Braided Lives (11 page)

Danny changed tactics. He let go of his grip on Jennifer's hips and stretched his hand up over his head where Peter was kneeling. His cupped his hand up under Peter's balls, feeling Peter's half arousal, and began to tease him, too. Damn, he wished he had two working hands, but every flex of his injured arm brought a shiver of pain, only half damped by Peter's now distracted mind. Danny gave into the exquisitely pleasurable sensations at his groin, bucking into the rubbing and gnawing warmth of Jen's mouth. Everything let loose, a full body shudder and surging sticky heat. The nicely padded squirming body on top of his stilled for a moment, then her knees pushed harder on his shoulders as she ground against Peter's hand. Danny's hand fumbled at Peter's belt and zipper, only getting it open with help from Peter. Closing his hand around Peter's hot prick, he stroked his lover, all the while feeling the build from Jen.

Peter was almost there, too. Danny reveled in the combined wave of pure lust. A little whimper from Jen preceded her jerky release and she gasped against Danny's hip. Two down, one to go. Danny scooted back a little and managed to squirm out from under Jen just enough to take Peter's cock in his mouth. Lapping across the tip and then sucking it, Danny tipped Peter over the edge, swallowing hard, as his lover came in his mouth.

They all sagged into a tangle of arms and legs with Jennifer sliding sideways to lie parallel to the headboard.

"You okay? I didn't bang into your arm, did I?" Peter slurred a little.

"No, it's fine…" Danny answered. "Jen?"

"Unh, what? Think my brain's off-line," was her mumbled reply.

Danny chuckled a little.

"Next time, there needs to be less clothes involved,"

said Peter.

"Next time?" asked Jennifer.

"Yeah, next time. 'Cause anything this good has to be revisited," concluded Danny.

***

"So how's the forensic course thing going?" Jennifer's mother asked over the phone. Jennifer had told her parents a partial truth about how she was spending her summer. She had spun a tale of a special, invitation-only seminar for forensic sketch artists to help refine her technique and talents. Okay, it wasn't a total lie: that was the primary goal of Division P's training. It just happened to be a lot more specialized and profoundly weirder than that.

"Fine, Mom. Kind of grueling but good."

"Meet anybody nice?" Jennifer rolled her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her room for a moment. Oh Lord, how could she even begin to explain to her very Catholic mother her attraction to two separate men who also had their own relationship?

"Most everybody's been friendly and very helpful,"

Jennifer replied.

"Any nice single men?"

"Mom, I'm not here to find a husband."

"I know, but you need to look a little harder. You're almost thirty. The biological clock is ticking, honey,"

her mother said.

"We've had this discussion before. If children never end up being part of my life, that's okay. On the other hand if you're so hot to have a grandchild, maybe I should find a willing sperm donor."

"Jennifer! You were raised better than that!"

"Yeah well, virginity went out the window about ten years ago."

"I do
not
want to hear how bad you've been. When's the last time you went to confession?"

"About eight months ago," Jennifer admitted.

"Your father would be horrified if I told him."

"Dad's pretty horrified by my entire life. He thinks I belong barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen."

"He does not. He thinks you have a very respectable job teaching at the college. He just thinks you ought to focus on that and stay away from all the horrifying things that people tell you about the crimes they've suffered," her mother replied.

"I help people, Mom. I help make sure that bad people pay for what they've done. Listen, I have to go, class is about to start up again."

Jennifer hung up and flopped back on her bed. Her mother often got on her last nerve, but talking to her narrow-minded overbearing father was worse. There was actually another hour before she had to be anywhere else.

Her mind returned to the thoughts she had mostly avoided when talking to her mother. What exactly did she want to do about Peter and Danny? Was her desire to get involved with them just another hard headed rebellion against her family's conservative values? God knows, better than fifty percent of what she had done with her life over the past decade had been a direct and intentional defiance against them. But, in retrospect, she liked what she did, all of it. The teaching, the forensics, her stabs at original artwork. She hadn't lied when she told her mother that she helped people. Division P

would make her better at that, and give her some nice federal backing, too.

