by Lora Leigh
Alyssa was a very intuitive person; they’d always known that. And Shane knew damned good and well she was aware what the night would hold when he’d opened her bedroom door to the sound of her and Jeb’s laughter in the hall.
His cousin had stated that his cousins had never been jealous men, and he was right. Until Alyssa, neither he nor Shane had been particularly jealous concerning their women. Protective, yes, but if another man attempted to draw a lover away they didn’t fight for her. What would have been the point?
Until Alyssa.
“I can’t deal with the two of you tonight.” A hard, decisive shake of her head and she turned from them as though she actually expected them to obey the underlying demand to leave.
As Sebastian had related to him earlier, her attitude was one of a princess dismissing a peasant or, rather, one dismissing the stable boy she’d taken as her lover.
“Alyssa,” Shane reproved her gently, “do you really think we’re leaving so easily? You’ve indeed forgotten a lot if you’ve forgotten exactly how untamable and untrainable, we really are.”
She turned back to them slowly and shot him a look from the corners of her eyes. What he saw there was all he needed to see. Pure, sensual purpose was reflected there along with sweet innocence and a hint of confused emotional responses.
Alyssa stared between them. From Sebastian’s dark, brooding sensuality to Shane’s determined lusts they were in some ways so very different yet in others so very alike. And when they were together their eroticism had a way of overwhelming the senses.
“What the two of you have in mind isn’t happening, either,” she informed them, praying they didn’t know just how hard it was to force those words past her lips. “You’ve both had your little revisit to the past. But I simply can’t afford what you’ll do to what’s left of my heart if this goes any further.”
She’d fought too long, too hard, to get herself to a place where she could function without them. She’d given them so much of herself, so much of her heart and soul, that at times she’d hated them for the handicap being without them had given her.
“And you really think that excuse is going to see us out the door, siren?” Sebastian’s voice was dark, smooth. It slid over her senses like the softest caress, yet the warning of power lay just beneath the surface.
“It’s not an excuse, Sebastian,” she assured him, watching him closely. For once, it was Shane who appeared relaxed and amused while Sebastian seemed ready to slip the leash of his control. It was clear neither of them wanted to listen to reason or any sense of logic. “I can’t risk destroying myself further. There’s just not enough left of me to risk losing any more.”
Turning away to escape to the only sanctuary she had left, a shower she didn’t need, Alyssa found herself swung around so suddenly she could only gasp.
Sebastian held her to his chest, the look of implacable determination hardening his expression.
“You did not suffer alone, Alyssa.” The hard, ruthless snap in his voice was an indication of how thin his control was at the moment.
The loss of that control didn’t frighten her, though; it excited her, infuriated her. Just as his statement left her astounded. She hadn’t suffered alone? She had been alone. Neither of them had been with her. She had lost everything and had nothing, no one to turn to for comfort, for warmth.
“Didn’t I, Sebastian? What do you call six years of not living? Six years of just drifting through life as though the only reason I existed was to love two men who couldn’t be with me and couldn’t be honest with me about the reasons why?” Struggling against him, she glared up at his set expression, his dark, tortured gaze. “The two of you made this decision for me.”
“To protect you.” Dark blond brows furrowed in a brooding frown.
“To protect me? You would have protected me far better if you had come to me and explained what the hell was going on.” Pushing her fingers through her hair, she tried to fight the frustration she felt each time she tried to make sense of the past eight years. “I don’t understand you,” she gritted out, frustration raking at her nerves. “What gives you the right to do this to me, after all these years?”
“The same right you took when you made the choice to wait for us,” he pointed out, the dark, latent anger throbbing in his voice. “Think about that, Alyssa. You can hate us for it all you need to, curse us until hell freezes over. But you knew, all these years you knew, we didn’t choose to leave you. If you hadn’t known that, if your heart hadn’t known that, then you would have never waited for us.”
“What did I know, Sebastian?” she cried, placing her hand over her heart, over the ache she’d known for as long as she’d been separated from them. “That I was alone? That something held me so locked inside myself that I didn’t know how to escape?”
