She blinked at me then nodded, and I watched as she hauled herself upright, clinging to the shower door at first, then leveraging off the faucet. I felt ashamed for not helping her, but maintaining this distance was bad enough. If I approached her, that was it. Game over. Plus, I didn’t know what she was doing. It figured she was coming toward me, that Hell Hound deep in her psyche not appreciating being denied something it had just helped forge.
But she surprised me.
When the bloody hell wouldn’t she though?
Instead of staggering toward me on shaky legs, she turned around and switched on the shower once more. Her legs were trembling from having to stand upright without any aid, and again, I felt so bad, but if she was too weak to stand, then she was too weak for me to feed from.
I could almost taste her, could imagine the delicious essence sliding down my throat, nourishing me in ways that few ever had. Not even my Pack would feed me as well as she did, and I longed for that, longed for her taste with a power that both bewildered and enchanted me.
When the water warmed, the shakes eased off. She stood there, under the pouring water, allowing the heat to offset the intense chill, and then she stunned me further. She began to tug off the shirt and shorts she’d worn in bed. Her clothes were different than what she’d had her seizure in, and I had to wonder if Eren had changed her or if a female member of the crew had…
The thought was stupid.
Why wouldn’t Eren change her?
He was her mate. But the prospect of him seeing her naked made the Vampire inordinately angry, and that wasn’t fair considering Eren was her Chosen and…
As I connected with my soul, I realized why I was still on edge.
I wasn’t Chosen yet.
What the fuck?
Before I could sputter out my agony, her clothes landed in wet heaps on the shower floor. The soggy splats broke into my spiraling thoughts, and I gaped at her naked body for timeless moments. She was rounder than I usually appreciated in a woman, curvier, and yet, despite being unlike any other woman I’d slept with, that just felt all the more perfect.
I needed Eve. So fucking badly I was starting to hurt.
She grabbed some soap from a silver frame that hung suspended from the ceiling. Watching her clean herself was agonizingly delicious. It was such a private act, that had I not known her Hell Hound was in charge today, I knew she’d be blushing. But that beast had no shame. Especially not with someone they believed belonged to them. And from the fire in her eyes? There was no question in my mind that she believed I was hers, so why the fuck wasn’t I Chosen?
When she’d cleaned up, not leaving a single stone unturned—and having never watched a woman in the shower—I was surprised at the inherent grace in watching her soap up her body, and in seeing the suds sliding down her curves. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth from the sheer sensuality of it.
When the soap had rinsed away, she held out her hand and whispered, “I’m clean for you now.”
Okay, so she’d been asleep for five days and hadn’t showered in that length of time. I could see why she might think that was the reason for my pulling back, but it wasn’t.
I shook my head. “You’re too weak from the sleep. If I take from you, I could hurt you.”
“I can’t Choose you if you don’t feed from me.”
Her bland words had me frowning at her. “What do you mean? How do you know that?”
She licked her lips and her hand moved to trace the leaves on the other wrist. I felt entranced by the gentle movement of the digits, enticed as though she were touching me instead of herself. Christ, the moves were perfectly innocent, but they made me hard as nails.
“I just know.” Her fingers carried on tracing upward, higher and higher until she reached her chest. My heart almost stopped when I figured she was going to touch her tits, but she didn’t. She moved her hand to the center of her sternum, right where, a few days before, her torso had glowed with the form of a tree, and right where her fingers twirled around and around was where the tree had branched off, splitting in two before heading down each arm.
There was something she wasn’t telling me. Either because she didn’t know the answer herself or because she was hiding it from me. I saw no reason for her to hide anything, not when we were all on the same team, so I chalked it down to instinct. Sheer animal instinct that had her knowing something she shouldn’t.
When I remained pressed to the back of the shower wall, she narrowed her eyes at me. I half expected her to pounce, but she didn’t. Instead, she stepped forward and opened the shower door, then stepped out into the bathroom. I was so focused on her that I saw the tremor in her limbs, the shake to her body as she tried to keep herself under control. The sight perturbed me because it meant she was still weak, and of course she was. She’d been unconscious for days on end. Why would she think she was ready for my mauling her?
The sound of her brushing her teeth had me almost chuckling through the despair swirling inside me. God, I wanted to go to her, wanted to taste her and explore her and accept the invitation she’d given me so freely, but, how could I?
No decent man would take what she was offering, not when she was still so frail.
It didn’t matter that the Hell Hound was in charge—
The shower door slammed open again, and this time, she was in the doorway, her body bare and her hands clamped down on either side of the frame. I saw the beast in her eyes, saw it in the heavy shake of her chest, and heard it when she grated out, “You deny me you?”
The words were so strange, so archaic, that I knew the beast was utterly in control. It didn’t happen often, but it did in a high-stress situation.
Reed would be better suited to dealing with her, because he was a Hell Hound himself and they could both fuck each other’s rage out of the other. Instead, she was stuck with me, and I saw in her face, in the tightening of her fists on the doorframe, that no one but me would do.
My Vampire, being the prick he was, decided to leap to the challenge.
Both our creatures were in control now, and God help her for triggering that particular catalyst.
