Rounding the backside of the duplex, Eve bypassed the kitchen door and went to the main entrance of the girls’ side. It was unlocked and she hurried in. A pile of duffel bags and backpacks rested on the threshold to the dining room, including hers. “Can you go upstairs and ask God for a little help here?”
“You know better than that.”
“Can’t you try?”
She should be a basket case right now. Traumatized for life and frightened into paralysis. Instead, the memory of Molenaar’s death filled her with an aggressive, wild energy. The need to move, to act, to rip something apart was difficult to fight. But a good hard screw would do just as well. That bothered her more than she could say.
“Angel—”
“Why is sex so much a part of being a Mark?” She swiped at a drop of sweat that trickled down her temple. “Sex brought us together in the first place. Then, it was involved when Abel put the mark on me, and again when I went through the physical changes with you. Seems to me that being marked and being a nymphomaniac go hand in hand.”
“It’s balance, Eve. You’re a killer now. You’ll wake up in the morning for the sole purpose of murdering something and you will usually go to bed having accomplished that task. Sex connects you to someone. It forces you to give and take intimacy. It keeps you human.”
“Balance would be sex one day and hunting the next.” She leaned against the living room wall. “Mixing the two is just . . . kinky.”
“Sex isn’t the reason we hooked up.”
She quivered at his rumbling tone. “Liar,” she breathed. “It’s all we had time for.”
“Liar,” he rejoined gruffly. “It took us half a second to see where we were headed. Time had nothing to do with it and the sex was a bonus.”
Eve would never forget the sight of him on his Harley outside the ice cream store where she worked after school. He’d had her at the first glance. “You made my mouth water,” she confessed. “Still do.”
“Right now, I could tell you to cool off with a shower and an ice pack. I could tell you to pick a fight with that blonde who has issues with you and knock out some of the stress that way. I could suggest that you slip away and get yourself off without me. But I’m not going to let you do any of those things, Eve, because I need to be your go-to guy.” He paused, then, “And I need Abel to not be that guy.”
Sagging into the wall, Eve knew she couldn’t feel any worse. Reed had run like hell, but she couldn’t say that without explaining what he’d been running from. And it didn’t matter anyway. Alec was a damn good guy and she was lucky to have him in her corner. He wouldn’t be there forever, but right now was better than nothing.
“Eve?”
“Gimme a minute. You slayed me.”
He laughed softly. “I’m glad you don’t need wine and roses.”
She wiped at her wet cheeks with her free hand. “You make this all bearable, you know.”
“Just bearable? I’ll have to work harder.”
More than bearable. He made her feel safe and sane. He didn’t put her off or undermine her. He treated her with respect when everyone else was manipulating her into cramped corners.
“I miss you like crazy,” he murmured. “You’re in my head even when I’m sleeping.”
“Did you have a wet dream?”
“Damn near. You were lying beside me, nak*d and hot as hell. I got hard just watching you sleep.”
Eve understood that. Admiring him while he was sleeping was a favorite pastime of hers. Sleep softened him in a way nothing else could.
“I pulled you under me and slid into you before you were fully awake. You made those sexy little noises you always make when I’m deep in you. I could almost feel you fisting around me. And the way you can’t stop coming . . . Drives me f**king crazy that I can get to you that way.”
The images that flooded her mind concentrated the heat of the Novium and dropped it low in her belly. Alec’s voice, roughly seductive like velvet, always left her weak in the knees. He was inexhaustible, and his need to get her off until she couldn’t take any more had pretty much ruined her for other men.
“I wish you were here with me now,” he purred. “I’d strip you bare and lick you from head to toe.”
She gave a shaky exhale. “You have an oral fixation.”
“Which you love.” The smile in his voice sparked an inner quivering.
Alec never did anything in half-measure. Unlike Reed, who rode a woman hard and put her away wet, Alec took his time during sex. He used his mouth first, then his hands. From head to toe, front to back, every curve and crevice. Whispering praise both lewd and tender. Taking hours.