“You didn’t want to escape,” the whisper came from behind her, from Shane’s lips at her ear, his hands settling on her shoulders. “No more than we wanted to escape you.”
Those wicked, drugging lips trailed down her neck to her shoulder as his fingers pulled the material of her blouse aside.
“You weren’t locked inside yourself, ’Lyssa. We were locked inside you. You were the only solace we could depend on. You were locked inside us. And you placed yourself there willingly when you gave us your heart.” His voice, soft, low, had her stilling herself between them, her heart racing as the sensual, erotic tone mesmerized her. “Just as we placed ourselves in your keeping. You belong to us.” Her eyelids drifted closed, her body melting between them. “And we belong to you. We have the deepest love that can be shared, sweetheart. It’s soul bound.”
Soul bound.
Would she have allowed it if she had known it was possible?
Her breath caught at the feel of the buttons of her blouse being undone, leaving the silent question unanswered.
“We were dying without you, siren,” Sebastian whispered, his hands spreading the edges of her blouse apart with a slow, seductive move. As it caught at her shoulders Shane eased it over her shoulders, down her arms and away.
They were doing it to her again. Completely mesmerizing her with the pleasure erupting through her senses. And was she strong enough to fight it?
“I’m crazy to let you do this to me,” she moaned, but she didn’t fight when Shane pressed her arms to her sides and Sebastian released the catch of her bra. “I should kick you both out now.”
“Hmm, foreplay.” The voice with the Texas accent was filled with amusement. “You’re makin’ me hard, darlin’.”
Anything she would have come back with dissolved in her brain as Sebastian’s lips wrapped around the stiff point of a nipple and sucked it into his mouth. Firm, hungry draws of his mouth had her arms wrapping around his neck and desperate mewls spilling from her lips.
“Oh God, the two of you are crazy. And it’s contagious,” she whimpered.
Behind her, Shane released the zipper to her skirt, allowing the material to fall to the floor. Sliding his palm between her thighs, he cupped the sensitive mound there, his fingers sliding over the silk and lace of her panties.
Sebastian’s teeth grazed her nipple, his mouth suckling at her more firmly, filling her with so much pleasure that she didn’t want to deny it.
How had she lived eight years without this? Without them?
“You’re a stubborn woman, Alyssa,” Shane whispered behind her a second before he nipped at the rounded curve of her shoulder.
They were just figuring out she could be stubborn? Weren’t they paying any attention at all, outside sex, in Barcelona?
“If I were stubborn you’d not be in my room tonight,” she gasped when Sebastian applied just enough pressure on the tight point he held captive in his mouth.
God, that was good. The gentle nips to the over sensitive tip, that edge of pleasure and pain spiking with such intensity she moaned at the sensation.
“If you weren’t stubborn you’d accept you still belong to us,” Shane growle
d.
“Been there, done that,” she whimpered as his fingers applied a subtle pressure over her clit, barely there, causing the bundle of nerves to send a riot of sharp sensations racing through her sex.
The pressure eased around her nipple, but rather than moving to the next Sebastian eased back from her, his dark gaze moving along her nakedness, the black of his eyes flaring in lust.
“Been there, done that?” he repeated softly, his gaze narrowing, the features of his face tightening into a hard, dominant expression. “Not revisiting, baby?”
“I’ll think about it later.” Maybe.
They needed to just shut up and finish what they were starting, because she’d be damned if she’d give them the parts of her soul that she had managed to drag out of hell with her.
Her arms she curled around Sebastian’s neck as his head lowered, his lips taking hers with dominant force. The deep, hungry kisses and sensual press of his tongue against hers built her pleasure, prepared her for the ultimate high.
As his lips made love to hers, his tongue teasing her, drawing her to taste even as he tasted, Alyssa let herself become lost in the sensations wrapping around her. So lost that when he lifted her and carried her to the bed, she was only barely aware of it.
