Power Up 3: Whispered Words (18 page)

Hopkins reached into his pocket and withdrew a switchblade. One he pointed at Xavier. “Your turn.”

Xavier stood tall and strong in front of Chloe. “Josh, bar the door.” Josh rolled away faster than she would have thought him able and slammed the door right as Ian appeared. With a raised hand, Josh turned the antique lock and sealed them inside. “We got this,” he slurred.

Not exactly the heartening cry of support she’d hoped might calm her rescuers.

But at least this way she knew that Hopkins wouldn’t evade justice. Not now.

“Chloe!” She heard Ian, Nathan, and Keegan calling her name. And she knew there were others outside as well.

“Not yet,” she shouted. “I got this. Keegan, don’t you dare tear down the door!” The telekinetic could easily rip it away, but she had to handle this. Josh had seen her and Xavier and no others. Who knew what might happen if anyone else became involved? “My voices said it’s just me and them and Hopkins. Don’t fuck with me on this.” She hoped like hell she didn’t sound as shrill as she thought she did. But she couldn’t stomach the thought of anyone else dying at the hands of this psycho. And certainly not her friends.

“Oh goodie. You know my name.” Instead of sounding worried, Hopkins laughed with delight. “We’ll put it on our wedding invitations in blue and gold.

Whore takes Hopkins as wife.”

Chloe was really getting tired of being called a whore. The anger helped stave off the fear inside her.

“We got this,” Xavier yelled as he ducked the blade aimed at his throat.

Hopkins had an uncanny ability at hand-to-hand combat.

What surprised her even more—so did Xavier. She’d seen him and Josh in the woods and knew the pair could hunt. But his skill at bare-knuckle brawling astounded her.

Despite sharing the dizziness Josh must have felt, Xavier met her stalker blow for blow, avoiding the knife while backing the bastard into the corner. Chloe used the distraction to grab the pistol Josh had dropped.

Hopkins slashed at Xavier. He managed to draw blood before Xavier reassessed the situation enough to avoid more than that wound to his forearm.

She fired twice at Hopkins’s legs, but nothing happened. The gun must have jammed. She worked to free the bullets and reload the magazine.
“Fuck.”
Then she saw Xavier’s pistol near their enemy’s feet. Josh recognized the danger at the same instant. As if reading her mind, he rolled for it at the same time Hopkins threw the knife at him.

Xavier intercepted the psycho, and Josh and caught the blade in the meat of his arm. He fell just as Hopkins picked up the gun.

But Chloe was two steps ahead of him. She’d cleared the rounds and reinserted the magazine, never more glad of her time served as a cop who lived and breathed her pistol. She fired a bullet right between Hopkins’s eyes. And if that wouldn’t stop him, she’d keep shooting until the fucker flat-out died.

The single bullet did the trick. As he fell, she noticed the protrusion of what looked like a protective vest underneath his shirt, explaining his ability to resist four bullets to the chest earlier. The ankles, though, those wounds should have incapacitated him.

Banging on the door alerted her to hurry up before they broke it down. “I’m good. We’re fine. Hold on,” she yelled.

Thankfully, they didn’t bust down her door. She buttoned up the shirt she wore while Xavier helped Josh tuck himself back into his jeans and button up. All she needed was for her friends to see her and Josh half naked.

“With cum dripping down your leg,”
Xavier added and tossed a T-shirt at her.

She realized she’d been thinking out loud.

She cleaned up, blushing like crazy, and threw on a pair of sweatpants as Xavier unlocked and opened the door.

Five men tried to bust through the opening at the same time. It would have been comical had she not been so keyed up on adrenaline and worried about what Hopkins had done to Josh.

“There’s a car waiting downstairs,” Ian said quickly.

“Good,” Xavier growled. “We need to get Josh to a hospital. The idiot got himself drugged.”
“After he got to come inside you. Next time I’m playing bait while
he hides under the bed.”

Xavier sounded cranky and out of sorts but otherwise healthy. The blood dripping down his arm didn’t bother her as much as Josh’s near-comatose state.

Xavier saw the direction of her worry and swore.

“And again I’m bleeding, and he gets all the concern. You owe me, Chloe,” he started whining as Ian prodded him out the door. “I’m wounded, and she goes to him. Again.”

“I know. Women. Why do you think I prefer men?” she heard Ian say as he escorted Xavier downstairs.

