His aura shifted closer to otter shaped, and Deck suspected Kyle’s otterside was imagining the three of them as otters, floating together, paw in paw in paw, so the waves wouldn’t separate them.
This was what Kyle had needed all along, only better with Meaghan in the mix. He might have a need to settle down, rare for his kind, but he was still a bi switch and two partners would definitely be better than one for him.
And frankly, it was the best of both worlds for Deck as well, even if as a bisexual Donovan, “the best of both worlds” romantically speaking had always seemed unlikely.
“You wanted forever from the start. That’s scary enough for any guy, but as a witch I should be able to know if I can promise forever and I didn’t. I’m still scared shitless, but at least I know the magic agrees that we’re a good idea.”
Meaghan managed a shy giggle. “Although after that storm, I can see why you’re nervous about trusting the magic. I’m not so keen on trusting mine right now either, because apparently you bring Shaw or the Agency up and I go nuts and we’re going to have to talk about the Agency if we’re going to beat them.” She did that freaky thing again where she turned from Deck to Kyle with uncanny accuracy, not quite meeting their gaze, but getting closer than you’d expect a blind person to do. “But if that dancing feeling is my magic hitting me with a clue-by-four that I’ve met the right people…that would explain why I had a vision of being with the two of you before we’d even met.”
“What?” Deck and Kyle exclaimed simultaneously.
“I had a vision of making love with the two of you in the water. I thought it was just a vivid dream at the time, because I’d been listening to a book that had two guys and one woman in a relationship. When I met you both, I suspected it hadn’t been a dream, but I couldn’t trust the way I felt. I was so happy you were all having naughty thoughts about me, but knowing it’s more…wow.”
She smiled like a floodlight illuminating the room. And then she began to cry, but though tears poured down her thin cheeks, she was still smiling. “I can’t promise you forever. But I promise you what time I have. And if magic or medicine has a way to make that time longer, I’ll seize every minute I can so I can share them with you both.”
“You better. You damn well better,” Kyle growled. “Or I’ll find a shaman who can jump to the Otherside and spank you.”
Through her tears, Meaghan laughed. “Maybe I’d like that. The spanking part, not the afterlife part or the random shaman part. Game to try sometime.”
Kyle looked at Deck and whispered, barely audibly, “What the… After what she’s been through…”
“I can hear you,” she said, “Blind people tend to hear better than sighted ones, I think, so whispering doesn’t help.” By now she wasn’t crying, and when she stood and put her hands on her hips, Deck couldn’t help thinking their waiflike witch looked as kick-ass and stubborn as any of his female relatives. The look on her face, in fact, would have done his late great-aunt Jocelyn proud, and she was so stubborn her ghost regularly popped in to keep plaguing her living relatives. “I know you’re worried about me and sex because of Shaw. And if I get cured of the thing that’s eating my brain literally, I promise I’ll get therapy for the things that may try to eat it metaphorically. That’s what you do when you’ve been through trauma, right?”
Deck started to nod, remembered she couldn’t see him and said, “We usually work with shamans, though. Normy therapists don’t understand when your trauma involves three-headed kangaroos from another dimension trying to destroy the world.”
Meaghan looked like she wasn’t sure if she should laugh at that or take it seriously. Which might be her inexperience with humor or might be that at some point the Agency had dealt with dangerous alien kangaroos. “Okay, a shaman then. But I’m not going to let Shaw own my body and my heart in the meantime. I’m not naive enough to think that having good sex with people I love will miraculously erase manipulative sex with a bad man, let alone my whole fucked-up past. Sometimes something will trigger memories and you guys will have to talk me down. But good times will start balancing the bad ones, even if they can’t erase them. And, damn it, I’ve earned some good times.”
Love. He and Kyle had talked around the word, both with each other and now. He’d made a commitment to them both without actually saying that scary four-letter word. It seemed too soon, even with the magic doing the tango all over his skin.
But Meaghan said it as if it was the simplest thing in the word.
