Ten minutes later by the light of the electric hurricane lamp, she had the seven little animals and their larger mother rounded up and corralled. Jay found an old tray in the corner of the barn and secured it on the basket loosely with a piece of twine. “What now?” he asked her.
“Would you take them?” She tried puppy eyes on him. “You have a big spread. You must need cats in the barns to keep the rodents away.”
“A good cat is worth a dozen traps,” Ryan said, amusement at Jay’s predicament turning up the corners of his normally tight mouth.
“Then you take them.” Jay thrust the basket at his rival. “My managers look after that kind of thing.”
“You don’t like cats?” she asked. She adored them. The only reason she didn’t have any was Digger, who didn’t tolerate any other animal but himself and the kind that found its way into his food bowl.
“I like them fine. But not when they’re in the way.”
“In the way?”
He shot Ryan a hard smile. “You got it wrong.” When he turned back to her, she saw nothing but amused tenderness in the depths of his dark gaze. “You take care of the livestock first. Then you go for the kiss.” He tilted her chin and met her gaze for a fraught instant before he touched his lips to hers.
His kiss was different from Ryan’s. It started gentle, but he flicked her lips with his tongue, and she let him in. They kissed as if they’d been doing it for years, practiced and fulfilling, but just as exciting as the first time.
When they broke apart, they were both breathing more heavily.
Ryan remained where he was, basket in one strong hand, watching them with grim purpose. “You’ll move on,” he said. “I won’t.” He brushed past them, knocking Jay’s shoulder, and crossed the yard to the outer door.
She didn’t remember leaving it open, but she must have. That lock was awkward.
“I hope the kittens will be all right,” Jay remarked coolly. “Does he lose his temper often?”
“Never,” she answered. It was true. Jay got to Ryan like nobody else she’d ever met.
Jay was still staring after him, although he’d gone up the street, out of sight. “There’s something about that guy…” He shook his head. “I guess years of chasing enemies has made me paranoid, or maybe close proximity to his relatives has tinged him with some sense.” He grinned. “But then, the paranoid get to live another day. Usually.” He gazed at her, his expression unreadable.
Instinct warned her not to enter into his mind. She might not like what she could read in him right now. He seemed too serious, thinking of something past her understanding. But that might be just her private paranoia.
Hers was of being outed by the people she grew up with, the people who accepted her as one of them. She accepted her fear as inevitable. Maybe others who were different in some way felt the same. It certainly gave her comprehension of other minorities; that was for sure. “The kittens will be fine. They’re with their mama. He’ll probably put them in one of his barns, nice and cozy.”
He smiled down at her. “Not only beautiful, but a lover of nature. How about a roll in the hay?” His mock growl made her laugh, and she temporarily forgot her worries. He did that to her, this vampire with a troubled past, as nobody else had done before.
“We can’t go to bed yet. We have a whole night.”
He raised a brow, the devilish expression making him sexier, if anything. “We can get busy in bed—all night.”
His gaze rested on her, playful and intimate, but as she watched, the light in his eyes changed, going deeper. He lost his smile, and the amused rhythm of his mind set into a regular pattern as if he were using it to cover something else. She couldn’t tell what it was.
He glanced away, and she took the time to tell him, “I want to visit Drew. See how he is. I’m not working tonight.”
He sighed. “Now she tells me. We could have spent the day and the night in bed. Or are you sick of me already?” That last had almost a wistful tone, not an emotion she associated with Jay.
She’d never be sick of him. That was what worried her most.
INSTEAD OF GOING to bed, Jay’s decided preference, they climbed into his car, which he’d parked farther up the street, and he drove her to the ranch. He’d eaten dinner before he left with Drew, and discovered that what that boy didn’t know about his kind could fill several volumes.
What the fuck were their parents thinking? He’d checked in with Nathan, mentally opening a channel that his colleague could use whenever he needed. He heard nothing unusual, except that Nathan was forgoing sleep in favor of searching the land, hoping to pick something up, a trace, maybe.