“I love you, Xavier. I’m worried about you too. I swear.”

“Well, okay, then.”
He sounded sulky until he laughed.
“Had you going, didn’t
I?”

“Jerk.”

“Witch.”
He paused.
“Don’t worry. I can feel what my bonehead brother feels.

He’ll probably wake up with a hell of a headache, but he’s okay. Just sleeping it off.”
She sighed with relief. And then Keegan shoved everyone else out of the way and lifted Josh up again. Like déjà vu. She burst into tears and scared the hell out of her boss, who’d surprised her by showing up. She didn’t really mean it, but the tears acted as a kind of catharsis, and she felt much better. Too, she was freaking Jack out. And she liked it.

“You are one evil woman, Chloe King.” Xavier laughed with her as Jack went out of his way to calm her down. “No wonder I love you.”

* * *

“Tell me again how much you love me.” More than a week later, Xavier was really making her pay for staying behind with Josh. Not that his mother hadn’t healed all three of them easily once they’d been taken to her clinic.

She sighed, and Josh snickered. “I love you. Idiot.”

“I heard that. I’m so heartbroken, I don’t know if I can manage.” Josh had catered to Xavier for a good week, feeling guilty over making his brother handle most of the crap that night while he’d had all the fun with Chloe.

Chloe tried to glare at him. “You can manage. I said I’d take your last name, didn’t I?”

They grinned at her like fools. In a desperate attempt to put Xavier in a better mood, she’d relented to changing her name…when they got married. At this point, it was more like an
if
they got married. She’d moved into their home, had consented to living with them while she spent time getting to know their weird family. A family she loved like her own. Those Cannons really knew how to throw a Christmas party.

“Chloe. I feel so unloved.” Xavier’s wicked grin made him less than believable.

Josh smiled and leaned back against the door in the changing room leading to the employee’s hallway.

“Guys, I thought you wanted to see where I train.” They stood in the same changing room with the hidden door leading to the secret downstairs facility. Jack’s one concession to being all James Bondish. This hidden entrance. She’d teased him about it unmercifully since they’d opened. Too bad she had yet to get a rise out of him. Even when she’d been crying all over him last week, he’d just patted her back harder.

Josh sighed. “Chloe, I hate to say it, but my brother has a point. I remember seeing a lot of blood.”

“Yes, blood,” Xavier said sadly.

“I think you owe him some tenderness, don’t you?”

“You have been less than compassionate lately.” Xavier fought a grin.

She rolled her eyes. “You know, it’s hard to play along with you laughing.” He coughed to hide his smile and blinked hard. “I think I’m going to cry.”

“Okay. I give. What can I do to make it all better?” She hadn’t expected him to whip out his cock. In a dressing room her peers could enter
at any moment
. “Good God, Xavier. Put that thing away.”

“I would, but it hurts. It’s so unloved lately.” The bastard turned her on in spite of herself, and he knew it.

“Come on, Chloe. Better do it fast before someone catches you,” Josh whispered. Then he pushed down his sweatpants to reveal an equally hard cock. He took the towel from around his neck and held it close. And she knew he planned to come while she blew his twin.

“Oh hell.” Not even pretending she didn’t want it, she dropped to her knees and took Xavier to the back of her throat.

He hissed his appreciation. “Yes. God, Chloe. Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

“Because he does. Shit. That tongue just kills me.” Josh moaned, that gravelly sound in the back of his throat that never failed to get her going.

Then Xavier wrapped his hand in her hair and started fucking her mouth.

Since that night in her bedroom, when the guys had discovered how much she liked it a little rough, they’d been driving her crazy with their shows of dominance. The hair thing made her wild.

“Do it,” Xavier whispered. “Get yourself off while I come in your mouth.” 

She moaned and shoved her hand beneath her shorts and underwear. She fingered herself, not surprised to feel herself so slick.

Xavier tightened his hold on her hair. His balls felt hard under her palm. Then she gripped the base of his cock and sucked harder while she rubbed herself with faster fingers.

“Oh yeah. That’s good. Here it comes,” Josh warned, out of breath, and came into his gym towel.

At the same instant, Xavier poured into her mouth, his cock so big and thick, she could do nothing but swallow as he released. Knowing she’d brought them both pleasure, tasting her lover, pushed her over the edge. She came and swallowed the last bit of Xavier before he withdrew.