Glancing at the clock, Jennifer decided maybe she'd go grab a soda from the cafeteria before the dreaded session at telepathic word retrieval.

***

"See you next week," said Peter as Mason Flynn left.

He watched the tall surgeon walk out the door. For a doctor with precious little formal psi training, Flynn was impressive. Raw Talent that strong rivaled Peter's own.

The guy might even eventually surpass him.

Peter swiveled his chair back to face his desk, trying to make up his mind what to do with his evening. With his arm back to near normal by way of Peter's care, Danny had gone to Chicago for a few days to check on the progress of one of the newer agents. There were no other pressing crises at the moment and Peter was at loose ends. He found himself thinking of Jennifer. It had been a couple of weeks since the three of them had messed around the night Danny got home. That had been a delightfully memorable experience. Although they had all had dinner together several times since then, the interaction had mostly been confined to flirting, kissing and a little groping. Danny and Peter had agreed that they wouldn't push too hard, while they gave Jen some time to decide how she felt about something more intense.

Tonight might be a good opportunity to take her out to eat, away from the complex, and find out how much thought she'd given to the idea.

***

She-crab soup, salad, and prime rib… Jennifer struggled to decide if she dared do dessert. On the table, where her hand lay, Peter played with her fingers. It was sexy and comfortable. She could feel just a hint of his mind brushing against hers; neither of them was unshielded in such a public place.

"When Danny gets back from Chicago, I think all three of us should make a night of it," Peter said.

"Mmm, dinner and dancing?" she replied, deliberating avoiding the implication.

"I was thinking naked in bed."

Jennifer smiled. The thought was alluring. Peter rubbed his thumb along the center of her palm. Except for a kiss, it was about as intimate a gesture as he could make here.

"I know you keep holding back. The offer is not intended to be a one time wild night never do it again thing. With Danny and me, it started out physical and became a lot more. You're the one who pushed us into realizing it was more. It feels right to me to make you part of my life, in the same way Danny's part of it, too,"

he finished.

She sat looking at his hand holding hers, for a long moment. "Can three people make it work? Sometimes even two have issues."

"I won't promise there won't be times when we drive each other round the bend, or that we won't ever fight, but inventing problems before they show up is awfully fatalistic. You come from a big family right?"

"Yeah, you could say that. I have four brothers. The long standing joke is that my parents kept having kids until they finally got a girl."

"I'm an only. My dad died when I was a teenager. My mother died four years ago. I suppose you could define me as someone who wants people to love. Being bisexual used to seem like a mixed blessing; these days I think maybe I'm not supposed to choose, that I need both. I want that to be you and Danny."

"And if we really screw this all up?"

"That's life."

***

Back in his quarters, Jennifer and Peter drank a bottle of wine and cuddled on the sofa with the TV playing softly in the background. Snuggling led to kisses and wandering hands. Sprawled on the couch beneath Peter, Jennifer remembered a similar event. But that particular time they had shared a few heated kisses and little more.

Peter was apparently thinking back on that morning, too, because she saw glimpses of his memories.

"I want you," he whispered. "I want you worse than I did that morning." His hips were snugged between her thighs and he was pushing her down onto the cushions.

Jen wanted to just give in to the lust but a niggling little piece of angst wouldn't quite let her. "What about Danny? Last time it was all three of us and I don't want to cause issues."

Peter gave her a solemn look. "We talked about it before he left. He is perfectly okay with you and me having sex." Peter's shields were entirely down and she saw a snip of conversation that had occurred. Danny had even brought up the possibility that two might be less intimidating than three as a next step.

Jennifer let her objections fade and focused on the moment. Peter's mouth was a glorious, gentle assault on her own.

"How 'bout we take this to the bedroom. I've fallen off this couch more than once," said Peter, and she knew he meant with Danny.

