by A. C. Mason
“I’ve been wondering the same thing.” A sideways glance from him heated her insides with fire. “Maybe, I like knowing you want me. Just me, even if you don’t intend to act on it. When you and I started our sexual encounter, you’d asked Rowley to take part. By the end, you wanted just me. That’s a sizable shift.”
Didn’t she know it. A tender quality about him drew her in. “Am I some type of strange surrogate between the two of you? I’ve heard of this before on some talk show. Men who want to sleep together concoct a sexual scenario to fuck a woman together, but really, it’s about the two men wanting to bang.”
“Now there’s some psychobabble if I’ve ever heard any.” He laughed. “Rowley and I don’t have those types of sexual hang-ups. If the mood strikes us, then we’ll fuck, as you put it. Of course, neither of us would jeopardize a monogamous relationship for a romp.”
Was he making this up to shock her? “Have you? I mean, have you two slept together?” It was doubtful they had any hang-ups, given what they were open to.
“Yes, but that was a very long time ago.”
Hard to imagine Devin or Rowley being a bottom. “How long?”
“Six or seven years. It was on and off before that, but I got involved with a woman, Maria, and she was very religious–repressed. I worshiped her.” He got up, grabbed shorts from the dresser, pulled them up over his penis and tied the string. “She and Rowley didn’t get on.”
“What happened? Why did you break up?”
“Fatigue mostly. Nothing was ever good enough for her. I don’t claim to be perfect, far from it. I got tired of trying to be something and someone I’m not to please her. I’m a fairly simple man. I enjoy pretty women. Good whisky. Old cars. I also happen to want to rid the world of the undead. Nothing religious, as in the cleansing of the earth. Simple survival. Nothing fancy.”
From the outside, Devin didn’t appear like the kind of man who wanted more than a good lover. But he was kind and loyal. She could see Devin as very devoted to his partner. “Maybe Rowley wants you back in his bed.”
“He doesn’t need an elaborate scheme for that.” He flicked his bangs back.
The front door opened and Rowley rushed into the bedroom. “Forgot the keys to the building.” He picked them up from the nightstand. “No morning relief?”
Was that what he wanted, to catch them? “Fuck you.” She rushed past him, ran into the bathroom and locked the door.
“Lee-lee. Don’t be like this.” He raised his voice and turned the knob.
Rowley’s thugs hung out at the warehouse. Someone would be there to open the door for him. He didn’t need the keys. “Is it not enough that I do this for you? Why do you need to push me?”
“I’m an ass. I don’t mean to push.” He huffed. “I’ve got a meeting. I’ll see you at my office for lunch.”
Footsteps paused at the bedroom. “Don’t give me that fucking look,” came from Rowley.
“Then stop pushing her.” Devin’s tone remained even.
“Don’t tell me how to deal with her!” Rowley shouted.
Were they going to get into it? Fuck, she didn’t want them to fight.
The front door slammed closed.
Rowley expected her to be Devin’s lover too, when Rowley wasn’t there. For what reason?
Pots and dishes clanked in the kitchen. “He’s gone.”
She smiled at Devin’s words. She wasn’t going to spend the entire day in the bathroom.
When she entered the kitchen, Devin chopped vegetables on the counter, bare-chested. “I love him, but he doesn’t deserve you,” he said.
Butter sizzled in a frying pan on the stove.
“I wouldn’t wish me on my worst enemy.” Maybe in another life something intense could have been between the two of them. “What are you making?” In this life, their worlds were oceans apart.
“That’s not what I meant, and switching the topic won’t change that.” He twisted his lips. “Breakfast, you hungry?”
It might not change his opinion, but it helped keep her mind off the mess she was in. With all the sex and running around, she needed more food. “Famished.”
From head to toe, his gaze traveled over her, and again. He shook his head, then put his back to her.
She didn’t take pleasure in pushing away from his pull. Did he intend on making her feel bad? “What?” It wasn’t like she didn’t want him.
“I know the feeling.” The tent in his shorts explained his meaning.
Why Rowley insisted on giving the man the impression they should slip between the sheets without him confused her. “Devin.”
“I heard. However, my body isn’t persuaded by logic my mind doesn’t want to buy into.” He pointed to his temple. “Omelet? Eggs, scrambled or sunny side up...”
“Same as you, please.”
“Spinach, feta and jalapeno omelet it is.” Devin’s kitchen skills were a nice bonus.
For once, she didn’t have to do all the cooking. Leera turned the radio on. Militant hip-hop bass vibrated the speakers hanging on each side of the window above the sink.
His head bobbed to the beat. “What?” Devin’s lips parted in a broad grin.
She added dish soap to the sink and cranked on the hot water. “I just didn’t peg you as the underground hip hop type.”
“I can krump with the best of ’em.” He whipped up eggs in a bowl. “I lived on the streets after my mum died. I was fifteen. To pass time, street kids battled at the community center. I, however, always did better with a female to play off.”
Bet that was what they all said. “Right.” She turned the water off, pumped up the music. Hands in the suds and warm water, she swayed her hips while washing the surface of the plate with the sponge and setting the dish on the tray.
