Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Yes, in a way, we did,” Sasha said just as quickly. “Only to give you back a power you’ve been blind to for years.”

  Her anger checked. “Excuse me?”

  “The power of choice,” Dante said. “You’ve cut yourself off from it for years, afraid to let yourself take what you really wanted. I don’t think you can even see what you really want, anymore.”

  “You’re talking about you,” she said flatly. “Maybe I just realized I don’t want you anymore.”

  “Then you admit you did want me, up until five seconds ago,” Dante replied.

  She bit her lip. She had made a stupid rookie mistake. She knew better than to get herself caught in verbal traps like that. She had been handling million dollar negotiations for years. This is what happened when she let her anger direct her.

  So she reined it in, trying to rake back control. “You know what, guys? Good joke. You fooled me. Ha ha. Now, I’m going back to the house. Enjoy your cozy evening…the décor is lovely.”

  She turned back to the door.

  “Dante isn’t Armand, Rory,” Sasha said.

  Rory whirled, pain spearing her. “You dare speak of that! I told you in confidence! I trusted you.”

  Dante frowned. “Armand?” he repeated.

  “Later,” Sasha told him swiftly. He got to his feet. “You like plain speaking, Rory. Or at least you normally do. I grow weary of circumlocution myself. It is endemic in the intelligence world. Dante has learned to appreciate the direct approach, too. You taught him that. So let’s cut the bullshit.”

  Rory swallowed. Why was she suddenly afraid? She had control here. She could walk out any time she pleased. Neither of them would try to stop her. Neither of them could stop her, anyway.

  Sasha moved toward her. Only, he didn’t stop in front of her. He walked slowly around her, making her want to turn to follow him. He was the threat here, she realized. He knew too much about her. Her moment of weakness in the car, when she had wanted to explain herself in order to make amends, was now coming back around to slap her.

  Live with consequences of your own making, she reminded herself. She had wanted the power to control her life. She had been fighting for that power since the night she leaned over the odious man she had been married to with a knife in her hand and yearned for the courage to take it. Well, she had the power now. If her decisions went wrong, she had to live with them.

  So she lifted her chin and kept still, despite knowing what Sasha was going to say now.

  “You like to control anything around you, because once upon a time, you lived at the whim of others,” Sasha said. “You indulge yourself because that is one of the perks of keeping that control. But Dante…he was different. You knew he was almost from the start. You knew he could upset everything, because you believe that falling in love means giving up that control.”

  “It does mean that,” Rory said stiffly. She was facing Dante and he was watching her closely, which made the words even harder to speak. “Even now when women are supposed to enjoy equality, they rarely do. They earn less, are shuffled off into less prestigious roles and are rarely taken seriously. Relationships are almost never true partnerships. The woman always ends up giving up far more than the man.”

  “Does she?” Dante said. “Really?”

  “How would you know one way or the other?” Rory demanded. “You’ve never had a relationship in your life that was more than an inch deep!”

  “Because I had you!” Dante roared back. “God, Rory, you’re so blind!”

  “She’s doing it deliberately,” Sasha said, coming into her view on the other side. “She’s afraid,” he added. “The last time she truly loved someone, they were killed because of it.”

  He’d said it. He’d spoken the words.

  Rory drew in a shaky breath.

  Sasha moved around behind Dante and stopped next to his shoulder. Over it, Rory could see Sasha’s steady gaze. “Rory couldn’t bring herself to let you go, either. The contract clause. The practical jokes. Friendship. A mutual love of competition and excellence. She clung to you the only way she could let herself, while fearing to ask for more.”

  Dante’s gaze was steady. Relentless. “You could have asked for anything, Rory,” he said gently. “I would have moved mountains to give it to you. Complete freedom if you wanted it. You could have fucked every player on every team, if that’s what it took to let you feel as if you were still in control. All I wanted was you. Whatever you could share of yourself.”

