Beauty's Beasts

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Damian, you don’t just get to just shrug off leaving us thinking you were dead for five days,” Nicholas said, his voice dangerously soft and calm.

  Damian reached into his pocket and pulled out a small glass vial with a black plastic lid, about two inches high. It held a brown colored liquid. He tossed it to Nicholas. “Remember that? I found it in the casket with the house wards, when I was placing them on the windows and doors after Azazel made his appearance. When we went to see Natan that day, I took some.”

  “What is it?” Riley asked.

  “Gargoyle anti-toxin,” Damian told her.

  Nicholas held up the bottle. “This has to be thirty, forty years old.”

  “At least,” Damian agreed. “I didn’t know if it would work. It was sheer happenstance that I took it. We were heading into gargoyle territory and the last time we did that I got my guts ripped out, so I thought I’d try it. As it was, the anti-toxin is so old, it took two days to counter the poison.” He grimaced. “I had forgotten what it is like to be genuinely sick.”

  “But you would have recovered at least three days ago,” Nick said, putting the bottle on the dining table. He still looked grim.

  “Azazel was watching this apartment and every move you two made. Why would I ruin the one genuine advantage you had by letting you, and Azazel, know I was really alive?” Damian lifted his shoulders, a tiny shrug. “I was still weak and recovering, but even then I knew I would rather put you through a few more days of misery than show my hand to Azazel. It was a tactical advantage that won the game, Nick. We could not have killed Azazel otherwise.”

  Nick shoved his hands into his pockets. Riley knew that look. He was upset. Damian was making sense, but Nick was hurting about this.

  “You don’t understand, Damian,” she said softly. “It wasn’t just five days of misery he felt—”

  “No, Riley,” Nick said shortly. “Don’t.”

  Damian leaned forward. “The demon has been dogging your steps for nearly forty years. He’s had a hand in the killing of the people you loved the most.” He lifted a hand, a helpless little gesture. “I know the hurt I caused you. I, more than anyone…” He glanced at Riley. “Except maybe Riley, now. We know what you went through the last few days. But I thought it was worth it to rid the world—to rid you—of Azazel for once and for all. Christ, Nick, for all the people he’s killed—Peter, Carson, Tally and the others—”

  “You,” Nick said hoarsely. “It wasn’t worth it if you were part of that price.” He moved toward Damian slowly, as if he were dragged there against his will. When he stood in front of Damian, he reached out with equal slowness to push his hand into Damian’s thick black hair. His hand clenched, gripping tight, and he bent and kissed him.

  Damian groaned and his hand clawed the sofa.

  Riley flinched. She had guessed her position correctly. She was the disposable mortal. Now Damian was back, Nick had forgotten her.

  She made to rise from the couch, but Damian’s hand shot out and locked about her wrist. He broke the kiss and turned to look at her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Riley fought hard to keep her voice even. “You don’t need me,” she said politely.

  Nicholas straightened. His eyes were sleepy. Aroused.

  Damian’s thumb smoothed over her wrist. She hated that it made her nerves sizzle. “You and Nicholas are lovers now,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  She looked Nicholas in the eye. “Were.”

  Nicholas swallowed. “Riley…”

  “I don’t want pretty speeches, Nick,” she said tiredly, pulling her wrist from Damian’s grip. “I’ve had my fill the last few days. I don’t think I could stand another one.”

  He pushed a hand through his hair. “No!” he said desperately. “That’s not what this is. Damian, for god’s sake, what game are you playing here? You’re pushing the pieces around and I don’t want to play anymore. Not if it means losing Riley.”

  Damian’s face lit up. He surged to his feet and caught Nick’s face in his. “Say that again.”

  Nick pushed him away. “You heard well enough.” He dropped to his knees on the floor in front of Riley. “I meant every word I’ve said, Riley,” he said gently. “I always do.”

  Tears were burning her eyes. “But you love Damian,” she told him. “I saw the look on your face just then. Having him back now that you’ve lost him has taught you exactly what he means to you. You want him back, Nick.”

  He sat back, silent.

  The tears slid down her face. “You need to be with him,” she told him. “You always have.”

