by Jory Strong
She stepped aside and he entered the apartment, opening a briefcase and quickly assembling a piece of equipment. No one spoke as he made a methodical sweep through her living space. Finally saying, “Clean,” and repacking the scanner.
“The cell phones?” Cathal asked.
“No warrants issued so far.” He glanced at Etaín. “They can be turned into mobile listening devices. You’re probably in the clear but I’d recommend you pop the battery or put your phone somewhere that’s too far away to pick up a conversation if you’re talking about anything sensitive.”
She acknowledged the advice with a nod, a chill coming with the implicit reminder she was under suspicion. He left and Cathal stepped forward as if he’d pull her against him.
She stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest as a defense against being swayed by the feel of his body against hers. “You wanted to talk. Then talk, Cathal. Or leave.”
He shrugged out of his jacket, throwing it to the floor then unbuttoning his shirt, letting it hang open rather than removing it. Heat stole through her at the sight of his chest. Her nipples tightened as sensory memories bombarded her and she dug her fingers into her arms to keep from touching him.
“I went to see my father, that’s why I wasn’t here sooner,” he told her, cautiously reaching out, encircling her wrists and gently tugging, pulling her arms away from her body, the hum of connection and electric desire flaming into existence with the contact. “I wanted to make sure he understood how important you are to me, and what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
There was no fear in his eyes when he carried her hands to his bare chest, stopping just beyond the dark hair she loved to comb her fingers through and feel against her bare skin. His thumbs stroked over the eyes on her palms, as if he’d guessed at their importance, though all he said was, “When you came by the club, you only saw part of the truth, a very, very small part of it. I want you to see all of it. I want you to know everything.”
He pressed her palms to his chest and held them there. Beneath them, his heart slid into a racing beat, primal fear mastered by desire and strength of purpose.
“I can’t promise you’re safe from my father and uncle. I believe you are. They have a code they live by. There are parts of it I respect, but I’m not involved in their business. Never have been and never will be.”
“Organized crime?”
“Yes. Don’t ask me for details. I don’t know them. I don’t want to know them.”
He leaned in, touching his forehead to hers, his hands tightening on hers. “Look at my memories, Etaín. Don’t just take my word for it.”
“Show me the truth,” she said, and it was as easy and safe for Cathal as it had been with Eamon, only it was different too. Seeing Cathal’s memories was like stepping into a darkened movie theater, except instead of being alone, phantom arms wrapped around her.
An imagined chest served as a pillar of strength for her to lean on as they both watched fast moving images on a mental screen. Glimpses of reality focused on his seeking her out and his desire to keep her safe, ending with his burning the drawings and protecting her further by not revealing she could easily re-create them.
She couldn’t fault him, not when she knew his motives and saw how he was caught in a situation beyond his control. She couldn’t separate herself from him in anger, not after the visits with Brianna.
“Forgive me?” he asked, voice soft and uncertain, hopeful.
“Yes.”
She didn’t protest when his hands went to her hips, pulling her against him as his mouth sought hers. It felt good, right. Inevitable.
If ignorance was deadly, then knowledge was empowering, freeing. Her lips parted with the first touch of his tongue to them. Desire burned through her, desperate need demanding a deeper revelation of truth, a joining of bodies.
Cathal hardly dared to believe she was back in his arms, the small sounds she made going straight to his heart, urging him to greater intimacy so he pushed her shorts downward.
They dropped to the floor and his hands cupped bare buttocks, his mouth sealed to hers as his tongue thrust, retreated, hungrily revealing the depth of his need to be inside her.
Stroking his hands upward he found only skin beneath the sweatshirt she wore. Desire deepened to see, to touch, to taste every inch of her in a carnal possession.
He drew back, stripping the sweatshirt off so she stood completely naked, nipples hardened and lips swollen, eyes dark, sultry, beckoning with the power of a born seductress.
A hard throb went through his cock. She was beautiful, more than beautiful. He’d had beautiful women before but none of them had affected him the way she did.
