Someone touched the small of my back and I jumped, pulling away from Wade.
It was only Gideon. He dragged the daypack from my shoulders and let it drop. His fingers glided down my spine, sniffing my hair again, bending his nose to the back of my head. How well could they smell like that?
His fingertips reached my jeans, sliding down between the pockets, making me shiver and catch my breath.
No need to be jumpy in here. This room was different. Just an old dusty bedroom in an old dusty farmhouse where we’d trespassed to perform a public service. No vampires or yelping, no blood or foxes, no holes in the floor or footsteps behind us. Anyway, Adam was keeping an eye out, wasn’t he?
Third date, after all. That wasn’t so early.
As to Gideon, obviously we’d had an instant connection. It had been clear the moment … well … something. It must have been there. The peach, oh immortal spirits, those two peaches he’d given me. If that wasn’t a sign of love and devotion, I didn’t know what was.
So … yeah… The only problem was that it was so damn hot. If we could just get clothes off. I’d never been part of a threesome. The thought made me want my sweat-soaked garments banished even more than I had already.
Wade’s mouth, hot and sweet and sexy, gradually grew more demanding, his touches more mobile and insistent. So hot between them I felt like my eyeballs could melt out of my head.
Gideon ran his hands over my stomach, peeling the wet cotton up from my skin, lifting until he reached the band of my bra and his strong hands pressed sensually around my breasts—which were undeniably too small for my height. All through my teens I’d been thought of as such a tomboy that I’d embraced the image, not because I wanted it but because it fit how I looked without having to fight. I went along, ran wild, big feet, small breasts; tomboy it was. But … I wasn’t. It was just a label and identity that school and society slapped onto an innocent bystander. The way Gideon touched me, muscular arms around me, fondling my breasts like he had pillows to work with, snatched what remained of my breath and left me dizzy.
Wade pulled off my glasses to kiss all over my face. No idea what he did with them.
Gideon bent until he could kiss my spine, still pulling up my shirt. He straightened up to kiss my shoulder, the back of my neck, still feeling around me. When he rocked his hips against my butt I leaned back, easily feeling the concave pressure behind his fly. Gideon pushed more. He dropped his hands, letting my T-shirt fall, and seized my hips. His pressure was painful, clutching me against him while pushing as if to knock over a barn. I wished for more, harder—skin, not just fabric.
I gasped into Wade’s mouth while Gideon’s panting tangled through in my hair.
“You’re beautiful, Ripley,” Gideon breathed. “You smell like fire and passion.”
No shit? Did I smell like fire and passion? If I’d ever received higher praise, I couldn’t recall it. The compliment brought tears to my eyes.
“Thank you, Gideon,” I gasped. “May I just say that the three of you might be the most handsome men I’ve ever had the privilege of working with? Or dating? Or knowing?”
“Come home with me,” Wade said against my mouth. He had the button in my jeans open, his hand flat on my abdomen. “Tonight, Ripley, when we get out of here. I’ll show you my place. We can meet there to get ready for the next … thing. Make a plan.”
Why was he so concerned with plans? The rest of it sounded perfect.
“Yes…” I said on a groan as his fingers ran below the band of my underwear. I sucked in my breath, drawing in my stomach, giving him room to reach into the tight, sweaty jeans.
Gideon released me for a moment to yank off his own shirt and open his fly.
I choked out Wade’s name while he reached lower, one finger making me cry out, before his tongue was exploring my mouth again. He reached still farther, fumbling for my fly with his other hand.
I moaned with the fresh buzz of sensation, burning ripple of pleasure, impossible build of even more heat as he touched me. Wade fumbled at his own fly with his free hand, every motion urgent. Gideon’s newly exposed erection rubbed my jeans as he worked his thumbs into my waistband to tug at the clinging denim.
Behind us, the door closed with a sharp click.
15
I hope most people never have to weigh blue balls against possible death. The fact that it took me and the new loves of my life many, many seconds to choose survival and take action bears testament to the seriousness of the dilemma.