And that made him believe it was.
“You are so brave,” he managed to say. “Oh Lord and Lady, I barely know you, Meaghan, but I love you. And, Kyle…I’m sorry. I ran so hard because I was falling for you and it scared the shit out of me.”
Kyle squeezed his ankle. “I think I knew that even when we were apart, but I couldn’t say anything without scaring you even more. Humans make everything so complicated. But let me explain this in short words even witches can understand. I’m crazy about you both. I’m yours, Deck. I have been since the first time you touched me. Meaghan, the ocean gave you to me, so I feel like you’re mine. And you and Deck love each other too. Anything else is details.” He shrugged. “Huge, terrifying, life-threatening details, sure, but we can get back to trying to figure those out in the morning. I want to hold you both. Want to sleep in a big, tangled pile. Maybe wake up around dawn and make love.”
He blinked, then added, “I’m not sure I’ve ever said ‘make love’ out loud before.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve never said it without snickering. Let me try.” Deck took a deep breath. It came out more easily than he’d imagined. “Make love. I kind of like it. Once I get past the bone-numbing terror, that is.” Only it wasn’t nearly as alarming as he was pretending, and he hoped the tone of his voice conveyed it to Meaghan the way the wink and grin did to Kyle.
Meaghan laughed. “You two are ridiculous. The Agency is terrifying. Trying to stop that storm was frightening. Hell, Jocelyn is a little scary when you think about it. Love isn’t that kind of frightening. It’s what makes the bad parts manageable. At least they feel less huge to me now.” Meaghan should have been exhausted after using so much magic in unfamiliar ways. She probably was exhausted but was pumped enough on adrenaline and emotion that she didn’t feel it yet. Deck swore she looked stronger as she made the speech, with a little more meat on her all-too-prominent bones. Most normies thought saying someone was glowing with enthusiasm or passion was a metaphor, but Meaghan and Deck were both witches, so he could see how radiant her aura was. Something—the declaration of love, using her terrifying seer’s ability in a controlled way, managing to defuse a storm that a more experienced witch had created, or all three—had bolstered her confidence, improved her spirits, made her feel more alive.
“Yeah,” he said, not trusting himself to say more, but realizing she was right. Despite all his anxiety about the whole lifetime-commitment thing, the glow of love did make the big problems seem less fucking immense.
She crouched down and kissed Kyle, who was closer to her, easier to find because he was touching her leg. Then she reached out, found Deck’s legs and knelt up to kiss him too.
Then she said, “I’m sure we need to talk about the Agency and what to do next with us. But I like Kyle’s ideas of curling up on the bed and just cuddling for a while.”
Deck thought for a minute. His Donovan upbringing screamed that it couldn’t be that simple, that a woman who’d been taken advantage of by someone in a position of authority over her couldn’t possibly jump into a potentially complicated sexual and romantic relationship feetfirst. But the same upbringing prompted him that he needed to trust his partner. “In that case,” he finally said, “I think we’re overdressed.”
Chapter Seventeen
Kyle woke before full light. Deck’s window faced west, toward the Pacific, so he couldn’t see sunrise, but he could tell the first gl
immerings of dawn were dyeing the water different colors. He wanted to see how the waves looked, but Meaghan was curled on his chest, light as a cat, and Deck lay on the other side, one leg sprawled across him, so for the moment he lay still, basking in their warm presence.
Their love. Even though they slept, he could still feel it.
It seemed like he’d been waiting forever for Deck to wake up, or grow up, or man up, or whatever the right term was, and recognize what Kyle had known all along. And now Deck had and it was sweeter than he’d ever imagined. More complicated too. He and Deck would butt heads a lot. He was happy to submit to Deck in bed, but they’d have to figure out all the details of being equal partners the rest of the time, because neither of them was the type to extend D/s outside of sex. Thanks to dealing with his flaky family, he’d gotten used to being, well, bossy—and with Deck’s overwhelming family, Deck wouldn’t take well to that.
