Dante waved his hand, as if he was clearing the air, or trying to calm down. “Knock….Knock,” he breathed.
Sasha wiped his eyes. “Who’s there?”
“Nobel.”
“Nobel who?”
“No bell, so I’ll knock.”
They wheezed out more laughter. They were shaking with it.
Sasha held up a long finger. “Wait. Wait!”
Dante got himself under control. He was still shaking with laughter, though.
“Famous Russian knock knock joke,” Sasha declared.
“Okay. Go.”
“No, no, it’s so good, this one,” Sasha assured him. “You start.”
“Knock. Knock,” Dante said instantly.
“Who’s there?” Sasha demanded.
They looked at each other. Then they burst out laughing again. Sasha pummeled the steel bench with his hand, while Dante held his forehead in his hand, leaning on his.
“Knock. Knock,” Rory said.
Both of them snapped upright, surprised into it. They looked at her, then at each other. “Who’s there?” they chorused together.
“The guy who finished second,” Rory told them.
“The guy who finished second who?” they responded.
Rory shrugged. “Exactly.”
This time, they really did collapse. Sasha sagged onto the floor, as his knees gave way. Dante doubled over, then lost his balance and thrust out a hand, then gave up and folded up onto the floor next to Sasha.
Sasha slapped Dante’s shoulder. “What do you call a Lada on the top of a hill?”
Rory smiled. She had owned a Lada when she had lived in Russia. They were cheap and that had been the problem with them.
“I don’t know,” Dante told Sasha. “What?”
“A bloody miracle,” Sasha said gravely, then started laughing again.
Rory laughed, too. Dante grinned.
Sasha was on a roll. “What did the Russian people light their houses with before they started using candles?” he demanded.
They both looked at him.
“Electricity.”
Dante hid his face in his hands.
“I’m really starting to hate those stupid little Russian dolls,” Rory said conversationally.
Sasha looked up. “Matryoshka dolls?” he clarified.
“Those,” Rory agreed. “They’re just so full of themselves.”
Dante and Sasha fell together, holding each other up. Then Dante levered himself up into a sitting position. His hand rested on Sasha’s knee and Rory stared at it, all her amusement fading.
“Knock. Knock,” Dante said to Sasha.
Sasha sighed and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, wiping them. “Who’s there?”
“Keith.”
“Keith who?”
“Keith me, my thweet preenth,” Dante lisped, leaning toward him.
And Sasha did.
For a moment, Rory was frozen on the high stool. Even thought stopped. Fire whooshed up from her toes, enveloping her body in white hot flames. The air in her lungs evaporated. Her flesh sizzled. Nerves crackled with more life than she had felt for a long time.
Rory gripped her fingers in a tight fist, riding out the reaction, while Dante and Sasha’s kiss seemed to stretch on for a small ice age. Perhaps two.
When the kiss ended, Dante rested his head against Sasha’s and they looked into each other’s eyes.
Rory spoke before she even considered what she was about to say. It was pulled out of her. “Do you do that in front of me because you’re pissed I didn’t kiss you?”
They looked at her. Dante leaned back on one arm, making it look casual. “Why would we be pissed?”
Sasha’s expression was wary. He was watching her closely.
Rory shook her head. “Never mind.” She turned back to the computer, regretting speaking at all.
“No.” Dante got to his feet. “No more never minds. No more denial. For once, just for this one moment, say what you really feel, Rory. It’s just us. No one can hear. No one will ever know what you say now.” He glanced at Sasha.
Sasha shook his head. “I keep secrets for a living,” he said and eased up on to his feet.
“The truth doesn’t serve anyone,” Rory assured them.
“Except you,” Dante finished. “So for once in your life, reach out for what you want. No more distractions. No more petty entertainments.”
He knew. He knew already, or else he would not be speaking that way. She could tell by Sasha’s expression that he knew, too. So what was the harm in saying it? Yet she didn’t have the courage to expose herself completely, not even with these two men. So she came at it backward. “You both want me. That’s why you’re compensating with each other.”
Fear gripped her throat, shutting it down. This was why she hated messy emotions. They made her vulnerable. They exposed her to hurt and worse.
Sasha shrugged, though. “Of course we want you.”
“You’ve always known that,” Dante said, his voice low and rough.
Rory swallowed. “Why haven’t you come to me, if you want me? Any other man would…would….”
“What?” Sasha demanded. “Would try to seduce you? Force you into compliance? Bend your will until you see it his way?”
She flinched.
Dante came closer to the stool. “Any other man would try to own you. Shape your life to match his. Tangle you up in trivial intimacies and resent your independent ways. He’d try to change you.”
Rory stared at him. Dante had never done any of those things. Not once, in the nearly ten years she had known him.
“I kept the clause in my contract,” he added.
To anyone else, that might have sounded like a non sequitur. Rory, though, knew exactly what he was saying. She stared up at him, her heart working harder than it ever had. She could feel it throwing itself against her chest. It was almost hurting.
He knew she had put the clause in there. He’d known all along and he’d left it in there, anyway. He’d chosen to stay.