Her pleasure left her throbbing. And consumed with joy.

“Let me.” Josh folded the towel, pulled down her shorts and panties, and used the clean side to wipe her up. “You get so wet. If we weren’t already behind on our tour, I’d eat you out and watch you come again.”

“Dibs.” Xavier held up a hand.

Josh set her clothing to rights. “Bro, I just facilitated an A plus blowjob for you. You can’t call dibs.”

“Can too. I just did. And don’t act all self-sacrificing. You got off just as much as I did.” As they turned the argument into a silent battle of words, Chloe smiled ear to ear. They playfully fought…over her. Could she get a better present than that?

Their first Christmas together had been magical. She didn’t know when they’d done it, but her lovers had purchased the matching rings they all now wore. She suspected Rory, Keegan and James’s wife-slash-lover, had something to do with it.

But the closemouthed woman had only smiled and refused to say anything more than “welcome to the club.”

Though their wedding hadn’t been scheduled yet because her lovers hadn’t figured out which of them she’d marry, Chloe knew it would happen. She’d never been so happy in her life, and she had her voices to thank.

“You will marry your choice of perfect men,”
she heard the familiar voice, but this time Xavier’s loving tones framed the order.

“But I don’t know which one to pick,”
she teased as she unlocked the door and they walked downstairs. Out loud, she expressed the concern she still had.

Relationships were hard enough with two people. Add a third to the mix, and you had a recipe for problems. “I’m afraid whoever I pick will hurt the other person not chosen.”

Xavier and Josh stopped her when they reached the floor.

“Chloe, we love you. We don’t—”

“Want you to worry. Xavier and I—”

“Talked it out. We don’t care.” Xavier shared a grin with his brother.

“I thought I’d need the label to feel like you were mine,” Josh admitted. “But now, knowing you love me, feeling it, is all that matters.” He kissed her.

Then Xavier kissed her.

“We love you, Chloe. Marry us.”

She blinked. Behind them stood her night crew. Ian, Nathan, and Avery stood near Jack, who waited with his arms crossed.

She looked back at her lovers. “Um, far as I know, bigamy isn’t legal.”

“It’s not.” Ian agreed. “But if you have the right papers, anything can look legal.”

Her men grinned at Ian. Chloe scowled. “Ian Ryder. You aren’t forging again, are you?” She’d arrested him at least three times before she’d made anything stick.

And then the sly bastard had evaded jail time. She still wanted to know how he’d managed that, since he’d supposedly also been on the outs with the PWP who didn’t officially exist.

Jack raised a brow at him, and he quickly backed down.

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Ian coughed. “But you know, there are ways around certain, uh, legalities.” He glanced at Josh, who nodded.

“We’ll talk to her later,” Josh and Xavier said together.

She loved when they spoke at the same time. The closeness between the three of them only continued to grow. But she’d noticed the twins’ unity tended to alarm other people.

Avery and Nathan stared from Xavier to Josh and shook their heads. Then they walked away but not after starting another argument that made little sense to Chloe.

She glanced at Jack. “Time to separate them again. Want Avery back on the day shift?”

“No. Let them work it out. We’re past the third grade.” He gave Xavier and Josh a hard look. “Treat her right, or we’ll have a heart-to-heart you won’t forget.” The cold look in his eyes even scared Chloe.

But her lovers nodded and said without a worry, “Sure thing, Jack.” Chloe had to grin. “You know, that’s the same look their mother gave me the other day when she told me the same thing.”

Jack nodded. “Julia Cannon doesn’t mess around. Guys, tell the Doctor of Death I said hi, would you?” That said, he left them, headed back into his office, and shut the door behind him.

“Like a friggin’ mole in there,” Ian murmured.

“I heard that,” Jack yelled.

“We have got to talk to Mom about that name. ‘Doctor of Death’ isn’t going to inspire a lot of confidence in her patients.” Xavier frowned.

Josh nodded.

“Time for me to head upstairs before our great lord and master shackles me below.” Ian gave Jack’s door a wary look and walked to the stairs. But before he stepped up, he shot them a sly smile. “Oh, and guys? Thanks for the show. I thoroughly enjoyed it.” He popped a piece of gum in his mouth and flashed them a Doublemint wrapper. “Yum.”