In days she’d made it impossible for him to want anyone else, to imagine being with anyone else. He pulled her against him, pleasure rippling through him at the feel of her breasts pressed to his chest. He tangled his fingers in silky hair, holding her as he plundered her mouth until they were both panting, their lower bodies rubbing and grinding.
Her hands went to his belt and his joined them there, making fast work of unbuckling, unzipping. He moaned when she captured his cock, her thumb teasing over the head, wetting it with escaped desire.
“Bed,” he said against her lips, buttocks clenching as her fist moved up and down on his shaft.
“I think you need help getting undressed first.”
She knelt, electric heat surging through his cock at its proximity to her mouth. If not for her grip on it, it would have pulled away from his body to go to her.
She laughed, knowing her effect on him, the sound of her amusement a sensual caress, a taunt that had him burrowing his fingers through the wheat-gold strands of her hair again, his clothes no longer mattering.
“Do it,” he ordered.
And she did.
Slowly. In her own time.
Delivering ecstasy with the touch of her tongue to his cock head, with wet swirls and flicked exploration.
Delivering punishment with the barest incarceration of it between her lips, with tormenting hints of suction.
Fire burned in his testicles as she cupped them, her touch a craving that had already lodged itself in his soul.
A light sheen of sweat coated his skin as he worked desperately against the restraint of her fist. Trying to drive himself into her mouth and the nearly unbearable pleasure to be found there.
She gave. An inch at a time. White heat filling his head with each one of them. Each pull of her mouth delivering a lesson. His body didn’t belong to him. It belonged to her.
“Finish it,” he said, fingers sliding through her hair, trying to urge her to take all of him. But she refused to hurry and give him the release he thought he’d die without.
Eamon stopped in front of the apartment door. He’d given Cathal long enough to make his case with Etaín, and Etaín long enough to decide whether or not she wanted Cathal in her life. Time now to put Cathal to a different test, and to remind Etaín that another had a claim to her.
He traced a glyph into the wooden door, delivering a magical announcement of his presence, pausing for a moment to allow her to feel the whisper of a tropical-scented breeze where there could be none, before he knocked.
Through the barrier separating them he heard Cathal’s voice, a ragged curse of pleasure interrupted, followed by a command to ignore the summons. Eamon smiled, but his amusement lasted only until she opened the door.
The sight of her swollen lips and another man’s shirt covering her body shredded organized thought and left only the incendiary combination of magic and sex in its place. He wanted her. Here. Now. Always. Everything about her called to him, making it easy to forget the myriad dangers she presented, the change to Elf she had yet to survive.
He stepped forward, tearing his eyes away from her just long enough to meet Cathal’s gaze in challenge and acknowledgment. Leave or join me in this.
His fingers went to the buttons of his own shirt, freeing them before he shrugged it
off, leaving him standing bare-chested as Cathal was. He felt the heat and fast currents of his magic combine with the wild, primordial aspects of hers, saw an awareness of it in the black, deep ocean depths of eyes he could get lost in.
“Perfect timing,” Etaín said, molten lust flooding into her bloodstream, a fever heralding desire beyond reasoning. Leaving her nipples aching and arousal wetting her inner thighs as fantasy and reality merged at having both men with her at the same time.
Eamon reached for her, undoing the buttons of the shirt and stripping it away. She moaned, wanting them both.
She expected him to pull her into his arms and take possession of her mouth in a demonstration of ownership. Instead he moved behind her, turning her so they both faced Cathal.
He cupped her breasts as if in an offer to share, his touch and the eroticism of their positioning making her channel clench. A whimper escaped when his thumbs brushed over her nipples and she saw Cathal’s eyes fix on them, darkening not with jealousy but with passion.
He closed the distance, his cock rigid against the front of his hastily fastened pants. She wondered if it was still wet from her mouth, licked her lips thinking about it, and knew by the hitch in his breathing he was remembering her mouth being on him.