Sasha rested his hand on Dante’s shoulder. He was looking at her though. “I didn’t kiss you,” he said. “Twice.”
Dante nodded.
“Why?” Rory asked them both.
They looked at each other. It was almost as if they were mind-reading.
“No, you do it,” Dante said, as if Sasha had already spoken.
Sasha looked at her. “If either of us had pushed, if we had insisted on answers from you, then we would be distorting what it is we like about you. If you had given us answers, then you would not be the Rory we know.”
“And love,” Dante added, almost in a whisper.
Sasha’s hand tightened on his shoulder.
“You like that I keep you at arm’s length?” Her voice trembled because now she was speaking the fundamental truth. She was revealing her weaknesses and it scared her.
“It’s a part of who you are,” Dante said. “You drive me fucking nuts at times, but I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Rory couldn’t help it. Her gaze swiveled to Sasha.
He smiled. “No one else in the world could have put me in the middle of a swimming pool and lived to tell the tale.”
Rory kissed him. There was no other sane response she could give.
She had kissed many men in the past. This was different. To begin, Dante was watching and she could feel his gaze on her and Sasha, adding a tension to the kiss. Making it better.
Secondly, Sasha didn’t let her kiss him for very long. He stirred. His hands caught her face and held it. He was kissing her. His tongue pressed into her mouth, soft and firm at once. Rory usually didn’t like to have control taken away from her that way. This time, it seemed right. It felt safe to let go.
She sighed into his mouth.
Sasha released her. His eyes were very blue, this close. Then he turned her gently to face Dante.
Dante drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I think I just
forgot how to kiss.” His voice was uneven.
“I’ll do it,” Rory said and wound her arms around his neck. She’d had reason to touch him many times in the past. Dressing wounds, massaging sore muscles, even occasional hugs. Every time, she had been able to appreciate the magnificent strength and beauty of his body, only it had never been like this. Even though she was simply putting her arms around him, she trembled.
Dante held her. “This should feel strange…” he whispered.
“Yet it doesn’t,” she finished and kissed him.
Like Sasha, he did not passively accept the kiss. He dominated it and her, too. He was a big man, although in her mind, he seemed to grow larger and even stronger than his true strength.
When he let her go, he was breathing heavily. “Sasha,” he breathed.
Sasha pressed against her from behind. “Not here, among chemicals and steel.”
“No,” Rory said. “Not here.”
The oven alarm began beeping in its high, demanding series of notes and all three of them jumped.
“Jesus, that was the fastest hour ever,” Dante breathed.
Sasha moved away. He turned the oven alarm off and Rory shivered as the cooler air in the room bathed her back, where Sasha had been pressing.
She stirred and dropped her arms. “I’ll shut down the lab. You two go into the house. I’ll come and find you there.”
“Shut it down?” Dante asked.
“We can’t leave any processes running if at least one of us is not here. They’re too unstable. We’ll have to shut down everything, throw out any batches in progress and start fresh later. I think we deserve a break, anyway. A day or two.”
“Or three,” Sasha said, his lips pressing against her shoulder.
“Or more. Perhaps this is the natural break we spoke of that first day we started this,” Rory told them. “Go on, both of you. I’ll take care of this. I’m awake and alert and I can move faster than either of you.”
“You heard the lady,” Dante said.
Sasha followed him out of the shed and they shut the door silently behind them. Rory heard them step onto the bricks surrounding the swimming pool, on the other side of the pool house, as she moved around the lab turning off equipment and breaking down the stages of the process, making sure any chemicals left were inert and safe to leave alone.
As she worked, her heart wouldn’t settle and there was a heat in her belly, pushing her into hurrying. She refused to rush, though. The chemicals they handled were all toxic or corrosive, all of them dangerous to one degree or another and there were children in the house, now. She would lock the door, only inquisitive kids had accessed places adults thought were safely barred to them so she wouldn’t assume a locked door was any sort of barrier..
So Rory took her time, making sure everything remotely dangerous was tucked away inside the second steel cabinet. The first was already full of recycled water drums, each of them containing newly made Pyrrhus.
Finally, she stepped out of the shed and locked the door and tested it. She pushed the key into her pocket. Now, she let herself hurry. Not too much, because maintaining human speed was purely automatic. She let her heart loose to beat as it wished and it leapt about her chest.
She had experienced only a few short moments pressed up against the both of them. It was all she could think about now. Their hot, hard bodies. Their hands and mouths.
The taste of them. They tasted different and both of them were delicious.
She would let herself have this one indulgence, this one moment with them. What harm could it do? Dante was right. She had spent too long dallying with the safe choices, the uncomplicated men.
Although she had never tasted a potato chip in her life, she suspected a diet of nothing but potato chips would leave her feeling somewhat like she had felt for several years now. Full, but unsatisfied and uncertain about what she really craved.
She didn’t stop to consider which bedroom she would find them in. She went straight to her own and pushed the door open, her heart zooming into the stratosphere.
Dante and Sasha were there. Both of them lay on the bed.
Both of them were sound asleep.
