Love Under Two Bad Boys

by Cara Covington

  Chapter Fourteen

  Adam asked aloud if Marc was comfortable leaving his sleek silver car parked on Main Street before suggesting he should bring it with him. He did tend to be careful with the Tesla because it had cost a lot of his hard-earned money. The distance between the sheriff’s office and the Big House wasn’t far, so Marcus drove his Tesla with April riding shot gun again and Jeremy once more following them in April’s BMW Cabriolet. They’d head home the same way, as he wanted to put his wheels back into the garage.

  During the short drive from the sheriff’s office to the Big House, Marc kept thinking the same thing, over and over. It just was not possible his grandmother—Kate Benedict—could have any way or means of formulating a plan to uncover the identity of the man who’d attempted to kill him. Not that he didn’t think Grandma Kate wasn’t a formidable woman. He knew she was. Not that she couldn’t wield the immense power and resources at her fingertips as head of the combined families and a billionaire in her own right. He knew she could, would, and had. He knew as well as anyone her attitude toward the wealth they’d been blessed with. Money wasn’t merely for having fun and spoiling oneself, though of course one could, from time to time, do those very things. Money was for doing good, making a difference in the lives of others, and solving problems. In his lifetime he’d known Grandma Kate to move quickly and effectively when necessary. Hell, hadn’t he been a part of and seen the “op” that had been put together to protect his new soon-to-be cousin, Jenny Collins? True, he’d figured that to have been something Adam had organized. As well, he sure as hell never wanted to be the target of Grandma Kate’s wrath, though that was simply not possible because family was family, period. But he’d seen her in action a time or two in the past, too, and he would definitely characterize her as small, but damn mighty.

  That said, there was a world of difference between the kinds of situations he’d seen her handle—including that dust-up at Angel’s Roadhouse—and delving into the world of government agencies known by their acronyms, agencies that often operated in the shadows, and in some of the worst cesspools of the world.

  Marc Jessop was relieved, once he got inside the Big House and understood what was going on, that he hadn’t voiced his doubts about Adam’s assertions. Knowing April, she’d have laughed and bet on the matter, and he would have lost. His grandmother, it turned out, not only had the beginning of a plan, she had something far more to the point—a couple of ringers, right there in the great room, awaiting their arrival.

  Marc, April, and Jeremy didn’t wait for Adam, who was a few minutes behind them. Flanked by his lovers, he didn’t stand on ceremony at the top of the porch steps, either. This was the Big House, this was family, and family didn’t knock.

  He opened and held the door and then followed his lovers inside. Voices came from the great room, so that was where he guided them and got his first clue when Jeremy stopped dead in his tracks and swore softly.

  Always protective, Marc placed his hand on Jeremy’s back and then restrained a grin when April immediately moved to put their lover between them.

  Two men he didn’t recognize sat on a sofa talking with Grandma Kate. Also in the room was his cousin Jake Kendall as well as Mel Richardson and Connor Talbot. All the men got to their feet at their entrance—in deference, he knew, to April having entered the room.

  Marc met the gaze of one of the men he didn’t know, the one with dark hair and blue eyes. In those eyes he read a sense of awareness. This was an awareness on more than one level because an acknowledgment passed between them. Marc had never met the man before, but in a sense, they recognized each other.

  The man who’d been sitting next to him, with hair several shades lighter and brown eyes, reacted to his partner’s demeanor. Increased awareness showed on him, as well, and a sharpness entered his gaze, a calculation as he looked between his lover and Marc.

  “There you are. Please come in and meet my guests.” Grandma Kate looked from the one man to Jeremy. “Or, perhaps introductions aren’t necessary?”

  Jeremy sighed then nodded to the dark-haired man. “Hello, Damion.”

  “Jeremy, good to see you again.”

  Jeremy looked at Marc. “Damion Quest is a former colleague of mine. I believe he tendered his resignation around the same time I did. Damion, my partners, Marc Jessop and April Bixby.”

  Damion nodded. “I did resign, just before you did. This is one of my partners, Chance Carter, recently retired from the Houston Police Department.”

