Grave Chance Page 5

  Both men made sounds of pleasure, and my own pleasure continued to soar to new heights as silken flesh slid in and out of me in perfect time. It began more insistent and less gentle as Cole dug his fingers into my hips and picked up his pace, too close to the edge of the abyss to stop or slow down.

  Ethan finally met my eyes for a beat, then I lost him to his orgasm, his head falling back. He gasped and his cock pulsed and throbbed in my mouth as I swallowed convulsively to capture all of him.

  I reached back and put my hand over Cole’s, encouraging him to dig his nails in harder, but he was already cresting the wave of his own pleasure. He held himself inside me as I tried to divide my attention between them, lost to the sensation of one cock still throbbing inside my mouth, the other filling my pussy as Cole followed Ethan’s climax with his own.

  Cole slipped his hand between my legs to push me over the edge as Ethan released my hair, letting me take a deep breath before my own orgasm crashed into me and pushed me to the bed, my arms and legs turned to jelly.

  I collapsed on my side and watched Cole cup Ethan, still partially hard, in his hand and kiss him, pushing him to the bed and sliding up over his body to hold him there as he struggled out of his shirt, tugging it over his head and throwing it to one side with a growl.

  Their legs entangled, Cole drew me to them, his tongue still lashing at the inside of Ethan’s mouth in a kiss that was need and passion without tenderness, until he’d taken his fill. He leaned up on his arms and looked down at us, grinning.

  “I’m ready for round two. I think this time; Ethan and I should flip a coin to see who takes Vexa’s spot.”

  Ethan blanched for a moment and swallowed hard. “I’ll try.”

  But Cole chuckled again and dropped a quick, affectionate kiss on his nose. “No, I think I should.” He reached between them and gave Ethan a gentle squeeze. “We’ve got plenty of time to break you in, and you’ve got more experience giving our Vexa what she likes.”

  Our Vexa. My heart soared at those two words like nothing else I’d ever heard. Sure, getting to watch my men together while they made me orgasm repeatedly sounded like the best way to spend an evening, like ever. But knowing that I was theirs, and they were mine, brought an overwhelming joy I couldn’t express any other way than to make love to them both. So round two it was.

  Chapter 6

  It took a few blissful minutes to catch my breath, curled up between Ethan and Cole, our legs all intertwined as Ethan sprawled away from Cole and me, while Cole spooned me, one arm thrown across me to touch Ethan's hip.

  We kept the bedroom lights low, but they still glowed over Ethan’s bare skin

  “Hot,” Ethan muttered, but his tone suggested he wasn’t suggesting he was ready for round three. He shifted a little, so more of his body was free from our post-coitus cuddling.

  Cole poked his head up as his hand slipped off Ethan’s side. “Hey. You’re not getting wolfish, are you?” I understood Cole’s concern. With everything we’d been through, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that Ethan’s broken curse was just a dream. It would not be a good time to find out we’d been wrong all this time about what had caused it.

  But Ethan was just…Ethan, lean and cut and (at the moment) covered in marks both Cole and I had made during our lovemaking.

  Ethan grumbled and rolled over to face us. “Nope, just getting hot. Aren’t you necromancers supposed to be cold-blooded?” He was still accepting of himself and us, still human, still yummy as hell…and apparently overheated from both the exertion of our threesome and the extra body heat from all of us sharing a bed.

  “We’re not vampires, Ethan,” I scoffed, and he flashed a sleepy, contented grin. “You sure? Because somebody bit me, and I can still feel it.”

  Cole half-raised his arm. “That was Vexa…unless it’s the one on your ass. I couldn’t help myself, it looked so fucking tasty.”

  “Right,” Ethan chuckled. “I certainly didn’t mind. I may have done my fair share of damage.” He stretched luxuriously. “How amazing that I didn’t have to control myself at all.”

  I trailed a finger down his exposed stomach to his thigh and under the sheet that still twisted around his legs. “I liked watching you let go completely.”

