by Gigi Moore
Lucy closed her eyes with a sigh upon contact, the callused warmth of his hand sending tingles throughout her entire body, but especially shooting liquid heat through her pussy. She fidgeted, shifting her weight from one leg to the other to try to ease the swelling and throbbing between the apex of her thighs.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Prentice asked and his voice was much closer than she expected it to be.
When she opened her eyes, she saw his intense brandy gaze staring at her, no more than an inch from her face. “No, and I probably should go.”
“Not yet.” He slid his hand around to the nape of her neck and drew her closer as he bent his head. He pressed his lips against hers, firm and insistent.
Lucy automatically parted her lips beneath his, knowing she was making a mistake as his tongue instantly thrust inside and stroked hers. She moaned, a mixture of ambivalence and passion pouring through her before she tried to pull back.
Prentice, however, wouldn’t let her go. He advanced, pressing her against the side of the gazebo, his hips grinding into hers as he fisted his hands in her hair.
She felt his uncertainty blend with hers and knew that one of them needed to put a stop to what was happening before it went any farther. She felt too weak for her to be that one.
Prentice jerked back, taking a ragged breath as he pressed his forehead against hers. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Are you okay?”
He laughed, and it was a bitter sound, strangely comforting, because it steadied Lucy in Prentice’s personality. “Not in the least, but that’s not your problem.”
“Of course it’s my problem.” She felt wholly responsible for the lapse. She, after all, had come out to the gazebo and invaded his solitude. She reached out to put her hand on his face and he caught her wrist.
“Don’t.”
“Prentice…”
“This was a bad idea.”
She couldn’t argue with him though she wanted to.
“You just got married. Your husband could walk out here at any moment and find us together.” He searched her face and when she didn’t say anything he asked, “Is that what you want, Lucy?”
“No, of course not.” She wanted to be a good wife for as long as her marriage lasted. She wanted to be in a normal relationship then realized she didn’t really know what a “normal” relationship was or what was so attractive about “normal.” Maia, Thayne, and Cade certainly weren’t involved in a “normal” relationship and they couldn’t have been happier. She couldn’t forget Lily, Wyatt, and Dakota, who weren’t in a “normal” relationship either and seemed just as happy as Maia, Thayne, and Cade.
That’s because none of them allow anyone who doesn’t matter to influence their decisions or tell them how to feel and how to love.
Could she ever be that courageous or defiant?
Lucy freed her wrist from Prentice’s loose grip and took his hand in hers. He let her hold his hand, but just barely. She could feel him trying to pull away—physically, emotionally.
“This entire situation with you and your husband is just plain…weird. And I have to tell you, I’m getting some unusual mixed messages from the both of you. I really don’t know what to make of you or him.”
“What to make of us?” Confusion overwhelmed her and it didn’t help that he was still standing close enough that she could feel the heat of his hard cock through his trousers and her gown. The thought that just a few thin layers of clothing kept her from feeling his naked hot flesh flush against hers didn’t help matters.
“Maybe coming to stay with you two wasn’t such a good idea,” Prentice murmured, almost as if to himself, but Lucy heard and the thought of him leaving her alone with Ki threw her into a mite of a panic.
“Did Ki say something to you last night?”
Prentice laughed again and that mocking sound twisted her insides, but not as much as his next words. “You’re a newlywed, Lucy, and you need space and time to be alone with your husband. It’s as simple as that.”
“Please don’t go. I…I don’t think I can do this without you.”
Prentice grimaced. “Did he do something to you? Has he…hurt you?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. In fact he’s been mostly a perfect gentleman with me.”
Prentice mumbled something and Lucy could have sworn she heard, “I wish I could say the same thing.”
What did he mean by that?
“Mostly a perfect gentleman with you? What does that mean?”
Lucy shrugged, not willing to admit that she had been absolutely willing to let Ki take liberties with her that no proper unmarried lady would have. What would Prentice think of her then? Could he think any less of her, considering the circumstances of her and Prentice’s one and only encounter?
She didn’t know she had lowered her face until she felt Prentice’s finger under her chin, gently lifting it.
“Hey, what do you mean you can’t do this alone? What is going on between you two?”
Lucy wished she knew. She wished she knew what was going on between her and Ki and her and Prentice and why she felt inescapably attracted to two men and not just one.
Had Rance’s deviant proclivities rubbed off on her? What did that make Maia, Thayne, and Cade? They didn’t seem deviant to her. They seemed content and in love.
Would it be so wrong for her to be happy and in love with two men when she or they weren’t hurting anyone?
“Nothing’s going on between us…yet.”
“Do you want something to be going on or is this really just a marriage in name only?”
Lucy jerked her face away from him and boldly lifted her chin. “What difference does it make to you?”
Prentice caught her by the biceps, gritting his teeth as he seemed to stop just short of shaking her.