There was no going back, no turning back time.
She’d have to accept the consequences of her actions now.
❖
Eve
Half of me felt like I was the walking dead. The other half? I was alive. On fire, and burning for my mate, because that was Samuel. He just didn’t know it yet. But it was time to Choose him and time to Claim him. Time for him to wear my mark and for me to wear his scars.
I shuddered at the thought and allowed him to haul me over his shoulder, my naked body on display, and deep into the bedroom I didn’t even recall falling asleep in.
When we approached the bed, I knew the sheets had been changed, because if I’d been sleeping in them for as long as he said I had, then they’d stink, but they didn’t. These smelled like fresh sea air, and they enticed my senses as much as the man lying on the bed, with his feet crossed at the ankles.
Samuel staggered to a halt as he stared at his brother. “What are you doing here?”
“Eren said her Hell Hound was out to party.” Reed shot me a narrow-eyed glance that made me burn even brighter as the animal inside him responded to the one inside me.
Goodness, I felt like I was being torn in so many ways. Reed was Chosen but not Claimed, and Samuel was neither. But how could I do both at the same time?
Was that even possible?
What I’d done with Frazer had felt so right, so pure and beautiful, but with Samuel and Reed both in need…
Samuel settled me on the bed with a care he hadn’t shown back in the bathroom when he’d carried me in a fireman’s lift out into this room. I twisted to face the male sitting on the bed, then turned and watched as Samuel began to strip off his sopping wet clothes.
Neither looked ill at ease at the prospect of Samuel suddenly wearing no clothes in front of another man, and even though arousal unf
urled inside me, the need to Choose and Claim burning hotly in my veins, discomfort and embarrassment began to creep in.
Doubt too.
“H-How…?”
Reed cocked a brow at me. “Do you trust us to keep you safe when we get off this yacht?”
The question astonished me. “Of course.” And I did. There wasn’t a second’s hesitation in my answer, and I sensed both men’s innate satisfaction with that.
“Well then, trust us here too,” he said, his tone as simple as the words, and though they put me at ease, there was more to this than just trust.
I blinked at him, and I wasn’t sure where it came from, wasn’t sure because I’d never have thought the question was even remotely possible, since people didn’t do things like this, did they? “Have you done something like this before?”
Reed and Samuel shot each other a look I knew meant the answer was yes. They’d been together, naked, and with another woman.
The Eve that was rational and slightly innocent was faintly perplexed and, I had to admit, curious. I’d had sex now. Outside the bonds of marriage, but within the confines of a union that, to my mind, was even more holy than that of marriage. How couldn’t it be? Someone, somewhere, had deigned to put me with Frazer, as well as the other men. Not just for the safekeeping of my body, but my heart too.
But there was a different Eve at play in this moment.
An Eve who had been stirred when Samuel had urged me to awaken in the shower. The eighth soul, the one Eren had called djinn, was in control, but the Hell Hound was awake and raging at the confines of my being.
That particular beast?
She did not appreciate the knowledge that she was not the first to be in such an intimate environment with Reed and Samuel at the same time.
My hands curled into fists, and I stared at first Reed, and then Samuel until the latter hissed. He strode over to me, grabbed my hand, and hissed again at the sight of the blood on my palms—my nails had dug through the flesh and I hadn’t even noticed. He raised my arm, sniffed at my blood, then his tongue flickered out. The pair of us shuddered the second he touched me, and I clenched my eyes closed as the Hell Hound’s outrage began to simmer down.
I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to maintain this rage or allow them to do to me what they’d done to someone else.
Was nothing sacred?
The thought had my eyes fluttering open, and I grated out, “You’ll touch no other female.”
“We wouldn’t want to,” Reed stated immediately. “We’re your Chosen.”
“Speak for yourself,” Samuel retorted, though his hand still clasped mine. They were the wrong words to utter.
In the blink of an eye, I surged upward and shoved him away from me. He fell back, straight down onto the rug beside the bed with a startled ‘oomph.’ The second he was flat on his back, I was on him, with my legs straddling his nakedness, my bare body atop his, and my hands at his shoulders as I pinned him down. My strength came from the creature that spewed these toxic emotions deep inside me. The blood from my palms stained his flesh, painting him in it, and the ruby red smears were a delicious counterpart to his skin. He was more tanned than me, but still pale too.
As I stared down at him, my Hell Hound bristled with outrage but also, desire. He was beautiful. If a man could be that. His hair was dark and thick but shorn close to his head on the sides. The top was longer, scruffier, and against his paler skin, he looked all the darker and more delicious for it. His jaw was solid, his cheekbones high. His top lip was ragged thanks to a scar that skewed the Cupid’s bow, but I wanted to trace that scar with my tongue so badly, that I felt my body clench with the need I was barely withholding. His eyes glittered up at me like shining onyx, and his nose, with two kinks in it from several breaks, wasn’t as patrician as say Stefan’s or Frazer’s, but it didn’t detract from his attractiveness.
Samuel looked like a fighter. A nasty scrapper that would fight dirty to win.
The thought shouldn’t have inspired anything other than disgust in me, but if anything, I shuddered with want.
