"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 h.e.l.l, but she couldn't say that without explaining what he'd been running from. And it didn't matter anyway. Alec was a d.a.m.n 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?"

"d.a.m.n near. You were lying beside me, naked and hot as h.e.l.l. 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 s.e.xy 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.u.c.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 s.e.x. 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 s.e.x, Alec. And I'm inexperienced. It would be embarra.s.sing 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 naked?"

"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."

"f.u.c.k, yeah. Me, too."

"I want to hold you. I love how soft the skin of your c.o.c.k 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 b.u.t.ton 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.

"d.a.m.n, that feels good," Alec gasped. "You suck c.o.c.k 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 p.r.i.c.kling wave, the Novium burning through her in double time, yet she felt closer to him than ever before. An o.r.g.a.s.m hovered just out of reach. Through no physical manipulation at all, she was about to climax 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 climax. 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 s.e.xual 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!

f.u.c.k, 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 o.r.g.a.s.m 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 o.r.g.a.s.mic 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 c.o.c.k. 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 hips 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 climax 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.u.c.king killing me. If you were here, I'd have my mouth between your legs, tonguing your c.l.i.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 p.r.i.c.kled.

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 pa.s.sion, 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 s.e.x. 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. They each wrapped around her, their mental embraces as heated and pa.s.sionate as their physical ones. But she was divided and untrained, torn by guilt and confusion. She lacked the sheer strength and knowledge required to see into their souls the way they'd seen into hers. Still, Eve tried to probe their minds even as her fingers delved between her thighs. She moaned as she pushed two fingers inside, feeling how hot and swollen she was, how desperate and greedy. Both men growled in unison, feeling her pleasure as she felt theirs.

It seemed as if there was no separation between them. She felt Alec's strong fingers wrapped around his c.o.c.k, pumping with unrestrained ferocity. She felt Izzie's lips and tongue around Reed, felt the rhythmic suction and drenching heat.

But mentally, she was the deliverer of both forms of pleasure. The two men saw her in their minds' eyes, a revelation that caused tears to blind her.

Eve . . .

Which one spoke, she couldn't discern. The voice was too guttural, too coa.r.s.e from the knife's edge of o.r.g.a.s.m. Suddenly, the hand between her legs wasn't hers. It was theirs. Both of them. Together. Spreading her, stroking her, filling her.

Her resulting climax devastated her, bringing a cry to her lips that was lost in the conjoined roar of their o.r.g.a.s.ms. In that moment, at the height of pleasure, there was no distinction between them. They were one, a triumvirate of souls. She melted, crying both inside and out, her skin so hot her sweat steamed off it. It wasn't until the first brutal surge had pa.s.sed that she realized their transient embraces weren't meant to cherish but to restrain. As she struggled to explore them while the singular connection existed, they bound her tightly. Too tightly. Preventing her from looking deeper. Their history was behind her, an open book. But their futures-their hopes, dreams, and motivations-were beyond, and they wouldn't allow her to see them.

What are you hiding? her two halves asked, their voices an eerie chorus that sent a shiver down her spine. She lost her grip on her phone. Her marked reflexes kicked in, enabling her to withdraw her hand from her jeans and fumble for the cell within the blink of an eye. As she struggled to make the catch, she took several stumbling steps down the hall before slipping into the guest bedroom where she'd spent the night. Eve held herself flush against the wall, reeling from an encounter she could only liken to a mental menage a trois. Gulping in air, she was arrested by the vortex of emotions that swirled through all three of them. Alec was sick with jealousy, Reed was tormented by guilt, and she . . . she felt an all-pervasive confusion. What the h.e.l.l had just happened to them?

Inside Eve, something shifted and solidified. Time pa.s.sed without her registering it. It wasn't until she heard Izzie's quick, light footsteps pa.s.s the open doorway followed by Reed's heavier, more arrogant stride that she realized they had finished and were leaving. In her hand, her cell phone vibrated, urging her to answer. Seven missed calls, the display read, and she hadn't felt a one. She turned the phone off, shoved it into her pocket, and refastened her jeans.

The comfort of her waistband reminded her-she'd left her gun on the living room floor. Galvanized, Eve darted out of the bedroom. She was halted by a collision with a steely chest.

"Let go, Reed."

Part of her took comfort in his need to see her. Another part resisted the lying in wait. Perhaps that was all she was to him and Alec, a prize to be won.

He held fast. "It's too late for that now."

Eve opened her mouth to protest, but was silenced by a piercing female scream.

"s.h.i.t," she breathed.

"Stay here," Reed ordered, shifting out of the room.

Running to the living room, Eve dug through the backpacks looking for her gun, missing the feeling of safety the weapon imparted.

A shout. This one male, but not Reed's.