“Are you thinking about my mouth on you?” he murmured. “Are you hot and wet?”
“Are you alone?” Eve locked the front door. The big picture window was covered by a white sheet that let milky light in, but made viewing impossible. It was as private as she was going to get without venturing off to someplace farther away. “Do you have an audience?”
“I’m all yours. Why are you whispering? Aren’t you alone yet?”
“Yes, but we’re having phone sex, Alec. And I’m inexperienced. It would be embarrassing if someone overheard me. Where’s the horse?”
He laughed. “Giselle is handcuffed to the bathroom pipes in the adjoining room.”
“Handcuffed? Sounds kinky.”
“Stop it. Tell me you miss me.”
She sighed. “A lot. Are you nak*d?”
“Not completely. Just enough to get the job done. I’ve got work to do, too, but you come first.”
“We’ll come at the same time,” she breathed. “Are you touching yourself?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for?”
Her eyes closed against the building ache in her chest. “You.”
She’d been waiting for him for ten years. Staying away hadn’t spared her punishment, so when she’d been marked he’d come back for the duration. But now that she had him, she sometimes turned him away and sent him home just to prove to herself that she could still live without him. Because one day, soon, she would have to.
“I’m here, angel,” he purred. “Hard and ready. I’m in heat, too. Thinking about you always gets me that way.”
It was her complete trust in him that gave her the courage to say, “I wish you were in my hands.”
“Fuck, yeah. Me, too.”
“I want to hold you. I love how soft the skin of your c*ck is. How thick the veins are. They make you look so brutal, when you’re really so tender.”
“Trace them with your tongue.”
“What?”
“The veins. Use your tongue.”
Eve’s mouth watered. Alec wasn’t the only one to have an oral fixation. What really got to her was how much he loved it. He was so unabashed in his enjoyment, his hands fisting in the sheets or her hair, his voice hoarse as he cursed at her for stripping him down to base animalistic need.
“I love that sensitive spot just beneath the head,” she whispered. “I like to flutter my tongue across it just to hear you fall apart.”
Alec groaned. “Touch yourself while you’re sucking me.”
Eve’s fingers went to the top button of her jeans and flicked it open. “It gives me a thrill to know you’re so hot for me.”
“I’m beyond hot. I’m about to go up in flames.”
She imagined herself kneeling over him, holding his fly apart so nothing impeded her working mouth. The fantasy was so real she could hear the slick suction noises. Her hand pushed into her jeans, forcing the zipper pull to slide down.
Suck harder.
Eve lost her balance, sinking into an off-kilter crouch.
It wasn’t Alec’s voice she heard in her mind; it was Reed’s.
CHAPTER 12
Eve’s eyes stung with welling tears.
Why Reed’s voice? Why now, when she was deep into an intimate moment with another man? A man she’d loved for as long as she could remember.
The gun at her lower back shifted dangerously, freed from its position by the loosening of her fly. She grabbed for it, then set it down on the dusty floor beside the luggage, her fingers clenching spasmodically around the grip.
“Damn, that feels good,” Alec gasped. “You suck c*ck as if you were starved for it.”
Her mind was inundated with sensation—the rhythmic drawing of a hungry mouth, a tongue flickering, a fist pumping the thick root. It felt as if she was inside his brain, enjoying their fantasy through his senses. Sweat dotted her brow and upper lip. Heat rippled along her skin in a prickling wave, the Novium burning through her in double time, yet she felt closer to him than ever before.
An orgasm hovered just out of reach. Through no physical manipulation at all, she was about to cli**x from the feel of Alec’s pleasure. She cried softly, nearly dizzy from the surfeit of sensual perception. “Please . . .”
“Yes, angel.” His voice was sandpaper rough. “Come for me. Let me hear you.”
A pained female whimper yanked Eve back from the edge, cruelly halting her hurtle toward cli**x.
Her eyes flew open. She hadn’t made that sound . . . could never make that sound with Alec. He was too gentle. Despite the ferocity of his ardor, he always treated her as if she was breakable.
