by Diana Seere
“I’m too tall. Or too short. Depends how you look at it.”
She rubbed harder. “Where?”
“The big one,” he gasped.
“It really is. I don’t understand how it fits, honestly.”
He looked down at her with a grin. “I meant the Rolls. Come on.” Hooking an arm around her waist, he led her over to the longest vehicle, then released her just long enough to tear off the cover. Stretching out in front of them was the type of car she’d only seen in old movies, the kind of luxury automobile that was designed for a man with a chauffeur and a fortune in early twentieth-century British pounds.
“What is it?”
Derry reached in and opened the door. “Rolls-Royce Phantom. Asher brought it over from England ages ago. Do you like it?”
Sighing, she came up behind him and, pressing her breasts into his back, reached around and stroked his abs. “I like this.”
He climbed into the backseat, having to fold in the middle like Ron’s massage table to fit inside. “I remember it being bigger than this. I must’ve been a cu—child the last time I was in here.”
She crawled in after him, stroking the cheeks of his ass as he bent over. “We’ll make it work.” She slid her hands between his legs from behind and tickled his balls.
With a cry, he fell onto the leather seat and pulled her on top of him. “Twenty-four hours ago, you never would’ve dared to do that,” he said, palming her breasts under her T-shirt, his voice lowering to a growl when he discovered she wasn’t wearing a bra. He swept the shirt over her head, then pulled her down to suckle her breast.
Fire shot through her from nipple to clit, making her too clumsy to manage his pants. She arched her back and rode him, the top of her head brushing the car’s ceiling, wriggling her pants and panties over her hips and off, to invite him inside, flinging the clothes over the edge of the car.
His hands pushed between their hips and just as swiftly fit them together.
He entered her with a shout. Filled, stretching with him inside her, Jess dug her fingernails into his shoulders and bore down harder, deliciously painful, terribly satisfying, she invited him in deeper and deeper.
The ecstasy began to build in a familiar way, like when she was alone but harder, softer, faster, more, and she let go of the last fragments of her self-consciousness and began vocalizing with wild abandon, squealing louder and louder with each thrust.
“What the hell are you doing in Asher’s car?”
The unfamiliar voice, so male and so angry, snapped her out of her madness. She looked up and saw a long, bearded face with angry green eyes glaring at them through the back window.
Derry pulled her down and rolled her under him, crouching over her body to shield her as he looked up. “For fuck’s sake, Edward, would you give us some privacy!” he shouted.
Of all the times for his own brother to find him and Jess in flagrante delicto.
And he hadn’t even come yet. So close, and yet… so far.
So very, painfully, blue-ballishly far.
“Derry?” Edward sounded so scandalized he began to laugh, which only increased the look of mortification on poor Jessica’s face. “You’re having one of your orgies in the garage? In the Rolls?”
He abruptly stopped, the chuckles dead in his chest as Jess’s expression hardened, then tightened.
“He doesn’t know,” Derry murmured to him. “He has no idea there’s only you.”
Her look of deep skepticism made his heart physically hurt.
“And there is only you,” he whispered, kissing her cheek.
She gave him a weak smile.
“I am not having an orgy!” Derry shouted to Edward. “And do you mind? We’re naked.”
“I see that. I don’t want to see that, but I do.”
“Then turn around and have some decency!”
Edward pitched Derry’s clothes at him through the tiny window.
“Get dressed. Asher is going to kill you. I hope you didn’t stain the leather.”
“Oh, good God, Edward. Don’t talk about issues in which you have no interest.”
The angry flush in Edward’s bare cheeks above the neatly trimmed beard made Derry feel some sense of satisfaction. The youngest of the Stanton family, and the only mountain lion shifter, Edward lived in solitary misery. At least that was how Derry assumed it must feel. Derry felt a sting of regret as he watched Edward lose his composure, turning away to gather himself. Only last year, in a rare moment of drunkenness, his young brother had admitted to being celibate. Edward had refused to explain why he had chosen to live such a perverted lifestyle.
