Cunningham, Pat - Legacy [Sequel to Belonging] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (22 page)

“Fuck,” Wallace rasped. “Fucking bossy—” He clamped his lips shut. Even in the throes of ecstasy he wouldn’t show his fangs because he knew it upset her. Colleen had just enough mind left to kiss him. Jeremy angled forward to kiss him as well, and fisted his hand in Colleen’s hair.

Jeremy thrust home one last time with a cry that signaled his release. His thrust triggered Wallace’s. Colleen’s orgasm hit her in a shattering explosion that whited out the world. Free at last, Wallace let go. They bucked in concert for what felt to her like forever.

Gradually, she spiraled down and rejoined the mundane world. Wallace lay atop her. He was sweating. She hadn’t known vampires could sweat. Jeremy withdrew from Wallace and cuddled up beside them. He stroked Colleen’s slender arm and Wallace’s spiky hair.

Wallace looked at Jeremy and finally showed fang. “You sadistic bastard,” he pronounced. Jeremy shrugged lazily with a big, smug grin. “I should trade you in for a real slave.”

“Why, when you’ve got me all broken in?”

“Yeah,” Wallace had to agree, “there’s that.” He rolled off Colleen and onto Jeremy. He buried his head against Jeremy’s neck. Whatever that talented tongue was up to now, it made Jeremy giggle and writhe.

Colleen burrowed against Jeremy’s side. Warm, content, and relaxed, she wasn’t even aware she was drifting off. “Don’t mind me, you two,” she murmured and let her eyes slide shut.

* * * *

Colleen awoke from a bleary dream to a sense of weight and confinement. In her dream, she’d starred in a 1920s movie cliffhanger, tied to a log in a sawmill while a silver-eyed, moustache-twirling vampire leered and showed his fangs in full display. For the first few seconds upon awakening, she thought the log had rolled on top of her. The “log” turned out to be Jeremy’s arm, flung across her chest with all the weight of a lead sewer pipe. His other arm twined around Wallace’s waist, and his legs pinned the vampire’s. When he sprawled, he sprawled with a vengeance.

Snickers tickled over her mind. Wallace turned his head toward her. His eyes sparkled with humor. “Hey, sweetheart,” he whispered. “How you doing over there?”

Colleen surveyed her situation. Jeremy’s slumberous contortions had nudged her perilously close to the edge of the bed. At the same time his arm held her anchored. She inched closer to him, and he in turn snuggled closer to Wallace.

“I could use a little more room.”

“I tried to warn you,” Wallace said. He licked the side of Jeremy’s neck, over his mark. Jeremy smiled in his sleep. Admiration joined the warm possessiveness in Wallace’s face. “You held up well. I’m surprised.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Yes, it is. We’re stronger than humans. Vamp sex can get pretty strenuous. You’re a helluva lot tougher than you look. I’ll have to remember that, for when it’s just you and me.” He favored her with his first smirk of the day.

Colleen didn’t smile. “That door was closed when I came upstairs.”

“Do tell.”

“You’re a total bastard.”

“And you were terrific.” He reached across Jeremy to twine a curl of her hair through his fingers. She couldn’t stop herself from leaning toward him so that his blunt fingers brushed her cheek. Did he have any idea of the enormity of what he did to her? Of course he did. He could probably hear how fast her blood was blasting through her veins right now.

Whatever signals that thought prompted caused Wallace to withdraw his hand. “It’s almost dawn. I better get to bed. You think a sprawler’s annoying? I turn into a rock. You couldn’t budge me with a crowbar. Are you going to work?”

That’s right, it was Monday. She glanced at the clock. Five thirty. In less than three hours, she’d be on her way to the school as if the last three days had never happened, as if her life had not just gone topsy-turvy forever.

“I was planning on it,” she murmured.

“But you’re coming back.” He didn’t make it a question.

“Yes. I’m coming back until all this is over.”

While they talked her hand stole out to rub across Jeremy’s torso. Her hand encountered Wallace’s. He’d been doing the same. They looked at their linked hands atop his flat stomach and couldn’t help grinning at each other.

“He’s so cute when he’s asleep, isn’t he?” Wallace said.

“And when he’s awake.”

“Definitely.” He leaned forward and kissed her, a light touch of his lips to hers. His hand squeezed hers briefly before he let go. He gave Jeremy a similar kiss on the cheek before he rose from the bed with pantherish grace. “Nighty-night.”

Colleen watched him leave, her gaze drawn to him as if attached by a tether. Once the door clicked shut behind him, she turned back to look down at Jeremy’s peaceful face.

This was how life would be with them. Nights and days divided, because Wallace couldn’t face the dawn.

Had she ever had any hopes of living a normal life? There’d been that period almost a decade ago when she had dared to dream. The David years. That had petered out after a long and painful effort on her part to keep it alive.

So my personal biology’s a little screwed up, she thought. How is that my fault?

Now here she sat, drawn to a pair of men who couldn’t be considered normal by any stretch of the term. What the heck, she wasn’t normal either. Raised among vampires, hunted by vampires, sharing a bed with a vampire and the vampire’s human companion. Somehow every important matter in her life seemed to be tied to blood.

She ran her hand through Jeremy’s hair before she cuddled up against his lanky body. He rolled toward her without waking and drew her securely against him. In his arms she felt protected, loved. Just as she did with Wallace.

A vampire. A vampire’s slave. And me. If I tell Norelle, she’ll have a horse
.

With that thought in her mind, she fell asleep again.