Nathan had a mind like a steel trap and a nose for Talents better than a bloodhound’s for prey. If he couldn’t find anything, there was nothing to be found.
Jay took Lucille straight to the library and listened to the honeyed tones of their accents when the siblings greeted each other.
The rhythmic drawl was one reason he’d decided to relocate to Texas, the other being he was sick of Europe and his life there.
He left them alone and went to catch up with Thorndyke events on his phone. A shame telepathy didn’t work long-distance, but they had innocuous-sounding code words they could use on checks like this. Nothing, which was, he supposed, good news. He’d hoped someone had heard about the cell hereabouts. Just to make sure, he made a call on an encrypted phone he kept in a locked drawer.
A warm male voice answered. “Cristos.”
“How are you, my friend?” These days Cristos headed Department 57, but Jay knew him long before that. Useful to have a friend who had access to classified data.
“Fine, fine. Just checking something. Nathan Beaumont’s here. He’s one of yours, right?” All his instincts told him Nathan was on the level. However, when someone he cared very much about was in trouble, he would check and double-check to make certain he’d got his facts right.
“He was.” Cristos paused. “You know him?”
He could almost hear Cristos processing the information. “From way back. From before I was a Talent.”
“Ah. Yes, well. He had a hard time on a case recently. His team was halved before they got to the perpetrators. Once I debriefed him, I suggested he try something else. He’s damaged, Jay, needs healing. That’s why he made the change from the Department to Thorndykes, but he insisted on finishing this job first.”
“He was full-time?”
Not all the Department’s agents were full-time spies. Some of them were well-placed Talents and people who passed on information. Nominally the Department was part of the CIA, but in recent years it had moved farther and farther away. Its headquarters weren’t even in Langley, and in an organization of secrets, its existence and the people who worked there was the biggest secrets of all.
“Yes, he was. He had sidelines—most of you people do. He’s building on them now that he’s decided to throw in his lot with the Thorndykes.”
“Would you say he was sound?” The British word for honest, trustworthy. Typical understatement, but Cristos would understand.
“Totally. He never lets his private feelings get in the way of his work.”
That was what Jay needed to know. If Cristos said that, then Nathan was still the man Jay remembered. Or a part of him was. He was bound to have changed in two hundred years. Nobody stayed the same forever. Learning to cope with change was one of the trickiest lessons a Talent had to master. Not all of them did.
Sound. A good word for a man with so many twists and turns Jay would never discover them all. Shit, he had difficulty discovering his own. After thanking Cristos, he cut the call and locked the phone back in its drawer. He sat for a while in silence, staring into space, thinking out the situation he found himself in. He thought about everything—about the increasingly strong feelings for Lucille, feelings he hesitated putting a name to. He came to no conclusion he felt comfortable with. Because once he did name those emotions, he could well be lost.
<
br /> A sharp note pinged in his mind, a warning that a Talent was approaching him, and he knew which one. The subject of his recent conversation with Cristos. He checked the clock. Late for a ranch hand, past ten. “Come right in. The living area.”
Jay went to his great room, where Lucille waited for him. He held out his hands, and she went into his arms as naturally as breathing. They shared a kiss, and he allowed himself the luxury of sinking into it. The door opened, and she jerked back.
Nathan strolled in naked as a jaybird. Unselfconscious as one too. Lucille gave a sharp cry and buried her face against Jay’s chest.
Jay chuckled. “You don’t know many shape-shifters, do you? Does it bother you?”
Nathan leaned against a built-in bookcase and folded his arms. “If I didn’t strip before I shifted, I wouldn’t have any clothes left.”
“Couldn’t you have brought some with you?” Lucille demanded.
Nathan grinned. “I could. Then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing you blush. You have a very pretty blush.”