Definite potential for squabbles.
But after squabbles, there would be make-up sex, and that would be hot.
And then there was Meaghan, with her mysteries and challenges and powers she didn’t know how to control. As if two sloppy surfer dudes learning to live with a blind woman wouldn’t be enough of a learning curve—poor thing would be tripping over their stuff all the time until they got used to being more organized than either of them had ever had to be—without the real possibility of tragedy down the road.
But he’d rather face that potential tragedy than be without Meaghan. Maybe it didn’t make sense to love someone he’d known such a short time. Yet he knew it was love and not just infatuation, knew it as surely as the two witches did with their magic guiding them.
Otters didn’t have mates, didn’t have that sense that let them know which of many potential lovers were the right ones for the long haul. But he’d always been a weirdo by otter standards. Because he had mates. Two of them. And his heart had known it while his brain was still trying to figure out the logic. Which made him a lucky otter.
He lay as still as he could, but before long Deck woke and nuzzled at him. “Hey,” he whispered, “want to go surfing?”
Without speaking, he pointed at Meaghan, and Deck nodded, obviously not wanting to wake her either. But before long, she stirred.
And jumped like a startled cat when she realized she wasn’t alone.
“It’s all right,” Kyle soothed. “It’s just us.” She relaxed visibly as soon as she heard his voice. When Deck half crawled over Kyle to reach her, letting her feel who he was, it finished the job.
Meaghan laughed, though the laugh was shaky. “I’m not used to waking up with other people,” she admitted. “And not being able to see, there was a second of ‘what the hell?’ before I remembered that I was supposed to be surrounded by hot men.”
For a little while, the three of them kissed and cuddled. Kyle always woke up hard in an absentminded way that didn’t necessarily mean he was horny, but the contact was turning his habitual morning wood into a passion-driven one. Deck was in a similar state, and, judging from the small, desperate noises she was making and the scent of arousal rising from her, Meaghan was just as excited.
Yet Meaghan was the first to break from the three-way embrace. Her lips were red from kissing, swollen to fullness, and Kyle wanted to grab her and kiss some more. But as she started to speak she looked so eager that he wanted to hear her thought. “Can we go down to the beach soon? I want to work more on the magic.” A slight blush suffused her fair skin. “I mean, I want to fool around too but honestly I’m a little sore. Besides, I have this feeling I need to get up to speed fast.”
“And when someone with your particular kind of magic says that, we should listen.” Deck sighed and began to disentangle himself from his lovers.
Knowing she couldn’t see, Kyle glanced at Deck and mouthed, “Maybe we can surf later.” If Meaghan’s instincts were telling her to work on magic, then, damn it, she and Deck would work on magic and Kyle would pretend to be adult supervision.
But before Deck could even respond, Meaghan said, “Maybe you guys could surf first. I can work on the stuff we went over yesterday until you’re done, because I’m pretty sure it won’t cause a tidal wave if I do it wrong. And if you’re not comfortable with that, I’ll just feel the energy of the water. It’s good practice, right?”
“Right.” The two men grinned at each other.
On Donovan’s Cove beach, Kyle didn’t need to bother with a wet suit to keep up the pretense of humanity. He surfed in board shorts and a rash-guard shirt, like someone might in far warmer water. Deck’s water affinity meant he didn’t get chilled as easily as most humans, but he wriggled into a black wet suit with bright-blue zigzags anyway. No point in expending magical energy when he didn’t need to.
Meaghan, her green hoodie zipped against the morning chill, looked almost as excited as Kyle did and as Deck felt. A true water witch, he thought fondly. Simply being within spray’s reach of the ocean thrilled her.
“I can’t wait to feel you guys surfing,” she exclaimed, which was odd enough that Deck made a puzzled noise.
She snorted. “Duh! I can sense the waves. I can feel your energies. I should be able to follow what you’re doing, feel you and the waves moving together.”