  Nick groaned. “No.”

  Damian put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Wait, my lover. Just wait a moment,” he said softly.

  Nick hung his head.

  Damian turned to her. His black eyes were warm. She could drown in them. “You would give Nick up so I could have him, wouldn’t you?”

  She nodded. “I’d only get to be with him for such a short time, anyway. Even if I lived an extraordinarily long time for a human, it would be over in a blink in your terms.”

  Damian picked up her wrist again. “Do you remember that day when I said that I had to collect you first?” He kissed the inside of her wrist. His tongue slid along the inside of it.

  Nick’s head jerked up. He was staring at Damian, his eyes narrowed as if his mind was racing. “You son of a bitch,” he breathed.

  Riley looked at Nick. “Why? I remember the day, but I don’t…Nick?”

  Nick was smiling. “’Trust me’ you said,” he told Damian. He got to his feet. “Oh, but this was a dangerous game to play, Spartan.” He grabbed Damian’s hair and kissed him. Hard. His knee came down between Damian’s thighs and pushed against his crotch and Damian spread his hand over Nick’s thigh.

  Riley had no clue what “the game” was, but the sight of the two men kissing was doing interesting things to her innards. Her clitoris swelled and her pussy clenched. She pressed her thighs together, which put further pressure on her vulva.

  Nick let Damian go and laughed. “I could kill you.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve been dead once this decade already.” Damian’s hand hadn’t moved off Nick’s thigh. His fingers were stroking gently. Sensuously. Riley couldn’t tear her gaze off Damian’s hand.

  Nicholas looked at her.

  So did Damian. “She likes it,” he said softly. As before, it wasn’t a question.

  Nicholas held out his hand to her. Riley took it, her heart thundering and he drew her closer to them both and kissed her. “Have you figured out Damian’s game yet, Riley?”

  “I could guess, but why don’t you paint me the picture?” she asked. “You’re both as devious as original sin and I’m just a mere mortal.”

  Damian chuckled. “There’s no ‘mere’ about you.” His hand smoothed its way up the back of her thigh, the hand that wasn’t caressing Nick’s. “I knew as soon as I saw you that I wanted you and not just a casual affair. Nick and I don’t indulge in them, especially not with humans. My reactions to you from the start told me I was in trouble, and everything that happened from then on confirmed it.”

  His hand fluttered between her thighs, high up by the hem of her skirt. This was no casual touch. He was seducing her. Riley looked at Nick, but he was watching what Damian was doing. He wasn’t protesting.

  With a rush, she understood the game. All of it. She bit back a moan, and let Damian continue to speak.

  “I could see that Nicholas was reacting to you, too, and that his reaction was as powerful as mine. But I also knew that Nick would stifle his response. You are human, and you are Tally’s daughter. For both those reasons, he would kill off any feelings he had for you before they began to bloom.” Damian smiled. “When we realized that morning in the car that you wanted us both, my plan was born.”

  “To ensure I got you both,” Riley concluded.

  Damian stood up, dislodging Nick’s knee. Now both of them faced her.


  “He had to make sure I learned to love you without destroying your love for him, or mine,” Nick said.

  “The gargoyle bullet did it for me, although that’s not the way I would have chosen to do it,” Damian confessed. “My preferred way may have taken longer, but it would have been gentler and lots more fun.”

  Nick brushed Riley’s hair from her temple. “I don’t know…we managed to have fun, didn’t we?” He winked.

  Riley smiled, but it was a weak thing. She looked at Damian. “You manipulated us.”

  Damian shook his head. “Just Nicholas, because he’s so stubborn he can’t always see happiness when it’s staring him in the face, or reach out and take it.”

  “So you…claimed me first to make him jealous?”

  “To make him see you as a desirable woman, not an animated object.”

  Nicholas swore. “I could already see that in Pittsburgh. I’m not blind.”

  “You saw her as a sex object, Nick. Not as someone you could love.” Damian spoke the words calmly. “You had to witness my love for her first before you could see the possibilities for yourself.”

