Maria said, then grinned again. “But then again, all you gringos do in the winter.”

  “I saw him a few minutes ago,” Ian said. “He told me he was hungry, like he could eat a cow.”

  “I wonder if he’ll take them in the form of a couple hundred steak dinners,” Ger chuckled. “We owe him that, at least.”

  The easy laughter of Ger, Ian, and Maria grated somewhat on Trisha. The bliss of waking up with her men and the lovemaking with Ger was fast being pushed back by damnable practicality. Their explanations about wolves and demons from earlier still sat uneasily on her brain, reality resistin
g absorbing what she had always considered to be fairy tales and paranoia. Admitting that boogeymen existed was going to take some work, and then what was next? Vampires? She huffed silently to her coffee cup.

  Ian’s gaze turned to her, and she felt her mouth go dry with desire, which was both exhilarating and annoying. There was work to be done this morning, and it had to be done, even if she wanted to drag him off to a broom closet and do unspeakable things to him…and hopefully have him do equally unspeakable things to her as well.

  No, no, no. Not now. When had doing her job ever become so irritating? Oh right, when she had started having amazing sex with two brothers in a remote seaside town in Maine. Right.

  “Is Marguerite up, yet?” Trisha asked, clinging to her coffee cup as a talisman against her morning incivility.

  “No,” Maria replied. “But, that may have to do with the sedative Doctor Nasir gave her late last night before she went to bed. Oh, that reminds me! Hernando got a message early this morning that Grace and Father Edlow are on their way over. They are bringing changes of clothing and supplies.”

  Trisha frowned. “They’re going to have to come directly to this house. We don’t want them contaminating the crime scene.”

  “There’s no crime scene,” Ian said flatly. “Not one that’s going in any official report, at least.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Think, Blacke,” Ian retorted. “Exactly how are you going to explain wolf saliva on the corpses? How are you going to persuade the coroner to overlook Perk’s canine DNA?”

  “It shows up in DNA?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So,” Trisha asked slowly. “What are you going to do?”

  Ian sighed and ran his hand over his jaw. Suddenly, he looked very tired and very burdened, and his eyes looked very, very hard.

  “What we have always done,” he replied. “Lie as close to the truth as we can get. Do creative paperwork. Rely on our family in the state government to help round out the edges and deflect things.”

  “Family in government?” Trisha was lost.

  “There are a lot of women from Blue Moon who go to work in the state system,” Ger explained. “Some are elected, but most choose to work quietly behind the scenes. It’s easier to make ‘corrections’ to records when you’re in charge of them.”

  “Oh my God,” Trisha murmured. “I don’t even want to know about this. Thank the Lord, I’m not a RICCO investigator. This takes ‘protect and serve’ to a whole new level.”

  Ian smiled wanly. “We still need to go out to Perk’s. We need to see what is going on out there.” He paused and his smile turned wry as he winked at Trisha. “If only to see exactly how much we need to cover up.”

  She stared down at her coffee. She knew Ian was right, and that he was doing what he had to do to protect Blue Moon, his family, and all the families who depended on him. It was just another fact that sat uneasily on her conscience which was habitually wary of accepting any rule bending.

  Sighing, she handed her cup back to Ian. “Another, please. I’m going to need a lot more coffee if I’m going to help you all cover up a crime scene convincingly.”

  * * * *

  The pilgrimage back to Perk’s house was no less tense or bizarre than the night before. Ger and Robert again led the way, with Ian and Trisha behind them. Sean and Declan had stayed back with Marguerite and to get in touch with the mainland as needed. Cole and Preston had gone to check on the boats and wait for the arrival of Zara Nasir, Father Edlow, and Grace Murray on Big Al Boyer’s old lobster boat.

  Trisha looked around her, feeling stunned and somewhat betrayed by the brilliant blue skies and calm seas. The trees glittered blindingly with ice, their bare branches like sculptures encased in glass. Snow with an icy crust on top crunched under their feet, and the only other sounds came from the occasional cracking of branches as they split from the trees under the weight of the ice.

  The air was bitingly cold and dry, but freeing in a way. It blew away the cobwebs in her brain, and the physical exertion of walking through knee-high snow, even if the guys ahead had sort of made a path, pumped her blood vigorously through her veins. Her brain revved up, familiar analytic gears beginning to turn, thoughts flitting and falling into place as she prepared herself to see Perk’s house. Lists formed and cross-pollinated with research ideas and theories she was curious about.

  She stumbled over a chunk of ice that had been buried under the churned up snow. Before she could even fall to one knee, Ger was by her on one side, and Ian on the other, supporting her and keeping her from falling.