“Comes from being a redhead.” She lifted her chin and shot a glare at him, keeping her attention firmly above his waist. “Seriously, doesn’t it concern you at all?”
“Nope.” He showed no sign of wanting to cover up.
The bastard had done this on purpose. Of course Lucille wasn’t used to other Talents. This was a challenge.
Jay’s immediate response was rejection. No, just no. In the past he and Nathan had shared women. But not Lucille. Then again, her reaction the other night led him to believe she might like the alternative possibility, and the one Nathan was partial to.
Would she want that? Carefully he touched her mind and found it. The vaguest hint of arousal, mostly covered by guilt when she’d realized it was somehow traitorous. Well, she would think like a mortal. To all intents and purposes, she’d been raised as one. No Talents except her parents and her brother. To distract himself he asked, “Do you have news?”
“No. I’m still looking. At least I know where they’re not. The Talents, that is. But I’ve detected traces, very faint. Another less experienced Talent would never notice.”
“It’s a dude ranch. Talents could well pass through.”
Nathan nodded. “We can’t discount it, but I don’t think it’s that.”
“You found anything else?”
Nathan shook his head. “More instinct, really. Are you going to kiss her again?”
“I might.” Jay gazed down at Lucille. She stared up at him, her expression wary, but that spark of arousal had grown. Unmistakable now but tucked inside her mind, in a place only he could reach. He rarely let anyone in at that level, even though women had opened themselves to him in the past. This time he’d chosen to share.
Deep down he knew why, but he wasn’t ready to acknowledge it yet.
She leaned up, her lips parted in obvious invitation, so he took it, kissed her, and enjoyed the fuck out of it. She tasted sweet, a unique flavor he could describe as singularly Lucille. No other person tasted like that, not in his whole two hundred and fifty years of existence. Nobody ever would again.
She responded, stroking her tongue against his with a shyness he suspected was not just because of her relative inexperience, but part of her nature. She had a reticence he loved. Very few women these days were reticent about anything at all. While he enjoyed the forthright and outspoken women he met, he missed the manners and mores of his youth.
“Do you want to let him in?”
She drew back, stared at him. “What do you mean?”
He sighed. So much for tact. “I mean that Nathan doesn’t just have an exhibitionist streak. He likes other people to have one too.”
Her eyes widened. Such pretty eyes. “You want us to…”
“Only as far as you want to go. If this is it, then he’ll have to suck it up. He won’t ask, but…” He waved a hand in Nathan’s direction before returning it to the curve of her waist. “His appearance is a tiny hint, don’t you think?”
Nathan waited. He uncrossed his arms. Said nothing, but he must know what they were discussing. He was waiting for her response.
“Is it something that interests you?”
“Would you share me?” She sounded more than shocked, but the arousal had dampened down. She didn’t want to do it.
“The idea of taking two men doesn’t intrigue you?”
“No.”
Thank God. He shared women before, but not her, never her. She was his. Oh, he’d let Nathan watch because that was what he wanted, and Jay didn’t give a shit. Except he wouldn’t let it all go. He wouldn’t show the tenderness that belonged between them alone. Fucking, not lovemaking.
She said no with a firmness of mind and voice that held no possibility of persuasion.
“Would you let him watch?”
“I—I don’t know.” She really didn’t. That in itself aroused Jay, made his cock full to bursting—to help her into her sexuality, discover what she liked and what she didn’t. A privilege he never expected to experience, and now here it was. Already he knew her preferences in bed. He could touch her, knowing how to arouse her and how to keep her waiting, hovering on the edge.
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t forget, you can say no. At any time.”
She glanced over at a now aroused Nathan. Unashamedly he reached down and took his cock in hand, easing the foreskin back, displaying the red, shiny head.
“Never mind him,” Jay said. He guided her over to the big sofa in front of the windows, the one with the soft throw over the back. If she balked at any time, she could cover herself with it. Something Nathan might have done if he’d wanted to. Christ knew Jay had enough clothes, and he’d shared them with shape-shifters before. That was how he knew Nathan’s entrance was more than unselfconscious display. He guessed Lucille would react to his nakedness.
