The Ghosts' Return [Were-Devils of Tasmania 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Simone Sinna

  “Or else,” Kael whispered, “we’ll abduct you and smother you with love until you do eat.”

  Lincoln now shifted himself on the bed, so his cock was near her lips, his mouth going over her clit and opening up her pussy, lapping up her juices. She turned and took his cock first in her hand, marveling as it became firmer under her touch, a fine firm rod that lengthened even further in response to her tongue circling its tip. She licked and then caressed around the end lightly with her fingers, before sucking firmly and eliciting a groan of pleasure.

  Kael, behind her, had one hand teasing around her nipple and the other partly underneath her, massaging her butt and tickling over her anus. Lincoln continued to lick her out, pushing his tongue further into her pussy. The sensation of them both being so close to taking her sent shivers through her, waves of pleasure blotting out all the pain of the past months.

  Kael edged closer to her, and she now felt his cock hard against her asshole.

  “Do you want me?” he asked gently.

  “I want you both,” Lena whispered in reply.

  Lincoln leaned back for a moment as Kael pulled her hips to him. In doing so his cock stretched her back passage, and she gasped as it opened her up and filled her. Then Lincoln from the front opened up her pussy lips with his fingers, dipping one then a second into her pussy as she took his cock again in her mouth. The feeling of being so completely taken, full and joined as one, sent Lena spiraling. The psychological and physical appeared to entwine as she felt herself accelerating, all her muscles going into a vibrating holding pattern, waiting for the sensations to catch up and her mind to make sense of it. The waves of an orgasm began then plateaued, Kael thrusting as Lincoln alternated between rubbing her clit and pushing fingers and tongue inside her pussy. The spiral went up another notch, and when Kael gripped her nipples hard and pulled her even tighter into him, it went up a final level before first she, then Kael, and finally Lincoln, let themselves give in to the wave, first the sense of rippling ecstasy and then the fall into a complete sense of calm and well-being. Lena felt, for the first time in her life, complete and at peace with herself.

  When she woke up properly it was nearly lunchtime, and though the bed beside her was empty, her heart was thumping with the half belief that they had indeed been there.

  * * * *

  “I felt Wilson calling.”

  This was good news, and Lena felt like she could do with some. In the week since the dream where she’d relented she’d been beating herself over the head for being weak, and as if a punishment, her scratch continued to hurt and her dreams were all the more troubled. She had been feeling too unwell to worry too much about Wilson, but he hadn’t turned up to her Great-Aunt Marianne, Zac’s grandmother’s funeral. Zac and Wilson had sensed were-devils further south, so it was hard not to conclude Wilson’s disappearance was somehow linked. Lena bit her lip, wondering if the Tremain boys—her Tremain boys—had lost their protection from being sensed and were involved. She felt sick at the thought. She saw Zac look at her through narrowed eyes and wondered how much of her thoughts he’d gotten.

  “That’s great,” said Lena.

  “It may or may not be entirely great,” said Zac. “We’re heading south to find out.”

  “South?” They didn’t have a charter, so this wasn’t a problem, but why south when most of the reef was north or east?

  “We’re going to Dream-maker,” said Zac curtly, going upstairs to prepare the boat for departure.

  Lena was lost in thought. Dream-maker was where her cousin Gabriella worked and lived. She had seen her recently, and there had been something decidedly weird about her. She had been the last person to see Wilson, but while Wilson still carried a torch for her, Lena knew that there was no way Gabriella was going to succumb. But nor would she ever harm him. Unlike Lena and her mother, Rose, Gabriella and her mother, Lily, had always shied away from the ghost connection and tried to remain neutral. Lily was half human and couldn’t transform, and as she had married a human, the only ghost trait Gabriella had from her quarter blood was mind reading, and she was pretty awesome at that.

  Lena would have liked to have stayed out of it. She didn’t have the stomach for a fight if her experience in Tasmania was anything to go by. But if they were going by boat she didn’t have much of a choice. She pulled on a long-sleeved shirt and went up on deck to help Zac. He needed and deserved better than she’d been able to give for the last three months. She still felt weak and depressed, but they were her family, and she’d do whatever she had to.