Devin slid behind her, dunking his hands in the soapy water. With his face tucked next to hers, he pressed his lips to her ear. Molded to her form, he matched the rhythm as she moved to the beat.
“Beautiful.” He lifted her hands together over her head. As he trailed his fingers over her skin, water and suds ran down her arms. He cupped her breasts, palms pressed to the hard buds of her nipples. The rise and fall of his torso quickened. “My body craves you more each time he lets me taste you.” As his fingers moved down her midriff, he pushed his erection into her ass.
She pumped her bottom to his crotch, lowering with him. A little bumping and grinding couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like she didn’t want him. Quite the opposite, she wanted him more each time too.
He descended with her to the floor, grinding into her. Slipping his hand beneath the lace fabric between her thighs, he pushed her into his cock. He glided his fingers to her throbbing clit. With slow circles, he gave and withdrew his delicious touch.
She gasped, releasing her weight into him and arched her back. “Mmm.”
“You make me crazy hot for you.” He popped, cranking his pelvis, lifting her inch by inch as his digits massaged her nub with her own juices. Muscles rippled as they contracted and released with each precise movement of his chest.
Liquid heat coated her inner labia. “Please, don’t stop.”
With his lips, he smeared a path of need up the nape of her neck. “I can relieve you–us.” He pressed his fingers to her opening.
She wanted to be filled with him. Just her and him. This was that line in her mind she shouldn’t cross. Devin wasn’t part of her job to keep Peter out of jail.
A finger glided into her. “Leera,” he pleaded, his need and hers in his tone.
“I want to but...”
“Don’t overthink this.” He brushed her earlobe with his warm lips. “My touch feels good, feels right. Doesn’t it?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. Better than good. Safe, and protective. And yet that was the issue. Maybe Vaihan could find a way to forgive her betrayal, understand her being with Rowley and Devin. But being with just Devin served no purpose. Yet she wanted him. How could Vaihan forgive her for sleeping with him?<
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Devin made her feel as Vaihan had once, like a person and not an object of interest.
She met his gaze, covered his mouth and twisted to face him. He entered her mouth with his tongue, reached behind her and lifted her to his waist, carried her to the table and set her down. She tugged her shirt off.
Using his teeth, he grazed her nipple. “I’ll pull out. All right?”
One more worry. Did she trust him to do as he said?
“Leera, you have my word.”
“I know.” She pulled the tie to his shorts loose. “I want you inside me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He pushed the fabric aside, wrapped one hand around her inner thigh, and lowered himself into her opening. “Mmm.” With his forehead pressed to hers, he pumped out and into her. “So tight and wet.”
The table thumped against the wall.
She wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Mo cron sceimhiuil.” He held her gaze with his pear green stare. “My dark beauty.” He rubbed her lips with his mouth, coaxing them apart, and licked them. “Delicious, milis sweet.” Angled to her, he rocked in and out of her, bringing the head to her labia and bearing deep inside her. “Neamh, Heaven.”
She rotated her hips to meet his cock. “Faster.”
“I want to savor you.” He held steady, building more demand inside her for him to bring her to release.
His deep plunges filled her with him, her clit pulsing as his pelvis brushed the bead of flesh. “Like that.”
Up into her, down, and her insides longed for his cock to fill her once more.
“Exactly, like this.” The corner of his mouth flipped up. He suckled her breast.
Her inner muscles contracted around his shaft. She jerked against his thrust, fighting the urge to close her legs, letting the pleasure move through her. “Devin.” A tidal wave shuddered through every part of her.
He withdrew, hand wrapped around the length of his cock and stroked the gleaming head. “Leera.” Cum shot out and drizzled over his fingers.
“Ta sin luí le cheile.” He bent, pressed his face to her abdomen, and planted kisses on her stomach. “That is making love.”
He spoke to her in his native tongue. She suspected he wasn’t telling her what his words really meant.
As he climbed off the table and cleaned off with a paper towel, the afterglow faded.
What had she done? “I can’t believe I just...” She sat up.
“Not you, we.” He skimmed her jawline with the back of his hand. “And it was amazing.” He leaned in.
Things were messed up enough because she let her attraction to him win out. She pushed him away, hopped off the table and ran into the bathroom.
“Leera.” His footsteps hustled behind her. “Open up.”
“No.” What the hell was she thinking? It was one thing for her to sleep with him for Rowley to build trust, but nothing good could come of what they shared. “We shouldn’t have. That shouldn’t have happened.”
“We need to talk. Please, come out.”
“I can’t.” Tears burned her eyes. “God.” She was doing all this for Peter, and she risked all of that. “I’m so stupid.”
“Leera, open up.” The tone of his voice wavered in pitch.
She had screwed up. “Not unless you promise me you won’t tell Rowley.”
“Not telling him will anger him.”
“Then what we shared doesn’t mean anything to you.” If he told Rowley, she didn’t know what would happen.
“You know that isn’t true.”
Did she? For all she knew this was another part of the sex games. “Then promise me you won’t tell him.”
