Captivated (12 page)

Vincenz laughed and reached across the table to squeeze Julian’s hand. “I know you haven’t. I think you and I are struggling in a similar way. She …
you
make me feel alive. Vibrant. There’s no holding back
with you and I have no desire to anyway. But she’s there too. She’s strong and fragile all at once. It makes me want to wrap her hair around my fist. Makes me want to lick up her neck.” His faraway look sharpened as he focused on Julian again. “Makes me want her.
And
you. And I’ve felt like an asshole just thinking it. She’s still recovering!”

“Me too. I’ve felt like I betrayed you.” Julian breathed a little easier knowing he hadn’t been alone in this.

“So we’ve agreed then? That we haven’t? And then what?”

“And then who knows? Yes, she’s recovering, but she’s not the same as she was four months ago. She’s clearheaded about herself and her goals and needs in a way she couldn’t have contemplated before. When I’m debriefing her, I can track the strength of mind she has. The stability she’s gained. She knows her mind.” He snorted, thinking about how stubborn she could be at times.

He continued. “But for now we have a mission to plan. What we have is good. Let’s just let this play out slowly and on her schedule. She may not be interested at all.” Julian shrugged. He didn’t believe it for a second. Granted, theirs was not the ideal situation, but he knew what was in her eyes.

Indeed they had work to do.

H
annah awoke and simply relaxed for long moments, breathing in Julian’s skin as she lay on his biceps. His other arm was banded about her waist, holding her. Keeping her from floating away on bad dreams.

When she opened her eyes, it was to find Vincenz looking at her.

“Would you like to go on an adventure, Hannah Black?” he asked softly.

She thought carefully. Would she?

“What kind of adventure?”

He smiled and she wanted to simply curl into him with happiness.

“Sometimes it might be dangerous. It would involve travel.”

He made it sound like a fairy story. “Would you be there?”

“I’d ask if that was something you wanted, but I think I know the answer. Yes, with me and Julian.”

Julian’s breathing changed and she didn’t fail to note the hard cock resting against her ass. It was what happened in the morning for men, she told herself, even as her nipples hardened.

“Do you know me that well, then?”

“Sometimes.” Vincenz’s pupils swallowed nearly all the color of his eyes and her heart pounded as the moment stretched taut between them. She wanted … so much. In the months that she’d ended treatment, she’d entered into talk therapy with Dr. Pesch. The panic had long subsided and every day she gained a little more ground in her head. Enough to feel, so very fully, everything else she’d been stripped of in her time at the labs.

Foremost among those feelings was sexual desire.

And chief among the causes for that popping back into her life lay there in the bed with her. And she felt guilty about it. Yes, they’d made a place for her in their lives and in their bed. They showed each other affection in her presence in a way they never did in front of anyone else. On one hand it thrilled her to be so trusted with such a beautiful and intimate thing. They were so sexy together. And she never wanted to hurt that.

On the other, she wanted those hands on her. She wanted Vincenz to kiss her the way he kissed Julian. Well, not precisely. She found what they had together to be gorgeous. She didn’t want to
replace
that. She wanted to have it too. In her own way. She wanted Julian’s voice to change when he said her name. Not exactly how he did when
he said Vincenz, but the change, the way it was clear he meant something to Julian simply by the way he uttered Vincenz’s name. That’s what she wanted.

Something beautiful and unique and not only with
one
of them.

So stupid to want such a thing. Stupid to think the way Julian touched her was more than just friendly, or to imagine the desire in Vincenz’s gaze when she moved. They were together and she would never do anything to harm that.

“Where is this adventure then?” she murmured, swallowing hard and trying not to squirm against Julian, whose response to her attempt to get up just a breath earlier had been a tightening of his hold. Which … seemed to make her molten inside. It felt so good she wasn’t sure how to respond.

“We’re off to blow things up in the Imperium.” Julian’s lips brushed against her shoulder as he settled her back against his body, and yes, yes, he was still hard.

“You’d let me blow things up?”

