Chapter Fifteen

Take Me Somewhere Better

 

Frank Crawford handed me a key. “Shower and bed waiting for you, Sinclair.”

I automatically reached out to take the key, but Angus stopped me with a hand on my wrist. “No.”

Frank watched me for a few seconds, and when I didn’t argue, he shrugged and slid the key back into his pocket. His eyes were glassy, the lines on his pale face a little deeper, and he looked thinner, as though he’d lost a few pounds overnight.

“You need to get some sleep,” I told him. The man ran himself ragged. As far as I could tell, he never slept, ate, or took time to recover from anything. And I had a frustrating desire to take care of him.

Then a couple of detectives came to hurry him away, and I knew he wasn’t going to find himself a bed or a hot meal. He was just going to work until he fell over.

“Frank,” I called, as he walked away with the other two men.

He glanced back over his shoulder. “Yes?”

But what did I want to say? Go home, rest, lie down, eat? I wasn’t his mother. I felt heat climb my cheeks. “Just…I’ll be back tonight.”

He nodded and turned back around, and then I remembered what Himself had asked me to do. “Frank!”

He stiffened, then turned toward me again, his eyes narrowed. I could feel Angus, Clayton, and Shane staring at me, but I ignored them.

“Sinclair, what is it?”

I straightened my shoulders. “Can you get me a meeting with the mayor?”

He glanced around at the bloody streets, then nodded slowly. “I’ll do my best.”

And that time when he walked away, I let him go.

When we arrived back at the way station, I headed for the shower to wash away the blood and grime of the night. The others would do the same.

And we would need to plan. I’d talk with Amias in Willow-Wisp later, and I’d need to meet again with Himself. The rifters had to have a weakness. They had to. And we needed an army.

But when I was nearly finished with my shower, Shane climbed in with me.

He said nothing. Neither did I.

His hair was slicked back, still wet—he’d already had his shower. But then, getting clean wasn’t on his mind.

Quietly, and with just a touch of exhausted desperation, we stared at each other. How far we’d come in such a short time. When I’d first met Shane Copas, I hadn’t liked him. He hadn’t liked me, either.

He’d been a complete jerk.

But now…

Now he was just the perfect amount of jerk.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked me.

He was dark, my hunter—I could feel it as surely as I could feel my own darkness. The night had kicked all our asses.

“Memories,” I said. “Memories of you.”

“What do you need, baby hunter?” He skimmed my cheek with his lips.

I shuddered. “I need to get out of my head. Take me somewhere better, Shane.”

He slid his fingers up my chest. “You got it.” He grabbed my throat and held me in place while he kissed me, hard and deep, his violence, always there, always retrained—except when he fought and sometimes when he fucked—fighting to get free.

As soon as his fingers encircled my throat, squeezing gently, my entire body relaxed.

I didn’t know why. It just was.

I lost myself in his roughness, his intensity. I pulled him to me, my hands pressing against his wet, smooth back, loving him with every part of me. God, I loved him.

Someone else was in the bathroom.

I could feel him.

I dragged my mouth away from Shane’s and peered over his shoulder.

Clayton, dressed in a pair of faded jeans and nothing else, leaned against the sink, his arms crossed, watching us.

Alone.

“Clayton,” I whispered.

Shane stiffened and half turned, then buried his fingers in my short hair and tugged, bringing my eyes back to his. Whatever he saw made his fierce stare soften.

He planted a soft kiss on my forehead, then shoved open the shower doors. “You okay, man?”

I felt a twinge of guilt for having left Clayton alone after his traumatic encounter with the demon’s sword.

With Miriam.

His eyes were dark and sunken, and I realized then how much the encounter had affected him. He shuddered, remembering, and though he stared at Shane and me, I wasn’t sure he was seeing either of us.

Concerned, I stepped from the stall, wrapped my wet arms around his neck, and asked him the question Shane had asked me. “What do you need?”

He focused on my face. “I need control of that sword, Trinity.”

As much as Miriam was obsessed with him, he was obsessed with her. I blew out a hard breath. “I know.” If he controlled the sword, the sword could not control him.

Shane shut off the water and followed me from the shower. He placed a fluffy towel around my shoulders, then shrugged. “You want the sword, we’ll get you the sword.”

I released Clayton’s tense body and stepped back, then caught his hand and laced my fingers with his.

He gave my fingers a squeeze. “Thanks. Both of you.”

Shane, completely comfortable with his nudity—and his flagging erection—gave the other man a nod. “We’ve got your back.”

“Sorry for…” Clayton gestured at the shower. “Interrupting.”

They took my breath, the two of them. Watching them, my mouth dried up, my heart galloped, and my stomach tightened. Shane had awakened my lust monster in the shower, and I really wanted him to finish what he’d started.

The air grew suddenly heavy, and both men jerked their heads around to pin me with sharp stares.

No one moved.

Usually, sex wasn’t awkward. We’d always managed to find our alone time, and no one was left out or neglected.

But now both men watched me, both of them aroused. Both of them in need. And I wanted them both.

I let the towel slide from my body. Then, without a word, I padded from the bathroom, walked across the floor, and got into my bed.

And there I waited.

Shane climbed in a few seconds later. He pressed his warmth against me and glided his fingers across my ribs, then covered one of my breasts with his hand, his rough palm sliding across the nipple.

