by Josee Renard
Morteza rushed through the shower, threw on a pair of jeans and the first T-shirt his hands touched, thankful it wasn’t one of the ratty ones he generally wore around the house, and hurried back to the kitchen.
Ellie sat, as he’d so often imagined her, on a stool at the island, her face serene, looking as if the space belonged to her, as if she’d been there always. Her hair shone in the sunlight as she sipped the coffee he’d made. The coffee Morteza had made and served to the woman he loved.
He smiled and allowed himself a single stroke of her hair before heading to the coffeemaker.
“More?” he asked, holding up the pot.
“I’m fine,” Ellie said. “I’m not a big coffee drinker, though I love the smell of it. And the taste of that very first sip. After that?” She shrugged.
Just one of the millions of things he was going to learn and memorize about Ellie.
“I’m an addict,” he said. “Maybe it’s my job or my weird schedule.”
“You work for Big Dave?” Ellie asked, patting the stool beside her in obvious invitation.
Morteza steadied himself as he prepared to tell Ellie about his life. He worried about the money—how would he tell her, tell Eli, that he’d gambled to buy this house? That he’d gambled to give himself a human identity?
That he wasn’t human?
The whole thing was a mess.
The whole thing seemed like an impossible conversation to have.
Though, he considered, maybe he didn’t have to say anything about the non-human thing at all. If things went as he’d dreamed they would, they’d soon figure it out, but by then they’d be committed.
He may have lost some of his demon abilities, but by no means all of them.
Scent. Sight. Hearing. All way above the range for even extraordinary humans. His sense of smell was the equivalent of a brown bear’s, his sight that of an eagle, and he heard at least as well as a dolphin.
These abilities were relatively easy to disguise. And his size? Again, bigger, healthier than most humans, but not so much that he had to hide it.
But the other things?
The fact that he could practically disappear? That he could ensure that a person didn’t see or smell or hear him? That he could transform himself into the shape of another?
That he came from a world where torture and killing were how a demon made his way in the world?
That his cock wasn’t his only sexual organ? And he wasn’t talking about his brain either. If Ellie and Eli spent a little more time with him, Morteza was pretty certain they’d figure out that his tongue—a little longer, a little more flexible than a human’s—was more than just a tongue.
He would have to tell them about these things before they somehow noticed and began to worry. He’d have to tell them he was a demon and all that entailed—including the problem with the Lord of all the demons.
But not yet.
Morteza wanted just one more perfect night before they all three had to get down to the practicalities of his life, of their life together.
“No,” he finally responded to Ellie’s question, having worked out what not to say. “I hang out there a lot. When I first came here, I didn’t know anyone, and I wanted to get to know about computers and do some research about River City.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie, though after the first week or so the research had become much more general—about humans, who they were, what they did, how they thought and how they lived.
Because it had only taken Morteza a week to know that he was never going back. And that meant he had to figure out how to be human.
And then it had taken him only another week to know that he could do it. He was smart, he was quick, he was, well, he was everything he needed to be, and he could learn all the skills he needed to actually be human. At least on the outside.
Ellie and Eli had taught him that he already was human on the inside.
“Big Dave and his wife Jenn and I all grew up together. Eli, too,” she said, a little hesitantly, as if unsure of Morteza’s reaction to Eli’s name.
All Morteza’s wait-and-see plans flew out the window at the scent of sorrow in Ellie’s words.
“What’s wrong? Where is he?”
And then he simply gave it all up.
“Where is he?” he whispered. “I miss him.”
“Oh, God, Morteza, I miss him too.”
Chapter Twelve
Ellie wasn’t sure what to do. She’d never really expected to find Morteza on the first cast.
Of course she had made plans—to locate Morteza, to convince him the three of them belonged together.
Next they would make more plans—this time, together. Plans on how to deal with Eli and convince him that the three of them belonged together.
And then? She had no frigging clue.
But here she was on a stool in Morteza’s kitchen, though she knew in her heart that the kitchen—the house—belonged to all three of them, that Morteza had bought and renovated it because he believed they would be together, and where better than where they’d first met and loved each other.
She could see that in the care he’d taken to have three of everything. Stools at the island, mugs on the counter, towels in the bathroom he’d shown her to her when she asked to freshen up.
Coffee and anxiety were a bad combination.
“Ellie?”
Morteza spoke her name, and she heard all the questions loaded into that one word, because she had thought of all those questions herself.
“You planned this one way, didn’t you?” she asked. “And now it’s happened in a different way, and you don’t know what to do next.”
“Yes.” He nodded, a faint smile on his face, a smile that echoed that one she felt on her lips that hadn’t left her since she saw him opening the front door.
“I don’t know what to do either. I’ve been thinking about this…” She waved an arm to encompass memories of that night, Morteza and the house. “…for months, actually, since I left you that morning. I had a script…”
Morteza laughed, a big, booming belly laugh she’d never heard before, and he nodded again. “Me, too. I knew what you would say, where we would go, what would happen.”