She lifted her arms, hands spearing through Eamon’s hair, the stretch of her body, the offering of it, making her feel like a sexual priestess, a follower of some ancient goddess dedicated to pleasure.
She widened her stance and the movement drew Cathal’s gaze downward to swollen folds and a clit standing erect, flushed, the hood pulled back to reveal a tiny darkened head.
Color fanned across stubbled cheeks taut with lust, exciting her further. He was raw to Eamon’s refined. Dark, dangerous masculinity to Eamon’s golden beauty. Together they were everything she would ever need or want in a lover.
A shiver went through her when Cathal stopped inches away. The vines on her arms didn’t react to him the same way they did to Eamon, the call of like to like, magic to magic, but deep inside her, something resonated, hungered for him, reached out in reaction to his scent and his nearness as if it would anchor itself in his very existence.
The intensity of the feeling sent a spike of fear through her, but before it could lodge itself and spread, Eamon’s fingers clamped onto her nipples and his mouth captured her earlobe, need forcing a plea from her. “Please, Cathal. I want you, too.”
Cathal took the final step so their bodies touched, lust soaking through his skin like a drug despite an awareness of Eamon’s hands on her breasts. Desire suppressed all resistance and separated him from any objection to sharing her. He couldn’t think, couldn’t remember why he’d fought against the very idea of it, not when it turned him on to see them together, to see her skin flush with pleasure, her eyes bottomless pools of promised ecstasy.
He wanted to lose himself in her. To pull the same sounds from her that she gave Eamon as he sucked her lobe, leaving it to fuck into her ear canal so her hips jerked.
Cathal panted as her cunt ground into a cock craving the wet heat of either her mouth or slit. He captured her lips, thrust his tongue against hers and was rewarded by whimpers and the urgent press of her clit to his erection.
He couldn’t stand the separation, didn’t wait for her to reach down and free him as she had before Eamon’s arrival. A moan escaped as his pants dropped away and hot skin touched hot skin.
He cupped her hips, need pulsing between them as he rubbed against her clit, constrained from lifting her and sheathing himself in heated ecstasy by Eamon’s presence behind her.
Greedily he kissed downward, ready to rip Eamon’s fingers from her nipple if necessary, but instead of finding confrontation, he found cooperation, the dark eroticism of a breast offered, held for him by another man.
Cathal latched on to the nipple, greeting it first with the swirl of his tongue. Lapping over it, biting then sucking, loving the way she cried out.
His hand went to her mound, covering it possessively, fingers going to her opening and thrusting inside. She was wet, dripping with the need for a man’s cock.
He fucked her with his fingers and she writhed between them, powerless. And that powerlessness excited him after being so desperately in her thrall since he’d met her.
The urge to dominate rose, bringing with it images of her on elbows and knees, the remembered rush of mounting her. It came with heightened anticipation, the promise of a more intense experience at having Eamon there to witness the claiming, to cover her afterward.
He gripped his cock to keep from coming. He was primed, ready, and had been from the instant she’d put her mouth on him after their reconciliation.
Remembering the torment she’d delivered, the lesson in ownership, he left her breast, intent on delivering the same to her. Kissing downward, pausing to explore her navel, the flat perfection of her abdomen, nuzzling into the dark honey of a small triangle of pubic hair.
Her plea for him to put his mouth on her filled him with carnal satisfaction. Her clit was engorged, an erogenous zone he had no intention of ignoring. He knew what she liked, intended to make her scream with pleasure as he had after stretching her out on the padded rim of the hot tub beneath a night sky.
She bucked when he took the swollen knob between his lips, her hands leaving Eamon’s hair to tangle in his so she could hold him to her.
He tightened his grip on his cock, knowing he couldn’t hold out much longer. Fierce competitiveness and masculine pride refused to let him come as he had when he’d been alone, splashing his stomach and chest with semen while fantasizing about her.