  Riley’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “You didn’t tell her, did you?” Nick looked at Damian with something like disgust in his face. He wheeled away, and blew his breath out, looking at the ceiling. “The great strategist! He can’t even woo the woman properly!”

  Damian sank to his knees in front of her. It put his head lower than hers. “Do you remember when I spoke of trust, Riley? When I said that saying the words were often harder than just giving the trust, unspoken?”

  She nodded. “You said love was the same.”

  Nick came up behind him. “He quite desperately loves you, Riley. He would lie on the bed next to you while you slept and bemoan his fate that he was not a man and could not marry you and give you children.” Nick grimaced. “It seems we’ve both been kissed by that muse.”

  Damian’s gaze dropped from hers when she looked at him. “I couldn’t speak of it,” he said. “It was too new. Too strong.”

  “It scared him,” Nicholas said softly. “Finally, after all this time, I got to see something that made the great Spartan afraid, and it was you.” He rested his hand on Damian’s shoulder. “Of course my eyes were opened, Riley. Of course I looked at you differently. Who would not? After two thousand years, Damian chooses you, of all humans, to love.” He looked down at Damian and back at her. “I see what Damian sees, now. Or perhaps not. Perhaps we love different things about you. I know I love you just as deeply as he does. Apparently that was his plan all along. Simple sex would have been too easy. Damian always plays at the high stakes table.”

  Riley let out her breath. They were both looking at her.

  “Does this mean, then, I get to keep you both?” she asked cautiously. “I really don’t have to choose?”

  Damian grinned.

  Nicholas’ smile made his eyes light up. He sat beside her on the sofa and brushed her hair back over her shoulder as she sank back down onto her heels. “The time I put the dildo in your pussy and I took you in the ass. You liked it, didn’t you?”

  She glanced at Damian, her cheeks flaming. But Damian sat forward, his expression hungry. Intense.

  Riley turned back to Nick and nodded.

  “More than liked it, in fact,” he pressed.

  She licked her lips. She had loved it.

  Nick picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles. “Think about what it would be like if that were me and Damian in you, instead.”

  White hot-ice cold excitement dropped over her like a blanket, whooshing through her from her toes to her hair, leaving prickling, sensitive nerve endings in its wake. She gasped, her genitals sizzling at the idea. Her pussy and ass both clenched involuntarily. A mental image flashed through her mind of Damian and Nick on either side of her, their cocks in her. Both of them.

  She moaned.

  Nick licked her palm. “Kiss Damian as you kiss me,” he murmured.

  Damian lifted her down from the sofa. His black eyes looked into hers and now she knew what lay in his heart, it was hard to mistake the emotion in them. How could she have missed it before? Because these two were so good at protecting themselves, that was why. But they had let her in, now.

  She settled her knees on either side of Damian’s hips, and her arms around his neck. “I love you,” she told him. “Even though you deserve to get kicked in the groin for letting me think you were dead for five days.”

  “And she’d do it, too,” Nick added.

  “My lover,” Damian told her, his hand curling around the back of her neck. He kissed her, and she pressed herself up against him. Even just knowing that Nicholas was watching was intoxicating and she moaned into Damian’s mouth. She pushed her tongue inside and felt his answering thrust. She ran her tongue along his teeth and felt the narrow, sharp points of his fangs, almost fully retracted. She stroked them and they extended a little.

  Damian groaned, his hand at her neck sliding into her hair and clenching hard. He pushed her hips against him and the pressure of his hand spread her thighs and forced the denim skirt to ride up to the level of her hips. Her mons was crushed against his lower abs. The hard contact with his stomach made her clit pulse and she thrust her hips, rubbing herself against him. There was only her panties and the black sweater between them.

  She brushed her tongue over his fangs again, and this time, Damian pulled her lips away from his. He was panting, his eyes glazed over with heavy sexual arousal. “Christos,” he whispered. He looked at Nick. “Take her.”

  Nick’s hands came in around her waist and she was lifted and turned. Nick brought her against him. “Put your legs around me, instead,” he murmured.

  “I thought you’d take the moment to strip, Nick. How unenterprising of you,” she chided him.