“I promise, but can you do the same for me?”
She would gain nothing from telling Rowley. “I won’t breathe a word of what we shared to him.” Leera unlocked and opened the door and jetted for the bedroom.
Devin stopped, midpace. “You regret what happened.”
There was no point in lying any more than she had to. “Yes.” She tugged another white t-shirt over her head.
“It’s not because of Rowley. You know he’d forgive you anything.”
She sighed. Rowley felt for her more than he could for anyone.
“It’s because of the undead, Vaihan.” He leaned on the dresser. “You have feelings for him?”
What did it matter? Vaihan hated her. “What do you want me to tell you?”
“The truth.”
“Yes, I have feelings for him.”
“Yet sleeping with Rowley is okay. But me, I threw the balance off since the first night. Why?”
“I don’t know. Vaihan knows about Rowley. The history–the emotions. You represent something else. Something I can’t make sense of. From the first night I enjoyed being with you. Now, even more concretely, and that doesn’t make sense. How long will Rowley welcome you into our bed? And then what? You’ll go when he says No more.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
“Why not, Leera?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to say?”
“Leave this...”
“I need to know it isn’t just me and my feelings for you, that you feel something for me too.” He tilted her chin, so her eyes met his.
“I do, but I shouldn’t.” She pulled away.
“You’re safe with me. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.” Devin’s hand reached around the back of her neck and his mouth crushed hers.
Yet, she knew her actions would compromise him too.
Chapter 41
Vaihan sat. Somehow, the last time he’d been in this room with Leera, the laboratory had melted away. Only she had existed. Today the room shrunk, crowding him. He’d killed her husband, and if he told, then there could never be anything between them. If he kept the lie, the information would eat him from the inside out. One day the truth might surface, and he’d lose her. The scent of the two males lingered in her pores, Rowley’s more faint than the other. And the younger male’s fragrance held endorphins human males produced when they formed emotional connections with females. Who was this male to her?
“Shall I undress?” Leera stood.
“Pardon the pun, but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to come through today.” While she’d slept peacefully in the car on the drive there, he’d wanted to claim her body. So primal. She didn’t belong to him, but he belonged to her. She’d claimed him, and for him, there was no way to relinquish the bond.
“What?” She slumped. “I need this, please, Vaihan. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Not because she cared for him, but for the chance to carry another male’s child. “Do you have feelings for the younger man?” He knew the answer to the question, but wanted her to explain to him how and why the same endorphins he’d smelled when she’d come for him in this very room were now present with this other man.
She crossed her arms and her legs. “His name is Devin, and I do enjoy being with him.”
What kind of messy situation was she in? “And Rowley in all this?”
“He is assured of my safety and satisfaction. Devin is Rowley’s insurance policy.” She stared off to the side.
A policy the man wouldn’t hesitate to collect on. “How grand of him.” The other male went along with the game, but for what reason, since he felt something for Leera?
“Will making me feel any more guilty, upset or humiliated than I already am turn you on?” She sighed.
If she felt those things, why the hell was she taking part? “Of course not.”
“Why bring this up, then?” She tapped the floor with her foot.
“If you feel guilty, upset or humiliated, why are you with Rowley?” Her actions didn’t make any sense. The man was abusing her, and she stayed. He didn’t want to hurt her, but his own pain urged him to press her for answers.
“I will tell you, on one condition.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“
Which is?” He wouldn’t agree to a condition she’d yet to voice.
“That you will make no attempt afterward to make me feel better or explain. Any such efforts would only cause me to feel worse.”
If it was the only way she would give him answer, what choice did he have? “Agreed.”
“I’m with Rowley, because despite everything I have done, including sleeping with you–which to him is the mother of all betrayals–he didn’t leave me at the hospital.” With her dark gaze, she challenged him.
As Vaihan had. She’d failed to add in those words, but they were implicitly clear. “I appreciate your honesty.” It was not love, then, but loyalty to a man who’d preyed on her when her vulnerability kept her with him.
She didn’t understand him. He’d nearly killed her. No matter the political fallout, he’d left her to protect her from herself because he could refuse her nothing.
This could be the last time he saw her. His transformation to human may not prove to her how he felt about her. If this was the last time he was with her, he wanted to touch her. “Sit on my knees, facing away from me.”
She rose, spun and sat at the edge of his lap. The coolness from her body temperature seeped into him.
“Spill your breasts from your top and bra,” he said and leaned into her back, tucking his lips to her neck.
As the fabric lowered from her shoulders, he reached around front, felt one of her hard nipples and squeezed it.
She gasped.
“Spread your legs.” She parted her thighs with one foot dangling on each side of his lap.
He withdrew his hard length from his pants. One hand wrapped around his shaft, he pushed aside the thin material of her panties and touched her slick heat with the other. Her inner folds dripped with her excitement. Did being with him turn her on, or did she picture someone else? Perhaps Devin? She was slipping away.
He pumped up and down, inhaling the saccharine fragrance from inside her. Using two fingers, he parted her labia, stretching her opening. She ground herself into his plunging fingers.