by Sierra Dean
“No, Melvin, I don’t believe I’ll be needing any help from you.” I waved my black keycard at him and faced the elevator.
“Apologies, Miss McQueen. We weren’t expecting you.”
I grunted and the doors swished open. “No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.” It was a foolish reply and I almost regretted it, but I was too busy chuckling to myself to let it show. His face was red.
I punched in my penthouse access code on a hidden keypad above the regular numbers and gave Melvin a satisfied wave as the doors shut between us.
The elevator whirred to life, which put at least one fear to rest. My key code hadn’t been revoked. The higher the elevator numbers climbed, the more my heart sank until it was swimming in my stomach, doing backflips in the beer. I let out a shaky sigh as the ride came to an end with a slight jerk and the doors opened into the foyer of Lucas’s penthouse.
The main hall was dark and quiet, and I stepped into the hallway, listening for any sign of life. All I could hear was my own breathing. I followed the hallway for a few steps and saw a light on in a room I remembered being a small office. With as much stealth as possible given my shoes, I moved towards the light and, after a moment’s hesitation, pushed the door open an inch, asking, “Lucas?”
“No, he’s not…”
The speaker and I both froze simultaneously and stared at each other from across the dimly lit room. I didn’t need more light to know who it was. I had known the second I opened the door and was assaulted by the tart, bright flavor of limes. My eyes watered from the overpowering emotional response to the taste.
“Desmond.”
“Secret?” He didn’t seem to believe it. He put down the book he’d been reading and stood by the far wall, licking his lips tentatively. I tasted sweet to him, like crème brulee or spun sugar, and he was probably checking for the sweetness. With that much flavor in the room, there was no way for him to pass my presence off as a flight of imagination.
He looked different somehow. His dark brown hair had grown out but was cut more evenly, so instead of being short in the back and longer in front, it was uniformly shaggy and had been left to hang in his face. His big violet-gray eyes held a hint of pain that tore at my insides and sobered me up better than a cold shower. It was the same way he’d looked at me when he thought I might be dead. He was wearing dark jeans cut to show off the muscular build of his lower body, and a crisp white dress shirt, rolled up to the elbows, paired with a skinny black tie, loosened enough he had undone his top shirt button. Under the lime, I could smell a musky cologne on him, and the combined package made me take a step closer.
In response, he moved backwards.
“What are you doing here?” The words were loaded with unspoken accusation. I had anticipated it, but nevertheless, it stung.
“I’m back,” I replied. “I’m home.”
His face clouded with anger. “Lucas isn’t here.”
I looked around the room, as if he meant here with us, which seemed obvious enough. Then I realized he meant in the penthouse.
“Where is he?”
“He’s upstate, dealing with pack business. He’s had to do a lot since you left. There was a big mess to clean up and no one to help him with it.”
I couldn’t imagine exactly how my killing Marcus Sullivan might result in a big mess for the king, but I suppose there were a lot of things about the pack I didn’t understand.
“Oh,” was all I could say.
“Is that all?” His tone was cold and painful for me to hear. I stepped closer to him again, and this time he didn’t retreat, though I could feel anger coming off him in hot waves.
“I’m so sorry, Desmond. For everything.”
He growled a little, still glaring, but he didn’t stop me from edging towards him. I was within inches and could feel his rage in a searing, red aura. He was shaking.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Why?” He looked beyond me. “Just…why? All of it.”
“I left because I was scared. I didn’t know what you and Lucas would think. And more than that. The vampire council came to me at the Oracle’s and gave me a job I was too scared to deal with.”
“Is that why you’re back?”
“That’s part of it.”
He raised a hand as if he wanted to touch me, but reconsidered and let it drop.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I lowered my voice and found I couldn’t look at him. “I missed you. I missed the taste of you.” I didn’t mean it in a sexual sense, though I had missed that too. With the sweet limey taste on my tongue, I was able to accept how much I missed the literal flavor of him.
Desmond made a small sound, somewhere between a whimper and a sigh, and then his mouth was on mine. His large, warm hands cupped my face, and he was imploring my lips to open. I sighed against him and wrapped my arms around his back, feeling the heat of his body through the thin layer of his shirt.
He pulled back again, holding my face, and looked at me with dark seriousness. “Don’t you ever leave me again.”
I nodded, no hesitation to my agreement. I’d longed for the warmth of his touch every night while I’d been gone, and now that I was with him once more, I never wanted to leave. “Shut up and kiss me,” I demanded, and he didn’t wait to be told a second time.
Picking me up, he walked us over to the desk and put me down on the hard wood surface. The few items that had been there—a phone, a penholder, a stack of papers—were showered onto the floor as he climbed onto the desk with me. I lay back and his body covered mine. I worshiped the heat coming off him as we kissed each other with the pent-up desire of a long separation. He clipped my lip with his teeth, breaking the delicate skin, then pulled back and gently sucked the blood off my lower lip.
I shuddered, and my lids fell closed as he tilted my head back and trailed kisses down my jaw, to my neck, then to my throat, then almost to my…
“Secret?” He stopped.
