The woman smiled and it was a lovely expression that made Zoe feel warm and happy. “I am Seramela. You can call me Sera.”
Zoe didn’t offer her hand. It was only humans who used the practice of shaking hands with a stranger.
“I’m Declan,” Declan said, coming up behind her.
Sera smiled at him, too. “And you are my first ghost,” she said.
Declan shrugged. “I’m the first ghost I’ve ever met, too.”
“Diego tells me you are also a healer.”
Zoe glanced at Diego, startled. None of them had mentioned that to him.
Diego lifted his phone. “It’s all over the Internet.”
Declan’s smile was warmer. “I was a doctor,” he agreed.
“You still are,” Sera said firmly. “The urge to heal does not fade.”
As Declan studied her, surprised, she turned to Diego and lifted a tangle of leather and buckles and two holsters, both with pistols in them. “Your spares, as requested.”
Diego got to his feet and kissed her and it was not a polite peck. “You are ever my savior.”
She laughed and dropped the bag in her left hand to his feet. “More supplies, including the machete.” She looked around the hall. “What a beautiful house,” she added. Then she smiled up at the ceiling. “Well, hello there.”
Zoe looked up quickly. There was nothing there.
“On the top beam,” Sera said softly. “They’re very shy. They seem to like elves, though. Lindal has a friend who almost lives on his shoulder.”
“Ferr,” Zoe said. “Diego told us about her.”
Sera looked around the hall once more, taking in everyone there, including Cole, who was standing in the kitchen doorway now, his chest still bare. “I’m interrupting,” Sera said. “I also left behind three vampires who are dealing with their own bonding, who I should get back to.”
Diego tilted his head. “They’re still fighting it?’
Sera looked troubled. “They have all been passing as human. One has a fiancé. It is…difficult.”
“The bonding will change that,” Diego said. “I was more stubborn than most and it worked on me.”
Sera looked at Zoe and rolled her eyes. “He caved, the moment he saw me.”
Zoe fought not to laugh as Diego looked affronted.
Sera spread her hands. “I really must not linger. Call if you need me.” She held her hand out to Diego and he caught the tips of her fingers with his, then let her go. It was a barely there touch, yet their expressions made Zoe feel embarrassed she was witnessing the highly intimate moment.
She glanced at Declan. He was watching the pair with his dark eyes narrowed, a look of heavy concentration on his face. She had seen that expression many times before, when he had been dealing with a tricky diagnosis.
Sera lifted her hand in a small wave goodbye and disappeared.
Diego stirred and returned to the bench. He did not look awkward about having been seen showing such raw emotions.
“I think I understand….” Declan breathed.
Diego looked at him. “Good,” he said flatly. “Go. Go and talk.” He sat down. “Have your discussion. Let the bond arrange things, while I take care of the rest.” He yanked one of the pistols from the harness, pulled out the clip and checked it, then snapped it back with a practiced motion and cocked the gun and put it beside him. He turned his head to look through the glass pane beside the door, toward the bridge.
Chapter Six
When Zoe returned to the kitchen, Cole was at the sink, his arms crossed and his butt resting on the edge of the sink itself. She had reminded him more than once not to do that, as his habit of sitting on the edge of the big farmhouse sink had broken two of them, resulting in costly replacements.
She said nothing now. All the little domestic conflicts and compromises, the rituals they had developed, including her making every cup of coffee because Cole’s coffee-making skills were non-existent…all that had been superseded.
Declan opened the pantry door and looked inside.
“You’re hungry?” Cole said, surprised.
Declan shook his head. “I can open the door.” He closed it and opened it again and grinned.
Cole gave a weak smile.
Zoe couldn’t react at all.
“I wonder if I can feel heat?” Declan murmured, heading for the range.
“Shut the door!” Cole and Zoe said, together.
Declan halted, startled, looking from one to the other. How many times had Cole said that to him over the years? Even Zoe had got into the habit of reminding him whenever she had been visiting. It was too easy for someone else to ram up against open door and hurt themselves.