Vincenz grinned at her. “Would you like to blow things up?”

“A year ago I’d have denied it. But I can’t lie to either of you it seems. I would very much like to blow things up. But … you can’t take me along. I’m not one of you.”

Vincenz moved closer. So close the heat of him seemed to sear her skin through her nightdress. Probably because it tended to ride up when she slept and lodged at the top of her thighs.

“If you’d rather not, we can make arrangements for you to travel to Ravena. You’ll be safe. Protected. Far, far away from anything that’ll blow up. We’ll be back after our mission is concluded.”

“You’d send me away?”

Vincenz closed the last bit of space between them, pressing his body to her front as Julian cradled behind her. A full-body shiver of delight rolled through her along with a gasp.

“If you wanted to go, we’d make it happen.”

Julian spoke in her ear. “But we wouldn’t be happy.”

Was she completely misunderstanding this situation? Was this no more than two friends surrounding her because that’s what she needed? Was the cock at her ass really for Vincenz? Who had an answering hard-on at her belly. Each breath she took was filled with them. The warm, utterly male scent each of them carried on his skin.

She had no words. None that she could utter and not feel like a fool anyway.

Finally, she let herself take a leap. “Take me with you.”

Vincenz brushed his lips across hers and she sighed into his mouth. Wanting so much. Needing and having no outlet.

She needed the bathing suite and some actual privacy. Because these men had created a problem and she had no choice but to fix it.

“I should go. To clean up.” That she managed to remember all the words to put into the correct order was a testament to how far the treatments had taken her.

Vincenz kissed her again and she found herself clutching the front of his shirt, the softness of the material cool against her palms. She was dizzy with him, intoxicated by the moment.

“I like the way you taste, Hannah Black.” He said this as he rolled over, bringing her atop him and then down to her feet on the floor next to the bed where she stood on shaky legs.

She blinked at them both so utterly male and satisfied in the bed. Staring at her.

Hannah had no idea what to say so she hurried from the room, closing the door behind her and leaning against it to catch her breath.

Flustered.

Her father had a word for being addled,
twitterpated.
Which seemed to be the perfect phrase for what she was.

Her reflection showed flushed skin, tousled hair, wide eyes and …
a grin. How long had it been since a man had rendered her so witless? What chance did she have against not just Vincenz but Julian too?

Needing something to do before she broke down into hysterical laughter, she pulled her nightdress off and stepped into the water closet before making her way to the shower enclosure and letting the water rush over her skin, letting it surround and warm her.

It had been a long time since she’d been touched.

Since leaving the labs the loss of the silence and the way people actually paid attention to her had been the most difficult things to deal with. Not that she craved silence, though she had come to remember what it felt like to need time alone in the bathing suite.

Julian had brought home three little cakes of soap. Each smelled like a different sort of flower. Today she chose the one that reminded her of the landsea on Sanctu. Salt and dry earth with a hint of sweet and wild.

Tough, broody Julian, who brought her gifts like little tributes. She loved his innate sweetness. Loved even more that he’d argue that he was sweet at all.

She closed her eyes and soaped up, the scent teasing her senses as the swirls of the washing cloth stimulated her skin.

Before she’d gone into the program and moved to work for the foundation, she’d had someone. A nice someone who asked her to marry him. It hadn’t been hard to say no. Which still filled her with sadness.

Her work had been so important, far more important than marrying a man she enjoyed but didn’t love. Sex was easy enough to find if that’s what she needed.

And it was really what she needed right then.

She hadn’t come. Not in over a year.

Her nipples ached, tightening as the soap slid over them, as her
fingertips brushed against them and she imagined it was Julian’s mouth. She loved his mouth. Loved the way his scruffy beard framed it.

The beard might tickle as she arched into him.

Or maybe she wouldn’t be able to arch. Maybe Vincenz would hold her fast. Keep her where they wanted her to be. Bound by his arms or … it didn’t matter. If it was him holding her, it would be all right. If it was him, or Julian, she’d struggle and like it, knowing it was a game.