“Uhn?”
“This is the stupidest shirt I’ve ever seen.”
It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about until I looked between us and remembered the shirt I had borrowed.
“Oh. My other one was covered in blood, so I—”
Desmond froze. His body went rigid on top of me, and not in the way I would have hoped given our position. He slid back and climbed off me, standing almost out of reach and looking at me with a frightening expression. I sat up, shimmied to the edge of the desk and took his limp hand in both of mine.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“Why was your shirt covered in blood?”
Oh, yeah, I probably could have worded things a bit better. “Um. I guess I haven’t been entirely honest about what brought me back. It wasn’t really my decision.”
“What does that mean?” He took another step closer and placed one hand on my wrist, brushing his thumb down it.
“I was kidnapped?”
“You say that like it’s a question.”
“Well, it wasn’t a kidnappy kidnapping. It was more like the time you guys kidnapped me, you know?”
He raised an eyebrow, and I couldn’t blame him. I tugged him closer and wrapped my legs around his waist. He was still hard, but he didn’t take the bait. He didn’t pull away either, and I was happy just being close to him again.
“Sig needed me back, so he sent some people to come and get me. The teen wolf and I got into a bit of a scuffle, and we both got a little bloody, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” He cupped my chin and moved my face from left to right, most likely checking for any signs of damage. He seemed satisfied my healing had done its job, and let his fingers trail down my face and rest on my shoulder. “Teen wolf?”
“Yeah, some kid. Definitely a wolf and seemed familiar. Might have been cute before I got him in the face with a tire iron.”
“That’s my girl.” He smiled. A part of him was trying to piece together ev
erything I’d told him, but a more substantial part of him was pressed against my pelvis. Now that his worry had faded, I was more likely to get what I wanted most out of the situation.
“Desmond?”
“Yeah?” He was absently rubbing his hand from my clavicle to my throat and back down again, making my pulse sing.
“About the shirt?”
He looked at my shirt and made a face.
“If you hate it so much, maybe you should take it off.”
Chapter Nine
My shirt was off before I’d finished the sentence. His was much less patiently removed in a tinkling shower of buttons hitting the floor and the satisfying sound of shredding cotton.
“I liked that shirt,” he said with a laugh as he pushed me back down onto the desk and kissed my exposed stomach. I grinned and ran my hands over his smooth, warm back.
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
There was little opportunity to joke around once he kissed me again. I fell into the abyss of his attentions, drowning in each deep, probing kiss. I dragged my fingers through the new length of his hair as he moved his hands between us and undid the button on my shorts. He found his way to the waistband of my underwear, and his sly fingers slipped under the cotton. He slid one finger inside me, and I gasped from the unexpected roughness of his warm skin.
He drifted away from my lips, peppering kisses over my breasts. I didn’t want him to stop what his probing fingers were doing, as first one, then two found a slow, deliberate rhythm inside me, making my head swim. With a faint grasp of how to use my hands, I undid my bra and shucked it to the floor. It was still dangling from my fingers when his hot mouth latched on to one peaked nipple, dragging a ragged sigh from my lips.
He pushed my shorts off, and they fell to the ground with a soft sound. I felt his hardness, trapped in his slacks, against my inner thigh. I let out a moan, drowning in the urgent need to have him inside me again. I had both hands on his lower back, imploring him to come closer, when I had a flash of memory.
For a moment I thought I was remembering our previous times together, and then, as he put a third finger inside me and his tongue swirled around my nipple, I was overcome by a disorienting dizziness. When I opened my eyes, I found myself in bed with Holden.
I blinked, unable to understand where the desk, Desmond and all of my reality had gone. And why it had been replaced with a missing vampire in a satin-sheeted bed.
My hands were on Holden’s lower back and his mouth was at my neck, and I caught my breath when his teeth dragged over my skin. The change in my breathing made my throat tighten, and the sharpness of his fangs pressed over my throbbing artery. Desmond was forgotten, as were all of the worries of my real life. When I touched Holden our bodies created steam where his cool skin rubbed against my own feverish exterior. His touch was as real as anything I’d ever felt, and the only thing my body understood was a growing desire that needed to be fed.
As far as my animal desires were concerned, one hard cock was as good as another right then. I shivered in anticipation of what was to follow and arched my hips against him.
“Yes,” I purred.
I was back on the desk with Desmond, and his pants were now undone. He ran his hands down my waist and grasped my hips as his mouth reclaimed mine for a jarring kiss. Without his fingers inside me there was a pulsing ache that demanded attention. I growled against his lips and nipped at his tongue. The rational parts of me were no longer in control, otherwise I would have been wondering what was happening to me. A wave of tension trembled through his body as he pushed himself inside me. I broke free of the kiss with a gasp, digging my nails into the skin of his back. I’d forgotten what it felt like to have the hot length of him fill me up. My eyes rolled back and then…
Holden’s body rocked against mine, and the heat of Desmond was replaced with a coolness so soothing it felt like a full-body sigh. The vampire drew me upright so I was perched on his lap. He held my hair away from my neck, and his tongue teased the delicate skin until my pulse raced with the breakneck speed of my overeager heart. With his free hand, he brushed his fingers down my back and over my bottom, where he lifted me easily, then lowered me, repeating the action until my hips took up the rhythm naturally, and I swayed with him as we built towards a fever pitch. As my cries grew louder and more frantic, my body shook. Teeth sank into my neck, and I heard myself call out in both realities from the combined pleasure of what was happening on both planes.