Lucy listened to his breath puffing out of his mouth in short bursts and saw his nostrils flaring as if he was about to do violence. She knew the signs. She had seen them often enough in Rance, in her father. She’d regularly wondered if she had done anything specific to bring their fury raining down on her, but sometimes it just seemed like her simply breathing bothered them. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” she whispered, resorting to the meek role that had kept her as near as she could get to her father’s and Rance’s good sides and alive for years.
“Oh, don’t you dare do that. Don’t back down now.” He did shake her then, but Lucy sensed more frustration than cruelty in his actions, as if he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted from her.
Seemed she couldn’t please any man.
“In case you didn’t notice, Lucy, it makes a difference to me because I care about you. Is that so hard for you to believe or understand?”
The truth was on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say it, because it was hard for her to believe that any man cared about her as more than just a vessel for his spirits.
“Care about me?”
“Don’t sound so shocked. Of course I care about you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. Just know that if that swanky bastard does anything to hurt you—”
“You’ll what, Prentice? Do what you did to Rance?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No!” Lucy’s heart squeezed in her chest at the idea of her former lover hurting her new husband. Maybe she didn’t love Ki, but she didn’t want to see harm come to him. He wasn’t like Rance after all. At least she didn’t believe he was.
What appalled her more than the idea that Prentice was willing to hurt Ki for her honor, was the idea that Prentice’s willingness made him that much more attractive to her.
“I don’t want you to do anything except be yourself and…and stay with me. Stay with us.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking, Lucy.”
“I do know. Do you want me to beg?”
A foul curse flew out of Prentice’s mouth that made Lucy’s face feel like she ha
d just pushed it into a furnace.
“I don’t want you to beg,” he said through his teeth.
At his acquiescence, Lucy questioned her reasons for asking and wanting Prentice to stay with her and Ki.
She wanted to believe that she was being noble helping Prentice in his time of need and giving him a place to stay, one far away from Maia, Thayne, and Cade, she might add. These people were her friends, people she had come to care about in the last several months, and Prentice had once tried to kill all of them the way he had killed Rance.
Lucy knew, however, that she was using Prentice as surely as her father or Rance had ever used her to their own ends. She wanted him close to protect her, not anyone else. She needed him to safeguard her virtue, to save her from herself as well as from Ki.
Who, however, was supposed to save her from Prentice and her feelings for him?
Chapter 11
What the hell was wrong with him? Why hadn’t he fought back, protested more? He should have done something like hit Ki to let him know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t like that. Instead he’d stood there in that kitchen like a coy Southern belle and let the other man put his hands on him.
Prentice couldn’t help thinking had he had his powers, that scene in the kitchen would have played out a lot differently than it had. He might have killed Ki or at least struck out and seriously maimed him as he had that blond, square-shouldered jock in high school.
He lay on his back in bed now and closed his eyes against the memory of Chad Feehan grabbing him from behind in the shower after everyone had left the locker room.
Prentice had been a sophomore, smaller than most of the boys his age, and he’d known the rules and how low in the pecking order he yet fell.
Unwilling to jeopardize what little status he had accumulated, he made it a habit of waiting until all the other boys took their showers before he even attempted to enter the shower area. The waiting made him late for his chemistry class on a regular basis, but Prentice gladly took the hit to avoid those other jocks that got their rocks off persecuting the smaller and younger boys in gym class.
This particular occasion, Prentice’s timing was off and the instant he realized he wasn’t alone in the locker room, it was too late.
Chad was on him before Prentice knew what was happening, seizing Prentice by the hair and bending one arm up behind his back until Prentice cried out.
He swallowed water, coughing and choking as Chad slammed him against the wall and the shower’s jets powered water down on him.
“I’ve been watching you, Teague. You think you’re special, pretty boy. You think you’re better than everybody else.”
Prentice tried to say something, tried to deny, but every time he opened his mouth to speak, more water flowed in. Rather than drown, he kept his mouth shut and settled for shaking his head back and forth as much as he could.
His cheek hurt from where Chad pressed it into the tile and the pain in his shoulder made him see stars.
Prentice knew he had to get Chad up off of him or the bigger athlete was going to break his arm…or worse.
Until that moment, he had only been toying with his newly-discovered powers, feeling them out, testing their limits…testing his limits.
Desperation forced his hand.
The last thing Prentice remembered before everything went black was casting his psychic energy out wide and wild like a fisherman’s net.
He woke up on the tile with someone flashing a penlight in his eyes.
“I think that he’s going to be okay, but the other one…”
Prentice watched the EMT shrug and got a glimpse of Chad several feet away as two other EMT’s furiously worked to revive him.
He sat up, coughing, and the EMT patted him on the back, solicitous but wary.
“Are you okay?”
It took Prentice the better part of several minutes to convince the EMT and the school’s principal that he didn’t want to go to the hospital, in fact that he didn’t need to go to the hospital. The last thing he wanted was to be sent to the same place as Chad. In fact, he wanted to get as far away from the scene and people as he could get.
“I just want to go home,” he told the EMT.
Prentice’s parents had been summoned to the school to pick him up.
