by Grace, KD
Sliding her mouth up the length of him, she pulled away, then rose on her knees and mounted him. He placed his hands on her hips and guided her deeper and deeper until all of him was sheathed inside her. Every inch of him was alive with Eleanor just beneath his skin, just beneath both their skins, drawing them together, drawing them deeper into each other, tightening their bonds like so many unseen knots.
When he began to thrust, it was as though she rode him from a high place, far away and yet at the same time nearer than the beating of his heart. And Eleanor was there all around them, everywhere. ‘I want to stay inside you for ever.’ The words were Finn’s, but the sentiment could have been anyone’s as they rolled and tumbled on the hardwood floor, slick with sweat, tight with passion. When they came, the explosion of lust blew the world apart and then collapsed back in on itself into gasping, writhing, trembling, weak, vulnerable flesh.
* * *
At some point they ate again then stumbled to the bed. Jill couldn’t remember how many times she had come, and through it all she felt Eleanor and Finn as though they were one, as though all three of them were one.
Resting her head against the strong steady beat of Finn’s heart, Jill tried to take in the events of the past few hours. Unable to, she placed a kiss on the rise and fall of his sternum and said, ‘She loves you, you know. Eleanor does.’
She felt him nod. ‘I know,’ he said. Then he lifted her chin so she could see his eyes shining dark in the waning moonlight filtering through her window. ‘That’s why she took you. For me.’
Before she could respond to his words with anything more than the skittering of her insides, he kissed her very softly. ‘Now go to sleep, Jill. We both have to work tomorrow, and we’ve got lots of time to talk about our little ménage.’
Chapter 14
‘We’ve never done anything like that. You and I,’ Finn said.
‘I’ve always wanted us to. It was always my plan.’ Eleanor replied.
Jill was dreaming again, but this time she wasn’t tied up. This time she stood quietly at the side of her bed looking down at the couple. Eleanor rested her head on Finn’s chest, absently stroking a nipple that stood erect against the mound of his pectoral muscle ‘I was crushed when things went so badly with Lisa. Surely you know that.’ She rose to meet his gaze. ‘But it’s different with Jill. She’s so comfortable. She feels so right. Even you think so, I can sense it every time you touch her.’
Though Jill knew what she looked down on from the hazy place of dreams wasn’t real, Eleanor’s statement made her chest feel tight, as though some unpleasant thing had worked its way into her lungs and was squeezing them.
Finn pulled Eleanor closer to him, into such a tight embrace that Eleanor emitted a little gasp. ‘I’ve never felt anything like what the three of us share,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid, Eleanor. I’m so afraid. You could have experienced her through me. You could have left her as she was. I mean, the attraction was there between us before you possessed her, and every time I’m with her I want her more. I don’t understand why you risked it.’
‘I would have thought that would be obvious, my darling.’ Eleanor traced a finger down along Finn’s sternum, trailing a ticklish path down beneath the duvet to where his cock rested against his thigh. ‘I don’t want to experience the world through your body, Finn. I want to experience what it feels like to love your body, the way you like your body to be loved, the way I never can when I’m inside you. You’ve never been without flesh. You don’t understand how it is to feel things you can’t express, to watch the world around you and not be able to interact with it unless you … unless you take up residence in someone who has what you don’t, in someone who has flesh and bone and breath.’ She slid her hand under his penis and rested it gently against his balls.
He pulled her hand away and brought it to his lips. ‘Dear Goddess, Eleanor, I know I don’t understand. I can’t possibly, but you have to understand what you’ve done to Jill, what will happen to her when you leave.’
‘But we don’t know that, Finn. We don’t know that. I’m convinced she’ll be just fine. In fact I’m convinced that she …’
He shook her gently. ‘That she what?’
‘That she won’t want me to leave.’
Jesus! Jill had never thought about asking Eleanor to stay on as a permanent resident, and yet at the moment she couldn’t imagine life without her.
‘That’s one helluva gamble to take after what happened to Lisa,’ Finn said.