  Chapter Five

  Angel Karlssen was feeling old. Everyone said she looked much younger than her ninety years, but then ghost blood was good for that. Or it was usually. This was the first time this whole mess had made her feel ancient. For the first time, too, she was fearful that she would die before the curse had been resolved. Marianne, who had married her brother Adam, had been much her age and died. If she’d been human it would have been considered a good innings. But she had been full-blood ghost and should have lived for another thirty or so years. Yet she had succumbed to a virus the doctors hadn’t been able to identify. Or at least human doctors, perhaps only because they hadn’t known what to look for. Who would think of a ninety-year-old woman getting Hendra? It had only been known to affect vets who were in close contact with horses who in turn had been infected by bats.

  Angel didn’t know for sure it was Hendra, but for once she thought her brother’s paranoid ramblings might have had a basis. If anyone should know, he should, because it had been him that had done the deal over half a century earlier that had resulted in it annihilating the vampire population in a small, isolated town in Queensland for their northern cousins, as well as almost wiping out the were-devils Adam had wanted revenge upon.

  Not that that had been the Hendra per se. There was a rumor that there had been a mutation from the virus Adam had brought back with him after the war. Which led to what was really worrying. The ghosts might no longer be immune. Either because the immunity was weakening down the generations, or because of the mutation. The latter seemed more likely given Marianne would have had the full dose vaccine.

  Angel had worried about her daughters and now worried about her granddaughters. When she got the call, loud and clear, despite the distance and despite Gabriella not being a full-blood ghost, she knew the time of reckoning had come. She was too old to make the journey under her own steam and wanted to save her energy. She got her son-in-law to fly her down in his lightplane the next morning and prayed she wouldn’t be too late.

  * * * *

  Lena, even in her weakened state, could sense the were-devils, as strong as it had been when she’d gone to Tasmania. They moored their boat just off Dream-maker, and Gabriella was on the beach waiting.

  “I found Wilson,” she said. “But he’s chained up, and we can’t shift the rock.”

  “Where are they?” Zac growled.

  “Let’s get Wilson first,” said Gabriella.

  Lena watched her cousin curiously. She recognized something in her only because it mirrored herself. They were both hiding something.

  Wilson was in a cave deep in the island’s heart. His rage was even greater than Zac’s, and Lena shrank back. After releasing him they went straight back to the main lodge area looking for two new employees who, apparently, Gabriella, because she wasn’t a full ghost, they had presumed, hadn’t been able to sense as were-devils.

  Lena felt the bottom of her stomach drop. Maybe Gabriella hadn’t sensed them for the same reason Lena hadn’t. It had to be the Tremains. She couldn’t bear to face them, but even worse, she couldn’t bear the thought of Wilson and Zac ripping them apart. She followed reluctantly. Could she throw herself in front of them and tell her cousins they’d have to kill her first? Given she was feeling so weak a strong wind could blow her over they’d probably just laugh.

  When they found the were-devils’ room empty, Lena took a deep breath. Catching Gabriella out of the corner
of her eye, she saw her do the same. In that instant she knew. In the three and half months, her men had quickly forgotten her and moved onto Gabriella. Lena could see in her look that she loved them, too. Would they break her heart, too, or had Gabriella, brave, lovely Gabriella, been able to do what she had failed to? Be true to love rather than the paranoia and anger of her family?

  She didn’t sleep at all that night, tossing and turning, alternating between rage at the Tremain men’s fecklessness, fear for Gabriella, and the relentless feeling of loss that gnawed at her. Her arm seemed to be mirroring her turmoil, aching more than ever. Even without the emotional angst she might not have slept.

  She was aware of Zac and Wilson rising early. She thought she’d stay on board and sleep all day, but soon after they left she sensed it again. The were-devil scent. She was dressed and back on the island in minutes. She was too distracted and agitated to notice a tall man with the black hair streaked with white until it was too late. He smelled faintly of roses, and after the first surge of fear, she could only think in amazement that it was neither Kael nor Lincoln.