“When you’re stronger,” Kyle said, “we’ll get you on a board. The water magic should help her learn, shouldn’t it?”
“Absolutely.” Deck wasn’t lying. He just wasn’t mentioning the other factors: whether she could get stronger, whether her medical problems would escalate too soon, whether they’d all survive the seemingly inevitable confrontation with the Agency.
She smiled blissfully, a light in her face that pierced Deck’s heart. Maybe she didn’t need to get stronger to learn to surf. Meaghan was already one of the strongest people he knew. He’d been ready to start paddling out, but he couldn’t resist running back to Meaghan, picking her up and giving her one more kiss.
Energy surged between them, a flare of red magic, but nothing danced until Kyle joined them, wrapping his arms around Deck from behind and planting a kiss on his neck. Meaghan laughed into Deck’s mouth and Deck shuddered pleasurably. It wasn’t as strong as the dancing sensation he got when the three of them worked magic together, or as keenly ecstatic as making love, although he’d finally figured out when they went back to bed yesterday that the magic had danced the first time the three of them had sex, maybe even the first time they’d all kissed, but in a subtle way, not quite like what other Donovans described.
Which made sense, considering the cast of characters. Deck’s magic was odd, Meaghan’s neurosystem was atypical, and Kyle was an otter dual and not many witches had been involved with his species before.
Sandwiched between his two lovers, Deck almost lost the motivation to surf. Almost, but not quite. He was Deck Donovan, after all, and the waves this morning were magnificent, crashing silver blue in the early light. Besides, a certain restless otter was already slipping away so he could head back to the water.
“Make sure your shields are strong before doing any other magic,” Deck told Meaghan, “even trying to track us surfing. You never know who might be looking for you.” He felt like an old stick reminding her, and the beach at Donovan’s Cove should be as safe as anywhere could be for someone on the run from the Agency. But better safe than sorry.
“I put them up already, but I’ll set another layer. Good practice, right?”
“Good practice.” One more quick kiss, because her lips were so delicious, her body so right in his arms, and he headed to the water.
The ocean was cold but thrilling, the waves as good as they’d had on this part of the coast for a while. Yet Deck found he couldn’t lose himself in surfing the way he usually did, the way Kyle obviously was. Maybe it was awareness of Meaghan’s magic teasing at him, probing him and the waves, and of Kyle surfing with him for the first time in far too long—both dist
racting in good ways.
But something was niggling at him, a sense of uneasiness that grew as the morning progressed. Nothing more dramatic happened than a couple of minor wipeouts and Meaghan accidentally causing a small waterspout, luckily when he and Kyle were both on the beach. Yet Deck was hyperalert, scanning the shoreline with both normal vision and witch-sight, and opening his shields so he could sense any trouble.
Which is why, when trouble came, it barreled him ass over teakettle like a rogue wave.
One minute he was surfing, enjoying the ride but at the same time filtering all the information coming in through his seven senses.
The next, the whole world wobbled on its axis. He felt exposed, naked under the gray spring sky, and not in a good way. He opened his witch-sight and saw…
Nothing. Not even the aural rainbows Meaghan could sometimes see.
He didn’t even have time to work up from uneasiness to full-fledged panic before something slammed into him.
Heat and immense pain and then he was underwater, body battered, magic scrambled, brain screaming, dazed because his board had smacked him on the head during the wipeout. Bleeding. He was bleeding, both his head and his shoulder. His left shoulder burned. He couldn’t move that arm properly to swim.
He hadn’t seen anyone on the beach or in the water, but just before he’d gone under, he’d sensed something. Heard something, maybe, although he was too shocky to remember what it was. And whatever it was had hurt him badly.
Shot him, he thought.
Were Meaghan and Kyle all right?
Silver cords. There should be silver cords connecting him to the others. They’d been there just moments ago, but now he couldn’t find them. His brain was working slowly, and he hadn’t felt any kind of wrenching that suggested harm had come to his partners, but would he have even noticed that pain amid the initial physical agony?
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