But part of her, some deep, dark part that seemed to pulse with life whenever Julian cuffed her wrist with his hand, or when Vincenz held her still by the shoulders to look into her eyes, that part craved it.

Forehead against the cool of the tile, she imagined Vincenz pushing her thighs wide, holding her open as he licked through her pussy. One hand slid from her nipples down to her clit. She gasped at the first contact as a ripple of intense sensation moved through her.

A man like Vincenz … what would he be like as a lover? She’d wondered if he only liked men. Had seen enough to know he liked Julian a great deal. But from the way he’d kissed her a few minutes before, he seemed pretty interested. Maybe.

She shook her head, annoyed that she was second-guessing her stupid masturbatory fantasy into the ground. It was a
fantasy
. If he didn’t like girls in real life, what did it matter one way or the other to her? Right then it was easy to imagine his mouth on her cunt. Kissing her like a lover while Julian kissed his way from one nipple to the other.

Her inner walls fluttered when she pressed two fingers inside, angling to brush her thumb across her now-aching clit.

Her rhythm was off, but she remembered well enough how things worked. Orgasm hung just out of reach as she tightened all her muscles, needing to come probably more than she ever had.

Vincenz would flip her over and she’d get to her knees as he slid into her that way. He’d order her to suck Julian’s cock, which would be just fine with her. Each man would possess her in his own way. Thrust and pull away, a push and pull of three.

Tears mixed with the water, now turning tepid, streamed down her face as orgasm remained elusive.

Had they stolen this from her too? Was this broken?

The tug and roll of her nipples, even while imagining getting a hard fucking from Vincenz and a mouthful of Julian’s cock, wasn’t getting her that last little bit. Just a breath or two away from climax, she teetered on the edge, trying several heretofore guaranteed methods and none of them worked.

Frustrated, she stopped, turning to rinse off and wash her hair. Trying not to think. Trying not to worry.

It would be all right. She would go with them on their mission. Be with them instead of sent to Ravena or to a hospital.

It would be all right.

J
ulian worked out as he thought about the way she’d felt against his body that morning. Each pull-up, the burn in his muscles, the stretch and strain of his upper arms and across his back meant he’d be strong enough not only to protect himself but to protect her as well.

He wasn’t able to protect Marame, who’d always been so invincible to him.

But he wouldn’t make the same mistake with Hannah. He and Vincenz would never give any opportunity for anyone to get a shot at her.

Vincenz had pushed her that morning, no doubt.

The moment she’d retreated into the bathing suite they’d been on each other, a mess of teeth and nails, cock to cock, writhing, sweating and in the end, he’d rolled to his back, breath heaving, fingers entangled still with Vincenz’s and with the knowledge that things had changed for not only the two of them, but for the
three
of them.

There was suddenly something else, which complicated matters considerably. But without which he’d be lesser. He wasn’t sure why or how it was that way, but she was part of his life, part of his life with Vincenz. Beautiful, skittish Hannah with her delightfully odd reactions to things they did. Any other woman, or man for that matter, would have run after a few days with them. But Hannah, though she didn’t know it herself, was made of sterner stuff.

She ignored the way he and Vincenz bickered as they worked. Never so much as flinched if one of them turned to her mid-conversation to argue a point. She rolled her eyes and waved it away if Julian got grumpy or short.

The way she accepted him did something to him. Disarmed him. Charmed him. Made him feel understood and appreciated. So many people he knew and loved were afraid of his reaction after Marame. They were right to in some ways. He’d gone off the rails and if it hadn’t been for work, and Vincenz, he may have fallen apart. The need to avenge her death had driven him hard, filling him with so much anger and darkness he stumbled his way through some days, barely hanging on. But Hannah wasn’t afraid of his reactions. When she was around she filled his empty spots, made it all right to feel the desolation of loss. Without judgment.

He had no idea what that could feel like. Had no concept that such a seemingly simple thing would be a revelation. About himself but also about Hannah.

Humming to himself, he did the last set and hopped down to mop his face off.