On the bed, Peter stripped her very slowly. Her shirt departed while he did a sinfully decadent version of his magic fingers massage on her shoulders and back. Her jeans were unzipped and his hand slipped slowly down the front, exploring, first outside her underwear, then inside. Peter eased a couple of fingers between intimate folds and she knew she was slickly wet with desire. He was slow, almost maddeningly so, rubbing, teasing, and stroking. Only when she was rocking against the careful, slippery friction, trying to find a way to ramp it up another notch, did he finally divest her of her jeans and undies.

Peter rubbed his face along the inside of her thigh.

Damn, he needed a shave. She was apt to end up with a bit of "rug burn", but she didn't care. His tongue replaced his fingers, licking at that most sensitive nub, then dipping inside and returning to frustrate her some more. He finally relented and focused on the best spot.

She felt the build tightening her muscles and her pulse was throbbing in far too many places. The release was like the backlash of an unwound spring, a wild uncontrolled pulsing rush.

Kissing his way up her pubic hair to her belly button and then to her breasts, Peter smiled at her with an expression of pure abandon.

There was a moment for a condom and then he was in her. Jennifer reveled in the combined wash of body and mind. His intensity was a like a roller coaster dive and the heat of his energy rolled through her body, pushing her toward another climax. Her fingers dug into his back and as Peter came hard within her, her own orgasm shot through her, sending a blinding set of fireworks through her nervous system.

Peter eased onto the mattress beside her and gave her a slow sleepy kiss, fingers tangling in her hair.

"You are positively delicious," he whispered.

***

The phone rang at two am, and Peter sleepily groped for it. "Vithoulkas," he answered. One of P's people had been critically injured on an op in Atlanta. The local hospital had stabilized her but now strange problems were cropping up and the doctors were at a loss as to why. There had been some sort of miscommunication and the woman was currently being airlifted back to the Virginia-based complex.

"Okay, I'll mobilize the team here. Damn, I wish somebody had told me the moment she got to the Atlanta hospital. I would've flown
there
; the risk would've had been lower." Peter swung his legs over the side of the bed and ran his hands down over his face.

Jennifer sat up in the bed. "Problems?"

"Yeah, big problems. One of our telepaths, Isabelle Rea, was stabbed in Atlanta. She was sent there to help on an arms trafficking case. Some moron in the ATF

made the decision to transport her back here, rather than trying to get me to her. It's bad." Peter dragged out a pair of scrubs from his dresser. "I need to call our trauma surgeon and get him here as soon as possible."

"P has a trauma surgeon?"

"Yeah, he's a pretty decent empath, no actual healing talent on the psi level, but he's really good in the OR."

"Anything you want me to do? Or just stay out of the way and try to go back to sleep?"

"I… If you want to come down to the infirmary in a while, if I get a break, I'd kind of like to have you around. If it's bad I like to have someone to touch," Peter said hesitantly. He wasn't sure how comfortable she was in the middle of potential medical chaos.

"Sure, I'll take a shower and get dressed and meet you there."

***

At the beginning of the transport Isabelle Rea had been stable. By the time she arrived at the Division P

complex, her vitals were plummeting. Peter and Craig, the surgeon, scrambled to re-stabilize her with little success. Sandra, who was the head nurse, and a corpsman named Trevor had also arrived to help. Peter had both hands on her when she coded. Fuck, oh please no, he pleaded internally as Craig grabbed for the defibrillator paddles.

"Charging," snapped Craig. "Clear!" Peter lifted his hands free as the jolt twitched Isabelle's body. Nothing.

They tried six more times, each time Peter pouring as much energy into her dying body as he could summon.

Finally, Craig looked at Peter with sorrow in his eyes.

"I think we have to call it," Craig said. Peter only nodded, unable to bring himself to say the words. He stood up to turn away and the room spun into alarming darkness as Craig began to say, "Time of death is…"

***

On the far side of the room where the desks were, Jennifer watched in rapt misery as Peter and the rest of the medical people made every possible attempt to save the life of the injured woman. Peter was drenched in sweat, his scrubs clinging in dark splotches to his body.

Her heart leaped into her throat when she saw Peter fall to the floor.