by Selena Scott
And both of them sighed in happy surprise when the water floated them easily enough that they could completely relax their bodies.
“This is incredible for me,” he told her, their shoulders gently pressing together as they floated next to one another. “But then again, I can’t fly.”
“This is totally different than flying. Flying is exhilarating. But it’s also work. I’m exhausted after a day spent in the air. This is primo relaxation.”
Rolling in the water, she turned to look at him.
“Plus,” she informed him, “when I’m flying, I’m alone. Completely alone. Watching everything at a distance.”
“You’re not alone right now.”
“No. I’m not.”
They splashed and swam in the water until the sun was high enough in the sky that they needed shade at all costs. Not wanting to be away from the group when night fell, they piled back in the car. Martine let her hair dry in the warm wind, her hand clasped with Arturo’s as he drove.
When they got home, the two of them showered and gratefully fell onto their dinners that Celia had made.
“Movie night?” Arturo asked an astonished group of people after he’d helped clear away dishes.
“I’m sorry,” Thea said, pretending to test her hearing with her finger. “Did I just hear you request a movie night?”
“Martine likes them,” he said with a shrug.
Which was how they all found themselves curled up and watching some sports movie about a team with unlikely odds.
“I changed all the lightbulbs,” Jean Luc quietly informed Arturo after the movie ended and the couples were making their ways back to bed. “So try to keep a lid on things tonight.”
“I refuse to promise that,” Arturo replied, taking a sleepy Martine by the hand and striding from the room.
The fatigue of the long day had caught up to them, though, as he closed the bedroom door behind him.
He turned to see Martine stripping out of her clothes with a lazy grace, her eyes focused on some memory.
“That was the best day of my entire existence.”
“I’m glad,” he said hoarsely, watching as more and more of her skin was exposed with each strip of clothing she removed.
He was vaguely aware of getting naked himself. They slipped into bed from opposite sides and immediately met in the middle of the mattress, their tired arms twining around one another.
Their mouths met, hot and open. For as lazily tired as their bodies were, there was an intensity in their touch. They were both torn between gripping tight and letting their hands wander.
Her tongue pressed against his, tracing and searching out the root of his flavor. She had never tasted anything like his mouth. There was something so human about it. He was such a complicated man. Filled with affection and heat and pain and longing. Every time his tongue touched hers, Martine was certain she was healing him and tearing him in two all at once.
She loved it.
She would never want to hurt him, of course, but she accepted the fact that all things good were also layered.
Nothing was ever one thing.
Kissing Arturo meant saying goodbye to him someday, maybe soon. And it was there, present in their kiss, an impending goodbye. It lent an urgency to the twisting path her tongue made against his. But still, they kissed slowly, thoroughly, unwilling to gloss over even a second of the experience.
She ended up with a leg sliding over his hip and his fingers gripping her calf, his other hand cradling her skull as he held her mouth to his.
Martine pulled back and sucked wind hard. “Do I still need to rest?”
She hadn’t realized that one of her hands was clawing into his hip, the other had his jaw in a death grip.
“I better test and see.”
He slid down her body, kissing her with his open mouth all the way down. He parted her legs and swirled his tongue through her heat. Martine was instantly tight with pleasure, gasping and begging, but Arturo truly was making sure she wasn’t too sore from last night’s adventures. He never wanted to hurt her, and certainly not in the pursuit of pleasure. He suckled at her, encouraged when she gasped his name and spread her legs further, her hands tightening in his hair.
“Please, I need you. The way we were last night. I need more. Please, I need more.”
Well, he’d be damned if she was empty and wanting. He’d be damned if he deprived her. He slid back up her body and to both of their surprise, he flipped her to her side, sliding in behind her.
Arturo draped her leg over his thigh and slowly pushed himself inside, spooning her. She was doing that liquid bronze thing again, tight and melting all at once, her gold spread over her like chocolate sauce over an ice cream cone. He pumped lazily into her, belying the incredible intensity of feeling he kept for her in his chest.