  Ethan pulled the sheet up over his thigh, starting a tug of war over it as I clung to the hem and refused to let him cover himself. “Please don’t hide from me. Not now.”

  He let go of his edge with a shy smile, then his expression turned thoughtful. “I suppose I don’t have to hide anymore, from anyone.” He chewed his lip as he watched me carefully. “Maybe it’s time for me to go home and mend things there.”

  “Wait.” I sat up and glared down at Ethan, and Cole made a sound of complaint as my heel dug into his thigh. “Sorry.” I shifted and returned to glowering darkly at Ethan. “What do you mean, maybe it’s time to go home?”

  He sighed and tried to pull me back down, snuggling back into our naked puppy pile. “Don’t get me wrong, I like not turning into a slobbering, ravenous wolf, but now I have nothing to add to the group as far as magical ability. Maybe it’s time for me to go home and see what I can do about fixing shit with my parents. An explanation, at least, for why I’ve been gone.”

  "A; I thought home was with me so I might be taking this personally. But, B; why now? Why ten seconds after we prove that we all work together, would you decide that you're gonna bail on us?"

  Cole sighed and disentangled himself from me, sitting up so he could see us both. “My parents have asked me to come talk to them eventually, too, Vex. I wasn’t planning on leaving until I knew you were safe from Aethon, of course, but…”

  "But I'd better get used to the idea of being alone again because you're both leaving me." Suddenly I was hyper-aware of my own nakedness. I jerked the satin sheet away from both of them and tucked it under my armpits, covering myself as much as I could. "Fuck your timing, both of you."

  Ethan touched my knee. “I didn’t mean to make you mad, Vexa. I’ve been thinking about the day I could go back and face them for a long time, ever since we learned we might be able to stop the curse.”

  I started to pull away and stopped. "I know. I'm sorry. I have no idea how you expected me to react to finally being with you both together, and then this is the pillow talk?”

  Ethan slipped his hand under the sheet and gently stroked my thigh, his calluses raising gooseflesh all over my body in spite of my mood. “I don’t want to leave you, Vexa. But my family needs to see me as I am.”

  “And I don’t want to stop you from being with your family. God, I know how lucky I am that I have one to go home to. But…”

  Cole said what I didn't want to. "But they're the ones that made you hate yourself, to begin with, right?"

  I nodded. “You were so happy a few minutes ago, we all were. How do you stop them from sending you down the same rabbit hole of self-loathing they shoved you into in the first place? You’ve changed, and I’m so happy for you. There’s no guarantee that they have, and let’s face it, bigoted minds are difficult to change.”

  Ethan had no answer for that, he just kept up the slow circles on my back, trying to coax me into being calm.

  “I don’t think anyone should leave until the fight is won.” Cole played with his fingers in his lap, not meeting my eyes. “It’s safer together, magic or no. But after we’ve stopped Aethon for good, and the world is back to being a regular old shithole, instead of a mystically fucked one, what’s next?”

  “What do you mean, what’s next?” I tugged the sheets up over my breasts. Suddenly, I felt more naked than I had just a few minutes before. “Don’t we want to at least try for a happily ever after?”

  Ethan sighed and gave up rubbing my leg, and sat up all the way, staring morosely ahead at the wall. “Come on, Vex. Do you really think once the imminent danger is gone, we’ll still have anything to hold on to?”

  His question was jarring. It was the one fear I hadn't had, that with Aet
hon's threat removed we'd have nothing left to keep us together. Aethon defeated, and Ethan's curse removed were literally the only things on my ‘how to make the world work' list.

  “I was hoping that would be when all this got even better,” I confessed. “I’ve had so much doubt, so many fears that once you accepted yourself, you’d just leave, and the moment I let go of them, you make them come true. How the fuck am I supposed to feel about that?”

  Cole shrugged, "you have to admit, there's something about feeling your own mortality to make you feel like you'd better do everything you ever wanted before it's too late."

  "Well fuck you, Cole. I didn't go into this like I was checking something off my bucket list, and frankly, I don't think you did either. I kicked him from under the blankets, and he caught my foot and placed it on his thigh, rubbing it through the bedding.

