CHAPTER 26
“Is she asleep?” Garrett asked softly.
Gabriel nodded and whispered for Noah to come open his door, so he could slide out with Emily still held in his arms and not wake her. Noah dipped his chin and left his seat, looking over the area as he made his way around.
“The plan for tonight still the same?” Garrett asked.
“Yeah,” Gabriel murmured. “We’ll call later on and touch base with everyone.”
“Okay.” Garrett turned back to watch the surrounding terrain while Noah helped Gabriel step out of the vehicle with Emily in tow. He and Kaden waited until they were inside the cabin before they moved on down the lane to the cabin they were using. They parked and then went about a thorough perimeter sweep before trekking inside to get comfortable for a while.
Gabriel paused inside the doorway and waited for Noah to go through each of the cabin’s rooms before he brought her further inside. He looked down and watched Emily sleeping against his chest. Watched the slow rise and fall of her body and the way her long eyelashes brushed against the delicate skin below. The dark circles under her eyes were greatly reduced and he was glad for it.
“Coast is clear,” Noah said softly. He walked back over to them and slid his sidearm back into its holster. “Bed or couch?”
“I think I’ll put her on the bed. I changed the sheets after she bathed this morning, so it’s ready to go.”
Noah smiled, but said nothing. He knew Gabriel liked to keep a place tidy. A throwback to his parents’ insistence that everything should have a place and stay in it. Noah followed him and watched as he gently deposited her on the mattress. Emily muttered something unintelligible and then her eyes came open.
“Hey, there,” Gabriel smiled down at her, his expression completely unguarded and loving. “Go back to sleep. We weren’t trying to wake you.”
“Join me? Both of you?” she asked and held her arms up to him.
To Noah, it seemed that Gabriel melted right in front of him. One minute he was standing over the bed, and then next he was stretched out beside Emily, gathering her in his arms. His shoes hit the floor in the next instant, as he kicked them off.
“Noah?” she asked in a groggy voice.
“I’m coming, baby.” He slid his holster off and placed his gun on the nightstand. Then he took his shoes off and set them to the side. He walked around the bed and told Gabriel to give him his holster, amazed that he hadn’t done it himself. Gabe sat up long enough to hand it over and then he refocused on Emily.
Noah chuckled softly as he made his way back around to the side he had claimed as his. Emily rolled towards him and hugged him when he joined them, but then she rolled to her back between their larger bodies. Just as she’d done when they had rested together before.
Gabriel propped his head in his hand and slid his other hand under the edge of her shirt. He slowly smoothed his palm over her skin in a gentle pattern that made her smile.
“Tell me something, Em,” Gabe said softly.
“Anything.”
Gabriel smiled at her immediate reply. “Tell me what you see for yourself in Whitford Falls in a year or five years down the road. Really?”
“What do you mean, Gabe?” Emily asked, becoming more alert by the second. She blinked hard to clear the last of the sleep in her eyes away. She noticed something - she wasn’t sure what yet - flit through his eyes. Something that made her uneasy.
“I mean, you’ve let slip a few times that you don’t think people in our town are ready for the kind of relationship we’re in now. You’ve said something about knowing Jasper’s parents from church, and I’m not sure that the congregation would welcome an arrangement such as ours through their doors. I want you to be happy, Emily. Before any needs or wants I might have, I want you to be content and fulfilled. I don’t want you to have to live in shame because of who you love.”
Noah rolled over and propped his head in his palm, mimicking Gabriel’s posture, and met his eyes with a fierce stare. What the fuck?! Where was he going with this, Noah silently demanded to know, and why in the hell hadn’t they talked it out before broaching such a topic with Emily?
“Okay,” Emily exhaled as she blew out a beleaguered sigh. “Let me up.”
Gabriel frowned as she slipped from her place between them. She sat up and removed her shoes, then scooted off the end of the bed. Gabriel pushed himself up and braced his arms behind him as he watched her stand and face them. Noah did the same.
