Authors: Tracy Cooper-Posey
“Christ, Alexander, what are you doing
to her?” Wyatt demanded from the doorway. “I can’t sleep for the
agony.”
Mia blinked the tears from her eyes.
Wyatt moved into the bathroom, still naked. He slid into the tub,
which was big enough for all three of them and plucked her away
from Alexander. “I heard ‘mourning’ and ‘widow’. Are you giving him
shit about when he died?”
She nodded, her eyes stinging again.
“He wants to know if I love him still. After all that.”
Alexander let out a deep breath.
“Wyatt—”
“If you’re about to say anything other
than ‘welcome to the discussion, Wyatt’, then just shut the fuck up
for a moment. I figure I’ve got as much of a stake in this as you,
now. I’m going to be changed by the bonding into something beyond
my control, for the good of humankind. If you agree on that much,
then you have to agree I have a right to stay here and your next
words had better be ‘welcome’.”
For several long heartbeats Alexander
was silent. Then he said mildly, “Welcome.”
Mia felt Wyatt draw a breath. “Thank
you.”
“I was saying—” Alexander began.
Wyatt lifted a hand. “Wait a second.
Can’t you feel how wound up Mia is?” He cuddled her closer.
Mia blinked, surprised. Even she had
not realized how hard her heart had been racing, or that her fists
were clenched so tightly. She made an effort to loosen them and
relax her muscles. These two men responded to how she felt at all
times. She had to control her reactions better. She had just woken
Wyatt.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured to Wyatt.
“It seems to me,” Wyatt continued,
“That you two have been hiding behind a lot of bullshit for far too
long. I don’t know all the details but I can guess a lot of it.
Mia, ten years ago, you had big brothers, right? Protective,
overbearing and probably gun-toting? Alexander, you were clearly
into something illegal that eventually got you executed Mafia
style. Both of you were sneaking around, keeping your mouths shut.
You’re still speaking in euphemisms and driving each other crazy.
Plain speaking would cut through a lot of it in about sixty
seconds. So how about it?”
“I don’t know if I’m capable of plain
speaking anymore,” Alexander said.
“I want that more than anything,” Mia
said longingly. “But only if you speak plainly too, Wyatt.”
He blinked, surprised.
Alexander laughed. “Do not ever
underestimate Mia, my friend.”
“Okay, fine.” Wyatt pointed at
Alexander. “Why didn’t you let Mia know you were alive after
Zachariah made you?”
Alexander sobered. “It was the price
for turning me. We are forbidden from revealing ourselves to humans
unless the human is to become a vampire, or is one of select
criteria, including hunters like yourself. The penalty is death of
the vampire and death of the human.”
Mia drew in an unsteady breath. Wyatt
had told her this within minutes of meeting her and she had
forgotten.
“Did you know this the night when you
came to see me, Alex?” she asked. The night he had taken her
virginity and proposed to her. She felt her clit throb. The memory
had stayed with her for a decade and influenced her heart and her
life.
Alexander shook his head. “I only knew
that Zachariah was a businessman in New York who spoke of new
opportunities and of starting over. He hadn’t revealed himself that
night. But gut instinct told him something was wrong and he came to
find me. He got there in time.”
Mia sat up. “You mean that was the
night you were…you
died
?” She felt Wyatt’s hands on her
shoulders, steadying her.
Alex nodded. “They picked me up on my
way back to the apartment from seeing you.” His gaze was
unwavering. “I knelt in that basement believing it was game over. I
didn’t know about Zachariah’s option then. All I could think about
with that gun against my head was you.” He drew a breath. “Then
they fired the gun and I woke a vampire and Zachariah explained
that I had a second chance to put things right…but that second
chance included never seeing you again.”
Mia knew she was crying but didn’t
care. What had it cost him to turn away from her this afternoon,
outside the elevator? Now she knew why he had asked his
question.
“Now you want to know if I still love
you,” she said, finishing the thought out loud.
“She does love you still,” Wyatt
said.
Alexander looked at him, his brow
lifting.