They stepped back from me. I zipped up my jeans. Wade cast a light at the door, which I couldn’t see.
“Where are my glasses?” I asked, shaking, chest rising and falling on fast breaths as if I’d sprinted up here many times over. Still, I wasn’t in nearly as bad shape as the other two.
“Window,” Wade panted.
I snatched at the window ledge, sure that we’d been meaning to open it. Why wasn’t it open? Had it been too warped? Sealed shut? I couldn’t remember.
“Adam?”
Even as I fumbled the glasses onto my damp face I could tell, both by the phone light on the floor, flooding the ceiling with murky gray, and from Wade’s gold light that Adam wasn’t in the room. Unless he was playing hide and seek behind the bed, there just wasn’t anywhere else he could be. Which meant he’d been shut out. And he hadn’t been the one to close and lock the bedroom door with a paw. Something weird happening around here.
I felt dazed as much as afraid. Waking up, coming out of a stupor. Which made no sense because I’d just been vividly, wildly alive and awake in their arms. How can you be sprinting around a track and suddenly wake up?
“What…? I… Crap…” Wade was shaking his head. “The door closed. And there’s something on it.”
Symbols, shapes, some sort of pattern that seemed to be seeping through the door from the outside in, like ink going through paper.
“Ripley? Sorry, I … uh…” he shook his head again.
“Adam!” After one shout, Gideon gave up and turned back to me, shoving me into the window frame. He hadn’t been able to get his fly closed over the obstacle looming in its path and he seemed to have abruptly chosen balls over the pursuit of freedom, fox vengeance, or continued life.
His mouth was a flame against mine. Nothing like the sensual, intense kisses from Wade. This was like being eaten by a volcano.
I grabbed his face in both hands, meaning to shove him away. Gideon seized my jeans again. There was his tongue, the lava reaching to engulf me, and his dick, straining for me, ready to merge his heat into mine. He was so damn strong. There was no way in hell I could just “shove him away.” I would have to use magic, or a quick knee to the balls, to get anywhere. And that didn’t seem fair or right or justified when I could so clearly envision him ripping those stupid tight jeans clear off my body, shoving me against the wall and splitting me in two while I wrapped my legs around him far more easily than I could envision anything unfair or unjustified.
“What is that?” Wade had moved away, actually paying attention to the patterns on the door. It was an excellent question. The best of the night so far. Better would be, Why are we still in here? Or maybe, Why isn’t Gideon already fucking me?
Yes, that was what I wanted to know.
I reached for his dick, longing to fondle him, tingling with anticipation while my sweat and saliva mingled with his.
“Holy shit! Ripley, do you know what that is? Ripley!”
I jumped, pushed both hands against Gideon’s chest instead of grabbing him, and tried to see around to the door. Wade stood before it, looking at us, eyes wide.
Someone was howling. A wolf trapped somewhere.
The door twisted and shimmered, shapes of suffering figures, people dying, screaming, symbols parading past them, crossing out their faces, tearing away their limbs.
Horrified, I pressed back into the window.
Gideon was also finally paying attention.
Speaking in that other language
again, sounding like a string of oaths, he pulled away from me. Shirt still on the floor, he struggled with his pants.
Hwooo-woo-woo… An anguished, piercing howl not just from out in the hall but far away, the other side of the house at least.
“Open it!” I shouted at Wade through the howling and flickering lights and roaring like a hurricane that seemed to exude off the door, yet come from inside my own skull with no filter into my ears.
“It’s locked!” Wade also had to shout.
“Can you cast or not? Unlock it!”
“I can’t!” He hadn’t even tried, just stood there.
I clutched the window frame, certain I would be blown away if I didn’t hold on. Something buffeted, beating at us with those images seeping through the door, the howl, and the room shrinking in, smaller, darker, Wade’s light almost gone. Roaring like a freight train in my ears.
At last, Gideon ran forward.
I focused on the lock, threw it open with a will and my own personal power. Gideon wrenched the door wide.