Derry had sworn to himself not to use that against him.
Then again, that orgy comment wasn’t exactly fair, either.
“I’ll be back,” Derry murmured to Jess, whose face had gone blank as she disguised her emotions. Shielding her from view, he backed out of the car and faced Edward. They weren’t eye to eye, for Edward was smaller, but he was whip-strong, muscles forged by years of mountain firefighting.
Derry painfully tucked his shirt in, avoiding brushing against various swollen parts. “Care to explain why you’re barging in on me in an intimate moment?”
Edward pointed to his motorcycle, a vintage Norton he treated like the girlfriend he didn’t have. “I was fixing a spark plug. I assure you, I never expected to come in here and find you in the middle of fireworks.”
Derry’s eye roll was as menacing as possible. Edward was not intimidated.
“Only one?” Edward said in a soft, cultured voice. All the Stanton children had been raised by British nannies in the States before being sent to England for boarding school, even Edward, whose mother had wanted to keep him in America. She had died while he was abroad, a devastating loss that had brought Edward home early to finish school in the States. Perhaps because of this, his British accent was lighter than the rest of the Stanton siblings, yet he carried himself with an old-fashioned formality more in keeping with Asher’s personality.
“My sex life is none of your business.”
“Your love life is quite often covered by no fewer than two hundred media outlets after a particularly spectacular playboy moment, Derry,” Edward said with a wry grin. He worried his hands, rubbing them, the only sign of nervousness.
“No more.”
Jess scrambled out of the Rolls, showing more leg than Derry liked Edward to see, her T-shirt her only garment. Glittering green eyes took her in, Edward’s obvious appraisal of her concluding with approval.
A green flame roared inside Derry.
“Here,” Edward said, bending down to retrieve her pants and panties, handing them to her with a respectful modesty that even Derry could sense. As Jess grabbed them, Derry noticed how soaked the panties were.
He bit back a self-congratulatory chuckle.
“You can leave now,” he said coldly to Edward, reaching for his forearm and pulling him a few feet from Jess, who was hobbling on one foot in an effort to finish dressing.
“I can’t leave my bike in that shape!” Edward argued, looking pointedly over Derry’s shoulder. He turned and followed Edward’s gaze.
The bike was partly dismantled. Derry felt a strange oily sensation on his palm and looked down to find Edward’s wrist covered with streaks of grease.
“We haven’t met yet,” Jess said, suddenly at his side. Her hand outstretched for a social nicety, she tried to shake Edward’s hand. “I’m Jess Murphy. Lilah’s sister.”
Edward’s eyes went anywhere but on her as he shook her hand and mumbled, “Nice to meet you. I’m Edward.”
Derry’s nose shifted into overdrive, picking up on subtexts only scent could communicate. Jess was horrified. Edward was mildly aroused, but then again, he’d been sexually starving himself for God knew how long—he would be. Some other element lingered beneath the surface, a dull sort of dread that Derry could not identify.
“You don’t look like Derry,” Jess said, tilting her head to one s
ide, studying Edward’s face.
Floom! There went the green flame.
Wrapping his arm around Jess’s shoulders in a gesture that went far beyond an animal’s claim, Derry gave Edward an unequivocal look.
Mine.
Don’t even fucking think about it.
Edward’s eyes flashed, the same color as Derry’s jealousy, and then the flame extinguished.
“We’re half-siblings,” Edward explained, his voice controlled now, his standoffish personality kicking in. “We share the same father.”
“Is that why you look so different?” Jess replied with a smile. She hugged Derry as if the three of them were at a church potluck, making conversation. “And are you a bear, too?”
All sense of composure drained out of Edward as if he’d been exsanguinated.
Derry felt his body tense, primed and coiled for some fight he couldn’t understand, yet felt coming. The fact that his balls ached and throbbed, begging for release, didn’t help either.
