Safe and Burning with Ecstasy [The Heroes of Silver Island 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Tonya Ramagos

  “Really, Delilah. You’ve blushed more today than a virgin watching Magic Mike.”

  A virgin she definitely was not, so she tamped down the heat in her cheeks and resumed her fantasy. Blaze and Kalvin had stood patiently waiting for her return. She saw herself walk into the picture now. Apparently, the imaginary her hadn’t seen the need for clothes, because she was already naked. It made the illusion progress faster, though a part of her had wanted to linger on the wonderment of their hands on her flesh as they peeled her clothes from her body.

  The imagery flashed like an old-fashioned slideshow and suddenly she was back in the tub. Kalvin and Blaze were with her, their hands roaming her body as they situated her between them. Blaze’s arms folded around her waist and dragged her between his powerful legs as he spread them and leaned back with her against the rim of the tub.

  What had once been a soft pillow beneath the back of her head turned to a hard surface of well-toned muscle as the visionary her relaxed against Blaze’s chest. She felt his cock, hard and enormous, at the small of her back and the muscles deep in her channel clenched in wanting. His callused hands moved from her waist, flattened on her inner thighs, and spread her legs wide, exposing her pussy for Kalvin’s view.

  Kalvin was on his knees in front of her, his stormy eyes heavy-lidded with lust and his large hand curled around the thick shaft of his cock. She licked her lips at the sight, her taste buds zinging and tongue begging to glide up and down his massive length the way his hand started to do. He held her gaze as he leaned forward and captured her mouth in a soul-stealing kiss.

  Blindly, she set the wine glass on the side of the tub as she imagined Kalvin’s tongue tangling with hers in a heated kiss that left them both breathless. He tore his mouth from hers only to trail shivery kissed down her jaw and throat until he reached her breast.

  She cupped her breasts in her hands and flicked her thumbs over her pulsing nipples as, in her fantasy, Kalvin licked one between his teeth and gave it a nip that skated the line of pleasure and pain. Her hips lifted slightly off the bottom of the tub, her thumbs and forefingers clamping onto both nipples, as Kalvin moved to her other breast, treating that nipple to the same pressured torment.

  She imagined Blaze dipping his head behind her to nuzzle his face in the side of her neck. He licked and nipped her flesh, sending fiery embers of need raining through her body to join the inferno Kalvin was creating in her pussy.

  Kalvin eased away, drawing a whimpering plea for her throat, both in reality as well as the dream. But then he was settling himself into position between her legs, the head of his marvelous cock nudging at the entrance of her pussy.

  She let go of one breast, flattened her hand on her abdomen, and slid it down her torso to cup her pussy. She delved her middle finger between her sodden folds and raked it over her flaming clit, eliciting a soft moan from her lips. She slid her hand lower and pushed the finger into her pussy as Kalvin impaled her with his cock. Her head pushed back harder against the pillow on the tub, against Blaze’s chest, as the sensational feeling she somehow knew would never compare to the real thing rocketed through her.

  Kalvin fucked her. There was no other word for the way she imagined him taking her as she added a second finger to the first in her pussy and pumped them viciously into her burning channel as deeply as she could. Blaze’s hands replaced hers on her breast, kneading and squeezing the mounds until she was crying out from the pleasure.

  Her entire body shook from the force of the orgasm as it tore its way out of her. Slowly, her imaginary paradise faded away as she came back to reality. She exhaled a ragged breath as she pulled her fingers from her pussy and opened her eyes.

  “Wow,” she whispered on a half-laugh. Spent, though still needy, she grabbed the glass of wine and took a long, refreshing swig before setting it back down. She eyed the book she’d yet to start reading, decided it could wait until another day, and completed her bath.

  Dregs of the fantasy stayed with her as she flipped off the lights in her suite and threw herself into the center of the huge bed. The king, larger than any she’d ever seen, had felt empty last night with so much mattress space on either side of her. She’d remembered reading in one of the brochures that most everything on the island had been designed with three in mind. The sidewalks were wider, the beds were larger, and even the golf carts available for rent to peruse the island in lieu of cars had wider than normal bench seats.

