The Hounds of Devotion

by Eva Chase

An idea bubbled up inside me with a giddy energy. I might have the perfect way to undo some of the shrouded folk’s influence on my men right here, right now.

  I eased my hand up Garrett’s lean chest to stroke his neck. “You learned not to be so jealous. How good are you at sharing?”

  Understanding dawned on his face. He glanced at Bash with an audible swallow, but his expression looked wary, not disgusted or any of the other more negative reactions I might have gotten.

  “Is that what you’d like?” he asked me. “To be shared?”

  “I expect I’d like it very much. What do you think, Bash? Can you summon a little more of that generous spirit?”

  Bash’s gaze burned into mine. He paused for long enough that I thought he might refuse.

  “It won’t be the same without you,” I said quietly.

  Those words stirred him into action. He got out of the chair and came to me, stopping at the edge of the couch. “Then here I am, Majesty,” he said in a low voice. In one swift movement, he leaned in and kissed me, hard.

  Mmmm, yes, this was exactly how I liked it. I kissed Bash back with a hand tucked around the back of his neck, and Garrett eased the strap of my silky top to the side to press his lips to my shoulder. Heat kindled all through my body between those points of contact.

  Bash kissed me again, his hand traveling down to skim over my breast. At my encouraging murmur, he flicked his thumb firmly over the nipple. Garrett brought his mouth to the crook of my neck and ran his fingers over my thigh. Oh, God, yes. I was caught between the two most possessively intense men I’ve ever met, and every inch of me was on fire.

  When Bash drew back to pull my shirt over my head, I took the opportunity to share another kiss with Garrett. His tongue slipped between my lips as he unhooked my bra. I met it with mine in a hot dueling dance that left us both breathless.

  “Still a firecracker,” he said hoarsely, caressing my bare breast. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get you out of my system, Jemma.”

  Something twinged, bittersweet, deep in my chest. “I don’t want you to,” I said with a sudden fierceness, and kissed him again.

  Bash had knelt down on the floor by my legs, the perfect position to bring his mouth to my other breast. At the hot swipe of his tongue, I gasped into Garrett’s mouth. Pleasure quivered over my skin in every which way.

  Garrett’s hand slid higher on my leg. I couldn’t help arching into his touch when it reached the place between my thighs. Bliss shot through me as he rubbed my clit through my slacks in rhythmic circles. His lips trailed across my cheek and down my neck, and Bash claimed my mouth all over again.

  Both of them had far too many clothes on still, but I didn’t want to push their comfort levels past the breaking point. Getting naked in front of each other might be a step too far this first time around.

  It had better only be the first time around. I could already tell I was going to want to repeat this experience.

  I slid forward to make it easier for the two of them to remove my slacks, and then we all ended up on the floor, the rug thick and soft beneath us, Bash shoving the coffee table farther to the side. He swiveled his fingers against my panties and growled at the feel of the wetness already forming there. Garrett ground into me from behind, his mouth scorching against my shoulder and his fingers doing wondrous things to my breast.

  “Purse,” I mumbled, and he grabbed it off the couch in an instant. I reached back to yank down the zipper of his fly. Bash stripped my panties off me as Garrett readied himself.

  My breath caught when the head of Garrett’s cock pressed between my legs. I eased them a little wider apart, giving him access. He dipped his fingers into my wetness with a groan and then plunged his length into me with a glorious surge of bliss that radiated from my core.

  Bash kissed my mouth, and Garrett kissed my neck, the one man fondling my breasts while the other thrust inside me with his hand gripping my hip. Every nerve in my body sang and blazed at the same time. I fumbled with Bash’s jeans, my hand shaky with the waves of pleasure rushing through me, and managed to free him from his boxers. His teeth nicked my lip as I gripped his erection.

  “Harder,” I gasped to Garrett, and he sped up his pace with a ragged curse.