I clawed at the desk but felt satin instead. I reached for Holden to push him away and met with the warmth of Desmond. Closing my eyes seemed to make it worse, so I opened them and hazily fixed my gaze on Desmond, who was looking down at me as he moved.
The sensation of him pounding inside me and the way it tasted when he kissed me was almost too much to bear, and I couldn’t help but shut my lids for a moment. In that instant I was back with Holden. He stopped biting me and pulled his head back with a look so satisfied it gave me a chill.
“Soon,” he said, tracing his thumb over my raw lips.
I wanted to reply, but my eyes flew open when Desmond pulled my hips closer to the edge of the desk and found his way deeper within me with a fierce thrust. I gasped, my mind reeling, and when he finished, I let him lay on top of me, breathing softly, while I stared at the ceiling, terrified to close my eyes.
I needed to find Holden Chancery.
Once I was back in my right mind, I felt violated. I buttoned up the dress shirt Desmond had brought me, trying to understand what had just happened. Seated on one of the leather chairs in the study, I was being too quiet, and it seemed to be making Desmond worry. I didn’t want him to think he’d done anything wrong, but he couldn’t know about the weird subconscious threesome we’d just had.
I didn’t know how to reconcile what I’d just experienced, so how could I expect him to understand? If I tried to explain it, I doubted I could make it sound like anything other than I was thinking about a vampire while we were having sex.
Desmond sat down in the chair across from me and gave a tentative half smile. You would think I’d just lost my virginity or something, with how careful he was being.
“Secret, I think I know what’s wrong.”
Startled, I looked up at him, and my breath caught in my throat. Had he been able to feel it too? Had he seen what I’d seen? God, I hoped not.
“You still need to see Lucas, and this unexpected…delay is making you feel guilty.”
“Oh.” I looked down at my hands and debated his words. Lesser of two evils. “Something along those lines, yeah.”
He knelt on the ground in front of me and wrapped me in his strong arms. I hesitated, scared to close my eyes, but when I did I found nothing there but darkness. So I let myself indulge in Desmond’s embrace. I breathed in the smell of him as deep as I could, and the wolf part of me stirred, like a dog stretching after a long nap. It had been a long time since I’d felt her as anything more than fractured senses or abilities. Or animal needs.
To know she was still there, a whole entity, a being unto herself who could still feel things through me, gave me both a chill and a shock of delight. It seemed like I could only feel my wolf as her own entity when I was with Desmond. When I was with Lucas, she merely felt like liquid heat bubbling below the surface. Desmond awakened the animal within.
I pulled back. “Thank you.”
“For what?” He brushed a hair back behind my ear.
“For being so damned understanding all the time. I don’t know how you do it.”
“I do what I need to do in order to keep you.” The sadness in his voice was heavy. I think it was the first time I let myself appreciate that neither he nor Lucas liked the situation they had found themselves in any more than I did. Who wanted to share their soul mate? They were no more interested in sharing me with each other than I was interested in being soul-bonded to two men.
As if love wasn’t complicated enough without the supernatural getting involved.
<
br /> “I do need to go see Lucas,” I said.
“I know. I called one of the cars while I was getting the shirts. It’s a bit of a drive, but if you don’t get too distracted, you can make it there and back well before sunrise.”
“Thank you, Desmond.” I kissed his cheek, then his mouth. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Ha,” he said with no humor, looking me in the eyes with that serious expression of his. “Can I ask you something for next time?”
“Of course.”
“Next time I want all of you here with me. I don’t want your mind off somewhere, or with someone else.”
I swallowed hard. He thought I’d had Lucas on my mind.
“I want that too,” was all I managed to say.
In the car, I tried not to think about what had transpired in Lucas’s penthouse but found it impossible. It wasn’t so much the sex part that was bothering me, because I had to admit it had been phenomenal, if bizarre. Rather, I was getting more and more concerned about the connection Holden and I seemed to share inside my mind. It was no longer restricted to dreams, and that made it unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
I was immune to the thrall, so it couldn’t have been that. Was there some other kind of vampire magic I was unaware of that could let Holden enter my dreams and my waking mind without permission? The dream I’d had in Elmwood could have been dismissed as one of my typically weird nocturnal ramblings. But what had happened tonight was something new. The part of me with Holden had felt as real as the physical part of me with Desmond. And when the vampire had bitten me…
My hand went to my neck, and I half-expected to feel something there, but the skin was as smooth as ever. There was nothing to indicate I had ever been bitten.
I sat back in the leather seats of the town car and sighed.