  “When I can have the pleasure of you taking my clothes off me?” He smiled. “I want you half-crazed from kissing me and tearing my clothes off, like you nearly were earlier tonight.”

  “Will you hush me like earlier tonight?”

  “Please don’t,” Damian said.

  Nicholas kissed her. His fangs were already extending and Riley stroked her tongue over the piercing ends. Like his cock, Nick’s fangs were longer while Damian’s were wider, but both were as sharp as razors. Nick moaned as she licked them, his hands squeezing her waist.

  She felt the touch of the hot-cold aphrodisiac on her tongue. Even before she swallowed, the tingling effects hit her system. She clutched Nick, as swirling hot need ripped through her. His eyes locked with hers and he read her dire arousal.

  “Damian,” he said softly.

  She was lifted from Nick’s arms. The slightest touch vibrated to her pleasure center, so Damian’s arms around her back and under her knees registered as glorious stroking pressure. He was carrying her.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked. Her voice was throaty. Used.

  “To our bed,” Damian replied.

  Her whole body rippled. “Nick…”

  “I’m here.” And he was there beside her.

  Damian laid her on the bed, but she left her arms around his neck. “Kiss me,” she begged.

  His eyes were very black as he leaned over her. “My lover,” he murmured. He kissed her, his hand resting on her hip, moving in the same restless little stroking movements as it had on Nick’s thigh.

  The reminder and the mental image, along with the sensations created by his fingers on her overly sensitive nerve endings spread sparkling flurries of pleasure through her. She gasped against Damian’s lips, her hips thrusting, her back arching.

  Hands were at her ankles. Her boots slid off her feet and her socks.

  “Relax,” Damian murmured against her lips.

  Riley smiled. “As long as you do.” She tugged at his sweater, pulling it over his head and saw his eyes widen just a little in surprise. She tossed the sweater to Nick, who threw it to the big easy chair with a smile.

 
Riley tucked her feet under her and got to her knees so that she was more or less at the same height as Damian, who stood at the end of the bed. She laid her hands on his chest, spreading her fingers and felt him catch his breath. “I learned something while you were away, Damian.”

  Nick began to undress, moving fast and silently. He had either anticipated Riley, or guessed her thoughts. Then he moved to stand behind Damian. He was perfectly placed for what she intended to do.

  She looked Damian in the eye. “Sometimes, you don’t get to control everything, Damian. Especially not Nick and me. Especially not here.”

  She caught Nick’s eye. He moved fast. Blindingly fast. She didn’t see it at all except the end result, Damian’s arms caught in Nick’s viselike grip, pulled back and held. Only Nick had the strength to hold Damian still and keep him captive.

  Damian tried to pull his arms free and grew still. He was breathing faster. “And now?” His voice was thicker. Heavier.

  “Now, I have the control,” Riley told him. She caressed his strained chest with her hands, running her fingers over his flesh. She saw the muscles flex in response. “You do what I say. You respond to my commands.”

  “And mine,” Nick added. He slid his tongue up the side of Damian’s neck, then bit his shoulder. Gently. But there was a capped, feral excitement in Nick’s eyes that made Riley’s heart jump anyway.

  Damian groaned. He was watching her through his lowered, heavily aroused lids and she could see the front of his jeans was swollen with his erect cock.

  Riley moved back on the bed so both Nick and Damian could watch her. She reached for the bottom of the tee shirt and languidly raised it to her breasts. She stroked her stomach, and slipped the button and short zip of the denim skirt undone, swinging her hips from side to side provocatively. Teasing. She had been to a strip club once or twice with groups of friends and now she deliberately mirrored the strip artists’ motions.

  “Jesu…” Damian breathed.

  She pulled the tee shirt up and off, revealing the leather bra beneath. Then she gathered the denim skirt up so it bunched up about her hips, and ran her hands over her thighs. Even her own touch was powerfully arousing to her, more so than usual. The aphrodisiac in Nick’s fangs was still at work. Still driving her. She licked her dry lips, feeling the pressure to hurry, to be possessed, and to be fucked. She would not hurry this, not tonight, no matter how driven she became.