I shivered and turned to face him, closing my eyes as I brushed his lips with mine.

Then my eyes flew open as the bed dipped. Clayton climbed in behind me, snaked his arm around my waist, and pressed his erection against my ass.

“Oh,” I managed.

Shane’s eyes glittered but he didn’t smile. “We’ll get you out of your head, Bloodhunter.”

I had no doubt whatsoever.

I was where I felt safest, most alive. With my hunters.

For a little while, there would be no rifters.

Shane pushed me to my back. I sighed, calm and tense at the same time, my limbs heavy but my body humming with expectation.

Their calloused fingertips whispered across my skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake, and my nerve endings woke up screaming with every warm breath, soft kiss, hard touch.

I didn’t close my eyes—I needed to see them. I watched them in the quiet, dim light, hot, then cold, hyperaware of every moment.

They slid down my body, and I buried my fingers in their hair as they each took a painfully stiff nipple into their warm mouths.

Hot, melting desire zinged through me and I arched my back, pressing my palms against their heads, holding them at my breasts. On my right, Shane was rough, his mouth causing pleasure that bordered on a perfect, promising pain, and on my left, Clayton flicked his tongue and sent streaks of pleasure like electricity from my nipple through my entire body.

My brain struggled to make sense of such different and equally pleasurable sensations, both overwhelming, both clamoring for attention. I opened my legs as they slid their hands over my stomach and to the center of my heat.

They took turns probing, massaging, caressing, and then both of them slid their fingers inside me. Shane bit, sucked, and kissed his way down my body as Clayton took my hand to his cock and bent my fingers around his hardness. I squeezed and slid my palm up and down the length of him, savoring his moans and his hoarse whispers, his throaty, rasping voice exciting me as much as any touch.

The sound of Clayton’s arousal would always be one of the best things I ever heard.

He leaned over to take my mouth in a long, deep kiss at the exact moment Shane forced my legs wide and flicked my clit with his tongue.

I groaned into Clayton’s mouth, my body throbbing, my heart racing, full of hot desire and fierce need.

Clayton’s tongue danced with mine, hot and deep, but then Shane took his mouth from between my legs and even as he began to kiss his way back up my body, Clayton pulled away from my mouth and slid his tongue and lips over my chin, my throat, my breasts. Tasting me, teasing me.

Shane bit my nipple and I cried out, taken for a moment by that sharp pleasure pain, then he soothed it with his tongue and gave me an entirely different sensation to dive into. To drown in.

I grabbed his hair and pulled his mouth to mine, needing the taste of him. I shuddered as Clayton crawled between my legs, and then I wrenched my lips from Shane’s so I could stare down my body at Clayton.

He knelt between my open thighs, his stare hot enough to burn me, his dick hard and long and beautiful, and mine.

All mine.

I unintentionally murmured the words aloud, and Clayton’s eyes narrowed, heavy-lidded and full of sex, his smile slow and dark.

“We’re yours, baby hunter,” Shane said, his voice thick.

And as Clayton positioned himself at my opening, probing, his stare glued to mine, Shane crawled up to the head of the bed, slipped his hand under my neck, and rubbed his cock across my closed lips.

I opened to take him.

I opened to take them both.

Shane’s fingers tightened on the back of my head and Clayton’s fingers tightened on my thighs, and both men fucked me.

Clayton pounded into me hard, almost brutally, and I screamed around Shane’s thrusting cock as I came. I wanted more. Needed more.

And they were happy to oblige.

I squirmed, whimpering, as another orgasm built, and I barely had time to recover from the first one before the second one washed over me. Clayton rammed himself into me, against me, filling me up.

I scraped Shane’s cock with my teeth and he groaned, holding my head as I sucked him, whispering words I couldn’t hear as he matched Clayton’s thrusts with his own.

Clayton pressed his thumb against my clit and sent me over the edge once again, then Shane muttered, “Fuck,” in a low, hot whisper, and spasmed inside my mouth, and he came, shooting hot, creamy ecstasy down my throat.

He pulled out with a groan and I flicked my tongue at the sticky head of him as he went, and still, Clayton thrust into me.

Shuddering, Shane stretched out beside me and slid his arm beneath my shoulders, cupping my breast as Clayton, his teeth clenched, his stare not leaving mine, shoved my knees to my chest and then, when he had all my attention, every single bit of it, he brought me again. He came with me, groaning, his fingers biting into my thighs, his gorgeous, scarred body covered with goosebumps.

My body stiffened as my orgasm pounded at the walls of my mind like a battering ram, and for an instant, an overwhelming instant, I drowned in that tidal wave of feeling, and there was nothing else. I fell into it, my eyes screwed shut, my body shaking with the fierceness of Clayton’s release, of my release. I felt his orgasm like it was mine.

Because he was mine.

He was part of me.

And when the hugeness of it finally began to recede, Clayton’s weight rested half on top of me, his lips buried at the side of my throat, his arm flung around my waist.

On my other side, Shane lay like the dead, heavy and still, his fingers covering my breast, his lips warm on my shoulder.

I continued to throb. I pressed my thighs against it, sore, wonderfully sore, and I was sure I’d carry that ache with me for the rest of the day.

I hoped I would. I’d need the sweetness, the comfort, the realization that sometimes things were perfect when darkness came and everything went to hell.