Laying her back against the pillows, he lifted his lips from hers, the sensual, erotic spell he was weaving around her not dimming in the least.
“My sweet ’Lyssa.” One hand slid to the side of her neck, his fingers curving around it, tilting her head farther back as she felt Shane move beside her.
“There, sweet baby.” A lingering kiss to her lips and Sebastian rose, straightening from her as Shane turned her, his kiss taking over where Sebastian’s had left off.
Where Sebastian’s kiss had been slow, achingly sweet, Shane’s was raw need. A melding of lips, his tongue pushing between them, stroking over hers demandingly.
He was naked. She could feel his broad, warm chest against her breasts as he drew her to her knees, his hands pushing beneath her skirt, stroking up her thighs to the elastic band of the silky panties she wore.
“We don’t need these,” he groaned against her lips, tugging at the elastic. “And they’re so pretty. You always wore the prettiest little underthings.”
Easing her back until she reclined against the bed, he removed the panties. Slowly, staring down at her, his expression absorbed, filled with searing emotion, as though she meant something. Like when the sun rose again nothing would change and they would always be there.
She wouldn’t let herself believe.… She would just let herself enjoy. There was no tomorrow; there was only now.
“Come here, darlin’.” Lifting her to him once she was naked, wearing nothing but the soft light from the lamp beside the bed, she felt Sebastian returning behind her.
Calloused hands caressed her back, stomach, her thighs. Fingertips rubbed, stroked, as she found herself drowning in pleasure. Her body became hyper-sensitive, the lightest brush of air against it another caress that burned through her senses.
Restrained now, her back against Shane’s hard body, she arched into Sebastian’s touch. It was like stepping back to that summer so long ago when they had completely filled her senses. A time when she had breathed for this magic and luxuriated in their single-minded determination to own her, heart and soul, with the pleasure they wrapped around her. When they had given her the world in the weeks they spent teaching her to belong completely to them.
They had branded her senses, marked her body as their own in a way she’d known, even then, that she would never be free of. She feared she had never wanted to be free.
A low, tortured moan parted her lips as Sebastian’s kisses moved from them, to her neck, to the bend of her shoulder. There he began spreading a path of burning anticipation, moving steadily to the peaks of her swollen breasts.
Her nipples ached. She needed to feel his kiss, to feel him drawing them into the moist, suckling heat of his mouth again.
“Give me your hands, love.” Shane captured her wrists as she tried to bury her fingers in Sebastian’s hair. “No need to hold on to anything. I have you. I won’t let you go, ’Lyssa.”
Pulling her arms back to allow her fingers to grip his neck instead, he cupped the swollen globe of one breast and captured the tightly puckered nipple with his thumb and forefinger. Plumping it further with a firm, knowing grip, he worked the tip to a level of pleasure bordering pain.
Anticipation thrummed through her senses, building with such aching need that she could barely process the onslaught of sensation.
“It’s been too long, sweets,” Shane crooned as she felt Sebastian shifting on the couch, his lips brushing over the inner curve of a breast. “Far too long since we’ve felt you burning for us together. Burn for us now, baby.”
Burn for them. God, she’d been burning for eight years and now they were stoking those fires, urging them to consume her.
“Open your eyes, ’Lyssa,” Shane urged her, his tone demanding and filled with lust. “Watch him suck those pretty nipples.”
Her lashes fluttered open, her gaze immediately captured by the sight of the reddened tip being covered by Sebastian’s hungry lips.
He consumed her. The rush of pleasure overwhelmed her senses and her resistance. Sebastian’s dark gaze locked with hers, his cheeks flexed, his hot mouth drawing on her as his tongue flicked over the peak, rubbed it, and sent forks of sharp, clenching pleasure racing to her womb.
It was so good. So good and she needed so much more.
“Don’t tease me,” she demanded, her tone sharp, the desperation building inside her at a speed she hadn’t expected.