  The three of them crossed over and shook hands with Quest and Carter. Marc saw April seated and then met Quest’s gaze. The man was fairly vibrating. He wanted something, and Marc didn’t have to wait long to find out what.

  “You brought the Tesla with you?” he asked.

  Adam hadn’t been ribbing him in the way the cousins often did with each other. Marc understood the sheriff, in his way, had engineered Marc’s decision to bring the car. That had occurred to Marc almost as soon as they’d driven off, though he’d had no idea why at the time. Now, with Damion’s question, he began to get an uneasy feeling. “It’s outside, yes. Why?”

  “I’d like for the two of us to go and have a look at it, if you don’t mind.”

  Realization kicked him in the gut. Fuck. I should have known. Truth was, if he hadn’t been so angry that his brother had been endangered because of someone gunning for him, he likely would have, as April liked to say, caught a clue earlier. Marc nodded. “All right, let’s go do that little thing.” To the others, he said, “We’ll be right back.”

  Marc led the way back outside and over to the Tesla. “I checked this car for bugs when I picked it up in Oklahoma, before I came home. There were three of the little suckers on there, and you can be sure I destroyed them.”

  Damion pulled a device out of his inside jacket pocket. “Don’t beat yourself up, Jessop. There’s a very new generation of device being used these days by the CIA. It’s been their policy, of late, to keep track of their retirees.”

  “I figured, but I’d hoped to slip away clean.” Then he looked at Damion. “If the tracker is that new, how do you have a detector for it? Considering that you’re no longer in the game?”

  Damion met his gaze, and Marc could see a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Chance and I are part of a private investigation firm based in Houston, and one of our major clients has controlling interest in a cutting-edge technology company. She gets us to field test choice pieces of that technology—even when it’s being utilized by certain government agencies. All according to her contract with them, of course.”

  Grandma Kate. Marc didn’t say that aloud, but it sure made a strange kind of sense. He stood quietly while Damion turned on a scanner that looked like it had come from the future. Using it, the man examined every inch of Marc’s Tesla.

  The idea that he’d missed something just settled like a burr up his ass. He’d been careful, damn it.

  “Yeah, there you are, hiding under there. Here, hold this.” Damion handed a small plastic bag to Marc, and then he crawled under the car on his back—quite a feat as the Tesla was pretty close to the ground. “Ah, yes. I see you. Come to papa, you bitch.”

  Marc squatted but he couldn’t see much. A light flickered, and Marc deduced Damion had put a small penlight between his teeth. He saw some movement of the man’s hand and further envisioned the procedure. He’d probably pull a lock pick or some other thin, sharp tool from his pocket. A scraping sound told him his guess was accurate. Marc couldn’t see the detailed work that Damion carried out, but he’d performed similar tasks in the past himself.

  A final scratch and a quiet sigh told him Damion Quest had been successful in removing the tracker from his car.

  Damion wiggled out from under the Tesla just as Adam drove into the parking area. He held out the small round piece and dropped it into the bag Marc held.

  “That was the only blip I got.” Damion got to his feet and dusted off his ass. “I think you’re
clear now. What about the GPS inside the Tesla?”

  Adam joined them in time to hear Damion’s question and looked at Marc, curiosity in his gaze.

  “Jeremy uploaded a program he designed that prevents anyone from finding me through the Tesla’s GPS.” He grinned. “Grandma Kate isn’t the only one with fingers on innovative technology.”

  “She’ll likely want to offer Jeremy a job,” Adam said.

  Marc chuckled. “More than likely, he’ll accept.”

  “Robbie’s on his way. He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. All things considered, I think we should wait for his arrival before we start the meeting.”

  “I think so, too.” Marc didn’t know what would come next, but Adam’s words when Marc had spoken his anger earlier, at having brought mayhem, as it were, to Lusty came back to him.

  His cousin had been right. Marc Jessop was glad he had come home, even if he’d inadvertently brought trouble along as a stowaway. Because this was home and he was about to do something he’d never done before.

