Appassionato (27 page)

“Get up, get up.” Jake was shoving at them.

Emma groaned and put her arms over her eyes. “No, no, go away.”

Duncan laughed, then heaved himself off the bed. “Rest for a few more minutes while I shower.” He leaned down and kissed her breast making her giggle. “The interview is in New York, right?” He looked at Jake and the other man nodded. Emma peeked out at them from between her arms. Jake stood in the middle of her bedroom, naked and beautiful. The morning sun lit his skin and she admired the view for a moment before her gaze skipped to the bonding tattoos on his arms. They were gorgeous, the colors and black markings highlighted somehow by his aura, making them three-dimensional. Then Duncan stepped up and cupped Jake’s cheeks. Jake stilled for a moment, smiling as Duncan moved in. Emma caught her breath as the two men she loved more than her own life kissed each other passionately.
Best morning ever
, she thought.

* * * *

Worst morning ever
, Emma thought two and a half hours later. She sat on a hard stool in front of what seemed like a thousand cameras. She tried not to fidget, but the tight jeans Duncan insisted she wear were a little uncomfortable and she wanted nothing more than to rip them off. She glanced down at her boots, grateful they’d let her wear the low heels.

You’re not going to die from wearing tight jeans for a few hours
, Duncan thought affectionately. She blushed as he smiled at her. She grinned helplessly back at him, wrinkling her nose at Jake, who sat on Duncan’s other side. They were in the foyer of Duncan’s favorite recording studio, holding a press conference. She felt like a fish out of water.

This is not a ‘little’ interview
, she thought to Jake, disgusted.
There are a hundred cameras out there!

You’ll be fine
, Jake thought back, distracted as he scribbled something down on his clipboard. She exhaled, trying to calm down. Duncan reached for her hand and she let him capture it and run his fingers over her wrist. She looked down, watching their auras slip around each other, the colors playing and melding.

“I can almost see them through your eyes,” Duncan said, his voice low so the cameras wouldn’t catch what he was saying.

Emma smiled up at him, suddenly feeling better. “They’re beautiful.” She looked at his face, loving the way his hair fell across his cheeks. He winked at her and she laughed, then Jake held up his hand and everyone quieted down. There were more people outside, some of them pressed to the glass, trying to see in. She sighed, hoping that Ms. Brown wasn’t one of them. Emma hated to think that there were still people out there making drugs from the blood of bonded couples, but she had to face reality. Just because they’d rescued a handful of kidnapped bond-mates didn’t mean that everything would go back to normal. The woman got away and she could be anywhere by now. Bonding was here to stay, and someone had already found a way to manufacture a very dangerous drug from it. Judging from how crazy Eric had been to get his hands on more after using Path for a short while, Emma knew there would be a demand for it. She and her two lovers would always be in danger. Even more frightening for Emma was the knowledge that other bond-mates didn’t have the power to protect themselves like she and Duncan and Jake could. Emma intended on doing all she could to find those who were behind the kidnapping and bring them to justice. She was immensely grateful that her men agreed with her and that Duncan’s fame and money would help them as they investigated the source of the criminal organization. Then Emma felt Jake straighten on his stool in preparation to speak and banished her negative thoughts.

“Thanks for coming today,” Jake said. “We have a brief statement to make, then we’ll take questions.” He took a deep breath and Emma sensed his nervousness, though no one watching would ever guess. He balanced on the stool confidently, his jeans and black leather jacket casual yet still appropriate for a press conference involving his rock star bond-mate. Duncan sat between them, his long-sleeved T-shirt glittering with silver threads woven in a subtle abstract pattern down the front. He looked good, Emma thought, especially sitting next to Jake. The two of them were a lethal combination. Jake shifted on his stool, shooting her a quick glance, and Emma reined in her wayward thoughts.

“To answer the question I can see on all of your faces, yes, Duncan and I are bonded.” Emma flinched slightly as the crowd went crazy, flashbulbs going off and people shouting questions. Duncan shook his head. Emma could feel his amusement.

“Hang on, hang on,” Jake was saying, trying to get them to settle down. When they realized none of them were going to answer their questions until they behaved, the crowd settled down. “Duncan and I are also bonded to Emma.” Jake gestured to her on the other side of Duncan, and she waved with her free hand, smiling despite the butterflies in her stomach. “And yes, that makes our bonding a triple-way thing. I don’t know of any other cases of this kind of bonding, but it’s real and we’re very happy.” He paused, gathering himself. “We’ll take your questions now, one at a time.” The commotion started again and Jake glanced over at Lisa, who stood waiting on the sidelines to organize the questions.

She stepped forward, raising her hand. “Yes, Melissa, what’s your question?”

“My question is for Jake—I thought you were straight? How did you end up bonding with Duncan?” Melissa leaned forward, holding her recorder out as she waited.

“I
was
straight. As far as I know, I’m
still
straight, but once you bond, labels like that don’t really matter anymore. You love where the heart goes, regardless of gender. Loving Duncan was easy. Falling in love with him was a surprise and bonding was a total shock, but I’m happy.” Jake set his hand on the back of Duncan’s neck and squeezed slightly, smiling when Duncan leaned into the gesture.

Lisa pointed to a man wearing a bowtie and a belligerent expression. “Matthew?”

The man shoved forward, ignoring the dirty looks thrown his way. “You say the three of you are ‘bonded.’” He used air quotes to emphasize his skepticism and Emma found herself frowning. At a quick glance from Lisa, she smoothed out her expression, listening to the man’s questions. “Do you have a sexual relationship? How does that even work? Do you take turns?”