  The bed still felt empty tonight, but after entertaining her fantasy with Kalvin and Blaze, she found she didn’t care. For the first time in months, she drifted off to sleep nearly the instant her head hit the pillow.

  Chapter Three

  The acrid odor of smoke pulled her from a deep sleep. A thick, gray haze hovered in the room, drifting in though the space beneath the door. Fear rendered her motionless for several heart-thudding moments before she rolled off the bed and fell to her hands and knees on the floor. The fog burned her eyes as she crawled through murk to the door. Remembering everything she’d ever been taught about emergency escapes, she flattened a hand on the wood to check for heat. Satisfied that the fire was not directly on the opposite side of the door, she turned the knob and back-stepped on her knees as she pulled it open.

  More smoky darkness met her as she moved into the hallway. She took a deep breath, choking on the tainted oxygen, and called out. There was no response. She started to head for the stairs. Surely they had gotten themselves to safety. The knowledge that they would never have left her behind stopped her cold.

  The hallway was short, spanning only the length of her room at the top of the stairs before making an L to a longer hallway that provided access to other rooms. She detoured her crawl, headed down that short hall, rounded the corner, and felt the scream bubble in her throat.

  Flames licked the sides of the hall, danced over the floor, and built a wall that seemed to be moving closer and closer at a rapid pace. There was no way under it, no way over it, and no way around it. Through it was the only option, but without water, she’d be burned alive.

  Shouts bellowed from below, footsteps struck the stairs, and she turned her back to the fire. She rounded the corner and managed a weak, “Help,” but doubted her cry had been heard over the roar of the beast at her back.

  She heard a whoosh in the second hallway that turned the blood in her veins to ice just as she saw a figure atop the stairs.

  “Move!”

  The figure’s shout puzzled her. Move where? She couldn’t go down the other hallway. She’d already tried. She saw him start for her, saw his arms out as if he meant to grab her, and started to go to him just as she heard a crack and felt something hit her between her shoulder blades.

  Delilah bolted upright, her breathing heavy, her heart hammering against her rib cage, and her mind disoriented. She forced her breathing to steady enough to enable her to take a deep, accessing breath. The cool, clean oxygen in the room confirmed what her head had already known, the acrid scent of smoke had merely been a product of the nightmare. The pain between her shoulder blades had been as well.

  “It was just a dream,” she whispered. She bowed her head, squeezed her eyes closed, and reached back to cover the scar with her palm. “Just a dream.”

  She wouldn’t cry. She’d done enough of that over the years, but the reality of that fateful night had never changed. It had been her first brush with fire, her first brush with death, and the first time she’d lost everything.

  She’d managed to put the nightmare at bay for over a decade. The night Delilah Designs burned to the ground, it had returned with a vengeance. When her home had caught fire less than two weeks later, the events had compiled into one twisted, horrendous dream that wouldn’t leave.

  “So much for sleep,” she muttered and raked her hair from her face as she lifted her head. She blinked, only now realizing her suite was no longer bathed in darkness, and shot a glance at the bedside clock. Her jaw dropped as she read the time. It was nearly ten in the
morning. “No fucking way.”

  She snagged the disposable cellphone off the table by the clock, flipped it open, and gaped at the time on the screen there, too. The clock wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t paid attention to exactly what time she had fallen into bed, but she knew it hadn’t been long after midnight. Had she really gotten nearly ten hours of sleep before the horrors of the past had paid their visit?

  She bowed her head again, caught a whiff of the oil she’d reapplied between her breasts after her bath, and felt her jittery nerves start to settle. Had the oil in combination with the sachet allowed her to sleep so well for so long? She remembered her fantasy of Kalvin and Blaze in the tub and the body-rocking orgasm it had given her.

  “Oil, sachet, and imaginary sex…” She snorted as she crawled across the bed and planted her feet on the plush carpeted floor. “Apparently it’s the right combination to bring on exhaustion.”