  * * * *

  Angel saw that things were about to get out of hand unless she did something quickly. Adam had never listened to her. She had to hope his grandson would.

  Standing in front of her was a broad-shouldered man with a crew cut who had just told Wilson and Zachary that if they didn’t apologize to Gabriella for spitting on her and calling her a traitor, then they might not get their girlfriend back. This presumably meant that there was another were-devil holding Lena. Zachary and Wilson looked like they were on the verge of ripping apart the entire room and everyone in it, and her granddaughter was standing with only a sheet around her.

  “Gabriella, get dressed,” Angel said calmly. “You three, outside now.”

  By the time Gabriella was dressed and sitting with the bodybuilder whose name was Mac, his brother Mitch was hovering on the edge of the gathering, holding Lena.

  “We are going to have a civilized conversation,” Angel said. “To which you will all listen. Because your lives may well depend on it.”

  * * * *

  Lena sat gingerly between Zac and Wilson and stared at her cousin. Gabriella was similarly positioned between Mac and Mitch but was clearly in love with them, and them her. Now that she didn’t have to deal with them being her men, Lena was trying to make sense of how it had happened and why.

  “My brother, Zac’s grandfather, brought the curse on the were-devils, not because the grandfather of these two,” Angel told them, indicating Mac and Mitch, “seduced our sister, but because Larissa had a daughter. They couldn’t bear the thought of mixed blood.”

  Lena could feel Gabriella staring at her. For a moment her mind was too jumbled to make sense of it, and then the truth dawned on her. Her mother, who had grown up with Angel as a mother, was not Angel’s daughter, but Larissa’s. Which meant it was her grandmother that was coming to her in her dreams and why she had always had such a strong affinity with the story. Rose had never told her. Yet Rose must have been—

  “No!” yelled out Lena, jumping up.

  Angel caught her in an embrace, stopping her emotions from spiraling as they had threatened to do. “You have were-devil blood, Lena.”

  Lena burst into tears. Not because she had were-devil blood, though Zac’s expression of horror suggested that this wasn’t going to make her family feel exactly warm toward her. She cried because now it made perfect sense as to why she had fallen in love with Kael and Lincoln. It was what Larissa had been trying to tell her in her dreams. She’d had her chance to end their curse and instead she’d blown that and her only chance at love. Angel seemed to confirm it.

  “I’d always thought it would have been Lena that…” she shrugged her shoulders and looked at Gabriella. She then looked at Lena and frowned. “You’re sick,” she said suddenly, and, taking Lena’s arm, rolled up the sleeve. They all gasped. Even Lena hadn’t known how bad it was.

  “The antibiotics aren’t working,” whispered Lena.

  “Oh, child,” said Angel, hugging her. “It’s not a bacteria. You were with an infected animal and scratched by the were-devils. I fear you don’t have enough immunity to protect you.”

  “She has the were-devils’ curse?” asked Mac in amazement.

  “Either that or a similar mutated virus, the one that killed my sister-in-law.”

  Lena felt herself floating, as if she was coming out of her body and watching as if she wasn’t really there. There was, she was told, an antidote Tilman Tremain had just developed.

  “We’ll go to Tasmania, and you’ll be cured,” said Gabriella, embracing her.

  But as she fainted, all Lena could think was that the man whose laboratory she had destroyed was hardly going to help her.

  * * * *

  She was dreaming again. This time she could see her grandmother clearly, a woman obviously Angel’s sister, but much younger, and more ethereal, less solid. Her smile was whimsical and her eyes dreamy. Larissa, the woman who had died of a broken heart and left her sister to bring up her child. But in Angel’s determination to make the child tolerant she had achieved the opposite, making Rose all the more desperate to be what she wasn’t, so much so she hadn’t even been able to tell her own daughter the truth.