Declan moved back to the pantry door and shut it silently. He let his hand linger on the door handle, then looked up. “I remember that,” he said quietly.
Cole shifted his shoulders, easing them, as if they were strained. Perhaps they were. “We need to talk.”
Declan put his shoulder against the pantry door and crossed his arms, matching Cole. “Agreed.”
Zoe sighed.
Cole gave them an effortful smile. “Do either of you get the feeling that this bonding thing is going to ride roughshod over all our feelings and wishes and expectations?”
“I figured that out a moment ago,” Declan said. “When I saw Diego and Sera out there.” He shrugged. “I don’t mind. Of course I don’t mind. I’ve got life back…and I didn’t even know I had lost it.”
“It’s not the life you used to have,” Cole pointed out.
“I don’t care,” Declan said firmly. He pressed his hand against his chest, his fingers digging in. “I can feel and not just with my hands and nerves.” He dropped his hand. “If I get to have even a small fraction of what Sera and Diego seem to have, then I really don’t care about the rest.” His black gaze settled on Zoe. “You’re the only one fighting this, Zoe.”
She was startled. She was also confused. She looked at Cole. “You’re not fighting it?”
Cole drew in a breath and let it out. “Are you asking if I care that our marriage seems to have been blown apart in the last few hours, then yes, I mind…except you’re still here and that’s something I can work with. You scared the crap out of me when you walked out just then.” His green eyes were narrowed, the way he held them when he was in pain. “Only, you came back.”
“To talk,” she said.
“I’m trying hard not to judge, to not use old standards.” Cole grimaced. “Hell, I spent my entire adult life hiding my real nature from the whole world except for the very few people I trusted with the truth, so I know all about prejudice. I know how insidious it can be. Since I saw those claw marks on the Mustang I’ve been reminding myself of that over and over.” He let out a breath, almost a sigh. “I think you need to let go, too, Zoe.”
She jumped. “Me?”
“You’re holding onto some old ways yourself,” Declan said, his voice low.
Zoe pressed her lips together.
“Tell us why you walked out just then,” Cole said.
“You know why.” Her voice came out strained.
“I’m pretty sure I do know. Declan, too,” Cole said. “I just don’t think you do.”
“Of course I do!” she said hotly.
They both just looked at her.
Zoe shifted on her feet. Her socks were damp. She should take them off. Maybe get a fresh pair….
“Zoe,” Declan said.
She looked at him and pushed the words out. “Cole was with you first. I can’t take that away from either of you, now you’ve got it back.”
Cole shook his head. “That’s just like you,” he said softly. “Everyone else first, while what you want is back there in the dust.”
“It’s called being human,” Zoe said stiffly. “It’s what decent people do. I grew up hunting alongside my father and that world, that life, teaches you to watch out for yourself, first and foremast. Survival is the priority. I walked away f
rom that when my father died. I swore I would not go back to that world and here I am,” she said bitterly.
“You loved your father,” Declan said.
“Of course I did!”
“How did he die?” Cole asked. “I mean, the real story. He didn’t die in a car accident, the way you told me, did he?”
Zoe wiped at her cheeks. “A demon took him.”
“Why didn’t the demon take you as well?” Declan asked.
Zoe’s heart squeezed. “My father…he….” She put her face in her hands, blocking out the light, trying to block the memory.
“He protected you,” Cole guessed.
She nodded. Her throat was too tight to speak.
“So, in fact, he didn’t look out for himself at all,” Declan said. His voice was closer. She didn’t have the courage to look. The miasmic stew of hot feelings swirling in her gut were making her feel dizzy and a little sick. “I don’t want to give up this life I worked so hard to create,” she said into her hands. “Only, if I fight for it, you and Cole will be hurt.”
“You don’t have to give up anything,” Cole said, his voice gentle.