Rory backed out of the room and quietly shut the door, then leaned against the closed door, considering her options. She could wake them, of course, yet both of them had been so short on sleep for so long she might end up dealing with a pair of zombies.
Better to let them sleep.
Although, what happened after that?
Slowly, she walked back down the passage toward the sitting area at the top of the stairs, thinking it through, forcing herself to consider options and weigh the consequences, while her heart settled down.
It was always possible to pick up where they had left off. She was sure that both Dante and Sasha would be amenable. Only, it was possible they would sleep for hours and hours, now. How would they feel about a dalliance with her in the cold light of day? How would she feel?
This had been a moment of madness, unprompted, stolen out of time. It was the product of strange circumstances. Considered soberly, it was a really stupid idea. She knew Dante too well. Could she do this to him when she couldn’t offer the same level of feelings he had for her?
And Sasha…this was not a casual thing for him either. Sasha was not the sort of man to do casual, not with someone he knew. He would take care of such physical needs coldly. An escort. An arrangement with a stranger in a bar. Remote friends with benefits. He guarded his heart as much as she and Dante did.
Besides, he and Dante were already lovers. Was it fair of her to step into the middle of that?
Rory moved down the stairs to the main floor, gripping the bannister harder than she needed to.
It was perhaps a good thing they had both been tired enough to sleep instantly. It gave her a way out. She could simply fail to follow up and they would not pursue it without her encouragement.
Yes, it was better this way.
Only, a queer sense of regret lingered, anyway.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sasha came awake knowing he was in the wrong place, again. He kept his eyes shut while he put together the last moments he could remember. It was foggy and far off, as if he was seeing the memories through a filtered lens.
Then he remembered. Tiredness. Laughter that seemed to spill out of him, uncontrolled and too close to sleep-deprived hysteria.
And Rory.
He sat up with a jerk, a silent curse on his lips.
Dante was sitting on the opposite corner of the bed, his legs crossed. He had been watching Sasha sleep. He didn’t smile.
Sasha frowned. “Ooops.”
“Yeah.” Dante let out his breath. “We never should have sat down. We should have stalked the room until she got here.” He grimaced.
“So, we’ll go find her.” Sasha hesitated, his physical needs making themselves felt, loudly. “We’ll shower and eat and then go and find her.”
Dante shook his head. “We’re too late. We were only ever going to get the one chance at this. We blew it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He let out a ragged breath. “Rory has had time to think. We’ve nearly slept the clock around. In that time, she’ll have argued herself out of it. She’ll remember all the reasons why risking herself is a really bad idea. She will have all her reasons laid out, one after another in a neat row and they’ll be logical and reasonable and they’ll hide the fact that she’s gone back to fear mode.”
Sasha considered him for a long moment. He wanted to hold him, or kiss him, something to ease the pain in his face. He had a feeling that Dante wouldn’t welcome his touch right now. “I’m sorry,” he said, inadequately.
“It’s not your fault.” Dante gave the same stunted smile as before. “In the ten years I’ve known her, this is the closest I have ever come to getting inside her shield and I think the reason for that is you. You change the equation, somehow.”
Sasha knew very lit
tle about higher order mathematics, although he’d heard experts expounding theory more than once. “Strange attractor?” he suggested.
Dante snorted. “That’s quantum physics, idiot.”
Sasha shrugged. “I am better with a gun than a calculator.”
“Yes, you are.” Dante untangled his legs and leaned forward to kiss him. Briefly. “Let’s get that shower and meal, then figure out where we go from here.”
Sasha caught him and held his shoulders, so he couldn’t pull away. “Are you sure that is how Rory will feel?” he asked.
Dante’s jaw rippled. “Care to bet on it? I’d like a chance to earn my two hundred thousand back.”
* * * * *
When Rory asked Nial for something to do, Sebastian pulled her over to the other side of the worktable and pointed at a spreadsheet of data on the big central screen. “It’s a compilation of every Summanus sighting and encounter, anywhere in the greater L.A. area, for the last year,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out how to display the data in a way that shows trends and patterns, only the size of the data pool is so ginormous, I can’t wrap my head around it. You use big databanks at NASA all the time. Figure you could pull something meaningful out of this?”
Rory looked at the table headings, working out relationships between one field and another, getting a feel for the data.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Sebastian said.
She blinked and looked at him. “I guess, yes. Sorry. I do that sometimes. It’s the challenge, I think.”
Sebastian smiled. “It reminds me of Rick. He would do that. Zone out while his mind went into hyper drive.” He stepped away from the chair. “Knock yourself out.”
Rory dropped into the chair and used the mouse to zoom out on the data. It was always worth getting the big picture, first, before diving into the details.
She glanced up again. The office was empty. Sebastian had left her alone and she wasn’t even sure how long ago he had left. She had not noticed.
It left her alone and that was fine. That was good. She could engage her mind, keep it focused and that would stop her thinking about anything else.
She didn’t know how long after that it was before Sasha came in. She glanced up and back at the data, before she lost her place. Then she looked up again, for Sasha’s face was blank. He looked like shell-shock victims from World War I.
Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Page 22