  Amused as much as she was amazed, she padded into the next room, to the small island dividing the sitting room and kitchen, and set the complementary coffeemaker to brew. With the nightmare still far too fresh in her mind, she returned to the bedroom to sift through the clothes still in the bags from the department store she’d purchased them from. She’d left the clothes Ashley had loaned her in the BMW when she’d abandoned the car, walking away with only the outfit she’d been wearing the day she’d fled Chicago. She’d need to replace those clothes when she returned home.

  She’d waited until she’d hit Silver Springs to purchase more things to wear, making sure to use cash so she didn’t leave a credit card trail. It had been another of the precautions she’d taken, not knowing exactly why until she’d talked to Ashley yesterday morning. Whoever had set their sights on her had made it clear he wasn’t done. He’d also made it clear by torching her car that he was, or at least had been, following her.

  The thought compelled her to the door of the suite. She checked the double locks, noting they were both securely in place. On her way back to the bedroom she saw the coffee had brewed enough for her to fix a cup. Detouring again, she pulled the pot off the maker, glad when it showed its high-tech ability to stop dripping when the carafe wasn’t in place, and poured the java into a cup. She replaced the carafe on the burner so the coffeemaker could finish its cycle and cradled the cup as she returned to the bedroom.

  She fell to her knees next to the bag of clothes and slapped a hand on top of her head as doubts overwhelmed her. “What the hell am I doing?” Maybe she should’ve stayed in Chicago. She should have weathered the storm. How did she really expect to figure out who was after her when she’d run hundreds of miles away? No doubt the Chicago officials were more concerned with finding her now than whoever had set fire to her store and house.

  Not that they’d been concerned with finding the real person responsible to start with. They’d had her under a microscope instead. Without any other concrete leads besides the note that hadn’t revealed any fingerprints except hers and Ashley’s, she was their prime suspect. And she’d ran, which she was positive had made her look even guiltier.

  She let her head fall back on her shoulders and stared at the ceiling. She hadn’t wanted anything else in the city to burn because of her. Then there was the note she and Ashley had found. Tears welled as she thought about the threat, I’ll get you next time. The arsonist hadn’t caused her any physical harm yet, but the wording of that note had made it sound as if he intended to.

  “And, even after the note, the police still didn’t believe you.”

  She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders as she lifted her head. She wouldn’t allow herself to second guess her decisions any longer. Yes, she’d probably made things worse on herself by running, but it was definitely better than being six-foot under if that was the arsonist’s plan. She’d gone with her gut. Damn it, other than a couple of small bags of clothing, a shitty disposable cellphone, and her laptop, her intuition was all she had left in the world and every instinct she possessed had told her to run.

  “Okay.” She pushed a hard breath from her lungs. “You ran and left yourself with two choices. You can go back or you find someone who will believe you and help.”

  Almost absently, she pulled a teal bikini painted with tiny pink polka dots from the bag as she wondered if Blaze or Kalvin would turn out to be that someone. They were definitely in the position to potentially help, especially Kalvin. But would they believe her?

  “It might be a chance you have to take,” she told herself as she covered her bikini with an oversized beach shirt and a pair of elastic waistband athletic shorts. She slipped her feet into a pair of flip-flops as she ran a brush through her hair, careful to make sure the back fell in a thick curtain down the middle to hide the scar.

  Back in the kitchen, she topped off her coffee and turned off the coffeemaker, remembering how she’d gotten that sudden urge to tell Blaze everything yesterday. She’d agreed to have dinner with him and Kalvin tonight. She could take that opportunity to talk.

  Resting her bottom lip on the rim of her coffee cup, she blew the liquid to cool a sip and pondered over how she was going to sit at a table between the two of them and have such a serious conversation without thinking about last night’s fantasy. Given that the blush monster had apparently taken control of her blood lately, she’d probably be redder than a fire engine all night.

  “Better hope they take you to a dimly lit restaurant,” she muttered, and found herself wondering about the lighting at Starry Skies.