  In this dream, Edmund, Rose’s father, was there, too. A tall, willowy man in uniform, besotted by Larissa, both just as in love as Lena had thought she was with Kael and Lincoln. But when she woke up all she could remember was that he had left her grandmother pregnant, married another who he had impregnated with Mac and Mitch’s father, and then never come back from the battlefields of France. She felt the same loss, her own, all over again.

  She turned, wiping her eyes, and started. She wasn’t alone. Gabriella was standing over her, staring at her. She had forgotten she wasn’t on the boat, but still on Dream-maker.

  “You’re in love,” said Gabriella, stunned. Until now Lena had been able to block her thoughts from her cousin. She didn’t suppose it mattered anymore, and if anyone would understand, it would be Gabriella.

  “I wasn’t as brave as you,” Lena said, staring at the ceiling.

  “Whatever do you mean?” said Gabriella. “Brave? My God, Lena, you were brought up to believe were-devils were direct descendants of Satan. Remember, I was at those Christmas dinners, too! It was just my parents joked about it afterward. You have tried to be everything your parents wanted you to be, despite how miserable it has made you!”

  “So stupid, too, huh?” said Lena.

  Gabriella, a fiery ball of red hair and passion all but took her breath away with the force of the hug she gave her. “Lena Magnussen, quit this nonsense now. You’re one of the kindest, sweetest people I know. You should have come and talked to me, and I could have helped.”

  “I didn’t know you had two of your own,” Lena said, managing a grin.

  “Well, if your two are even half the men mine are,” said Gabriella. “They’ll be still waiting.”

  Lena shook her head. “I didn’t exactly leave them any hope. And that was three months or more ago.”

  “Have you had any contact at all?”

  “No.” Lena paused. “Well, not exactly anyway.”

  “Meaning?”

  Lena described them coming to her in her dream, without the later detail, though judging from Gabriella’s grin, she guessed this. “Then my guess is that really happened.”

  “It couldn’t have,” Lena replied. “Zac was on board. It would have been too risky.”

  “But you said Zac couldn’t sense them,” said Gabriella. “Besides, you think they aren’t that brave? Or that you aren’t worth it?” She looked fierce. Heaven help Lincoln and Kael if they weren’t or didn’t think she was worth it.

  “Do you think I…?”

  “Yes,” said Gabriella. “Call them.”

  Chapter Six

  “No.” Zac stood in the doorway, having clearly heard most of the conversation. “I’m tak
ing her home. My grandfather will be able to help her.”

  “Your damn grandfather caused all these problems,” said Gabriella fiercely.

  “No, he fucking did not,” Zac replied. “It was your men’s grandfather, not mine, that left Adam’s sister unmarried and pregnant.”

  “Why would he help me, Zac?” said Lena softly. “I have were-devil blood, remember?”

  Zac dropped to his knees and held her hand, looking up at her. “You’re a ghost! Even if he had a problem with your mother’s origins, you’re three-quarter blood, and you are a ghost.”

  “So only slightly dirty blood, huh?”

  “You’re ghost,” Zac repeated. “He’ll have more antidote, and I want to get you up there tonight. We need to get going now.”

  There was a feeling of comfort in the thought of going back to the bosom of the family she had always known. Her mother would be worried and want to care for her. If Adam had had the original antidote or vaccine then surely he would be able to help now. He hadn’t been able to save his wife, but maybe that had been the mutated virus, and she had been infected in Tasmania with the original. She had never thought Adam had been anything except accepting. Zac was right, he would help.

  “I should try,” Lena said, looking apologetically at Gabriella who was shaking her head.

  “You need to come to Tasmania and see this Tilman person.”

  Lena felt Zac stiffen beside her.

  “Gabriella, I can’t,” said Lena. “I was with Zac who destroyed the man’s laboratory.”

  “But if your—” Gabriella stopped her thought and words just in time, though judging from the narrowing of Zac’s eyes, he was suspicious. “Mac and Mitch will talk to him,” she finished with.

  “If Great-Uncle Adam can’t help, then I’ll speak to you again,” said Lena, kissing her cousin.