Chapter 12

Jeremy’s insistent hand on her shoulder woke Colleen a second time. Sunlight streamed through the blinds. She blinked groggily at the clock—7:34 a.m. Jeremy stood over her in a bathrobe. The dampness on his skin and hair announced his recent exit from the shower.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said, “but it’s Monday morning. You still insist on going to work?”

That word cleared the cobwebs. Colleen sat up and swung her legs off the bed. Her legs bumped his, not by accident. “Of course I’m going to work. I’m safe in daylight, right?”

“If we take precautions.” He bent with easy grace to kiss her. “I’ll get breakfast started.”

Over breakfast they discussed the alluded-to precautions. Jeremy would escort her to work. At the end of the day, she’d call him and let him know her movements. Close to and after sundown, she wasn’t to go anywhere without one or both of them along.

“No excuses,” Jeremy said. “No trying to prove how tough or self-reliant you are. You can’t be left alone after dark. Wallace’s orders.”

“Am I allowed bathroom breaks?”

“I’ll have to check. I think we can give you some leeway.” His grin didn’t last for long. “Watch out for strangers. The flock might have human servants.”

“And a steady blood supply by now, from my childhood friends.”

Jeremy looked at his plate. “I know this has all been difficult for you. I wish I could make it easier, but there’s nothing easy when it comes to vampires.”

“That’s true. Wallace is so not easy.”

Jeremy’s smile reappeared. He got up, circled the table, and kissed her firmly. “He gets easier with time. Hope you’ve got a while.”

On her way to the bathroom Colleen paused outside the door to Wallace’s den. She laid her palm against the door. She could feel his presence, but no thoughts beyond wisps of dream.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For Jeremy. For everything.”

* * * *

Immediately upon Colleen’s arrival at work, Norelle pounced on her with a demand for details. “You’re a monster, Col,” Norelle pronounced. “You send me a photo of a sexy dude and then you leave me dangling. Real friends don’t do that. You owe me, girl.”

“We had a great time. That’s pretty much it.”

“C’mon, Col. You can do better than ‘great.’”

Fine, let’s see. I spent the weekend in a three-way with a hunk and an undead guy. Did I mention vampires are trying to kidnap me?
Colleen smiled. “Sorry, Norelle. I don’t kiss and tell. You’ll just have to settle for ‘great.’”

“No way. What about his boyfriend? This is the gay guy, right?”

“He wasn’t as gay as he wanted me to think.” Her eyes twinkled. “Neither was his boyfriend.”

“What? Col, you didn’t—girl, you get your butt back here and spill or this poster paint is going right into your hair.”

That set the pattern for the week. By day Colleen taught preschoolers and dodged Norelle’s interrogations. Her nights she spent with Jeremy. Wallace would get up at sundown, grab a bite to eat, slap her ass and Jeremy’s crotch and take off into the night. He said he was looking for clues regarding the vampires. He could say whatever he wanted. Colleen’s psychic prickle begged to differ. For all that he seemed to want her, she got the impression he was avoiding her.

After work Thursday, she checked in with Jeremy then headed for the grocery store. Up to now, Jeremy had handled all the cooking. Colleen decided it was high time she said thank you with more than just bedroom gymnastics.

She kept her eye more on the sun than the clock and made it home just before dusk. The thought stopped her dead with her hand on the knob.
Home.
In less than a week “home” had become Jeremy’s smile and Wallace’s smirk, a man’s tender embrace and a vampire’s lusty growl. Her apartment, her actual home, already felt empty to her. How she’d ever go back to her drab single life she didn’t want to imagine.

Balancing the grocery bags, she fumbled the door open. Her psychic prickle clamped down on the greeting she’d been about to call out. Colleen sensed Wallace in the kitchen. If she strained, she could hear faint noises that had nothing to do with pre-dinner prep.

Jeremy’s kitchen, Wallace awake. Easy to add two and two.

Courtesy demanded she leave them alone. She could go upstairs, linger in the shower, and make a ton of noise coming back down. Then she caught Wallace’s growl and decided, screw courtesy. She wouldn’t deny she enjoyed watching them together. Wallace encouraged it, in fact. Freaking undead exhibitionist. With a mischievous smile lighting her face, Colleen set her grocery bags on the floor and crept to the kitchen doorway.

Two pots, a knife, and a bag of carrots lay abandoned on the counter. Colleen’s imagination set the scene—Jeremy at the counter, his back to the doorway, Wallace stalking his unsuspecting prey with his uncanny silent tread. Perhaps Jeremy had a moment of warning before his capture—a hint of scent, a whisper of lips against his neck. Or perhaps he was as attuned to the vampire’s presence as she was and always knew when his lover was near.

They’d ended up beside the kitchen table. Wallace stood behind Jeremy with his arms clasped tight around the human’s waist. His lips nuzzled Jeremy’s neck. Jeremy leaned into the embrace, his eyes shut, humming that low, throaty purr of his that always turned her on. No doubt Jeremy had loosened his shirt collar himself. His enjoyment of the vampire’s attentions made itself boldly known against the fabric of his slacks. Colleen stared at that tantalizing bulge, right up until the moment Wallace bit into Jeremy’s neck.

It wasn’t anything like the violent, melodramatic attacks depicted in vampire movies. His fangs sank into Jeremy’s flesh right over the mark on his neck in a smooth, unhurried movement that was gentle as a kiss. Perhaps this was a kiss to Wallace. His throat rippled with a single swallow before he lifted his mouth. He laved his tongue across the bite, as tender as a mother cat with her kitten. Not so much as a drop of blood escaped it. Jeremy melted against him with a whimper of pure bliss.