It had never been like this. Like a clawing, searing fever overtaking her senses, possessing them with a single, driving need. To be taken. To have every part of her body, all the dark hunger rising inside her, sated by the two men determined to see her consumed by the heat overwhelming her.
“How we missed this,” Shane whispered at her ear, holding her to him as Alyssa fought to get closer to the chaotic pleasure Sebastian was inflicting on her swollen nipples. “How we missed feeling you burn.”
Sebastian’s lips moved to her other breast, drawing the neglected nipple into his mouth, increasing the lightning-hot strikes of sensation as he grew hungrier, his lust rising as his gaze remained on hers. She swore she could feel him clear to depths of her soul, pulling parts of her free that she hadn’t known existed.
“I need you.” Dazed, becoming mesmerized by the pleasure, she felt the words whisper unbidden from her lips. “I’ve needed you so bad. So long.”
The sudden press of his teeth around the peak he was suckling sent static surges of sizzling sensation to her womb, then to the violently sensitized bud of her clit.
Alyssa shuddered, her thighs tightening, the agonized need for relief, for release, growing by the second. She was mesmerized by the pleasure, the hunger, the unbridled need beginning to whip through her, chaos building into a storm far quicker, stronger, than it had been when they’d touched her like this years before.
“Don’t let me be dreaming again!” she cried out, her fingers curling, nails biting into her palms as Shane continued to hold her wrists. “Don’t leave me alone in the dark again.”
Please, God, not again. She couldn’t bear it.
“You’re not alone, baby.” Shane nipped her ear as though chastising her for the fear. “Feel how good it’s going to be. Better than before. Like magic and fireworks melting us together.”
Magic and fireworks.
She fought to breathe. The flexing, drawing heat around her nipple echoed in painful need at her clit, the swollen bud throbbing, pulsing for release.
Every inch of her body was hyper-sensitized, every brush of sensation a whisper of air, another caress that only built an overawareness of pleasure in each cell of her body.
Releasing her nipple with a groan, Sebastian’s lips began to move lower. Stoking over her midriff, his tongue taking small tast
es of her flesh as he kissed his way down her body. He pressed her thighs apart and moved to kneel next to the couch. His head tilted, lips moving inexorably closer to the saturated, swollen folds between her thighs.
“We dreamed of this, ’Lyssa. Of licking, tasting all that sweet flesh, and feeling you unravel for us,” Shane groaned at her ear as the feel of his erection throbbed against her thigh.
“Shane, please…” Breathless, she felt the fear of losing herself, of losing her defenses, suddenly rising inside her.
How would she survive it when they left? When the world or some other threat drew them away from her? How would she manage to force herself to breathe without knowing when they’d return?
“‘Please’ what, baby?” Shane crooned as he eased her back to the pillows and stretched out beside her.
Sebastian eased between her legs. Broad shoulders spread her thighs, making a place for himself, his hands slipping beneath her rear to lift her to his hungry lips.
Staring down her body at him, Alyssa watched, burning need rushing through her as he licked his lips, then his tongue extended and pierced the swollen, slick folds of her sex.
“Oh yes. ’Bastian. Yes. Oh God, please…” Strangled, breathless, what should have been a cry was little more than a ragged whimper.
She couldn’t take her eyes from him. He licked, flickering strokes racing over the sensitive folds, parting them, then drawing the slick essence of her response from her core.
“Sweet heaven, you make us crazy. You always have.” Shane’s voice was guttural now, low and rough, dark with his building hunger.
Alyssa struggled to process the pleasure, certain it was stronger, more intense, now than it had been before.
That the feel of Sebastian’s tongue thrusting inside her sex, easing back to lick to her clit, stroking over and around the swollen bundle of nerves intoxicated her senses. When his fingers slipped into the narrow cleft of her rear, finding and caressing the hidden entrance, the spiking pleasure hit her harder, stronger, stealing the last of her defenses against them.
As he caressed the highly sensitive area with his fingers, his tongue tortured her clit, stroking and pushing her to an edge of pleasure she knew would destroy her senses.