  Ger dropped a kiss on the top of her head and pulled her upright, then went ahead with Robert again.

  “City slicker.” Ian chuckled, slipping his arm around her waist and walked forward with her, his intention clearly to keep her from falling again.

  “Yokel.” Trisha sniffed, then felt a silly smile spread over her face. Her grim preparation for seeing the crime scene paused for a moment as the sensation of being loved washed over her.

  It was still too new and too shocking to feel love at all, let alone to find herself in what she would have just a mere week ago called a deviant relationship. But was it a relationship? To paraphrase badly, did a week of amazing sex and near-death experiences make a relationship? In all fairness, she did find that what the three of them shared went beyond just chemistry. There was a common set of values, and Ian and Ger each appealed to, complemented, and completed sides of her that no one had ever really understood before.

  Still. A reservation on US Airways back to Washington, D.C., on Sunday was burning up her e-mail inbox. That left 48 hours, with at least a day going through Perk’s house here, and another at the station tomorrow helping Ian and Dr. Nasir “fill out” paperwork. Two nights full of fantastic sex. But then what?

  Her schedule was completely fucked up by now, and she was going to have to juggle some serious shit to make it out to all the field investigations she had been assigned to. The next three weeks were going to be hell on a plane. Two days in Georgia. Three in Seattle. Two in Cedar Rapids. Paperwork. Research papers for peer review. Two seminars she was scheduled to teach at the BSU’s week-long workshops for law enforcement. She smiled wryly at the idea that she might be able to wrangle Ian into one of them so he would have an excuse to come and visit with her.

  Visits. Video chat. E-mail. Phone. Text. Sex once a month on a long weekend. Bangor to Washington, D.C. Was that…was that really the kind of relationship that she wanted? Was that something that would give this tender little seedling of love and attraction a chance to grow, to take root? Would this just end up being a prolonged, frustrating, difficult good-bye, complicated by a mutual need for sex? Would it just be better to end it now? Why couldn’t she figure this out? Psychologist, heal thyself and all that.

  She sighed and without realizing it, leaned her head against Ian’s shoulder as they tromped through the snow.

  * * * *

  The gravekeeper’s house reminded Ian of the worn-out winter trees they had just come through. It rose tall and weathered against the crystalline sky, peeling paint revealing gray wood, dirt-dimmed windows reflecting nothing and keeping all secrets inside.

  He shivered and glanced over to the graveyard where only the tops of the tombstones now peeked out from under the new layers of snow and ice. Ger would be buried there one day. Not him, though. Not Trisha. Not the rest of his family. Just Ger, alone with his wolf brothers in the cold ground. The deceit was necessary, but painful. All the wolf men of Blue Moon had empty graves and headstones in the Blue Moon churchyard for the sake of public appearances. But their bodies were secretly always buried on Seal Rock Island, safe from grave robbing and autopsies that might reveal the town’s secret. There was even a joke in Blue Moon that the men tried to die in the summer so the trip out to the island would be pleasant for their families.

  He pushed against the constriction of his hear
t, tightening his arm around Trisha’s tired figure. He noticed that she was doing her best to keep up, but that she was flagging already. In a perfect world, he would have had spent the next few days in bed, with hot soup, hot tea, hot whiskey, and hot loving. Well, the last bit was still going to happen as soon as he could get her alone again. No, he had to put that thought away for now. They were professionals, and there was a job to do, and if there was one thing he and Trisha shared deeply and intimately, it was their passion for their work and stern commitment to duty. He smiled a little. Only an officer of the law could understand an officer of the law in that way. Ger might have care of her gentleness, but Ian knew her blood.

  “So,” he said, looking down at her. “How do you want to do this?”

  She looked up at him, her nose an adorable pink from the cold. But her eyes were all business.

  “I think you and I should go in there first, since we know more about crime scene processing,” she said. “We’ll do an assessment and walk-through. Then, we’ll come out and see what to do about the bodies. Maybe Ger and Robert can locate some shovels, as I assume we’re going to bury them here on the island.”

  Ian heard the slight tension in her voice as she mentioned the slight bending of the law. Okay, not so slight. He squeezed her slightly in reassurance.

  “Ground’s frozen,” he replied. “It’s going to be impossible to dig graves.”

  “Maybe not so impossible,” Robert said thoughtfully, glancing back over his shoulder.

  “You heard that?” Trisha asked, eyes wide. “We were twenty feet away!”

  “Hearing of a dog,” Ian whispered in her ear and was rewarded with the quick chuckle in her chest.