  “I don’t think either of us ever wants to leave you, Vexa, or each other. But you’ve got to admit, once we don’t have danger pushing us together constantly, and the threat of death hanging over us to cancel out caution or thought of consequences, real life’s going to get in the way.”

  “Fine. There will be challenges. But you’re both suggesting trashing this like some failed experiment. We’re not an experiment, and my love isn’t something I give out so easily that I’m cool with hearing you’re done with me now.”

  “Oh, no. I could never just be done with you,” Ethan sighed, offering me his hand. “But you’ve been protecting me a lot. I don’t want that kind of thing.”

  “But you’d protect me, right?”

  “To the death.” He shrugged and gave me a wan smile.

  I nodded and glanced at Cole, who simply nodded in agreement and reached for my other hand. With my fingers entwined with theirs, I looked at each of them in turn. “So, we just made love, and you’re both content to kick ‘us’ to the curb for some sexist ideal of ‘me, Tarzan, you, Jane. And you’re both okay with all of this ending just for your masculine pride?” I dropped their hands and slid off the bed. “If that’s all it takes for you to want to be rid of me, then why would I even bother to argue? You never really loved me anyway.”

  Ethan opened his mouth to argue, then closed it without a word. Hurt and angry, I tugged on my clothes and stormed out the door before Cole decided to forego caution and make things worse. Who needs an ancient, insane ancestor to ruin your life when you've got boyfriends, anyway?

  Chapter 7

  I stomped down the first hallway, but by the time I’d made my third left and was beginning to worry I’d gotten myself lost again, the anger had drained from me, leaving me raw and sad.

  “This fucking house hates me.” I turned to my right and took the stairs that led down, finding myself in the kitchen. “Or maybe it was just figuring out what I really needed?” I dug through the high end, very modern double fridge until I found a pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream in the freezer. The first drawer I opened held silverware, and I grabbed a spoon and wriggled my butt up onto the counter.

  I dug into the fudgy, banana goodness and tried to forget that a floor (or two) above me two of my favorite people in the world were already planning their exit interviews.

  I put the half-eaten ice cream back in the freezer and set the lone spoon in the sink, wondering if the moment I left, it would wash itself and tuck itself back into the drawer. I climbed the stairs to a different hallway than had been there before and headed toward the flickering light playing on the wall ahead of me that indicated a fireplace nearby.

  Gwydion was still sitting by his fire, drinking something that was akin to the whiskey I'd drunk at Julius' bar if my whiskey had been full of shadows and light that played off one another and moved under the surface of the liquid like the tumbler held something alive.

  "Hey, Gwyd. Are you still in the mood to be left alone?"

  “Not particularly. Have you realized that the company you chose was too limited to satisfy?”

  I dropped into the other chair that faced the fire and shot him a dirty look. "The company was fine until it wasn't." I cupped my face in my hands and gathered myself, tucking my emotions away to unpack them later. "Is it too much to ask for you to feel generous and compassionate for a moment?"

  “You may always ask, though you understand I will not always give it.”

  I laughed and met his gaze. “But if you hadn’t been among humans so long, would you give it at all?”

  He gave me an elegant shrug. “Perhaps. But you are not here to ask me about my predilection for being far too generous with humankind.” He looked at me like he knew what I was going to say next but waited patiently as I stared into the fire to gather my thoughts.

  “The guys want to leave after we defeat Aethon. I mean, I guess I should be glad that they feel we will defeat him, but I don’t agree that the struggle is the only thing holding us together.”

  He nodded. "The honeymoon is over so quickly? You, humans, have so little stamina."

  I bristled a little at the patronizing tone. “They want to go back to the lives they ran from, to face their fears, not to run away from me.”

  “Ah.” He stood and offered me his hand. “Come with me.”

  Reluctantly I obeyed, letting him pull me to my feet. “It was just a question. I don’t think it requires one of your Fae artifacts to answer.”