  Sadness touched her. “I gave you as much as I could. It was much, much more than anyone else got.”

  Dante sighed. “And now it’s too late.”

  A chill enveloped her. “Too late?”

  “The whole point of me leaving tonight was to scare you into seeing what you might lose if you kept denying the truth,” Dante said, “only, I learned something about myself, when I drove away. Even though it was a dummy run, it felt real enough to scare me.”

  He looked at Sasha. “I don’t know how we work this out,” he said quietly. “I just know I’m not giving you up. Not without a fight.”

  Sasha’s smile was slow and warm.

  Dante looked back at Rory. “So now things are more complicated than either of us ever thought they would be.”

  “Are they?” Sasha asked. He moved back to the armchair and sat on the arm once more. “Plain speaking,” he reminded them both. “Rory, you won’t let yourself have a relationship that involves real love because you think it will trap you into a life not of your choosing. Dante wants you, but won’t ever push the matter because he knows it will drive you farther away. Now, he wants me, too. And I…” He cleared his throat. “I have no objections at all, which astonishes me. I think there was less bluff in my role tonight than I thought. I have always wanted you, Rory. You’ve known that from the start. That’s why you disliked me so much. You knew it and it scared you a little bit, too. Because you knew I wouldn’t let you dismiss me as others might.”

  Rory could feel her heart slowing. Now it was all out. The ugly truth revealed. None of them could take it back.

  “You have a point?” Dante asked Sasha curiously.

  “I do. We keep tripping over assumptions. They’re bloody great rocks in the way. Rory keeps making assumptions about how a relationship should be. You keep assuming you can’t make any demands, or you’ll lose her. I assumed that once Rory beckoned you, I would be forgotten.” He licked his lips. “Let’s stop doing that.”

  “Stop assuming?” Dante said.

  “Why can’t we make our own rules?” Sasha asked reasonably.

  Rory considered him, something stirring deep inside her. She didn’t know what it was, only for the first time since she had left the house with Sasha beside her, she felt something other than bleak misery. “You mean, I get to say how I want things to be?”

  “Dante does, too. We figure it out to suit ourselves. Then we see where this goes.”

  Rory stared at him. “Where it goes?”

  Sasha crossed his arms. Only now did she recognize it as a defensive shift. “We’ve moved beyond just sex. Beyond the simple moment you thought it would be this morning.”

  “We haven’t even properly kissed yet!” she protested.

  “You know I’m right, all the same,” Sasha told her, with maddening calm.

  “And look, you’re trying to push me into a corner already!”

  “Am I?” Sasha asked. “Or is that just your own fear doing it to you?”

  Dante came toward her. “Tell me what you felt in that first moment, when Sasha told you I had gone.”

  Rory glanced at Sasha. He looked steadily back. “I….” She shook her head, annoyed at her own prevarication. “I was….” She frowned. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

  “Finally,” Sasha said, sounding relieved.

  “You’ve spent so long avoiding even thinking about this, that it is almost an autonomic response now,” Dante told her. He was standing close to h
er. Beyond his heavy shoulder, she could see Sasha, too.

  “Think, Rory,” Dante urged her. “You’re so clear headed about your work and game theory. You can see every play on the field, even before it happens. Analyze your own mind for once. What did you feel, when you thought I had gone?”

  “I felt terror,” she said, finally remembering that split second moment. “Sasha said it in a way that made me think you had really gone. I almost panicked.”

  “Almost, but not quite,” he said. “What stopped the fear?”

  Rory dropped her gaze from his as she realized the terrible truth. She wasn’t sure she could say it. It felt like the worst betrayal in the world.

  “Tell me,” Dante said. “Remember, we make our own rules. You only get what you want if you say what that is.”

  She nodded. She still couldn’t look him in the eye. “I was afraid, yet a part of me…there was a voice that said…even as bad as it might be, if I really had lost you, at least Sasha was still there….”

  The awfulness of it made her want to sink into the carpet.