  “I want to make you fucking explode,” he muttered by my ear, his hand teasing around to press against my clit. The determination in his voice combined with the press of his fingers made me do just that. As he bucked into me, my body shuddered and shattered with its release. I gripped Bash harder, pumping him faster. With a clutch of my thigh, Garrett spilled himself inside me.

  He stroked his hand over my body, and then he was fishing another packet out of my purse to offer me. “Not only can I share,” he said in a voice scorching enough to melt me all over again, “I can take turns too.”

  Bash let out a chuckle that sounded as if it’d caught him by surprise. I wasn’t going to pass up a suggestion that good. I slicked the condom over Bash’s length and parted my legs to welcome him.

  Garrett kept caressing my side, my breasts, nibbling at my ear and the side of my neck, as Bash thrust inside me. I might have just come, but the rough strokes of my right-hand man’s cock filling me sent me soaring all over again. I grasped his bicep and turned my head to kiss Garrett.

  “Jemma,” Bash gritted out, just my name, as if it were the only word left in his vocabulary. As his pace turned faster, wilder, the friction of his cock sent fresh pleasure searing through me. Turning my head back to him, I started to shudder all over again.

  Ecstasy crashed over me. It flooded me and wiped everything else clean. Bash kissed me rough and hard and let out strangled sound as he came.

  We lay there on the rug for a few minutes longer, sated and panting—and completely companionable. A smile curled my lips. The shrouded folk could throw whatever they wanted at us, but I’d proven I was stronger. I could win my men back.

  Garrett nuzzled my hair and pressed another kiss to my neck. “Jemma,” he said, and paused. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I love you.”

  My pulse hiccupped. I twisted around to face him. “Garrett—”

  “I know,” he said quickly, his face flushing. “I know that’s not what you were looking for. I know that’s not what you were offering. I don’t expect anything in return. But I wanted to say it, because it’s true, and it matters at least as much as the things I told you before.”

  I sank back into the rug, gazing back at him, but my chest had tightened. Love… that wasn’t the sort of seduction I’d ever intended. It wasn’t one I had any hope of ever returning. The only person I’d ever really loved had died years ago, and too much of my heart had died with her. After all this time, I wasn’t sure even destroying the shrouded folk could heal the wound they’d dealt.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jemma

  It was a strange feeling standing surrounded by the four men I knew best in the world with none of them looking like themselves. Of course, I supposed I didn’t look much like myself either.

  All of us were in full costume for the complex operation we were about to carry out: wigs or temporary dye, plenty of make-up, colored contacts for some, sunglasses for others, new facial hair on all of the guys. Only Sherlock disappeared completely into his disguise with that way he had of transforming even his height and build with shifts in his posture, but I wasn’t sure I’d have recognized any of my men at a distance.

  I tugged a strand of my sleek blond wig back behind my ear and looked around our circle where we were sitting in the back of a rented van. The space had become humid as soon as we’d turned off the air conditioning, but it wasn’t the heat that had my heart thumping faster. We might be all of a half hour from taking down Tillhouse, heading off his sinister plans, and getting a move on with clearing the shrouded folk out of this country.

  “Is everyone good to go?” I said. “Any last minute concerns? Let’s get them out now, because it’s just about time to leave.”

  “I’m fully
prepared and ready to start hollering,” Bash said with a flash of a grin. He, John, and Garrett were heading to a political rally Tillhouse was holding here in London, just down the street. Bash had the most prominent job in that part of the operation—he’d be calling out Tillhouse for supposedly siphoning money from his company’s investors, hinting that he’d uncovered the politician’s criminal history at the same time to provoke a guilty reaction.

  Garrett gave me a crooked smile. “My role is pretty simple. I think I can handle placing a single phone call.” He was supposedly in attendance as an interested citizen, currently off duty, but he’d call in the disturbance to Scotland Yard to make sure we got a larger police presence on the scene.

  “And I’ll try to make sure everything stays on track,” John said. “Move through the crowd, make a comment here and there to get people talking—easy enough.” He rubbed his hands together, clearly eager to jump into the fray.