That made her look. He was calm. There was even a little smile playing around the corner of his mouth. “You said it yourself, Zoe. You said you were still the same person I always thought you were, just with additions I hadn’t known were there before. That could be us, too.”
“You and me?” she breathed.
He nodded. “We stay the same. We stay married, only there are additions we didn’t know about before.”
“Only you did know about Declan before!” she cried. “You loved him. I held you every time you cried. I listened to your stories. You bled over his loss, Cole. That gaping hole has never gone away.”
Cole nodded. “We both have pasts that dog us, even now. Declan does, too. That’s what makes us human. I just don’t think we should go back there. If Diego is right, then we’re all going to be something more than human. More additions.”
“Additions, not subtractions,” Declan added. “We include, we don’t take away.”
Zoe wiped her cheeks again. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said flatly. “If you include me, then you’ll lose something.”
Declan laughed.
Even Cole smiled. “Didn’t you hear a word of what we were saying, a while ago?”
“We seem to have been talking for an ice age,” Zoe said tiredly. “Remind me.”
Declan answered, though. “Cole has loved you since he came back from Afghanistan the first time after he moved in here. I watched him meet you in the surgery, that day. I saw his heart drop onto the floor at your feet.”
Cole was staring at the floor, a hard frown squeezing his brows together.
“You…didn’t mind?” Zoe whispered to Declan. She thought her heart might explode if any more pressure was exerted.
“How could I mind?” Declan said. “I’d been in love with you for months already.” He gave her a skewed smile. “Cole losing his heart just confirmed I wasn’t wrong about you.”
“You didn’t say anything, either of you! You got married!”
Cole still wasn’t looking at them. “I loved Declan more, right then. There was no way I was going to fuck that up with badly timed confessions.”
Declan was nodding. “Then, you just sort of…fitted in. It was good. Life was good. I had Cole and you were still there. Not quite the way I wanted, but there anyway.”
“I was so afraid that if I said anything, it would all explode and I would lose everything,” Cole said. He lifted his chin and looked at Declan.
Declan nodded. “It felt so finely balanced, as if a single wrong move might destroy it all.”
Zoe remembered to breathe. There were little specks dancing in her vision. “Neither of you said anything to each other? Nothing at all?”
Cole shrugged. “I knew, anyway.”
“We both knew,” Declan added softly. “We knew what we wanted, anyway. We still don’t know what you want, though.”
She swallowed. “As Cole said, I don’t think it matters what we want anymore. The bonding is going to take care of that.”
“Just this once, Zoe,” Cole said. “Say what you want.”
She rubbed her eyes. They were still aching from the tears. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Declan said.
She looked at Cole. “I just can’t hurt you in that way.”
“You want Declan,” he said flatly.
Her gut twisted. “No! I want you both! I always have!” She felt her jaw drop. So much for not hurting Cole.
Only, Cole was nodding. The small smile was back on the corner of his mouth. His eyes were warm…heated, even. He and Declan exchanged a glance that seemed to be loaded with meaning.
Declan was moving toward her, very slowly. “Do you remember that time in the surgery when we worked on that frostbite case?”
She nodded. They had used snow to keep the foot from defrosting too quickly, to restore circulation slowly so the deadened toes would be saved. She had brought bucket after bucket of snow in from the courtyard behind the surgery. “It was something I remembered from a story I’d read as a child,” she said. “Except you used the idea anyway and it worked.”
He nodded. “Afterward, in the staff room,” he said. “Remember?”
How could she forget? They had both been reeling with the need for sleep and she had barely been able to put on her coat. Her shirt sleeve had gotten all tangled up. Declan had unsnarled it and straightened up the coat. He’d even zipped it up. For a moment his hand had stayed there just under her chin and her breath had caught.
For once, she had allowed herself to look him directly in the eye, too tired to remember she shouldn’t do that.
There had been knowledge in his gaze. For that little moment, it felt as if her heart and soul was open and he was reading it all there in her eyes.