“While you were with Zachariah, Mia
told me she saw this bonding as a way to be with you forever. If
that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.” Wyatt shrugged. “Of the
three of us, Mia is the only one who hasn’t hesitated or questioned
whether she is going ahead with this. She knew as soon as she saw
you this afternoon that if there was any way to keep you in her
life, she was going to take it. This is the way. That makes her one
of the bravest people I’ve ever met, because I heard what Zack,
Lindál and Seaveth described tonight as well as she did and I’m
scared spitless.”
Mia turned to him. “Wyatt, no, don’t
be.” She cupped his face.
“Truth?” He looked at her and
Alexander. “The only thing that stops me from running into the
night screaming is you two, which is the scariest part of it.”
Alexander said quietly, “That it
happened so quickly?”
Wyatt nodded. “I know part of it is the
bonding. But not all of it. Mia, you’re so fucking beautiful it
makes my heart break. Alexander, I know you understand that, at
least.”
“At the very least,” Alexander agreed.
“Do you love her, Wyatt?”
“I’m already there, yes. Impossible as
it seems.” Wyatt’s black eyes were smoky with emotion. “It started
to happen when you held me while I was telling you about Julie.
Those two things have
never
happened, the telling and the
holding.”
“Finish the rest of your original
thought,” Alexander prompted.
“The rest of it?” Wyatt took a breath.
“That would be you.”
Mia’s heart pounded with the sudden
tension in the room.
Alexander’s gaze was steady, provoking
Wyatt into speaking again.
“I’ve never felt this way before. It’s
confusing. Especially with Mia.”
“You’ve never had male lovers before,”
Alex said calmly.
“No.” Wyatt sighed and relaxed. “Up
until now I considered myself aggressively heterosexual.”
“Sensuality is a broad subject,”
Alexander returned. “The bonding is making you more sensitive to
its wider aspects. Why worry about definitions? Just enjoy the
pleasure. I learned a long time ago—even before I became a
vampire—that people tend to slap labels on things and categorize in
order to feel better about themselves. So I stopped giving people
the information that allowed them to put the labels on me.” He
grinned. “Oh, some of the information leaked out. Women, men,
ménages, toys. But not enough to confirm anything and what did slip
out just confused things.”
Mia nodded. “I could never pin anything
down. The rumors I heard were vague. Dark.” She smiled.
“Exciting.”
Alexander’s smile broadened. “You see,
Wyatt? Don’t trouble yourself with labels. Has anything I’ve done
to you felt bad? Have you objected to any of it?”
Wyatt licked his lips. “No,” he
croaked.
“Then what happened—what will
happen—between the three of us is of our concern and no one
else’s.”
Wyatt nodded. “I can live with
that.”
“It’s how Zack and Lindál live with it,
I’m sure.”
“They’re lovers?”
“Not openly but I believe the bonding
has made them so, yes.” Alexander shrugged. “The signs are there if
you know what to look for but they don’t declare it publicly, so
I’ve never said anything. I doubt Diego, for instance, has
noticed.”
“Vampires and elves were mortal
enemies,” Wyatt breathed.
“And you thought all vampires were
worth less than spit,” Alexander reminded him. “I think the forces
that work behind this bonding process turn our weaknesses against
us and make them our strengths.”
“What’s your weakness then?” Wyatt
asked.
Alexander shrugged, as if the answer
was self-evident. “Mia. She got me killed once. I’d die for her
again, if I could. Once this bonding process is done, Wyatt, I have
a feeling that you will be part of that equation too.”
Wyatt drew a deep breath.
“Too much truth for you?” Mia asked
him.
He glanced at her. “Yes,” he admitted.
“After being alone for so long, being suddenly included and so
deeply….” He stood, streaming water and reached for a towel. “Let’s
finish this,” he said roughly.
“Are you sure?” Alexander asked,
sitting up.
Mia’s heart raced and her pulse leapt.
She stood too. “I’m ready,” she said, although she wasn’t entirely
sure she spoke the truth. But then she looked at Alexander and knew
she
was
ready to stay with him for as long as fate would let
her, no matter what it took. She took a breath. “Let’s do
this.”
Mia’s heart began to hammer as she
climbed the stairs to the big loft that was Alexander’s bedroom,
wrapped in Alexander’s bathrobe. The room he used to store clothes
and personal possessions but not for sleeping, for Alexander did
not sleep.
There was a king-sized bed with a
mussed cover in a deep russet color and tossed pillows. Wyatt had
been there. She was about to ask why Alexander had a bed at all but
realized that the bed was the same as all the other human props—it
allowed him to blend in with humans and go unremarked among
them.