‘What? What happened to Lisa, and what gamble are we taking?’ Perhaps she was talking in her sleep. Perhaps she was speaking in the dream, but suddenly she was falling back into her body, and she woke in Finn’s arms. ‘I want to know. Tell me about Lisa. Tell me about the gamble.’
The startled look on Finn’s face was mirrored in the equally startled feel of Eleanor inside her. ‘You heard us?’ Finn said. His voice sounded breathy, a bit unsteady.
‘Of course I heard you. I heard every word.’
‘But it was a dream, Eleanor said.’
‘Bullshit. It wasn’t a dream. You two were talking while I slept, and it’s been going on ever since you possessed me, Eleanor.’ Jill didn’t know how, but she knew. She knew with a gut certainty that Finn and Eleanor’s little chats after they thought she was sleeping were exactly that, a chance for them to talk without her hearing.
She thrust her way out from under the duvet and threw on the robe that she had tossed on the floor only a few hours ago. ‘Tell me what the hell is going on.’ She paced at the side of the bed. ‘Who’s Lisa? Did she really hang herself? And what’s this gamble that I’m suddenly at risk in? And don’t lie to me,’ she said, ‘because I’ll know.’ She didn’t know if she’d know or not, but it felt like she would.
Finn sat up in the bed and settled the duvet over his lap. He worried his bottom lip with his teeth, then he spoke. ‘Lisa was the last woman Eleanor possessed.’
‘Was?’ Jill said, perching on the bed across from him. ‘Then she is dead.’
‘Yes.’ The word was barely more than a whisper, and she didn’t miss the rise and fall of his throat as he swallowed, as though even that simple word was painful.
‘Hanged herself?’
He nodded.
‘Why?’
Finn reached for her hand but she pulled it away.
‘Eleanor didn’t stay with Lisa as long as she had intended. She thought, Sole Alliance, we all thought that it was too dangerous. We thought that Eleanor facilitated her … unstable behaviour, so we thought Eleanor should leave before Lisa did something to hurt herself or someone else. We couldn’t contain her behaviour within Sole Alliance, and Eleanor …’
‘I thought I should give her free rein, and, in truth, I delighted in all the things she did, all the dangerous things we did together.’ It was almost as though Eleanor moved closer to Jill, trying to make sure Jill understood. ‘There were orgies, drugs, sex with strangers, dangerous strangers. Nothing was too extreme for Lisa with me in residence, and it wasn’t just sex, it was anything, anything risky, anything dangerous, and I felt it all, all the excitement, all the fear, all the debauchery, things I’d never been allowed to feel under the control of Sole Alliance. You need to understand I’ve been under the control of Sole Alliance for a very long time. Finn and his gang are just the latest incarnation. And Finn, well, Finn has been much kinder to me. But that didn’t make me any better behaved.’
‘So you were exorcised from Lisa?’ Jill asked, not allowing herself to be pulled into the demon’s remorse, which felt way too much like her own.
‘There was no need to. I came out willingly. There was a death. She was doing rope play with one of her lovers. She wasn’t nearly as skilled at it as Meinrad is.’
‘Jesus,’ Jill whispered, suddenly feeling cold, as though she would never be warm again.
‘After that, I left her. I thought, we all thought, she’d calm down after I left. We never imagined that …’
Finn nodded.
‘I’ve never possessed anyone I intended to leave willingly. That only happened under the control of Sole Alliance, and before Lisa, well, before Lisa my last possession was nearly a hundred years ago.’
‘Did she die? The person before Lisa?’ Jill was trembling, but she pushed Finn away again when he reached for her. ‘Well, did she?’
She felt Eleanor’s slight nod of confirmation as though the earth had shaken beneath her. She swayed on the bed, then grabbed onto the night stand at her side to steady herself, to keep the world in focus, to keep herself grounded. For an eternal moment, her world consisted of breathing in and breathing out. Right over left and under and through. Left over right and under and through. And when she was at last able to speak again, she felt calm growing at her centre, and it came from a place where Eleanor was not. ‘Then when you leave me, I’ll die.’