  Dante lifted her chin. His touch made her skin sizzle. He was smiling.

  “You knew!” she gasped.

  He nodded. “Belittling him. Stranding him in the middle of the pool. Remind you of anyone, Rory?”

  “You,” she breathed.

  Sasha came up next to Dante. “Is that why you and I…?” he began.

  “I only figured this all out tonight,” Dante told him. “Pretending to leave gave me the distance I needed to see clearly. You and I…that was different.”

  Rory gripped his wrist, where he was still stoking her cheek. “I want you to kiss me,” she said. “Both of you.” It was very clear in her mind. Her rules, her way. Even when it came to love.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sasha nudged Dante with his elbow. “You heard the lady.”

  There was a brooding look in Dante’s black eyes that Rory didn’t recognize. He reached out slowly, as if he was moving through water. His big hand curled around her arm and drew her closer, which was barely a step, yet it brought her up against him.

  Rory shivered. She had always admired Dante’s strength and his physique. Now they were hers to enjoy and it was as if she was seeing them for the first time. She rested her hands on his broad chest. “You’re bothered by something,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “Fatalistic. I’ve wanted this to happen for so long and now it is, I’m wondering what the price will be.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  His smile was small as he brought his arm around her, locking her in against him. “Right now, nothing beyond this room even exists.” He kissed her. His lips were hot and firm against her and she sighed into his mouth. It really did feel as though they had been lovers for a very long time. Everything was so right and natural between them.

  His tongue pressed inside her mouth, stroking her lips. She could feel him growing even warmer against her.

  Then Sasha drew her from him, pulling her into his arms. Rory wound her arm around his neck, marveling at the pure beauty of his eyes. Sasha looked down at her, a small frown marring his smooth forehead.

  She touched the ridge, soothing it away. “Worry later,” she murmured.

  “Very well.” He brought his lips against hers. He seemed to throw himself into the kiss, as if he had followed her suggestion to the letter and was now concentrating one hundred percent on her.

  Just like Dante, Sasha seemed to grow warmer against her. He was not as big as Dante, although there was a wiry strength in him that was very male. If she had been human, Sasha would have been much stronger than her.

  That gave her a little shiver of pleasure. She pressed harder against him, trying to absorb everything about him. The angles. The muscles. The hard ridge of his cock.

  Dante’s hands settled on her waist. His fingers slipped underneath the fluttering hem of the silk tank top she was wearing, to brush up against her flesh. It made her muscles quiver and sent a squirt of pleasure through her. She was still kissing Sasha, although her attention was divided as she wondered what Dante would do next. She wanted him to slide his hands up higher, to take her breasts and play with them.

  Dante’s mouth pressed against her neck from behind. His tongue slid over her flesh.

  Rory pulled her mouth from Sasha’s, gasping.

  Sasha took advantage of her inattention. He dipped his head and pressed his lips against the nape of her neck, opposite Dante. Then he nibbled and licked his way over to the Centre of her chest, just above the silk top, while Dante was stroking her with his tongue, all around her neck and ear, while his hands inched higher in infinitesimally small increments, bringing the hem of the top with them.

  Then he trailed back down to the strap of the top and eased it over her shoulder. It fell to hang against her arm and the light brush of silk on her arm was another tiny stimulus adding to the input.

  Rory rolled her head back, her eyes closing, as the two men kissed and stroked her upper body with their fingers and mouths…and undressed her. For Sasha felt the rise of the bottom of her shirt and eased the front of it up to match, slowly exposing her torso.

  Between them, they eased the silk over her head. She didn’t see where it went. She didn’t care.

  She was naked from the waist up, standing between the only two men in the world who seemed to know how to keep her off-balance, her thoughts scattered, just by looking at her. They were not looking at her now. What they were doing instead was far more disconcerting in a purely pleasurable way.

  The tips of her breasts were heated, hard nubs, aching to be touched. Dante’s big hands were just beneath them, teasing simply by being so close to them, while Sasha’s tongue did wicked things just above.