Alexander was behind her and her pace
must have slowed, for his hands fell on her hips. Then he scooped
her up from behind as she took her second pace into the room.
“Wedding jitters?” he asked.
“Didn’t we just do the wedding?” she
asked. “This feels more like honeymoon nerves.”
“Let’s fix that.” He laid her on the
bed and kissed her, then drew the oversized robe open. “I’m buying
you a robe in your size. You look like Orphan Annie in mine and the
closest I’ve ever seen you to looking like a genuine
sixteen-year-old.”
Wyatt chuckled as he climbed onto the
bed. “All you’re missing is a pout.”
“I’ve never pouted in my life.” Mia was
already responding to the two men poised on either side of her. Her
breasts were heavy with promise, the tips swollen and sensitive.
Her pussy pulsed.
“Mia just loses her temper and throws
things. Learn Spanish, Wyatt. You’ll have need of it,” Alexander
said. He eased the robe from her and tossed it to the floor. Now
they were all naked, Alex and Wyatt would see her erect nipples and
that her pussy already gleamed with excess juices.
Then she remembered that Alexander
could have smelled her arousal from across the room and both men
could feel her responses. She could hide nothing from them.
Mia relaxed. They were aware of her
state already and they were both looking at her with a hungry gleam
in their eyes.
“Spanish, hmm?” Wyatt murmured.
“
Venga
aquí,
” he told Mia and instead of making her
come to him as he’d ordered, he picked her up. He was on his knees,
his legs spread and made her straddle his thighs. He kissed her,
one warm hand on her ass, the other in her hair, his tongue
thrusting into her mouth.
Mia fell into the kiss. She could feel
Alexander’s warmth behind her, then his hands on her back, then her
ass, sliding into her cleft and soaking up her cream.
She gasped into Wyatt’s mouth, breaking
the kiss. Wyatt smiled against her lips and calmly began to kiss
and nibble his way along her mouth and face, her jawline, her ears
and neck, while Alexander stroked her exposed cleft from clit to
ass, sparing not a single inch.
Mia writhed in Wyatt’s arms, moaning
and gasping at Alexander’s probing touch. When he had traversed her
entire length, Wyatt and Alexander turned her around so that she
was facing Alexander, her thighs once more spread across Wyatt’s
legs, her back against his chest.
Her breath was unsteady as she looked
at Alex. She trembled.
Alex’s cock was a deep red and his eyes
looked sleepy with arousal.
“Fuck me, please,” she whispered.
Alexander lifted her hips and she felt
Wyatt’s hands beneath her, supporting her, too.
Alex’s cock pushed against her cunt
lips and she sucked in a deep breath, choppy with nearly unbearable
excitement. “Now,” she pleaded. “Hard.”
He shook his head. “I want to feel
every fraction of an inch. I want to remember it.” He eased his way
into her so slowly she could feel the tissues of her pussy parting,
the hot walls separating, pulsing around the turgid head of his
cock and gripping the shaft, the elastic entrance trying to tighten
around him. Mia felt her control jitter apart as Alexander’s cock
finally came to rest inside her. She clawed at him, her clitoris
throbbing.
“Oh God, please just fuck me,” she
begged.
His eyes were dark, the blue almost
totally consumed by the irises and she realized that the animal,
the vampire, was very close to the surface. “Wyatt?” she
whispered.
“He’s in control,” Wyatt murmured by
her ear. “He’s just wanted to fuck you for so long that he’s
dropped into sensory overload. Animal instincts. He’s running on
pure feelings.” He kissed her neck. “Let yourself go. You’ll love
it, and I’m here.”
Mia hooked her arm around Alex’s neck
and took a breath. “Fuck me,” she demanded and bit his neck.
His answering growl was accompanied by
a deep, hard thrust of his cock that caught her breath. His hands
tightened on her hips and his cock pumped in and out of her. She
could feel her pussy caressing it as it slid in and out with each
stroke. Because of the angle Alex held her hips every time he
buried himself to the hilt his pelvis pushed up against her
hyper-alert, swollen and moist clit peeping beyond its hood.
Silvery sparks would flare. Deep pleasure was building. She was
going to climax.