This time his smile looked a little sheepish. “I’ve been studying, you know. A lot.”
The look on her face, his quick shift on the stool as if he was suddenly uncomfortable in his clothes, told Ellie exactly what he’d been studying. And, for one minute, she wanted to say to hell with Eli and take Morteza’s arm and walk him to the nearest bed. She wanted to test him on his studies.
He’d been passionate and intense, if unschooled. Incredibly disciplined and open to anything. And everything. She wondered what his newfound knowledge would add to the mix.
“On live models?” she asked, cursing herself for the jealousy inherent in that question.
“No. There is no one for me but the two of you,” he replied. “If not you, then no one.”
Her temptation level spiked higher.
She knew he wouldn’t object if she took his hand now. She also knew that both of them would regret it once they found Eli.
“That wasn’t fair,” Ellie said. “All three of us had the same response to that night. I’m sure of it, although Eli might have decided—probably did—to deal with it differently than I did.”
“Or I,” Morteza added. “I’ve learned many things this past year, the most important of which is that masturbation, no matter how good you get at it, is no substitute for the ones you love.”
Ellie blushed, thinking of Morteza’s big hand wrapped around his big cock. Then she rewarded him for his courage, for being the first to say what she knew was true but was—almost—willing to forget.
She hopped off her stool, stepped in between his legs and wrapped her arms around him. “I love you, too,” she said, “and if you absolutely can’t wait…”
She felt the burgeoning of his cock at her words, then the soft press of his lips on h
er hair.
“Now I can wait,” he said. “I can wait for Eli.”
Ellie stepped back and grinned at him. “Not for long, I’d bet. Besides, we’ve waited long enough. It’s time to find him and do whatever it takes to get him out of his funk.”
“Funk?”
Ellie laughed. “Sometimes I forget that you didn’t grow up here. I guarantee you that Eli’s locked himself away. Emotionally, I mean. Because that night changed everything he thought he knew about himself.”
She thought that he hadn’t been the only one to figure that out, that each of their worlds had changed. Permanently. But Morteza and Ellie had forged ahead with what was, in their minds, inevitable. Eli? Eli always fought the inevitable. It was one of his best—and worst—characteristics.
“Ah,” said Morteza, though it was more of a question than a statement.
“Eli has spent all of his grown-up life as a connoisseur of women and sex. He was good at short-term relationships, never leaving any woman with any pain at his departure. They were never messy, never complicated. He used to say that women loved him because he worshipped their bodies.”
“That’s probably true,” Morteza muttered. “I’m not a woman, but…”
“Yeah,” Ellie agreed. “I am, and he was right. But not anymore. Because that night made him give up something of himself. Something he’d never had to give up before. He realized that love is different than technique, and he’s scared to death.”
“So what do we do?”
Ellie loved the way Morteza said we as if there was no question—and there wasn’t—that whatever happened from here on, she’d never be alone in the doing of it.
“We get in the car, we go to his office because it’s lunchtime, and Eli is always at the office from eight until six. He never leaves for lunch or for meetings. He’s there. It’s one of the other things he’s going to have to change. And that, too, probably scares him to death.
“We go to his office and we kidnap him.”
“Then…” Morteza said, obviously getting the plan. “…we bring him back here, and we show him just what we’ve been missing all year and what we have together.”
“Right.”
Ellie was delighted Morteza was on her side. Alone, she couldn’t kidnap Eli if he didn’t want to come with her. But Morteza—she looked that big beautiful body up and down—could pick Eli up even if he was kicking and screaming, and drag him to the car, while she reassured his staff. No problem.
“Should I bring handcuffs?” Morteza asked, another grin lighting his face.
Ellie laughed in return. “We’ll get to those later. I think we can persuade him without them.” She waggled her eyebrows.
Morteza looked a trifle downfallen. He must have figured out exactly what fun those handcuffs could be and was dying to use them. Well, so was she. And they’d get to that. Sooner, she suspected, rather than later.
“The gossip is,” she said to change the subject, “that he’s been without a woman for most of the year. He’ll be desperate, and we can use that.”
Although I hope we won’t have to. I hope he’s just waiting for us to show up and rock his world.
“Your car or mine?” Morteza asked.
“Mine’s at Big Dave’s, so it has to be yours.” Ellie made a mental note to pick up her car sometime later. Much later.
Morteza picked up his keys and led the way to the front door. She waited while he thrust his feet—he had gorgeous feet, and she couldn’t wait to discover if they were an erogenous zone—into sneakers.
He opened the door, and she heard his breathing stop.
Chapter Thirteen
Eli was shocked when he turned onto James Street and saw 1275.
It felt as if someone had stolen his dream for their house and made it real in a way that he hadn’t but should have. Should have but couldn’t have done until today. And now he was too late. Someone else had bought their house and turned it into a home.
He sat in the car and looked at the house, really looked at it.