  Sherlock and I were handling the other part of the operation, meant to launch simultaneously with the first for maximum impact. When I glanced at him, his smile looked tight, but it was hard to tell with it partially hidden behind the drooping moustache he’d fixed to his face. “I look forward to playing the supporting character to your leading role,” he said in a wry voice that at least didn’t sound particularly stressed. His gaze slid to Garrett. “I trust you handled the earlier aspect of your role effectively?”

  “They’ll be there,” the detective inspector said confidently. “I heard them talking about it when I left the office yesterday afternoon.” He’d surreptitiously left materials around his office about a special lunch deal for law enforcement at the restaurant where we wanted at least a few of his colleagues to show up.

  Every piece accounted for. All those interconnecting elements working in harmony because I had four sharp minds working alongside mine. Sitting there in their midst with exhilaration building inside me, the sense of how much I appreciated these four men hit me like a punch in the gut.

  No, not just appreciated. Maybe I couldn’t say anything like the three words Garrett had offered me a few days ago, but I cared about them. I would have fought anyone who tried to hurt them. My victory over the shrouded folk would be twice as sweet because it was revenge for preying on them as well as for the many others the fiends had savaged over so many years.

  I had the impulse to solidify that bond somehow, to show them how much they’d come to mean to me, but this wasn’t the time for it. It wouldn’t help to mess up their disguises with a kiss. I settled for grasping John’s hand and Garrett’s on either side of me and catching Bash’s gaze with a tip of my head.

  “All right then,” I said. “The rally is kicking off now. The three of you get out of here. Knock this asshole out of the picture, and then we can get back to our monster-hunting.”

  Bash gave me a mock salute. John and Garrett returned my squeeze of their fingers. Then they stood and ducked out of the van, leaving a fizz of worry amid the eager anticipation quivering through my gut.

  “Five minutes, and then we set off too?” Sherlock said to confirm.

  I nodded, studying him as he leaned back against the van’s wall. There was no reason for him to put on much of a false front while we were in here. That sense of gloom still hung over him, didn’t it, if milder now? Was it milder because he was successfully battling it or simply because he was taking more care to disguise that too?

  “Feeling better now that we’ve got a clear plan of action?” I asked, keeping my tone light.

  “I’d be more pleased if we had any idea what this man’s full connection to your shrouded folk is,” Sherlock muttered, but he drew himself up straighter a moment later. “I suppose it doesn’t matter in comparison to ridding the world of the menace.”

  “There’ll always be plenty of time to question him after we’ve kicked their shrouded asses to kingdom come.”

  That remark got me a smile that was small but easier. “I certainly look forward to that moment.”

  I stood up, smoothed down my posh dress suit, and moved toward the van’s door. “Let’s get going. We don’t want to leave it too long.”

  We headed down the street in the opposite direction from where the other three had gone. It only took a moment to flag a taxi. The cab wove through the streets to the restaurant where both a group of police officers and some of the employees from one of Tillhouse’s more upscale businesses would be taking their lunch. Sherlock sat silently, staring out the window so grimly that I started to worry again.

  Before I could prod him a second time, the cab pulled to a stop at our destination. He sprang out with enough energy to convince me to put the matter to rest until we were done here. As we entered the restaurant, he walked a little behind me, as if he were more my assistant than an equal companion. Always fully immersed in his role.

  I spotted Garrett’s colleagues with a quick scan of the elegant interior. The officers looked as though they felt a tad out of place among the white table clothes and gleaming silver fixtures, but they were chatting away between bites of their lunches and glances at their surroundings. Our primary target, the company’s CFO, was eating on his own meal with a tablet propped on the table beside him, either reading or still working while he finished his food.

  The maître d hustled over. “A table for two?”

  “We don’t need a new one,” I said in a haughty tone. “I see the person we’re here to meet right over there.”