Emily stared at them as she pulled her shirt over her head and gave it a quick toss towards the closet. She slowly opened the button on her jeans and then seductively slid her zipper down, one inch at a time. She did a little wiggle as she worked the denim down her legs until it hit the carpeted floor.
She arched an eyebrow pointedly at Gabriel and reached behind her to unhook the lacy, black bra she was sporting. She held the cups as the straps slid down her arms, until she finally released the wispy material to the pile she was creating. Emily’s eyes turned to Noah next as she ran her hands over her waist, letting her fingers collide with her tiny, black panties. Her hands skimmed down her toned legs until there was nothing left to cover or hide her body from their appraisal.
Emily brushed her long hair over her shoulder and settled her hands on her hips. She watched both of them stare at her, their eyes raking over her from her head to her feet before they could remember to look her in the eye. Then she leaned forward and crawled back atop the bed until she stopped by their knees. Emily slid her hands up their legs, pausing when she came to the discernible bulge of their constrained cocks. The swell which their jeans could not hide.
“Now, let’s try this again,” she began. Emily smiled at Noah and then looked to Gabriel. She reached for the fly on his jeans and began to disrobe him as she spoke. Gabriel stared openly at her, dumbfounded, but he did manage to lift his hips to help her with the task.
“First, I have lived in our home town all of my life. Why? Well, it’s not because it’s the most glamorous or exciting place to pass the time away. And it’s not because I have a real interest in all the small town gossip or need to one-up your neighbor that goes on there. I’ve even been coaxed in the past by my publishing house to move to a larger city, but I never have. Lift your butt up, please.”
She added that little directive in so politely, that it took Gabriel a moment to realize she had given him an instruction she meant for him to follow. When he did, Emily slid his briefs off, smiling as his cock bobbed free and hit his flat abdomen. Then she set about divesting him of his shirt.
When she was satisfied with her work on Gabriel, she turned back to Noah and began the same process all over again. Noah gave her a crooked grin as he watched her take charge in a way she hadn’t yet. It was hot as hell, he thought.
“No,” she continued, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on, “I stayed there because of you two. I loved you both so much, that I was willing to go to a local college, not the Ivey League universities that actually tried to recruit me, just so I could be home when you came back on leave or between cases. I remained in my grandparents’ home, not because I am incapable of leaving it behind, but because it was where you knew to find me.”
Emily tossed Noah’s shirt over the side of the bed and then moved back in front of Gabriel. She slid between his legs and gently pushed his thighs apart. Then she leaned in and blew softly over the head of his thick cock, grinning when it twitched before her. With light pressure, she grasped the base and then licked over the moist slit again and again until he hissed through his teeth and raked his hands into her hair.
“Em, what are you doing?” Gabriel asked in a pained voice.
She looked up at him and angled her face. “What does it feel like I’m doing? I’m trying to get it through your head that I love you and I don’t give a crap what people say or where we bed down at night, as you put it the other day. And I thought I’d talk to the correct head, the one that is really invested in a
ll this and the one that would most certainly listen to me.”
Noah burst out laughing and wiped his hand over his face. He fell back on the bed, shaking, as he tried to rein it in.
“Oh, your head and I are talking to each other in a minute or two, so hush,” she teased.
“My head loves you, baby, so feel free to talk to it all afternoon,” Noah played easily against her banter. “Talk to it, kiss it, suck it, lick it…” he trailed off and waggled his eyebrows at her. Noah laced his hands behind his head and settled back to watch the show.
She gave him a sultry wink and then closed her lips over the crown of Gabriel’s shaft. She slowly began to move up and down, teasing the head with her teeth lightly and running her tongue over the thick vein along the underside. While she worked more of him into her mouth, Emily placed a hand on his stomach and began to push him back, so he lay flat on the bed.