In a flash, everything stopped. The images, lights, roar, doom, shrinking—all gone. Just a dark bedroom with my phone lying on the floor, still casting its flashlight beam at the ceiling. How long would the battery last? Not much longer now that I thought of it.
One thing didn’t change. The howling and yelping, tormented and painful, went on.
“Adam!” Gideon shouted again, dashing into the hallway.
Wade followed, holding his own head as if to keep his brain from exploding out his ears. I knew how he felt.
Crash!
The door slammed shut behind them and locked, leaving me alone. The light wavered. Somehow, I didn’t think it would be so easy to unlock a second time.
“Ripley!” Wade shouted.
Something bashed the door—Gideon’s shoulder?
The wall shook but the solid wood door didn’t budge.
I tried to focus another effort of magic on it, abandoning my grip on the window frame to snatch up my phone, sling the daypack over my shoulder, and move closer. Only … focus wasn’t coming so easily as it once had. Maybe it was the daze, that waking from a dream feeling. Maybe it was fear and confusion, worry for Adam and horror at being shut alone inside this house. Or maybe it was the man who stood up from behind the far side of the bed.
16
The man grinned, or leered, at me. “Well, well, buenas noches. I would ask do you come here often, but you’re not dead yet, so we’ll assume it’s your first time. How precious.”
I stepped back slowly, heart pounding in the pit of my throat so it seemed I could barely draw breath. I could almost keep my breathing hushed but the phone light in my hand was a dead giveaway—shaking like a snake’s rattle.
I held it up, aiming it into his face, driving back the phantom, blinding the vampire—could there really be a young one here? But, no. The wiry man only squinted and turned his head in the glare: human.
Shouldn’t that have been comforting? Instead of the single most terrifying thing that had happened all night?
Otherwise healthy twenty-year-olds don’t suffer heart attacks, do they?
“Ripley!” Another crash into the door, distant howling. Then … it all faded. Could I not hear them anymore? Had they moved on or stopped? Holding a whispered conference? Or did something … get them?
Why would the howling also stop unless it was my reality that altered rather than theirs? I had to hope it was mine—that I couldn’t hear but they were still strong, still fighting the door.
“I could ask the same of you.” I swallowed, forcing more volume to my voice in the absence of actual power. “What are you doing here?”
His smile broadened, a hooded grin that spoke of shared secrets and seedy nightclubs and made my skin crawl, breath quickening even more. “I live here.”
I glanced around the dust-covered room.
“Not here,” he continued. “Hereabouts. One could say you’re my guest.” His teeth flashed with his grin in the light. He was more used to it now, able to look right at me while I aimed the beam at the brass bed between us.
I’d thought at first he had a cloak on. It seemed just to be a wrap of some dark material tossed around his shoulders like a toga. Who wrapped up in this heat? Which, for the first time, made me wonder how long he’d been here watching us.
“I’m honored by your hospitality.” I glanced at Gideon’s shirt on the floor and eased another step farther away along the wall.
“We do our best. I thrill in making any lady guest comfortable.” Drawing out the last word lovingly, as if to savor the taste on his tongue.
Wouldn’t Adam have sniffed him out if he’d been here all along? Not if that was another part of the trickery at work. Maybe he was a trick? Maybe he reacted to the light as if human but he wasn’t here at all?
The light threw shadows across one side of his face. Dust hung in a faint haze where he’d stood from crouching on the floor and disturbed it. Also, his eyes reflected the light. Vampires’ did not. He was either solid and alive or the best trick I’d ever heard of.
His nose and chin were as sharp as if they’d been cut from a paper pattern. His face was lean with high cheekbones, coppery skin, what appeared to be jet black hair, and a light build, no taller than me. Maybe he would have been striking in daylight; elfin. The effect here was far more devilish.
I glanced at the door. Was he a caster? Could he stop me if I tried to escape? Best to figure this out before making a dash for it.
“Who are you?” I asked in a much stronger voice. “Did you do this to us?” With a gesture at the door.
“Moi?” Lifting his brows, he pressed a dramatic hand to his own chest in mock astonishment. His fingers were bony, sharp as his face. “No, no, no, nunca. Not I, but the other.”