He laid her down, gazed at her while he divested himself of his shirt. He undid each button of the black silk carefully, letting the expensive fabric rustle while he took his time unfastening his cuffs. That was for her, not anyone else. He needed her to watch him, only him.
He stripped the garment off his shoulders with a sensuous twist, shifting his muscles for her to enjoy, displaying himself as boldly as any peacock. Then he started on his pants and smiled. “You’re doing beautifully.”
“What do you mean?” She glanced at her body, still decorously dressed.
“You know what happens next.” He pushed his pants down his legs, taking his socks and shoes with them, but leaving his tight boxers in place. The undergarment barely held his erection, the beads at each end of the bar he wore through it visible against the fabric. He didn’t give a fuck who watched him or why, just that he had her.
“Yes.” She did, and he let her see the pictures in his mind of him pushing inside her, wet and pulsing for him because he’d made her that way. He didn’t show her how he’d take her. Let her have some surprises in store. Just not ones that would unhinge her.
Her voice had dropped to the sultry level he loved because she only used it in situations like these. Intimate situations.
He doubted Nathan was looking at him and the way his butt shaped his boxers, but he didn’t care either way. Nathan was usually straight. Easier, he’d always said, and his natural inclination. Both of them had fucked men, had been fucked by them but not had each other, although they’d shared plenty of women back in the day. Jay wasn’t sure why, just that they hadn’t wanted to. God knew they’d committed their share of debauchery in the short time they’d spent together. Amazing how many women they could get through in twenty-four hours.
He watched Lucille closely, her eyes dilated. He felt her want him and him alone. She concentrated on him, but he didn’t want that. “Look at him. How aroused he is when he sees you. He’s watching you, not me. He’s seen me naked in the past. He knows what I look like. Nathan likes women. Beautiful women, and you, my sweetheart, fit every part of that bill.”
She
looked at Nathan and flushed a pretty pink, but she didn’t stop him. Jay stripped his underwear down his legs. He’d like to bet this was the first time in her life Lucille had been in the same room as two naked, aroused men. The thought made him sweat.
Chapter Ten
“Your turn.” Jay kept his voice low and unthreatening. “You don’t want him to touch your body. Is your mind forbidden too?”
After swallowing and flicking her attention between him and Nathan, she gave a short, tight nod. “He can stay out of your mind.”
Nathan tilted his head to one side. “Thank you for letting me in this far. I will leave whenever you wish.”
He’d reverted to the more formal English of his youth. His voice changed, became lighter, more mellifluous. “I will also ensure that Drew will not surprise us.” He would set up a mental barrier warning the youth not to come in, he told them. The sound of Nathan’s clipped tones took Jay back years, to when he was young and wild and didn’t care about anyone or anything but himself. He wasn’t sure he liked himself as a youth, but he couldn’t deny what he’d been. It had gone to build the man he was now.
Was Nathan feeling the same way? Jay didn’t have an ear for accents, so he tended to stick to a version of his English one, cultured and soft. Understated. Nathan could change and convincingly, Jay had learned, so he wondered why Nathan had dropped his chosen accent. The answer came almost as soon as he’d posed it.
“To remind you of what we were. We can never go back, but sometimes we can remember. I want to remember.” The yearning in Nathan’s voice was like nothing Jay had ever heard from his friend before, and thanks to his recent conversation with Cristos, he could guess at some of it. To go back before the horror of losing half the team he’d worked with for years. When his world was new and all he had to do was enjoy himself.
Nathan glanced at Jay, more assessing than aroused. His gaze lingered at Jay’s erection. “Still have that piercing, I see.”
“I do.” No words to explain. None needed. He liked it; that was all. He’d had it done before his change, a link with the man he used to be.
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