It was a different kind of feeling in this position. There was a sort of blunt possession, the pleasure came from deep inside her, from being completely invaded by someone who was taking her apart piece by piece. She reveled in the freedom of it. The strange intimacy of not being able to see the man who was currently inside her. She felt his breath on the back of her neck, his teeth scraping at her hairline.
Arturo intentionally brought his energy to the tips of his fingers before he slid them between Martine’s legs, gently circling her clit.
Her body jolted, her toes curling, her ass jamming into him, her fingers clawing the bed.
“Good?” he asked her breathlessly, stilling his hips until he knew for sure she’d liked that.
“More. Forever. God. More.”
He grinned into her shoulder and did it again and again, prolonging it as long as he could. Their version of forever.
Her legs swam in the sheets, her eyes wide and unseeing. She grabbed a hank of his hair, bore down and clamped hard around his cock. He hadn’t planned on coming so soon, but there was no denying it. She dragged him full body over the edge and into her.
His teeth clamped her shoulder and he scream-groaned his pleasure into every place he touched her.
Martine felt his energy jolt right through her and she reveled in it. In those moments, there was no line between them. Their energy mixed and they couldn’t hide from one another, or the world, or themselves.
It was a perfectly honest moment of pleasure. It was terrifying and wonderful and she would never have wanted it to be simpler.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Where did you buy that?” Arturo asked Jean Luc two days later.
Jean Luc followed Arturo’s pointing finger across the field to where Celia was unloading groceries from the back of the van.
“Celia?” Jean Luc asked in confusion. “I didn’t buy her. I met her. You were there.”
“No,” Arturo laughed, surprising both of them. “Not the woman. The ring on her finger.”
Jean Luc’s confusion seemed to clear and then immediately cloud. “At a jewelry store?”
“Jewelry store…” Arturo mused, one hand on his chin. He started to stride toward the house but Jean Luc grabbed his arm.
Arturo turned, threat flashing in his eyes and energy flashing at his fingertips. He saw the non-aggressive stance of Jean Luc’s and sheathed his energy. “Sorry,” Arturo said. “Old habit.”
“That’s fine. Why are you asking about engagement rings?”
Arturo’s eyebrows lifted. As a big, quiet athlete, Jean Luc often gave the mistaken impression that he wasn’t exactly the fastest cheetah on the savannah. But Arturo happened to know that the big guy was actually very astute. Which was why Arturo was taken aback by the question he’d just been asked.
“Because I want to buy one,” Arturo replied, very slowly.
“For Martine.” Jean Luc was speaking very slowly as well, as if he were trying to piece together some sort of word scramble that was almost solved but not quite.
“Jean Luc, you think I want to buy one for myself? I know I’m fancy, but diamonds aren’t really my style.”
&n
bsp; Tre jogged over from where he and Jack had been sparring. “What’s up?”
Arturo barely restrained his groan and eye roll. There was a reason that Jean Luc was the person he’d chosen to talk to and not Tre or Jack.
“Nothing,” Jean Luc said in perhaps the most unconvincing tone any of them had ever heard another person use. Say what you would about him, the man was not a good liar.
Tre looked back and forth between the two of them. “Come on, tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Jack asked, as he, too, jogged up, his T-shirt sticking to the sweat on his chest and a gallon of water under his arm. He passed the water around the circle and all four men swigged from it, emptying the jug.
“Jean Luc and Arturo are conspiring about something.”
“We’re not conspiring!” Jean Luc insisted, but he pursed his lips and didn’t say more.
Arturo was actually kind of touched that Jean Luc was apparently insisting on keeping this secret for him. He let out a chuff of impatient air at the other two and crossed his arms over his chest. “I was asking him about jewelry stores.”
“You looking to buy yourself a tiara for your collection, your highness?” Tre asked.