  He was going to take on the devil with the full faith and force of his family at his back.

  * * * *

  April hadn’t attended the “war council” the family had held on behalf of Jenny Collins—soon to be Jenny Benedict. But she’d certainly heard about it. Guess I’m about to witness a war council first hand.

  They’d all moved from the great room to the dining room table, which two of Grandma Kate’s sons had made even larger by adding a leaf. Bernice and Abby, her daughters-in-law, had brought sweet tea and fresh coffee, and April swore it was the best coffee she’d had in ages. There were also cookies and cream puffs, enough to feed the people gathered around. One of Kate’s sons, Caleb Benedict, Texas Ranger retired, had joined the gathering, as had Robert Jessop and Adam Kendall. Twelve people sat, gathered to discuss what had happened that day to two of their own, ready, it would seem, to do battle.

  This is what family feels like. She turned her attention to Jeremy. His expression, a combination of wonder and gratitude, told her he was well on his way to finally believing what she and Marc, especially, had been telling him.

  Family mattered, and he—and his lover—were family. Marc flicked a look at him and then her. In his eyes she read his pleasure that Jeremy was finally becoming a believer.

  Damion Quest pulled out his laptop and sent his fingers flying over the keyboard even before everyone was gathered around.

  “I want to believe that someone other than CIA brass is responsible for what happened to you today,” Kate said to Marc and Robert. She folded her hands as she leaned slightly forward, her position at the head of the table leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind who was in charge here.

  Damn, I want to be just like her when I grow up.

  “We’re in the process of discovering the identity of your assailant, and I, personally, am going to be speaking later with someone at Langley who’s above reproach. I’ll make it very clear that this family doesn’t tolerate double-dealing. Robert, what’s the prisoner’s condition?”

  “When I left, the doctors on staff were going to run some scans to see if the man suffered brain damage in the crash. Sometimes a person is unconscious for hours and awakes with nothing more than a mild concussion. His air bag deployed, and he was belted in so he only suffered a broken right leg. They promised to keep me in the loop, and when I left, Clint Parrish with the DPS was on the scene.”

  “They’ve taken his fingerprints to determine his identity,” Adam said. “Clint will let me know when they have a positive I.D.”

  “Once we have that, between us, Jeremy and I can track his origins down,” Damion said. “If he’s affiliated with a covert agency, we’ll find out.”

  “I can give you a hand with that,” Connor said. “I think my connections might be with a different agency than yours.”

  “Good. Then we should have all the bases covered.”

  April had heard that Connor had used to work in covert ops before he quit and came to Lusty.

  For a sleepy-looking Texas town, there sure are a lot of former clandestine types hanging around. April figured that Lusty proved that old saw, that looks could be deceiving.

  Grandma Kate put her focus on Marc. The expression on her face was so…loving. “Sweet boy, I am so sorry this is happening to you. Do you think this attack is related generally to your past service to our country, or do you think it’s more closely related to your final assignment? What are your instincts telling you?”

  Marc met Kate’s gaze then looked at her and Jeremy. He reached down and clasped her hand. It pleased her enormously that he also took Jeremy’s hand—and pleased her even more that Jeremy allowed it, here, amongst the family, hiding nothing.

  “My instincts are telling me the latter.” He looked over at his brother, Robert. “I guess I’d better make an appointment with you, huh?”

  “You don’t need to make an appointment. You just tell me when, little brother, and I’m there.”

  Marc nodded, and then he looked around the table. He squeezed her hand, an indication that he was about to do something out of character for him. “I’ve been having nightmares, and I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I need some help retrieving memories that don’t want to be found. Robbie’s agreed to help me dig them out.”

  “I’m proud of you, Marc,” Kate said. “That kind of vulnerability is a difficult mantel for a man like you to assume.”

  “Thank you, Grandma. I’ll do anything and everything to keep this family safe.”

  “We all appreciate that,” Adam said.

  “We do,” said Jake. “And we’re really glad—though some of us might be a tad disappointed—that we didn’t have to pound it into your head that this is what family is for.” Jake had directed that comment to both Marc and Jeremy.