  * * * *

  Blaze wrenched open the door to the Karma Café, spotted Arianrhod behind the counter talking with Lara Cabelly-McCormick and her husbands, US Navy SEAL Brandon McCormick and Silver Island Sheriff John Cabelly, and made a beeline straight for her. He ignored the cursory glances he got from a few of the café’s customers sitting at the tables and booths he passed, but not the knowing look in Arianrhod’s eyes when she spotted him.

  The conversation between Arianrhod, Lara, Brandon, and John stopped as Blaze reached the counter. Determined to be the center of Arianrhod’s attention, at least until he found out what he wanted to know, he rudely shouldered his way between Lara and Brandon and flattened his hands on the counter.

  Arianrhod beamed at him and didn’t give him a chance to speak first. “I see you met her.”

  Blaze scowled. “You know I didn’t believe that mumbo jumbo you’ve been shovelin’ me and Kalvin for months.”

  “Would that mumbo jumbo be about the frightened woman with the jet-black hair the two of you have been waiting to come to the island?”

  Blaze shot a sharp look at the sheriff, who had leaned forward to look at him around his wife, a hint of an amused smile playing around his mouth. “Yeah, she told you, too?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “I heard it one day when you and Kalvin were hitting on her at Ménage a Drink.”

  “Mumbo jumbo or not, you believe it now, don’t you?”

  Blaze shifted his attention back to Arianrhod and his scowl deepened. He didn’t bother answering her. Though he’d been the one to tell Kalvin what they were feeling was real, he’d still found himself wondering if it was all in his head. The trouble came in knowing it had been in his cock and, more importantly, his heart, too. What he felt wasn’t love. No way, no how could he be in love with a woman he’d barely spent a half-hour with. But he couldn’t shake the connection that he’d felt that had seemed to reach way down in his soul.

  “Tell me what else you know.”

  Arianrhod’s eyes filled with compassion. “If I knew anything else, I would’ve told you a long time ago.”

  Blaze shook his head. Damn it, that was not what he’d wanted to hear. “What’s she runnin’ from?”

  Arianrhod lifted a shoulder and made a face. “Trouble.”

  Blaze glared at her through narrowed eyes.

  The corners of her lips twitched. “Yes, of course. Why else would she be on the run?” She sighed. “I don’t know precisely what kind of trouble. That was not sh
own to me.”

  Blaze raked a frustrated hand through is hair. “Well, why the hell not?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.” Arianrhod met his exasperated tone with one that dripped of sweetness and sympathy. “I can only tell you she’s frightened and the only good that will come out of running the way she has done is meeting you and Kalvin.”

  “’Cause we’re meant to protect her or save her or some shit,” Blaze grumbled. “How the hell are we supposed to do that if we don’t know what we’re up against?”

  Lara placed a hand on his forearm. “Have you tried asking her?”

  Blaze shook his head. “Kalvin met her yesterday in here. She dropped by the station while he was meetin’ with John and the chief. I taught her a little boxin’, Kalvin came back and we shot the shit for a bit, and she left. We ain’t seen her since.”

  “Are you sure she’s still on the island?” John asked.

  Blaze’s heart gave a decided bump at that. “Christ, she damn well better be.”

  “Give her a little time,” Arianrhod advised. “She’ll open up once she gets to know you and Kalvin.”

  Blaze lifted a brow as he stared at her. “Is that another of them visions of yours or is that a guess?”

  She grimaced. “It’s a guess, but I’m betting it’s a good one.”

  “And what if we don’t have that kind of time before whatever or whoever is after her shows up?”

  “What’s her name?” John asked. “If there’s trouble headed this way again, I need to know about it as much as you and Kalvin do. I’ll run a check on her and see what I can turn up.”

  Blaze studied the sheriff as he considered that. On the one hand, he knew the man was right. If he and Kalvin were supposed to protect Faith from whatever she was after her, they would likely need the help of the sheriff and his deputies to do it. Still, running a background check on their woman didn’t set well in his gut.