‘We don’t know that,’ both Finn and Eleanor said at the same time.
‘We don’t know that at all,’ Eleanor said. ‘You’re different. You’re not like the others. You’re certainly not like Lisa.’
When she was sure her legs would support her, she cinched a knot in the sash of her robe, then stood and turned to face Finn. In her mind’s eye, she was also facing Eleanor. ‘If you left Lisa at will, then I’m assuming the whole ritual, all of that stuff in Finn’s basement, was as much of a lie as everything else, and that you can leave me whenever you like. Is that true?’
‘‘Jill, you have to understand the risks. What we were doing that night in the basement could have –’
‘Is that true?’ she cut him off.
Once again both Finn and Eleanor nodded confirmation. Then Finn spoke. ‘But that might have been the problem with Lisa. Maybe if we’d waited. Maybe –’
‘Eleanor, I want you out. Now.’
She heard the startled silence inside her head.
Finn practically catapulted out of the bed, came to her side and took her arm. ‘Jill, please. We can work this out. Give us a chance.’
She jerked away. ‘I said I want her out now. I’ve got a hard day ahead of me, a hard week. If I die, I want to do it on my terms, not because you two toyed with my life like it was a fucking pair of shoes at your damned store to be filled by the right-sized foot. Now! And I mean it!’
There was a crackle that felt like an electrical current being discharged up her spine. For a second her head felt like it had swollen, like it would explode with all that it contained. Then Finn took her into his arms and kissed her, and she felt his body tense and the sensation, the power, the force that was Eleanor moved back into his body.
Then she was only conscious of pushing him away, stepping back towards the door, feeling as though there were nothing left inside her but a hollow space. ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she said. ‘I expect you two to be gone by the time I get out, or I’ll call the police.’ She turned and walked, on surprisingly steady legs, out of the bedroom. Once she was safe in the rising steam of the shower, she wept.
Chapter 15
Vivie nearly beat the door down before Jill could open it. She scooped her in a desperate bear hug. ‘Thank God you’re all right!’ And then she was blubbering on Jill’s shoulder.
Before Jill could say anything Vivie spoke, still holding her tight. ‘I know,’ she said between sobs. ‘I know everything. I know about Eleanor; I know about Sole Alliance. Finn told me.’
Jill supposed she should have been furious that Finn had brought Vivie into this mess, but instead she found herself moved, holding her friend to her as though her life depended on it. Vivie’s sobs invited her own, which she had managed to stave off through the workday by burying herself in the mountains of unfinished business Devlin had left. There was no need for that now, and the tears came.
After a while they settled on the sofa with a bottle of chardonnay, and Vivie continued. ‘You have to take her back, Jill. You have to take Eleanor back. You have to, because you’re my best friend and I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you. I just couldn’t.’
‘I made it through the day without dying,’ Jill said, ‘and I don’t have any plans to kill myself.’ She chafed her arms with her hands, feeling cold and empty. ‘Though I do have an urge to curl up in bed and cry for a few months.’
‘Finn’s desolate,’ Vivie said. ‘And so is Eleanor, I’m told.’
‘Glad to know I’m in good company.’ Jill downed her glass of wine and was about to refill before she remembered that, without Eleanor, she was no longer immune to the effects of alcohol, and she had to work tomorrow. She’d need her wits about her, and work was sanity at the moment. She didn’t want to be hungover.
Vivie grabbed her hand and squeezed it till it hurt. ‘Bloody hell, Jilly, it’s not worth losing your life over, is it? Finn said you and Eleanor got on well. He said you were good together.’ She held her gaze. ‘He said the three of you were good together. Jilly, the man loves you, can’t you see that?’
‘How do I know it’s really me he loves, Vivie?’ Jill pulled her hands away and blew her nose on a mangled tissue. ‘I mean, what part do I really play in our little ménage? I’m just the blank slate Eleanor can make over into her own image, into Finn’s dream lover.’ She wiped fiercely at her eyes. ‘If it’s just the demon enhancements that make me super-Jill, sexier, smarter, prettier, more fashion-conscious, then it’s not really me anyway, is it? It’s someone else he loves.’