  She ached for her breasts to be touched. Teased.

  Then Dante did lift his hands and cup the swell of each breast with his palms and it was so good, so very good, that Rory groaned, as her clit pulsed in agreement.

  Yet he didn’t touch her nipples and that was what she really wanted.

  “Sasha,” he said quietly.

  Sasha made a sound that might have been a growl or a groan. He sucked the tip of her breast into his mouth, his teeth closing around it and Rory threw out her hands, gripping his shoulders for support, as her eyes snapped shut and her breath hitched.

  The thrill from his touch was like a shock, searing her nerve ends and making her clit and pussy ache with the need for attention.

  As Sasha plied his mouth to her breast, Dante’s hand shifted and his fingers caught the other nipple between them and stroked.

  Rory trembled. Why had she denied herself this pleasure until now? Sex had grown stale and mechanical, even with the most inventive of lovers. They never failed to pay her attention, yet she had always felt unsatisfied.

  This was different. This was something she had never experienced before. Sasha and Dante had barely touched her and she still felt more powerfully aroused than she had ever felt in her life. What would it be like when they were joined? What would her climax be like, if she already felt this much pleasure from simple caresses?

  Sasha was tugging at the button on her trousers. Even that little motion sent a little fizz of excitement through her.

  The zipper slid down and the silk palazzo pants dropped to the ground, with nothing to hold them up.

  Sasha abandoned her breast and bent to lift the trousers away, raising each of her feet in turn. His fingers on her ankles tickled her flesh, sending a little ripple up her limbs. The thick locks of his hair were brushing her upper thighs, too, adding to the swiftly building pleasure.

  Dante shifted his hands so that both were playing with her nipples, as he made a sound low in the back of his throat.

  Sasha slid his hands up her legs, up to her thighs, where his fingers spread, as if he was tasting her flesh with them. His thumbs stroked the delicate flesh of her inner thighs, while his gaze settled on her panties. Her pussy pulsed in resp
onse.

  Dante dropped his hand down to her belly, resting it there. His fingertips were almost touching the lace edge of her panties and her stomach muscles quivered under his hand.

  Sasha glanced up at him. “Let me watch,” he murmured. His voice with thick with lust.

  Dante eased his fingers beneath the lace, lifted the fabric and pushed deeper, avoiding contact with her skin, until they curved over the mound of her pussy and held it.

  Rory gasped. It was twice more powerful, having Sasha watch while Dante did such wonderful things to her.

  Then Dante pressed the tips of his fingers into the deeper folds of her pussy, into the slickness of her arousal and pulled back, sliding through her channel, drawing moisture and heat, too, up through her folds, to push against her frantically pulsing clit.

  Her hips jerked as her clit squeezed and released a shower of electric excitement. Rory moaned.

  Sasha gripped the edges of her panties in either side of Dante’s buried hand and yanked them down her hips. They were removed, although Rory barely noticed. She was naked now except for her shoes. Dante’s hand against her pussy kept her attention focused on wondering what he would do next. She longed for him to drive his fingers back into her, only this time deeper and harder.

  He was moving his hand in a lazy little motion that nudged the side of his fingers against her clit, making it leap and throb.

  “Let me see,” Sasha breathed.

  Dante took his hand away and Sasha gripped her thighs, staring at her. His eyes were hooded. He used his grip on her thighs to ease them open, making Rory take a step sideways with one foot. She was spread open. Sasha’s view would be completely unobstructed.

  “Good idea,” Dante breathed, his voice thick and distorted, too. “Then I can do this.” His fingers pressed between her ass cheeks and slid down and beneath her, leaving a trail of fire.

  He pushed his fingers into her just as she had been hoping for a few moments ago, thrusting them deep and hard.

  Rory began to shake again, this time as her climax was born and built with a relentlessness that told her it would be unlike any other climax she had ever experienced.