Emma sighed as Duncan straightened up a bit. “Yes, we have a sexual relationship, not that it’s any of your business.” Then he grinned, eyes wicked. “And why would we have to ‘take turns?’ There’s plenty of room on a king sized bed for three people.” The crowd laughed as Matthew’s face turned red. Emma found herself blushing and smiling at the same time.

Lisa chose another journalist, this time a woman dressed in bright pink. The woman smiled at Emma. “My question is for Emma—how did you meet Duncan and Jake? What was it like finding yourself bonded to a rock star?”

Emma cleared her throat. “Um, well, we bonded before I met them.” The crowd erupted and Emma looked over at Jake, worried she’d said something wrong.

He held up his hands. “Let Emma finish.”

She waited until the murmurs died down then tried again. “The bond wasn’t solid or complete, but we dreamed about each other for weeks before we finally met. I didn’t understand what was happening, actually. I remembered seeing some reports in the news about bonds, but then all the information disappeared. It wasn’t until a couple of students in my school bonded that I realized what was happening to me.”

The reporters started shouting again, and Lisa stepped forward. “Take it easy, folks. You, in the blue shirt.”

He stretched out his arm, holding his recorder up. “I thought bonds were between two people, usually people who were already together.” He glanced at Duncan and Jake. “Or close to being together.”

Duncan dropped Emma’s hand and sat up straighter on his stool. “That’s been our understanding as well. We don’t know of any other people who have bonded with two partners, though I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing some. There has been a suppression of information regarding this in the last few weeks.” He laughed as some of the reporters shook their heads in agreement. “I know, I know, it’s absurd considering that the reports of the phenomenon only started coming out around a month ago, but it’s true. And the lack of information is largely because someone found a way to manufacture a drug using the blood from bonded couples.”

If Emma though the noise was bad before when Jake announced the bond with Duncan and Emma, it was nothing to what happened now. She lifted her hand and put it over Duncan’s on his leg and Jake shifted closer, the three of them seeking comfort. This was the true purpose of the press conference. After they’d dealt with the police at the warehouse two nights ago, they had agreed to keep quiet about the victims’ identities but not about bonding or the drug. Duncan firmly believed that the public deserved to know what was happening and the three of them were in a position to get it out there because of Duncan’s fame. They were also clearly able to protect themselves because of their new abilities. Emma and Jake agreed with Duncan. It was up to them to spread the word. Emma shifted on the hard stool, thinking back to that night. They never caught Ms. Brown when she snuck out during the commotion. Jake thought it was because she was the person who’d invented the drug, one of the people in charge of the whole thing. Given her pharmaceutical background, that made her extremely powerful. Anyone who had the resources to kidnap people, suppress information of that magnitude, then disappear in the middle of that chaos was clearly a dangerous individual. Emma hated that she’d escaped.

Lisa pointed again as the noise subsided.

A woman in a blue blazer moved forward, fighting her way to the front. “What kind of drug? What does it do?”

Emma nodded at Jake and he answered. “It’s a liquid. We don’t know the exact chemical composition but we know that it’s extracted from our blood. I don’t know how much you know about bonded couples, but most of us can sense the emotions of our bond-mates. It’s sort of like empathy, only not as perfect as you see in sci-fi movies.” He smiled and Emma relaxed. The hard part was over. They’d agreed not to mention their heightened sense of empathy, their telepathy, or their extra powers, but she knew they needed to explain how bonded couples sensed each other. Jake continued, “And it hurts, a lot, if you’re separated, especially in the initial stages. We need to have a honeymoon week. Eventually the bond settles down and we can be apart, but only for short periods of time.”

“How long can you be separated?” someone shouted.

Jake shrugged. “A week? Maybe more? After the bond is complete, it doesn’t hurt, but you get irritable. It feels like you’re itchy or like something’s missing. It’s unpleasant.”

Emma watched the crowd. Their surprise was genuine.
They really didn’t have any information about bonding, did they?
she thought.

Duncan glanced at her.
No
.

We need to make sure as many people as possible see this
, she realized.

Duncan nodded.
We will. That’s why we’re doing it this way. They didn’t know we were going to talk about bonding like this. They thought they were just getting a good scandal story about me and Jake
. He grinned and turned back to the crowd.

Lisa picked out a man dressed in a grey T-shirt. “How did you find out about the drug?”

Emma answered this question. “Two of my students were kidnapped. One of them managed to get to a phone and she called me, telling me some information about where she was being held. She explained that their kidnappers were drawing blood and that she and the others had been separated from their bond-mates. She was in a lot of pain because of the separation. She knew I would help find her because I’d talked to her and her bond-mate in school, trying to help their parents understand what it meant to be bonded. She went missing a few days ago.” She took a deep breath. “The police didn’t believe us when we called them with the information about my student. I was afraid of what would happen if she was kept from her bond-mate for much longer. She’s young and I was unable to convince her parents that bond-mates need a great deal of physical contact until the bond settles, so she was already in distress from the lack of touch. It’s difficult for a parent to accept that their child has suddenly formed a permanent connection to another person, particularly such an intimate connection.” Emma shook her head as she saw the mixed emotions of the crowd. Their expressions ranged from sympathy to outrage to disbelief.

“Duncan, Jake, and I tracked down where she was being held. With the help of Duncan’s security, we managed to free the kidnapped couples. One of Duncan’s men, Charlie Williams, lost his life that day. We’re all going to miss him terribly.”

Jake coughed and Emma knew he was using it to cover up his grief. Lisa pointed to another journalist who stepped closer. “What did the police say about this drug? I haven’t heard anything on the news.”