Absolute horror poured blood back into Edward’s skin, making him redden and pale at the same time, a strange paradox that Derry could not reconcile. He continued to stare at Jess, but his words were for Derry. “You, you… you told her?”
“It’s a long story.”
Edward finally turned to look at Derry, eyes dark and bleak. “Asher really is going to kill you.”
Chapter 17
Jess let Derry escort her out of the garage into the dark, cold night. Wearing only the T-shirt and yoga pants, she felt naked and vulnerable. Unseemly. Her bare breasts were tingling from foreplay and eager for more, but she stopped him when they reached the door to the kitchen. There she slid her hand out of his grasp and turned to face him under the house lights. “We’ve been really stupid. We have to stop.” Edward’s words about Asher had upset her even more than the look on his face when he’d caught her screaming and naked on top of his brother’s cock.
“Stop?” Derry asked sharply. In his expensive dress shirt and dark wool trousers, he didn’t look unseemly at all, although he was a little rumpled. Deliciously so.
But she would have to be strong for both of them. “The stupid has to stop,” she said.
“Perhaps you could do me the favor of being more specific.”
The house lights were behind him, so she couldn’t see his expression clearly, but she heard the tension in his voice. “We have to be more discreet. We can’t keep having sex all over the place.”
A smile crept into his voice. “But we can keep having sex in some places.”
God help her, she wasn’t willing to give that up. To wait so long and then have to stop after her first day of having a sex life—no. “Private places.”
“I love private places.” He palmed her breast, kneading it, stroking her nipple.
She smacked his hand away and gestured at the outdoor floodlights shining from each corner of the house. “This isn’t private. There are probably security cameras recording us right this minute.”
“No. Not at a Stanton property. Never.”
Stepping out of groping range, she crossed her arms over her chest, vowing to never walk out of her room without a bra ever again. “I thought rich people loved surveillance.”
“But shifters don’t.”
Of course, that would make one hell of a viral video. “All right, but somebody could see us. There are dozens of guests milling about.”
“I’ll come to your room,” he said.
“No, you can’t. I’m sorry, Derry, but we have to get ahold of ourselves.” When he lunged for her again, she hopped away. “Not that kind of holding. Listen, my mother might come by. Servants are everywhere. Somebody would see you. You’re pretty hard to miss.”
“Would you not miss me, lovely Jess?”
“I’d miss you like crazy,” she said with a sigh. “But I don’t want you to get in trouble with that brother of yours that everyone’s so afraid of. Asher. Edward was really worried for you. Even Lilah warned me about him.”
Derry ducked his head and mumbled, “It would be preferable to keep our activities unknown to my eldest sibling.”
“Why? What can he do?”
“Come to think if it, I believe you’re right. This isn’t a safe place for us to congregate,” he said, gesturing to the door to the kitchen. “You go on ahead, pretend you were searching for a glass of milk and a bowl of cookies, just a little midnight snack, and retire to your room.”
So he didn’t want to talk about Asher. She’d find a better time to make him open up. “People don’t usually eat entire bowls of cookies,” she said, smiling.
“I’m not like other people. Hadn’t you noticed?” His fingers brushed across her nipple in a good-bye grope as he strode away.
After a moment to catch her breath, Jess opened the door and slipped inside, took his advice about the milk and cookies, and retreated to her room, frustrated and alone. The urge to chase Derry down, wherever he was, was so powerful she had to curl up in a ball in bed and force herself to remember the moment in the Rolls when she’d looked up, mid-squeal, and seen Edward’s shocked face.
The stupid had to stop.
Stop the stupid.
They could wait a few days until they were back in Boston to enjoy themselves. There they could find privacy, anonymity, king-size beds, and long nights without interruption. She imagined his apartment must be huge and opulent, the opposite of hers. The faucets probably didn’t drip, and the windows didn’t need a stick to prop open in the summer. The appliances would be from her lifetime, and she didn’t need to guess that he wouldn’t have to fight junkies off while keying into her foyer.