Arturo ignored him. “I want to buy a ring for Martine.”
That wiped the smile off Tre’s face. And Jack’s, too. Actually, the two of them were suddenly wearing extremely thoughtful expressions.
“Yup,” Jack nodded. “Thinking about doing that myself, actually. For Thea, not Martine.” He grinned a lazy smile.
“Yeah.” Tre cleared his throat somewhat nervously. “Me, too.”
“Hold on,” Jean Luc asked. “All three of you are wanting to propose? What brought this on?”
“It’s now or never, son,” Jack replied, with a sort of somber note to his voice. “This thing with the demon, it’s circling in on us pretty fast. And I’ll be damned if Thea doesn’t know how I feel about her before it happens.”
“You only live once, you know?” Tre agreed, nodding his head at Jack’s assessment. “I’m getting out of my own way. I want Caroline to be happy. And I want to really let myself be happy. What I want is her. I’m already this far, might as well go the whole hog and keep her forever.”
Arturo gaped at the two men. Never in his life would he have thought that all of their reasons would have been so dang similar. He added in his own specific thoughts as well. “Because I want her to have everything. Anything. And my time to be able to give that to her is running out fast.”
“Wow.” Jean Luc looked at all three of them. “Okay. So. Ring shopping, then?”
Tre whooshed out a tense breath, ran in place for three furious seconds and then sagged forward, his hands on his knees. He stood up, a look of determination on his face. “Hell, yeah.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jack drawled.
“We’re all going together?” Arturo asked, droll skepticism in his tone. “This bonding thing is getting ridiculous.”
Jean Luc ignored him. “You all go get showered. I’ll do some googling.”
An hour later, they were pulling down the driveway in the van, claiming they were headed off to do the grocery shopping together, leaving a group of mystified women behind.
“You better not be headed off to the bar and leaving us here to cook dinner!” Thea called, a little good-natured venom in her expression.
“Groceries! Cross my heart!” Tre called back, sliding into the car and slamming the door shut. “Go, go, go!” he hissed to Jean Luc, who kicked up a cloud of dust as he gunned it down the driveway.
Arturo was quiet, with his window down and the dry, baking heat whipping past his face. The other men laughed and joked. He could feel their camaraderie with one another. He could feel Tre’s nervous excitement, Jean Luc’s curiosity, and Jack’s calm contentment. And… Arturo and Jack’s eyes clashed in the rearview mirror.
Arturo sensed, for just a moment, something coming off of Jack. There was a very strange feeling. It was almost like fear and nostalgia mixed into one. No, it was a childhood fear, bubbling up, Arturo was certain of it. Jack’s eyes flicked away and the feeling was pushed away.
Arturo kept looking at him until they pulled into the parking lot of the jewelry store and his attention got turned back to the task at hand.
The door jingled four times, after each man jostled his way through to the quiet, air-conditioned, pristinely clean jewelry store. Arturo had never been in one before and he found it profoundly strange. Wasn’t jewelry supposed to inspire great passion? But he found the store as cool and clinical as a hospital room. Even the sparkles off the jewelry seemed to be manufactured. There was none of the personal magic that he’d witnessed in the ring Jean Luc had chosen for Celia.
“Gentlemen!” A rather portly sales associate filed out of a back room, a set of glasses on his nose and another up at the top of his head, his suit perhaps a size too small. “What can I help you with today?”
“We’d like to see your collection of engagement rings,” Jean Luc told the man.
“Is this the same sort of store where you bought Celia’s ring?” Arturo asked Jean Luc quietly.
“Yes,” Jean Luc replied. “Why?”
“It seems so…”
“Sterile?” Jean Luc asked, chuckling. “Yeah, well. Either you find one you like here or you don’t and we go somewhere else. Quit chickening out.”
“I’m not—” But Arturo didn’t finish his sentence because Jean Luc was striding away, going to peer at the trays of rings that the dazzle-eyed salesman was setting out in front of Tre and Jack.