It had been painted a lovely rich cream with French blue trim, just the shades he would have chosen. The door was blue, the wooden porch stained and buffed, the railings the same cream as the siding.
Red geraniums and dark green ivy shared the pots on the stairs, and the tiny patch of grass in the front yard had been trimmed and cut with a precision that could only have been achieved with a pair of scissors.
It was perfect.
Eli felt himself falling apart, his heart breaking as he contemplated the house and what it should have meant to him, to all three of them.
He had managed to ignore the silver Cadillac Escalade in the driveway until now, but the lights flashed and he understood that whoever had bought their house was going to open the perfect front door, walk out onto the perfect porch and down the perfect stairs. They would cross the perfect lawn and get into that Escalade, and they would catch him skulking in front of their house.
He wasn’t sure he could bear to see that.
But he waited, anyway, on the off chance that whoever lived there had hired a real estate agent to list the house. Eli could spot a salesperson a mile away, and he knew if one walked out of that house, he would go right up to that salesperson and he would offer them the asking price and more. More. More. More.
His fingers clenched on the steering wheel as he waited for the door to open.
A woman walked out, her head down, her hand reaching behind her for the man who followed her out the door. They both turned away to see the door closed and locked, and then the woman reached for the man’s hand, turned him around and…
Eli’s heart and cock had exactly the same reaction. If they could have screamed in joy, they would have. Instead, his heart pounded in his chest so hard he worried, for a single moment, that he might be having a heart attack. But the pounding felt so good, as if he was alive for the first time in a year, that he ignored that worry.
Besides, he was concentrating on stopping his cock from exploding again, this time without the barrier of his boxers.
He didn’t want to walk up to Ellie and Morteza with a cum stain on his tan trousers. Now that would be embarrassing.
He stepped out of the car and shut the door. He stood in the street watching the two of them, wishing he was holding Ellie’s other hand. He couldn’t be sure that she’d even want him to. That either of them would want him.
So he waited for them to notice him. He didn’t move, didn’t shift away from the car, didn’t make a sound. He wasn’t sure he could speak.
Morteza and Ellie were at the bottom of the stairs before they noticed the car and halfway down the path to the Escalade before they stopped, their faces like twin flowers turning toward the sun.
Eli had no trouble believing they looked this way because they spotted him in the street. He believed because of the way they stood in the pathway and stared at him, the sunlight no brighter than the identical smiles they wore.
He pulled himself upright and forced himself to take the first step. He wasn’t sure he could take another.
But he didn’t have to.
Morteza and Ellie ran down the path toward him, their voices calling his name, their hands grabbing for his as they reached him.
“Come,” Morteza said. “We can’t do this on the street.”
He tugged Eli from behind the car with one hand and grabbed Ellie with the other. “Come on, come on. Hurry up,” he said, his voice breaking as he pulled the two of them with him. Up the path, up the stairs, to the door.
He paused there to point his key fob at the Escalade and wait for it to lock. It took another moment to unlock the door.
They were safe inside the foyer, the light streaming through the stained-glass windows that bordered the door, turning the wooden floors into bands of red and gold and green and blue.
The three of them stood still and silent, their hands clasped, their bodies in a circle that Eli knew would never again be broken.
Ch
apter Fourteen
Ellie was the one to finally break the silence, to pull her hands from Morteza’s and Eli’s.
“Stories later,” she said. “We’re all here where we belong. And I can’t wait.”
Morteza grinned. “Neither can I. Upstairs,” he ordered, pointing at the stairs. “It’s waiting for us.”
They raced up the stairs, Ellie, then Eli, then Morteza. The stairs opened up into heaven, though Ellie didn’t have time to look any farther than the king-size bed in the middle of the room.
Morteza stopped for a moment to press a switch on the wall. Blinds descended over the windows, turning the afternoon light pale and golden. He pressed another, and the fireplace across from the bed burst into flame. He pressed one more, and music began playing softly in the background.
Ellie laughed softly at the romantic gestures. All she could think about was ripping the clothes from herself and her men. She started with her own, and the men followed with theirs.
It took only moments for the three of them to be lying naked on the soft cotton of the comforter, Ellie in the middle, sandwiched between Morteza and Eli. She had dreamed of being here for so long, she wasn’t sure if this, too, wasn’t a dream. She took a deep breath.
She could smell them, the one thing she hadn’t once experienced in her dreams. This was real. Eli wore some tangy forest-scented cologne, and Morteza smelled of soap. Both of them wore the scent of arousal, that musky male aroma she loved.
Ellie reached for their hands and brought them to her breasts. She tried to breathe, but the orgasm she’d waited a year for wouldn’t wait a single second. She felt it roar through her like an oncoming train and, when she could raise her head from the pillow, she saw her body flushed as red as the light from the stained-glass window.
She saw something more.
Morteza and Eli stared across her at each other. One cock paler than the other, but each of them engorged and trembling.
Ellie took the hands from her breasts and sat up. “Roll over and scoot over,” she whispered and moved down to the foot of the bed.