No questions had been asked and Prentice had learned later that the principal, football coach, and his and Chad’s parents had come to the consensus that no good would come of taking the incident any further, especially since no one could agree on what had actually happened. Of course they hadn’t asked Prentice for his take and he hadn’t volunteered. Since Chad had refused to implicate Prentice or himself in the matter, the authorities and the school had quietly closed the book on it and washed their hands of the episode—all nice and neat and tidy—just putting things down to boys being boys.
No matter how much everyone had agreed not to talk, word had still gotten around. Once recovered, Chad had started to give Prentice a wide berth in the halls during changeover and his jock buddies had unquestioningly followed his lead, basically making Prentice into a veritable pariah. This had suited him just fine. Better a pariah than anyone’s victim or Chad’s bitch.
Prentice opened his eyes, panting and glancing around wildly as if expecting to find Chad hovering over his bed. He hadn’t meant to dig so deep and unearth those emotionally wrenching memories. He hadn’t realized how much Ki’s advances had affected him.
He couldn’t be attracted to Ki. He could not be. Being attracted to a man like Ki—so rich and flawlessly good-looking—went against all logic, too ironic to even consider.
The fact that Ki vaguely favored Chad didn’t alarm him as much as the idea that he actually found himself attracted to Ki and curious.
In my time the term was called bi-curious.
No way, no freaking way in hell!
He wasn’t going down that road. He wasn’t like that. Hadn’t he proven his manhood when he’d gotten it up with Lucy in the gazebo? Didn’t that hard-on mean something?
Yeah. It means I’m attracted to both of them.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!
Prentice couldn’t escape the truth. He couldn’t explain away his physiological reaction to Ki—incidentally the same physiological reaction he had to Lucy—no matter how much he tried.
He was thirty-two years old. He had made it through three decades of life only to learn that all the nasty names those jocks used to call him, all the homophobic insults they’d flung, had been accurate. He had hurt people, taken lives, gone back in time, died and come back to life to have his world turned upside down with the realization that everything he had believed to be true about himself was untrue.
Prentice closed his eyes again, picturing Ki as he’d cornered him in the kitchen.
He owned that Ki was a striking male. He was tall and masculine and Prentice could tell from the way his suit had hung on his body that he had a nice physique beneath.
It was a physique he could too easily imagine unclothed.
Prentice clutched the bedcovers in both hands and gritted his teeth as his cock slowly came to life. His hands itched with the need to grasp himself and ease the throbbing ache, but he refused to submit to the yearning.
If he couldn’t make it through one night in this house sleeping a couple of doors down from Lucy and her new husband, how was he going abide Lucy’s wish and stay any longer?
He tried not to listen, didn’t want to hear anything, but he felt his ears perk up, anticipating the sounds of hot newlywed sex. He didn’t, however, hear anything. He didn’t hear any erotic gasps or moans of passion. He didn’t hear any headboard banging against the wall. He didn’t hear any mattress squeaking beneath the pistoning action of two hips thrusting in concert right before the intense screams of release rended the air in a sensuous, shattering crescendo.
Prentice thought it would tear him apart if he had to hear Lucy’s dulcet tones raised in the throes of an orgasm in which he wasn�
��t the architect. He didn’t want to hear Ki do the things to her that he wanted to do…or imagine Ki doing the things to Lucy that he wanted Ki to do to him.
He thought he had had a hard enough time earlier fending off the married couple. He’d felt like he was being tag-teamed, as if Ki and Lucy had previously conferred and come to the decision on how best to seduce him. How else did one explain the way they had come at him one after the other, flaunting their sensual wiles at him? How he had managed to resist that one-two punch of male-female pheromones, Prentice had no idea.
The more he thought about it, however, the more he knew each encounter—the one in the kitchen and the one in the gazebo—had been natural and spontaneous, no more premeditated than someone taking advantage of an opportunity that had suddenly presented itself.
Lucy had especially seemed sincere about wanting him to stay and as confused by her feelings for him as he was confused by his feelings for Ki.
For Ki’s part, Prentice hadn’t sensed any of the cruelty or revulsion that he had experienced from Chad and his buddies as much as he had sensed Ki’s deliberate effort to unbalance and turn him on.
God help him, Ki’s efforts had worked, more than Prentice could have ever imagined.
He hadn’t said a prayer since he was very young. After having so many go unanswered, he had never felt the need to continue the useless and impractical custom. Once he realized that he couldn’t count on anyone but himself to reach his goals, he had never been tempted to search outside of himself for strength or answers to his problems.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, however, Prentice felt the need to ask for help.
He opened his eyes, stared up at the ceiling, and waited.
After several moments when nothing happened he wondered what he had expected and berated himself for presuming anything had changed since he had been a kid.
He was alone in the world and he would always be a—
You are not alone, Prentice.
He fought not to respond right away. She had made him wait, he would make her wait.
At the thought, he heard Brielle laugh.
How could she take this so lightly? He was losing his sanity, losing himself, and she was laughing.