“All three of you are looking to buy?” the man asked, obviously trying to stop himself from clicking his heels in the air.
“Pretty sure his pupils just turned into dollar signs,” Tre muttered under his breath.
Jack wandered away from the glittery trays and turned to start looking in other parts of the shop, his ball cap low over his eyes.
“I’m not exactly sure what Caroline would like,” Tre said, his hands jammed in his pockets and his eyes feverishly scanning over all the different cuts of diamonds. It was unclear exactly who he was talking to. “Maybe I should have asked her. All of these look exactly the same to me but I’m sure she would have a preference and—”
In a move that surprised both of them, Arturo clamped a hand over Tre’s shoulder. “You would know what she likes. It’s not a matter of taste. It’s a matter of knowing her.”
Tre looked up and nodded. For once, there was no joke on his tongue, no skepticism in his eyes.
“He’s right,” Jean Luc said. “Just find the one that reminds you of her. That’s what I did with Celia.”
The salesman bit his tongue. He’d been in this business long enough to know when it was time for guiding a sale and when it was time to shut up and let nature take its course.
Tre turned his attention back toward the trays and trays of rings, slowly looking over each one, his manic energy calmed. And then he laughed. He stared at one ring in particular, took a step back, squinted at it, and dragged a hand down over his face. He laughed again.
“What?” Jean Luc asked.
“I found it. You were right. It’s pretty simple if you just wait for the one that reminds you of her.”
“Which one, sir?” the salesman asked.
Tre pointed and the salesman masked his surprise. He deftly handed over a thin gold ring with a bright, heart-shaped ruby set on top.
Tre peered down at it and laughed again. It was a relieved sound. He could clearly picture Caroline’s delight at receiving this. Maybe heart-shaped jewelry was cheesy, but who cared? She would be thrilled with the daily reminder that he loved her. She’d love how bright it was. How clear of a message it sent. He loved her. Give her a bright red heart. Made sense to him.
He handed it back to the salesman. “I’ll take it.”
Next, Jack called the salesman down to the far end of the store. Arturo followed as well. It was a bit dimmer in this section of the store a
nd there was less sparkling lighting and black velvet beds of jewels.
“This is our estate sale section, sir,” the salesman told Jack carefully, as if he were hoping to gently lead Jack back to the engagement ring section.
“Yup. Figured that,” Jack replied. As easy-going as he was, he was not an easily swayed man. “I’d like to see that.”
Jean Luc squinted and leaned forward. “That jackknife? Why? You doing some shopping for yourself?”
“Nawl,” Jack replied with a smile on his face. “You said I should get the thing that reminded me of Thea.” Jack took the knife from the salesman and grinned. “And this thing was most likely Thea in another life.”
It was an antique jackknife. Perhaps three inches long. There was a complicated pattern of turquoise and copper inlaid over the hand. Jack flicked it open. It was obviously well taken care of, though there was a little rust on the blade. Jack was glad to see that, because it was fixed easily enough, but it also meant that he had a little leverage to not get completely fleeced on the price by this stooge with the tight suit and two pairs of glasses.
“I’m sorry,” Jean Luc said slowly. “You’re going to buy her a knife instead of an engagement ring?”
“She carries a jackknife in her pocket every day,” Jack said easily, his eyes on the knife. “And honestly, can you picture Thea wearing jewelry?”
Arturo thought that was a good point. Thea was quite beautiful, but in a carved, flawless, ancient sort of way. She dressed in a simple, utilitarian style, and she was one of the most hard-working, self-sufficient women any of them had ever met. Yeah. She wasn’t going to want some shiny bauble on her finger. She’d want something she could use.
“Fair enough,” Jean Luc mumbled.
“Now,” Jack said, leaning one deceptively casual elbow on the counter and eyeing the salesman. “Let’s talk turkey. Because you and I both know this knife has seen better days.”