  I set off toward the CFO with brisk strides and my head held high. I needed to look believably like the sort of woman who might have invested a large sum in stocks for an international merchandising corporation. My footsteps and Sherlock’s behind me thumped dully on the dense carpet.

  The maître d had trailed after us as if to make sure we really were expected. I hoped he wouldn’t cause too much trouble, but if he did, Sherlock would take care of that for long enough for me to get my piece in.

  We were just one table away when the detective grabbed my elbow. I hesitated as he pulled closer to me.

  “We can’t use him,” he murmured by my ear in an urgent voice.

  I stared at him. We’d chosen the man by group consensus two nights ago. “Why not?” I asked under my breath.

  Sherlock grimaced. “He’s got a splotch of mud on his trousers. It’s a distinctive color—one I’ve seen on Tillhouse’s before. One I determined is specific to a country club near here. No doubt they both belong to it. There wasn’t any evidence of that before. Now I’d be inclined to believe the two are friends more than distant business associates.”

  From anyone else, that reasoning would have sounded like a stretch. From Sherlock, I had to assume he was putting together several other minute pieces he didn’t have time to get into. He wouldn’t have stopped me in the middle of our operation if he hadn’t thought there was a real chance we’d gotten off course.

  If the CFO had a personal loyalty to Tillhouse, confronting him might not have the effect we wanted. We needed someone who’d focus more on getting to the bottom of the problem than ensuring peace of mind for the man behind the scenes.

  My heart stuttering, I cast my gaze about as the maître d cleared his throat behind us. Thankfully we hadn’t gotten quite close enough to the CFO for it to be obvious we were now changing our minds. Several employees from the company, which had its offices just down the street, tended to lunch here. The CFO was only the most prominent. We could just as easily use…

  My gaze settled on a man I recognized from the company records we’d gotten our hands on. A couple of steps down the ladder from the CFO here, but on the accounts side of things, which worked just fine. I even remembered his name, because it fit his appearance so well: Marten. He looked like a marten, ruddy haired and weaselly.

  I shifted direction with an air as if I’d taken a slight detour on purpose and marched up to Mr. Marten’s table. He was sitting with a woman I didn’t recognize, at least ten years younger and her clothes clearly off-the-rack rather
than tailored like most of the senior employees. One of the secretaries, I’d bet. I’d put a fair amount of money on the possibility that Marten was sleeping with her too, although that had little bearing on our success here.

  “Mr. Marten,” I said in a sharp voice pitched to carry through the room. “I’m very concerned about the state of my accounts. The math does not appear to be adding up.”

  Marten blinked at me, his jaw freezing in mid-bite, but I’d spoken with enough authority that he had to assume he knew me even if he hadn’t the slightest clue who I was.

  “I’m sorry, madam,” he said, fumbling. “I’m not sure what you mean?”

  “My shares in Everring Marketing.” I whipped out my phone open to the account—an account my and Sherlock’s associates had conjured up in preparation for this confrontation. “Look at these numbers. With the percentage rise in the stock yesterday, I should have seen an increase of twice that much. It concerned me so much I looked back through my past statements and found repeated omissions across years. I need answers, now!”

  “Ma’am,” the maître d said with a wringing of his hands, and Sherlock intercepted him smoothly with some murmured distraction. From the corner of my eye, I saw the cops glancing our way.

  Marten took the phone from me and peered at it. His eyes widened for a second before he caught his expression, but he clearly saw the discrepancy too. “I—I’m not sure what’s going on here,” he said. “If you could come into the office—”

  “Into the office?” I cried. “What, so you can rob me even more? This is a disgrace. Tens of thousands of dollars taken from under my nose, and you don’t know what’s ‘going on’?”

  “Really, at this point we should call the police,” Sherlock said in a high, stilted voice. “How can we trust people who’ve been robbing you for nearly a decade?”

  As intended, a couple of the officers from the nearby table got up and strolled over. “What seems to be the problem?” the woman in the lead asked.