Gabriel complied, but he managed to prop himself up on the pillow so he could look down the length of his body and watch her. He pulled her hair back and held it in one hand, wanting an unobstructed view of her lips as they stretched wide to accommodate him. When he felt the head of his dick hit the back of her throat, he held his breath. But then Emily swallowed and the ripple it caused over his engorged flesh nearly sent him right over the edge.
“Em, I’m about come in your mouth,” Gabriel managed to warn her. He was disappointed to see her slowly pull away, but she rolled his balls in her hand before she moved from her position and he was briefly pacified.
She took Noah with the same finesse she had taken him, and Gabriel stared unabashedly as Emily closed her lips around Noah and took him deep. Noah arched his hips upward, trying to get in her even deeper; and Emily went with it, taking it all. Gabe still couldn’t believe that this was coming so easily for him, that they could share like this and he would feel no jealousy whatsoever. All he could see was the startlingly beautiful and giving woman before him, who was taking care of her men.
Then she leaned away and sat on her heels between them, looking from one to the other. Emily held Noah’s cock in her right hand and she wrapped the fingers of her left around Gabriel’s shaft. She began to lightly caress them as she spoke again.
“Years ago, before Gram died from the cancer that claimed her far too soon, she asked me one day if I would ever tell the two of you that I was in love with you both. I was so shocked and startled, that I had to sit down on the side of the bed where she lay and catch my breath before I could speak.”
“I remember feeling my eyes cloud over with tears, because I was sure she would discourage me. Tell me I was wrong to feel that way. But I should have known better, because that wasn’t my Gram.” Emily blew out a happy little sigh as she remembered the lady who had come in and rescued her after her parents died. The one who always got her, and who always made her feel safe and accepted.
“She clasped my hands in hers and she smiled. She said, ‘Emily, there are all kinds of love in this world, and so many chances to share what’s in your heart with those around you. Some people go a lifetime looking for what’s already in front of you, staring you right in the face. They make mistakes and experiment, getting their hearts broken in the process, while they look for what comes effortlessly for you, Gabriel, and Noah. So how could telling those two boys that they mean everything to you, ever be wrong? How,’ Gram asked, ‘could being whole as the three of you are, only when you’re together, be a shameful or sinful thing?’”
“I told her that in my heart it wasn’t wrong, for I loved you both with a ferocity that took my breath away. You are my day and my night, my absolute everything. You’ve always had my heart, you see - my mind, body and soul, too. I’ve saved every part of myself for you, Gabriel, and you, Noah. No other.”
“So my answer is this Gabe: I want to be wherever the two of you are. I will never hang my head in shame because my heart is big enough to love you both. I will never deny us, never choose one of you over the other, never play favorites or make one of you feel less important or unworthy. Because you are both so very deserving of all the love I can heap on you.”
“And I’ll do that wherever we choose to live. Our parents chose Whitford Falls for their homes, and that’s where we were raised. But that doesn’t mean that’s the place we’ll finally decide to settle down. I vote we talk about it more. Talk about places in this great, wide world that I’ve always wanted to see and that you’d both like to explore. Let’s travel, and if another place speaks to us and treats us fairly, then we’ll buy a house and set up shop there.”
“But wherever we are in the moment, that’s where home is. Just as you said the other day. Because as long as I have the two of you, I’m content, happy, and so very at peace. Now,” Emily sniffled, “does that answer your question?”
Gabriel glanced at Noah, a look passing between the two of them, before they sat up and each placed a hand on her face. Emily released their erections and drew in a deep breath from the heated intensity in their eyes.
“This isn’t exactly as we planned it, but it’s the right moment. We feel exactly the same. There’s no one else in this world that we want to make a lifetime commitment to, other than you, Emily Nicole Matherson,” Gabriel said in a thick voice.
“No one else who completes us,” Noah grinned, his eyes looking bright from the moisture flooding them. “No one who we want to laugh with, love, and grow old with, like you, Em. No one who has ever taken the time to really see us, the person behind the face. So we have a question, and we want your answer.”