Intentions of making her scream fell to the greater need to be inside her. He forced himself to abandon her clit, but couldn’t leave without the intimate press of his lips to her lower ones and the thrust of his tongue into her channel, hard and fast and deep as she clenched on it, ground against his face.
Her movements grew more urgent, a frantic reaching for a release he wanted when she was impaled on his cock. He stood. Her “No!” music to his ears, though the sight of Eamon turned his smile at hearing it into little more than a baring of teeth.
“Take her,” Eamon said, and Cathal did, lifting Etaín and carrying her the short distance to the bed, lust making him deaf to any command in Eamon’s voice.
Eamon watched, held in place by the enthrallment of magic and the sheer eroticism of seeing Cathal tumble Etaín onto her hands and knees before entering her in a single hard thrust. With their bodies joined, her aura totally eclipsed Cathal’s, sending a call Eamon couldn’t refuse.
He removed the remainder of his clothing and joined them, lying on his back and positioning himself so he could cup her head and draw her mouth to his. Always before the magic had flowed from him into her, a gift to replenish and strengthen, but with Cathal’s presence came the opposite, a rich pour of Elfhome and Earth magic, as if sex with Etaín widened some ethereal crack between worlds, and Cathal served as a conduit for this world’s magic where he couldn’t serve as a vessel for it as the Elven did.
It was an intoxicating rush, elemental power mixed with lust and insatiable desire. Eamon drank hungrily from her lips, cock swelling further until its urgent demand dominated, and her swallowed cry of release, followed by Cathal’s, freed him from one type of enchantment only to ensnare him in another.
There was an instant to note purple spikes through the gold of her aura, but the splintered effect disappeared as he moved, shifting position and pulling her down and beneath him, in the process making Cathal’s cock slide from her channel.
She welcomed him readily, legs parting, eyes wickedly inviting. He was aware of Cathal watching as he joined his body to Etaín’s, twined his fingers with hers and held them to the mattress, palms touching, safe from her still because of his power as a spell caster.
In the presence of Elven pheromones and magic, he knew Cathal would harden again as a human rarely could so quickly after spending himself. He was content to let Cathal benefit
from the effect.
Eamon sealed his lips to hers once again, a sharing of magic this time. A twining as their tongues rubbed and her legs encircled his hips, holding him against her even as the position allowed him to thrust deeper.
As he’d done when it was Cathal who’d pleasured her, he swallowed her sharp cries, her husky moans, and finally her cry of release. The tight clenching of her channel milking him of seed in a white-hot rush of raw magic that left his body humming even after he’d rolled to his side, facing Cathal with Etaín’s feminine perfection between them.
Etaín felt like purring and suspected the smile on her face made her look like a well-satisfied cat. She suppressed a laugh. Or a cat very much in heat.
“That was better than the fantasy,” she said, touching a hand to the smooth heat of Eamon’s chest as she combed through the dark hair on Cathal’s before zeroing in on a nipple. “Much better.”
Cathal’s eyes heated, whether at mention of the fantasy or from the stroke of her fingertips over his nipple, she didn’t know, only thrilled at the hungry expression on his face. A glance at Eamon and she saw the same, though from the very first he’d made it clear he found the thought of sharing her arousing.
Her fingers zeroed in on his nipple, its color lighter than Cathal’s though it was equally hard, as were the cocks pressed to her thighs. The effects of magic she guessed but the thought was still accompanied by a small thrill of feminine power.
Her knowledge of their bodies gave her the advantage. “I want you both again,” she said, fingers tightening on male nipples in a command to pleasure.
Cathal moaned and lowered his head, claiming her lips as Eamon’s mouth went to her breast, the combined assault sending a scorching wave of lust to her cunt.
A sound of need escaped, and then a second as their hands settled between her thighs.
Her hips jerked upward with the rub and press, the strokes of masculine fingertips along the underside of her clit and over its head. With firm grips and a pumping that wrested any illusion of control away from her.
Desire pulsed through her. Overwhelming her so she trembled, begged.