Vivie shook her head, and the lovely lines of her jaw stiffened as though she were biting something hard. ‘You can’t really be that stupid, Jilly. Finn wanted you before Eleanor ever took up housekeeping. He told me so. Did it ever occur to you that Eleanor has nothing without flesh? Did it ever occur to you that maybe in you she has everything she wanted, everything she ever dreamed of? You’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re tender-hearted, you’re passionate. Hell, if I could trade places with anyone in the world, it would be you, Jill. Are you the only one who can’t see? Are you really the only one who doesn’t know how amazing you are?’
She didn’t feel amazing. She felt anything but. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t see that she had any choice under the circumstances. Jill squared her shoulders and ignored the tears. She figured she’d best get used to them. ‘Whether I live or die doesn’t matter so much, Vivie, if it’s not me. Things were amazing with Eleanor, and I miss her, and I miss Finn. But I have to know. I have to be certain that I’m still Jill Hart, and that it’s me, really me that they want.’
Three Months Later
‘Fizz and not tequila shots. I’ll take that as a good sign.’ The voice made Jill’s insides somersault, and the fact that she somehow knew that Finn Masters wasn’t alone, that Eleanor was in residence, made the feeling all the more intense.
‘I’m celebrating. Full On is one of the most frequently visited eZines in the UK. The list just came out.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been following it. Its success is mostly due to you, from what I understand. Congratulations.’
He sat down on the stool next to her and ordered a pint. For a second they sat in silence watching the Friday-evening crowd swell the ranks at the Water Poet, almost before their eyes. ‘Is Meinrad minding the shop tonight?’ she asked, hoping that light and airy conversation would disguise the nerves that bubbled to the surface with Finn and Eleanor so close to her after all these weeks, after all of the agony of trying to get used to being without them.
‘Chelsea,’ he said. ‘Meinrad’s off tying up a woman over in Camden Town.’
‘And you? You and Eleanor?’
When the bartender brought Finn’s pint, he also brought Jill another glass of fizz, and Finn offered her a warm smile. ‘We came to help you celebrate. Vivie told us.’
Jill still couldn’t imagine how Finn had convinced her friend that none of them were insane. She wasn’t sure she could have pulled it off. Ultimately she had been glad to have a friend wh
ose shoulder she could cry on, and she cried on Vivie’s shoulder a lot in those early days, a friend who understood exactly the circumstances of her anguish. She reckoned that Vivie was Finn and Eleanor and Sole Alliance’s way of having an insider, one whom Jill wouldn’t chase away, one who could make sure Jill didn’t try to hang herself or jump into the Thames with a breeze-block tied around her neck.
In addition to Vivie’s eagle eye, Jill knew that Sole Alliance were keeping watch over her. She never actually saw them, except for the occasional glimpse of someone tall and big as a mountain disappearing around a corner, or a wild mass of dreadlocks that vanished in a crowded Shoreditch street before she got a good look. But what was most reassuring, as well as disconcerting, was the smell. Occasionally, always when she least expected it, always when she most needed it, the scent of Finn that she knew so well would fill the air, so powerfully and so close to her that she expected to turn and find him standing there. He never was. Some sort of Sole Alliance magic, or maybe some demon voodoo that Eleanor conjured up.
She wanted to be angry about the close watch she was sure they kept on her. She wanted to call it stalking. She wanted someone of flesh and blood that she could tell to fuck off. But there was no one, and in truth she found it comforting to think they were keeping an eye on her. She found in it some wild sense of hope that she couldn’t fully allow herself and yet couldn’t fully deny herself either. And anyway, it could have just as easily been her imagination.
She returned her attention to the sea-water eyes of Finn Masters looking down at her and, with a sudden tightening of her throat, she realised just how much she’d missed them. She smiled up at him. ‘Have you come to celebrate me still being alive?’
The smile slipped from his face, but he held her gaze and gave her a slow nod of confirmation. ‘Something like that, I suppose.’