Emily held her breath, so afraid and excited at the same time at what she thought was coming, that she dared not move a muscle. The moment was too perfect in its fleeting stillness for her to disturb it in any way. She looked from one man to the other and watched their smiles grow.
“Marry us, Emily?” Gabriel and Noah asked in unison.
She lost sight of them as tears obliterated her vision. But she began to nod as she leaned forward and wrapped an arm around each of their necks. Emily felt their hands slide to her back, steadying her as she cried against their warm chests.
“Is that a yes?” Gabriel whispered in her ear. He kissed the delicate shell and then tugged on her lobe lightly with his teeth.
“Yes,” she breathed and sobbed happily all over their shoulders.
Noah chuckled helplessly against her. He leaned his head against hers and nuzzled Emily while his hand stroked soothing lines up and down her side. Finally, he turned his head and kissed her wet cheek.
“Be right back, baby. Hold on to Gabe,” he murmured against her skin and then slid from the bed. He walked across the room and stepped into the adjacent bedroom. Noah found the small box in his luggage that held the promise of a future he and Gabriel had agreed upon before coming home. He smiled to himself as he turned to carry it back to the beautiful lady who was still weeping in their bed.
“Emily, look at us,” Gabriel said. He cupped her face and drew her away from his shoulder as Noah rejoined them. While Noah got settled, Gabriel used his fingers to wipe the moisture from her skin. He smiled when she finally focused on him, happy that she could see him again.
“Accept this from us, as a promise of what’s to come,” Gabe added huskily. “For all the years ahead that we’ll share, through the good and the bad.”
“We picked this out to represent us, Emily.” Noah managed to get the words out, but he had to turn and cough to clear the knot in his throat. Damn it, he wanted to be stronger than this during such a significant moment. Be the rock she could lean on. But he was just as moved as she, and Noah couldn’t remain stoic to save his life.
“You see, Em,” Noah tried again, “we decided before we came home this last time to finally tell you how we felt, to make us official. We couldn’t ask your dad for your hand, nor your granddad, but it sounds like your Gram gave us her blessing from what you just said. So that makes me happy to know that when she passed, she knew that somehow we’d work it out and make a go of it
together.”
Emily watched as Noah opened the box he held in his trembling hands. She gasped and placed a hand over her heart when she beheld what they had chosen together. It was extraordinary, and she looked from it to Noah and then Gabriel in wide-eyed wonder.
“The center diamond is you, Em,” Gabriel said and palmed the side of her face. “The big, bright spot in our lives, who makes it all possible. The two diamonds on either side represent me and Noah. We’ll be strong partners, we’ll never leave you, and we’ll keep you protected between us until our dying day. The three of us, forever, honey.”
“Oh my, gosh!” she breathed, shaking her head slightly from the beauty of it all.
“Hold your hand out,” Noah chuckled. Gabriel had to help Emily and he supported her hand as Noah slid the three-stone, platinum diamond ring on her finger. “Perfect fit,” he grinned. Noah leaned forward and kissed the ring. When he leaned away, Gabriel did the same, sealing their engagement and their lives together in an unbreakable promise.
“I love you both, so very much.” Emily reached out to trail her hands over their faces and necks. She let her hands glide down until they rested over each man’s heart and she paused there. She leaned in and kissed first Noah’s chest above his heart, and then she turned and swept her lips across Gabriel’s skin in the same place.
“Make love to me. Both of you, until I can’t feel where I end and you begin.”
“Always,” Gabriel rumbled low in his throat. He cupped her face and then turned her, laying Emily down on the bed between them. His lips moved over hers with amazing strength and gentleness, stealing her breath with each masterful stroke of his tongue along hers.
Noah’s lips roamed over her skin, tasting and teasing her nipples initially, until the treasure below called to him. He glided down her body and parted her thighs, settling himself there for a while. There was no hurry, because they really did have a lifetime, he thought. Noah drew in a deep breath, savoring her scent, and then he pressed a delicate kiss to her folds.
Theirs To Claim (Predatory Desires Book 1) Page 25