All he had to do was lift his hand a fraction of an inch and he could have touched her face. They were standing so close he could have just bent his head to kiss her.
He did neither. Instead, after that little moment had lasted for what felt like an hour or two, he stepped away. “Drive carefully,” he warned her. “It’s slippery out there.”
She had stumbled away and driven home in a daze, wondering if she had imagined all of it. Had she projected her own yearnings onto him? Declan was happily married. Even though his marriage was a secret to almost everyone else in Revelstoke, his happiness and general air of contentedness was not. She was a fool for thinking he would consider even for a moment…
“I wanted to kiss you that night,” Declan said, his voice very low. He was right in front of her now. “I don’t know how I stopped myself.” He glanced at Cole. Cole hadn’t moved from the sink. His gaze was steady. “Well, yes, I know why I didn’t. But it was very, very close.”
“Kiss her now,” Cole said, his voice as quiet as Declan’s.
Zoe jumped a little in reaction.
“Forward, not backward,” Cole added.
“Yes, that was then, with all the reasons why we shouldn’t,” Declan added. “This is now.”
Zoe gasped as his lips met hers. That he could touch her at all was a miracle. His mouth was firm against hers just as she had always imagined it might be.
Zoe closed her eyes as the kiss deepened. Her body had spent the morning being whipsawed through extremes of emotions. Now everything came on-line in a heated sweep from her toes to the top of her head.
Declan brought his arms around her, pulling her even closer and she might have cried at finally being in his arms, except that it felt so good she had no capacity for anything other than delight.
He was taller than her. Everyone was taller than her and Cole more than most, yet she fitted against Declan in a way that felt natural. She drew her arms around his neck, holding herself up as he kissed her with a thoroughness that barely made up for all the times she wished he had.
His hands were
against her back, sliding over her hip, moving restlessly. Cole was strong and had muscles to prove it, while Declan was solid in a different way, firm against her body….
Zoe gasped and stepped back from him, not quite looking down. Her heart was frantic, her nerves screaming.
Declan, though, did look down at the swollen mass in the front of his jeans. “Well, then. That answers that question.” He was grinning.
“It answers mine, too,” Cole said. “I thought I would mind, watching you kiss her. Yet I don’t. It feels….”
“Right,” Zoe finished. “As though that’s the way it should be. It’s as if I’ve kissed you hundreds of time before.”
Declan nodded. “Comparison check,” he declared. He took the two small steps to reach Cole and kissed him. He didn’t hesitate. Their mouths pressed together and Cole rose to his feet almost as if the kiss was pulling him there. He grabbed Declan’s face and held him steady.
Declan’s hand settled on Cole’s hip, his fingers tangling with the band of his pajama pants.
Zoe caught her breath. In her imagination, Declan did not simply let his fingers rest there. She could clearly see him in her mind, pushing the pants down farther, exposing Cole’s hips, his pelvis and the ridge of muscle there, then his cock, which would be upright and throbbing.
She couldn’t look away. Every erotic thought she had ever had about the pair of them, together or alone, seemed to parade through her thoughts now, making her body vibrate. They looked so good together. They always had. Declan’s wild Celtic looks and Cole’s blond, clean-cut wholesomeness played off each other.
Declan groaned and pulled his lips away, breathing heavily.
Cole closed his eyes, just not before Zoe saw tears glittering there. “Just the same,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Her heart squeezed.
“Zoe.” Cole held his hand out toward her.
She took it and he pulled her close, up against the two of them. Almost as if they had done it many times before, both of them put their arms around her, linking them all together.
They stayed there, until Zoe’s heart eased. It didn’t slow completely, because she was standing with the two of them. The parade of wicked images was playing in her mind, still. Now the thoughts were becoming even more erotic. Just standing here was making her think of possibilities that had not occurred to her before.
Zoe's Blockade (Destiny's Trinities Book 5) Page 5