They could wait.
If their relationship lasted that long…
It was still dark when she woke in a cold sweat. Heart pounding, she squinted at the clock on the nightstand.
Just after five. Too early to have breakfast, too late to go back to sleep.
What had she been dreaming? She felt terrible, like her bones had frozen. She couldn’t stop shivering. On the window she heard hard rain tapping the glass. Wrapping a quilt around her shoulders, she got out of bed and walked over to look outside. It wasn’t rain, it was sleet. No wonder she was cold. Hours ago, when she hadn’t been able to sleep because she was burning with lust again, she’d turned down the thermostat.
Her breath fogged the glass. Winter was coming. She pressed her fingertip to the window and drew a heart. When she began to write two pair of initials with a plus sign between them, she wiped it away abruptly and turned her back to the window.
Stop the stupid.
A fragment of her dream came back to her. She’d been naked at the club again, serving drinks to a jeering crowd. Had Derry been there? She couldn’t remember and, if he had been there, didn’t want to.
Dropping the quilt on a chair, she went into the bathroom and tried to shake off the lingering bad feelings. If she could just get warm… She knew who could warm her up real good, but she’d turned over a new leaf, like a New Year’s resolution, and she wasn’t going to cave in so quickly.
She remembered the sauna Lilah had told her about, next to the outdoor pool. Apparently, when they were much younger, the two eldest Stanton brothers had enjoyed jumping into the lake in February—through a hole in the ice—after heating up in the sauna.
It had been years since she’d sat in a sauna. This was the perfect morning for it, an ideal setting. She pulled on a swimsuit, sweats, and her parka, and went out to look for it, exploring through the empty halls, seeing herself reflected in the glass doors as she walked out onto the back landing and down the steps to the pool.
At the path that led around the lake, she paused, tempted, so tempted, to turn left, to find the old stairs up into the woods and surprise Derry with breakfast in bed. That’s what she’d say, flinging off her clothes and jumping on top of him, that she was his to consume, his to devour.
She took several steps in his direction before sanity returned. Her phone, with its built
-in flashlight, was sitting in her room; for her to stumble around in the freezing predawn would not only be unpleasant, but might attract unwanted attention when she got lost or tripped in the dark and almost killed herself.
With a long sigh, she pivoted on her heel and marched to the pool. A floodlight shining from the main house illuminated the tendrils of steam rising up from the surface, telling her that the water, in spite of the sleet, was heated and ready for use.
The sauna was what she needed right now. She walked through a gate to the pool deck and maneuvered around lounge chairs to the small building at the end. Next to a dial and thermostat was a bulky wood door. She pulled it open a crack and felt a rush of heat. If there was a light, she couldn’t find it; after a minute of fruitless searching, she tore off her clothes, huffing in the cold, and scurried blind into the hot room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Dry heat stabbed her lungs, making her gasp. Coals glowed in a grate in one corner, faintly lighting a few feet around it. Fumbling in the shadows, she spread out her towel on the lower bench at the wall farthest from the door, not sure why her pulse was racing. Must be the sudden rise in temperature. She was having trouble catching a full breath.
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to learn this is a private place,” Derry’s voice whispered in her ear.
She screamed and jumped to her feet. “Derry!” She pressed her hand over her pounding heart. He’d been lying on the higher bench right behind her. “What are you doing here?”
“Me? I would ask you the same thing, except my manners forbid it.” He sat up and grinned, his white teeth reflecting the glow from the coals.
“How did you know I was here? I mean, how did you know I was going to come here?”
“I didn’t. Or, rather, I knew it the way I know everything about you.”
“Which is how?”
“I have no idea, but I’m rather learning to enjoy it.” He patted the wooden bench next to him. “Have a seat.”
“I can’t. We’ll start fooling around. You know we will.” The heat was making it hard to breathe. Whatever chill she’d had earlier was long gone. “I’ll go back to my room.”