The need to Claim this male was so overwhelming, but so was the need to be in control. I knew if I released my hold on him, he could have urged me upright, forced me onto my back, and taken over.
But as I eased my grasp, he didn’t.
And I think I fell a little bit in love with him for it.
“I meant you hadn’t Chosen me,” he rasped. “Not that I want another female.”
Reed snorted. “As if we’d want another.”
They spoke so matter-of-factly, and yet, Father Bryan, the leader of the cult I’d been raised in, had easily added to his coterie of wives whenever a prettier woman came into his line of sight. If someone who pretended to be so pious needed that, then how—
But Reed broke into my thoughts when he asked, “Do you know how many people could do that?”
I blinked at Samuel, then tilted my head to see that Reed was at the side of the bed, with his elbows on his knees as he stared at me.
“What?”
“Could take Samuel unaware and get him on his back?”
“How many?”
“The people on this boat. Probably Damon, but only because he’s an experienced fucker. Samuel is one of the nastiest fighters in Caelum. Even in the graduated ranks.”
But I’d attacked him twice before and scored hits each time.
Reed grinned at me as he saw understanding cross my face. “Exactly. If you think a woman with your particular talents isn’t going to keep all of us on our toes, then you’re not as clever as I thought you were, Eve.”
Was being a freak something that inspired attraction in men?
I stared up at him, unsure why he looked so amused, so certain, but that certainty bled into me. It made me realize that even if I felt unsure of myself, they didn’t. And, I had come to realize, they never would.
Where I was weak, they would be strong.
And when I was strong, they would back me all the way.
A shiver whispered down my spine as the thought resonated with me, hitting me right where it mattered—the place where the souls resided.
The Hell Hound took it down a notch, no longer actively wanting to strangle Samuel for daring to suggest there might be another female he’d have in this position, and instead, the creature induced me to rock my hips.
Both our eyes widened, and our breath hitched as his hardness, which lay flat against his belly and I was inadvertently straddling, ran down the softness of my sex. It hit that place a few of my men had discovered before, which I was learning all on my own was a hub of pleasure.
Because it felt so damn good, I did it again. And again. Until I had to close my eyes and drop my head to deal with the welter of emotions that were sparking through my veins.
Shuddering in sheer delight, I whispered, “You’re mine, Samuel.”
His eyes flashed. “I know it.”
Nostrils flaring, I dipped my chin, accepting his acquiescence. At that moment, I felt like a queen, so gloriously adored that it was a wonder my head didn’t expand.
Hands moved around me to cup my breasts, and I jerked in surprise then moaned in wonder as rough fingers, strong and sure, began to rub my nipples, followed by hard strokes, tight pinches, and gentle squeezes of soft, giving flesh. Torn between sagging into Samuel’s body and reaching back to stretch against Reed’s, I hovered between them both, staggered by the welter of sensation the two could inspire in me.
Samuel’s fingers dug into my hips as he began to urge me to move faster, to be more sure with the way I rocked against him, and Reed made me want to sob as he tormented the flesh that was hardening for him, my nipples turning into harder-than-diamond points at his ministrations.
My childhood taught me that this was obscene. Man and wife, not men and wife. But how could this be anything other than beautiful? How could it be anything other than a joyous exploration of the feelings we had for each other?
It might have
been wrong, but for me, it was right.
So right.
Perfect.
“Help me,” I rasped, my voice low and threaded with need. I was hungry, but not for food, and after five days asleep, that made no sense, and yet, it spoke of a different need. A need to be taken, to be Chosen and Claimed by these men too. “Make me yours.”
Two grunts were my answer, and Reed began to pull away. Fear whispered down my nerve endings—where was he going? Just as I started to panic, he pressed a kiss to my shoulder and whispered, “Relax, Chosen.”
Quivering at his verbal Claiming, I realized he was stripping, and I could hear the murmur of his clothes as the fabric bunched. And while he was busy, Samuel was too. He stared up at me with hot eyes, eyes that Claimed me in turn. His grip on me changed as he urged me into sitting higher on my knees so that there was space between us. I pouted at the distance, then something insidious flashed deep inside me as he reached for his hardness.
What did Dre call it?
A cock.
My mouth watered with a need that was foreign to me. It was like I was hungry, my mouth salivating for cake and certainly not…
Was it wrong to taste a man’s hardness?
His cock?
I gulped, swallowing thickly as Samuel groaned. “Don’t look at me like that, Eve. You’ll make me come.”
My eyes widened. “I will?” I wasn’t sure that was possible, but what I knew about things like this could be written on the back of a postage stamp.
“Yes,” he replied on a gruff chuckle, one that managed to sound pained. “You will.”
I wouldn’t lie about that making empowerment surge through me. I was hot and ready for something; I just wasn’t sure what. And considering I had two men in the room, with ‘something’ on their minds, I figured I’d best get with the program before I ended up biting off more than I could chew.
“Are you certain you’re ready for this?” he growled out, surprising me with how in tune he was with me.
“Ready?” I blinked at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
A snort sounded from behind us. “Yeah, Sam. She’s only been asleep for five days solid. Why wouldn’t she be ready for a threesome?”
Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE Page 5