  Her lovers traded a look that told April that, on another day, they wouldn’t mind facing off against some of their cousins.

  That look lifted her spirits. That’s a sign of belonging, right there.

  Chapter Fifteen

  April realized that she’d come to accept Marc’s need to be in control. If it had been Jeremy who’d been attacked, or was feeling off balance, she would have insisted on tucking him into the middle, and she’d do her best with Marc to lavish every bit of affection and caring on him she could.

  But it was Marc who was feeling on the edge, Marc who needed them, and so she gave him what she knew would help him—her total and absolute submission. Letting him exercise control here in the bedroom helped to balance him, to assuage that sense of helplessness he’d experienced in that moment when he and his brother were in danger, and he’d had only one chance to get it right.

  April sighed in pleasure as the heat of them surrounded her, and the tactile wonder of two naked and aroused male bodies cocooned her, pressing close.

  “I thought I’d killed my big brother. For one frantic moment…” Marc’s words were whispered, just a thread of sound, but loud enough within this sanctuary for them both to hear him.

  “But you didn’t, love. You saved him.” Jeremy reached over to Marc, moving closer to her in the process. April felt his arm move as his hand caressed Marc’s shoulder. Her right hand stroked Marc’s chest and her left rested behind her, on Jeremy, who was spooning her. Marc had her head on his chest while his right hand rested on her waist and his left arm, extended under her head and shoulders, allowed him to touch Jeremy.

  They were each of them touching the others, making a circle times three, making physical the connection that was already anchored in their hearts. How had it happened so fast? She didn’t know. All she knew was it felt right.

  “We’ll go with you to see Robert tomorrow, if you want us to, Marc,” April said.

  “I do want you both there. But that’s for tomorrow. Here and now, I need something else. I need…”

  “Tell us,” Jeremy said. “Show us what you need.”

  They moved to his directions, his choreography, as the
y touched and kissed and petted. April gave herself over completely, longing only to give, not just to Marc but to Jeremy, too.

  Fisting her lovers, she pumped and squeezed, and when they both thrust in her hands, she smiled, reveling in their reaction to her touch. Hands cupped and squeezed her breasts as fingers pulled her nipples and delved into her pussy. Masculine pleasure at her undeniably drenched state was murmured against her folds as a tongue tasted and teased.

  Her men moved and then moved her physically, as well as emotionally. The heat and scent and the feeling of the nearness of Marc’s cock urged her to open her eyes. They were in a triangle of sorts. Marc’s face neared Jeremy’s cock, just as Jeremy’s mouth blew warm moist air on her cunt. April met Marc’s gaze and understood what he wanted. What do you call a sixty-nine with three people? The question drifted away as she opened her mouth, closed her eyes, drew Marc’s cock in, and feasted.

  Thoughts gave way to sensations. Here existed only the salty tang of Marc’s precum, the shivery joy of Jeremy’s lips and tongue on her pussy, and the heat, the passion, the sense of rightness—the sense of love—as they took and they gave, each connected to the other.

  April sucked while she moved her hips in a bouncy little rhythm. As her arousal soared, as she came closer and closer to climax. Hurtling blindly and wantonly toward nirvana, she surrendered and served.

  The sounds they made combined into a sensuous symphony of sex—hot, loving, giving sex that not only energized, it healed. It balanced.

  They wiggled and writhed, she and her men, and she let them arrange her how they would. She didn’t even form a picture in her mind of how they looked, not even caring.

  Marc’s firm grip squeezed her hip, and she tilted her body toward him and then whimpered when his fingers pressed against her anus. Jeremy’s hand caressed her ass, and she sensed their touching her was their way of showing her they were all in this together.

  Higher and higher her arousal climbed, and she yearned to reach out and snatch her orgasm—and yet, at the same time, she strove to hold it off. She wanted more of this stunning buildup, more of this thrilling, electric, almost otherworldly kinesis. Shivers and quivers pebbled her flesh and heated her blood. Her arousal had become an independent force with a will all its own, an entity she couldn’t control.