Jory Strong: Inked Destiny

Etaín stood naked in the shower, hot water and the heat of the men on either side of her eradicating most of the chill that lingered following her rescue from the Harlequin Rapist. “I could get used to this,” she said, eyes closed to savor the sensation of masculine hands gliding over slick flesh.

The truth of their feelings was a hum against her senses. They might have ensnared her equally but their call differed. With Cathal it was raw sensuality and fierce imperative, while Eamon was the attraction of like to like.

Had she once truly believed she was okay with casual sex and lack of permanence? Before Cathal and Eamon had come into her life, true intimacy had been impossible.

Skin didn’t lie to her. It was her gift, her curse, to be able to touch the eyes inked into her palms to skin and not only see another’s memories, but take them. She shivered, because now that gift was changing and her control of it failing.

Cathal and Eamon were safe where others weren’t. She shivered again, harder, at thinking about how close she’d come to having to use her gift on the Harlequin Rapist to save herself.

“It’s over,” Eamon murmured, his hard cock pressed to her ass and lower back while Cathal’s was a heated announcement of need against her belly.

“Thanks to the two of you.”

If not for the tattoos—infused with Eamon’s magic—that she’d put on Cathal’s arms, creating a bond that allowed them to find her, even now her existence would be marked by cycles of torture and rape.

“Parker won’t be able to put off taking a report.” They were lucky no one of superior rank had been among the first responders. As an FBI taskforce member, her brother’s permission to leave had allowed them to escape.

“We’ll find a safe truth when the time comes,” Eamon said.

She opened her eyes, taking in Cathal’s good looks, short dark hair and the ever-present stubble that came with being Black Irish. Opposite to Eamon’s long blond hair and smooth chest.

Until they’d come into her life, sex had been a safety valve, a way to release some hidden buildup of pressure from too much touch, too many bodies inked. And now…

It was so much more. Looking back, she was torn between amusement, for thinking it would be easy to enjoy them and walk away afterward, and fear when it came to what the future held.

Because of Cathal she’d been made an accessory to four murders. There would be a fifth when his father and his uncle caught up with the last boy who’d been involved in the drugging and rape of two sixteen-year-old girls. This wasn’t behind them. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

She slid her hands down Cathal’s naked back, pressed kisses along his throat. His eyes remained closed and she knew the cause. He didn’t want to see Eamon on the other side of her.

I’m not a man to share when I’m serious about a woman.

Then don’t get serious about me.

She’d warned him, but still a fist formed around her heart, squeezing at the threat he might come to regret his involvement with her, that in the end, he might walk away, unable to handle sharing her.

Her hand brushed over his hip on its way to curl around his hardened length. “I want you. I want you both. Let’s go to bed.”

They left the shower.

Cathal took the towel from her, sliding it over her body, lingering over breasts capped with dark pink nipples. Within days of meeting her she’d become the beat of his heart, the relentless, molten pour of lust pumped directly into his bloodstream so that time away from her had become the crawl of eons.

Her lips curved with knowing. “Like what you see?” she asked, echoing the question he’d issued when first joining her in the shower.

“Definitely.” He’d like it even more when sight was accompanied by taste and scent and the touch of skin to skin.

A murmured command from Eamon and a warm, unnatural breeze swirled to life around them, smelling of tropical winds, drying shower-wet hair, though raising chill bumps on Cathal’s flesh. Magic again. Eamon’s again. So casually and easily summoned it made Cathal’s heart race with something other than need for Etaín, with a hard-wired fear accompanied by a sense of foreboding.

“Show-off,” he said, hearing the growl beneath the joking tone he’d tried for.

Eamon’s smile was the white flash of shark’s teeth, his amusement a deadly thing. “Feeling threatened?”

Cathal bared his teeth in response, a reaction he’d been fighting from the first instant Eamon had made his interest in Etaín known.

“Boys, boys,” Etaín said, the label turning the tide of hostility and unintentionally uniting them in common purpose.

“Is that how you think of us?” Eamon asked, hands going around to cup breasts capped with nipples that hardened instantly, the sight of them sending a throbbing pulse through Cathal’s cock. “As boys and not men?”

Her laugh was a hot, fisted squeeze around Cathal’s dick. “Less flattering to call you junkyard dogs fighting over a hunk of meat, even if you’re gorgeous enough to be paraded around a show ring.”

Eamon’s thumbs brushed across her nipples, causing a hitch in her breath, and her back to arch in an offering Cathal could no more resist than had it been a summons. The towel in his hands fell to the floor.

They’d shared her once before. On that night, too, Eamon had stood behind her, hands on her bare breasts. Daring him to join the two of them, inviting him, and he’d crossed the distance like a man drunk on lust, a man compelled…

By magic. He sensed it now, but it didn’t fog his head this time any more than being alone with a naked Etaín did.

Cathal bent, capturing a nipple between his lips and laving it with his tongue. Satisfaction was a hot surge through his cock at her soft moan of pleasure, at the way her hands speared into his hair, holding him against her breast as she pulled away from Eamon in an effort to give herself more fully to him.

It made him harder, hungrier, touching on primal, competitive instincts she’d no doubt claim reached back to the caveman days when strength and prowess and victory determined who fathered the next generation. He wanted it all with her. He’d agreed to come here, tonight, and he wouldn’t lie to himself—Eamon’s presence didn’t diminish the desire. But tomorrow was another day.

It’d grate on his nerves, those nights she spent with Eamon, but he’d welcome those he had alone with her. And he intended to have them.

Etaín could feel the hum of Cathal’s resistance even as she felt the heat of his lust joined to hers. She could know his exact thoughts if she desired it.

Don’t think, just feel, she wanted to tell him. This can work. I need it to work.

Desire burned her from the inside out, a hunger for both men that transcended the physical. She moaned as pleasure moved through her, a coiling turbulent wave going from breasts to clit.

Cathal’s sucks, the pull of his mouth on her nipple, were echoed by the tug and twist and tightening of Eamon’s fingers on the other areola as he kissed upward along her neck, pausing to nuzzle her earlobe.

More. Everything. That’s what she wanted. What she craved.

She reached backward and grasped the long strands of Eamon’s hair as Cathal kissed downward, his tongue tracing the rim of her belly button, dipping in then moving lower. If she had more willpower when it came to him, she would protest, telling him to wait until they were stretched out on the bed. Instead she parted her thighs in invitation, whispered yes the instant his lips captured her clit.