“Who else is here?”
“You are fortunate. Moon blessed, as your furry swains would say. He can only do things to you that you’re thinking anyway. Unless you look him dead in the eye.” Trace of emphasis on the word “dead.” “Then watch out. That’s when he’ll really fuck you up and send you on a ride you won’t forget. Or maybe you will forget. If he wants you to.” He winked. “No eye contact means he’s working with what’s already in your little noggins—maybe just below the surface. So you’re giving him all the material—such a plagiarizing windbag. Don’t worry, little lady, anything you’ve done or thought in this house tonight came from your own and your boyfriends’ minds.” Grinning more than ever.
“Is that supposed to be ironic or just patronizing?”
“Boyfriends?”
“‘Little lady.’ I’m almost five-ten. I’m like the tallest woman I know.”
“‘Like’ touchy, touchy,” he drawled, exaggerating every syllable. “What would you prefer I call you, señorita?”
“I’d prefer you call me a cab. We’re getting out of here.”
“Okay, Cabby. Go ahead and get out.” His grin broadened once more as he stole to the door and pulled it open without effort. “I dare you.” Voice fading when he slipped through, vanishing into darkness.
“Wait! Who’s the ‘he’?” I dashed to the door. “A vampire? A demon? We can put him to rest and end this!”
Nothing but a sneering laugh answered. By the time I shined the light into the pitch-black hall, the man was gone. Everyone was gone. While the house was suddenly, horribly, dead silent.
17
Afraid of the door closing on me again, I stepped into the hall, my back against the wall.
I checked the phone battery. Only twenty percent left.
Candles in my mom’s kit in the daypack. Leave that for worst-case scenario. I could draw on my caterpillar light but it took energy and I was already feeling the strain without having actually done much except get us out of a dungeon. So why did it feel like I’d been running a marathon along a rollercoaster track with a dragon chasing me?
I leaned into the yellow carnation wallpaper, breathing fast through my mouth, a
nd … laughed.
Sure, it was a bit of a hysterical, crazed laugh, but I’d take it.
The highs and lows, the peach and wolf, fall and pain, terror, visions, arousal and semi-sex with two strangers—at once. Now being alone, in the dark, with no idea where to turn or where my helpers were.
I’d never been as not numb as I’d been tonight.
So I laughed and pressed into the wall for support, mashing the daypack, thinking we could have just gone to a bar, shared buffalo wings and cold beer, that this really wasn’t necessary as some macho show of proving ourselves on a third date—or first, as the case may be—when I saw the man again. Not the slight man wrapped in a blanket. Taller, in some sort of blazer or jacket with sharply squared shoulders. I couldn’t tell anymore about him than this because he was a mere shadow at the end of the hall, simply staring at me while I giggled. I’m sure it was the same man who’d looked down on us in the pit after Gideon had fallen in. Unless the place was swarming with them.
I laughed, scratched elbows stinging as I leaned back, sweat trickling down my brow, soaking into my shirt, and pointed the light at him. “You are one sick fucker!” I cackled. “Are you the one doing this? Man … all this time and I never knew my parents had such a fun nightlife. She was right all along. I should have joined them two years ago.”
Still he watched me, unmoving. I could make out nothing but the form of him, yet knew he was staring at me from thirty feet down a hall that felt like ballfields away.
“All right!” I shouted. “You’ve made your point!” I caught my breath. “Very clever. You win. We’ll just trot along. Don’t like your stupid old house anyway. So just…” I flicked my fingers at him. “Go on. We’ll take ourselves off. Where do you have my friends? Standing with their noses in the corner like Blair Witch? You know I’m the witch here, right? I know all about people like you. That’s why she wanted me along. Dad thought it was too dangerous. He was glad I wanted to go to college and see the world. She thought I was wasting my gift. But whatever. Do you know how many people are good at drawing? Does that mean they’re professional artists? Hell no. Just…” I waved my hand dismissively. “Go. We’ll be on our way.”
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