Eve slid from her crouch to a seated position on the floor. A brazen wet sucking noise rent the quiet of the house, followed by a serrated masculine groan.
Unmistakable sounds with an unmistakable cause.
She wasn’t alone. And, worse, she wasn’t unaffected. The knowledge that a sexual act was taking place somewhere nearby ratcheted up the tension to painful intensity.
Alec growled in her ear, knowing her well enough to pick up on her sudden preoccupation. “Don’t stop! Fuck, I’m about to blow.”
“Do it,” she urged, struggling to her feet. He could come and keep going. It was a gift.
“Not without you. Are your fingers inside you?”
“Yes,” she lied. With deliberate steps, she managed to walk carefully to the hallway without her heavy boots giving her away.
She didn’t recognize herself. She wasn’t a voyeur. In her previous life, she would be hightailing it out of there, not salivating for a lewd peek. Especially of Romeo and Laurel. Part of her brain was revolted by the thought; the rest of her brain was so inundated with Alec’s approaching orgasm it couldn’t string a sentence together.
“I can’t hold off much longer,” Alec bit out. “Are you close?”
“Yes.” But her answer referred to her proximity, not her orgasmic state. The fellating noises were spilling into the hall from the farthest open bedroom doorway. Another couple of steps and she would be able to look inside.
Eve hugged the opposite wall. The panting and groaning grew in volume, as did the erotic sound of hard suckling.
The couple came into view and she stumbled. Her free hand covered her mouth, stemming the low moan of torment that rose up unbidden. Her chest constricted.
Reed.
He occupied the center of the master bedroom, standing with head back and eyes closed. Izzie kneeled before him like a supplicant, the bobbing of her pigtailed head betraying the enthusiasm with which she sucked his cock. His fingers were shoved into her restrained hair with white-knuckled force, pulling the blonde tresses in a way that caused her pained whimpers. He moved her as he wanted, his h*ps thrusting at a breathtaking pace. His neck was corded by straining muscles and his handsome face twisted with a carnal grimace of pleasure and fierce concentration.
Eve was bombarded by a dark and cold desire, as if the walls between them had stemmed a tide that the open doorway now freed. His struggle to cli**x rushed at her like an oncoming tsunami, carrying her back, beating her against the wall.
Ravaged by jealousy and the aggressiveness of the Heat, Eve watched with horrified eyes, understanding that the sensations she had thought were Alec’s were actually Reed’s. They traveled to her through their growing emotional link, hitting her in real time with Izzie’s movements.
But it wasn’t Izzie he pictured behind his closed eyelids.
“Angel?” Alec’s voice was strangled. “You’re f**king killing me. If you were here, I’d have my mouth between your legs, tonguing your cl*t until you went off for me.”
Alec’s intrusion triggered an emotional flood—remorse and longing, sorrow and love. It was so potent, it was tangible. The hairs on her nape prickled.
His breath caught. “I can feel you.”
Reed gasped and straightened. His gaze found her, his lips moving without sound. I can feel you.
And she felt them. Both of them, pushing into her, inundating her with their desire and raw needs, seeping into every pore, every memory, every hidden thought. She was bared in a way only a true . . . possession could make possible.
Two men. Inside her at the same time.
They swirled around her like billowing smoke, battling within her, shoving at each other like children over a favored toy and inadvertently discovering her tragic fascination with both of them in the process. Triumph and pain, joy and misery, envy and passion, love and hate—the way they responded to the revelation was destroying all three of them.
The roots of her hair grew damp with sweat. Her skin burned as it had when the dragon killed her, a blistering pain she hadn’t survived the first time. Alec and Reed were overpowering her, too focused on their endless rivalry to realize how their centuries of memories and bickering were drowning her.
Sucking in air, Eve pushed her hand into her open fly and cupped her sex. The subsequent flare of pleasure and relief was like a beam of light in the darkness. The two men recoiled from each other and she took the advantage, pushed them backward, slipping into them the way they had come into her.