  He chuckled and led me down a hallway I’d never seen before, filled with sculptures and art from both the Fae and humans. “You’re asking a question without an answer, Vexa. Some great loves from across the ages were founded in a quest or conflict, and some were torn apart by the same.”

  “But if we’re as willing to work at being happy as we are at being alive, everything will be fine.”

  “Very few humans are willing to work at being alive as hard as you have been, let alone their love.” He pointed to a painting of a woman, beautiful and strong, standing alone at the prow of an old schooner. “There’s a reason why so many compelling women throughout human art and history are pictured alone.”

  “You’re speaking of men who are only strong by comparison. But that isn’t Cole or Ethan. They’ve fought their share of demons, metaphorical and literal, and come out on top. They know they’re strong. Until tonight, this power, the strength I borrow from the candle hasn’t bothered them at all.”

  “But they saw what the candle is supposed to do to someone who taps into its power, and what happens to you. You are far stronger than I think anyone has realized until now. The more you grow, the more you will alienate the others.”

  But Ethan had no reason to want magical power or to be envious of mine. His need was simple. He wanted to his family to accept him, now that he knew he wasn't the monster they'd led him to believe. What really scared me was the same thing Gwyd had forced out of me to free me from the demon door not so long ago. It worried me that they'd leave together, and I'd be the one left alone.

  Gwyd had heard my confessions already. He knew it was on my mind, and there was no reason to repeat it to him, it was humiliating and pissed me off that I couldn’t help feeling that way.

  Instead, I stared up at the painting of the aristocratic redhead, one hand on the hip of her medieval gown, the other on the pommel of a sword that rested point down on the stone floor. She was staring out of the painting at some distant point on a horizon only she could see with calculating blue eyes.

  Eyes that weren’t too far from the blue eyes I’d helped to snuff the light out of a few hours before. Poor Aunt Percy. She fought as hard and as long as she could, I know it. The thing that kidnapped Cole’s parents and became a monster was Aethon using her as a puppet, not the real her.

  “Gwyd, is there a point where the cost is just too high for what we’re doing?”

  He led me down the hall to another painting. This one I knew, the famous Sunday Afternoon on the Island by Georges Seurat. It was an idyllic scene, people walking, picnicking, and playing by the water on a sunny day.

  “I don’t suppose that’s a print
, is it?”

  He gave me a long look without answering, one eyebrow arched nearly to his hairline.

  "Never mind. What's the point of showing me this one? That without us, these kinds of scenes will cease to exist? That the balance of life for billions is worth more than the lives, we may lose in the process? I know that already. But right now, looking at losing Cole and Ethan, my aunt's death, when does winning start to feel good?"

  “That, I cannot answer for you. But the balance of life and death is the most important law I have seen for humanity. It is your mortality that spurs your art and science and technological advancements.”

  I sighed and leaned companionably against his arm. “That’s true. Would we accomplish anything if the clock wasn’t ticking against us?”

  We continued down what seemed an endless corridor of treasures and Gwydion shared stories of his friendships with authors and artists long dead. He knew the history of every piece, and his affection for humanity seemed more apparent than ever as he spoke.

  His animation and excitement about what he believed was the best part of humanity only grew as the art changed from renaissance portraits and scenes to images and figures from his own legends and the mythology of the Fae.

  “My God, Gwyd. If professors were as interesting to listen to as you, no one would ever drop out of college again.” I pointed to an image I knew to be Titania, but not the queen I’d met when we were tricked into entering Tir Na Nog and almost captured by the impulsive and sometimes cruel leader. “I am interested in why she’s up here.”

  “She is a queen, Vexa. She deserves respect for her position and her leadership. Our ways of governing repulse you, but Titania is exactly who she wishes to be, and she is loved and feared by her people, ofttimes simultaneously. Can you speak honestly and tell me that holds no attraction for you?”

  “If I said it, it would be a lie. How could it not be? To have enough power to protect the ones I love and stop evil from winning is like a dream right now.”