Linda Gayle (13 page)

“I will fuck her,” Rahiti said, almost growling.

Moana narrowed his eyes. “We will both fuck her.”

“Isn’t it enough you had Mohea?” he said. They spoke in their own language so Lyric would not understand. A deliberate deception he was not proud of but could not will himself to stop. The confusion he’d been feeling all day surged to the surface.

“I had Mohea because you wanted to chain her to you,” Moana snapped. “Now you would do the same with Lyric?”

Hearing her name, she lifted her head and slid her hands over their shoulders. “Everything okay, guys?”

A fine sweat covered her body. Decadently spread before them, she was a feast for the senses, her musk inflaming his nostrils, her taste thick in his mouth. Rahiti closed his eyes briefly, fighting for self-control, and said, “We are deciding what to do.”

She pressed against his fingers still lightly impaling her, and moaned, “Fuck me. Just fuck me, please.”

“We must do this together, Rahiti,” Moana said earnestly, cupping his face with his palm. “This is what the gods intended.”

Rahiti felt the pressure of Moana’s hand all the way to his balls, as if he held them in his palm. What was wrong with him? Did he want Moana or Lyric? He and the other warrior were friends, might be lovers, but it was Lyric who was his destiny. Like Mohea…
Like Mohea
, his mind whispered back.

If he’d taken Mohea as he should have, dominated her, then there would have been no room in her heart for Moana’s charms. Clever Moana, who had bested him in every competition, who had never had to fight for the attentions of man or woman, who had never had to wonder if he was loved.

With a harsh grunt, he gripped Moana’s thick shoulder, holding him still while Rahiti positioned himself between Lyric’s thighs and pushed her legs apart with his knees. “Suck her tits while I fuck her. You can watch.” A sneer curled his lip. For a brief moment, uncertainty racked him, but the intensity of his emotions, the drive to possess, to make Lyric his, his alone, hammered through his veins. He had been with Moana for decades. He had only this time with this woman, and it was his time.
His!
Let Moana see how it felt to have the woman you wanted taken from you.

Hooking his arms beneath her knees, he dragged Lyric toward him, toward his waiting cock, blood-red, hot, engorged, and he rocked his hips forward. Her cream dripped in a pearly trail from her slit, and her lips were swollen. He wanted to run his tongue in the crease between her cunt and thigh, over her rounded clit, to ready her for his onslaught. Or ask Moana to lick her. Gods, yes, the thought of Moana’s tongue inside her made his buttocks tighten and his cock nudge forward into her moisture. Moana’s tongue on him. Wetting his balls, his lips smeared with her juices…

Rahiti gave a shaky, helpless groan, and Moana, who had been nibbling at Lyric’s breast, lifted his head to stare at him. “Well, go ahead.” He growled. “What are you waiting for? You wanted her all to yourself. Now you have her.” He switched to English, his tone fierce. “Take her, Rahiti. Fuck her.”

“Please, somebody do something.” Lyric pinched her own nipples, back arching, mouth open on a gasp. “I want you two so much. I feel like I’m on fire…”

Still glaring at Rahiti, Moana reared up then guided her mouth to his engorged dick. As her eager lips drew him in, he threw back his head and bared his teeth. Lean muscles rippled in his chest and stomach. A single bead of sweat trickled down between his pectorals. Lyric moaned and pumped her mouth up and down the shaft, and Rahiti was held spellbound by the scene they created. Then anger boiled up from deep in his bitter soul.

No. She would not choose Moana over him.

Clutching her thighs so hard his fingers left blunt, red marks on her fine skin, he sank his cock fully into her depths. She cried out with relief, with pleasure, and rocked her hips against him, taking him deeper still, but she never let go of Moana’s cock in her mouth.

Only Rahiti would drive her to completion, though. Like an animal, he covered her, pumping hard into her core. Her inner muscles clamped down on him, a strong, wet grip, clutching him stroke for stroke, like a powerful undertow dragging his will under hers.

Moana chanted her name, lost to her passion, her plaything now.

While Rahiti moved his hips faster and faster, his balls slapping against Lyric’s buttocks, he could not drag his attention from Moana’s face and the ecstasy etched there. On her back, legs spread, deceptively passive, Lyric mastered them both with her beauty and generous body. She gave to them equally, this woman who had known them for so short a time, while he and Moana, companions for centuries, bickered and fought over her like gulls over scraps.

Even shame could not dull the impact of the climax that caught him up and tumbled him. When she hooked her heels around his waist and drew him into her, Rahiti surrendered utterly. A hot rush seared through him, whiting out everything around him. He emptied himself into her hungry cunt, feeling her pulse around him as she swallowed his cum with her body and Moana’s seed with her mouth. His rival, just as ensnared, jerked and cried out and spent himself down her throat.

Finished, somber, Moana sat back, his hair plastered to his sweat-sheened face, then bent and twined tongues with Lyric, who reached to wrap her arms around his neck. Sitting on his heels between her wet thighs, Rahiti watched them. Neither reached for him. Neither spoke to him. He might as well not exist.

Clenching his fists, he swung off the bed, grabbed up his shorts, and strode out of the hut.

* * * *

How had things gone so wrong so fast? Panting from his climax, Moana stared as Rahiti thundered out of the room.

“Where’s he going? Moana? What just happened?” Lyric sat up and followed his gaze out the bedroom door.

He dragged a hand over his face. “I’m not sure.” But he was. He knew exactly what was going on. Rahiti’s old jealousies were tormenting him like demons, and Moana had not been able to resist goading him. He shoved his hair off his hot, damp brow. Just like the old days. Had they not learned any lessons at all?

“We should go after him,” Lyric said, already tugging on her shirt.

“No. I will.”

She started to pull up her shorts then stopped. “Shit, I need to clean up.”

He could see a thin trail of Rahiti’s seed trickling down her inner thigh, and grimaced. What should have been a glorious joining of the three of them had turned into a disaster. He reached out and touched her arm. “Lyric, stay here.” The window coverings billowed in, and a cool gust of air washed over them along with the iron smell of rain. “He can’t have gone far, and I–I know why he’s angry.”

“Was it me?” She clutched her fist to her chest, her eyes wide and stricken. “This is—this is all moving too fast. We shouldn’t have…”

The last thing he wanted was for her to blame herself. Standing, he drew her into his arms and kissed her. Her trembling only fueled his growing anger toward Rahiti. Yes, he felt guilty, but Rahiti bolting out of here, leaving her like this. There was no excuse. “You did nothing wrong. If anything, you are more than we deserve. Rahiti…” He shook his head, struggling to sum up in a few words what that hundreds of years had forged. “He is a proud man, and he wants to control things that are beyond his control.”

“It’s his jealousy, isn’t it? Like with Mohea.”

Moana nodded grimly, not knowing what else to say.

The rain hissed as it hit the roof of the hut and the sand outside. Lyric glanced toward the window. “A storm. Henri said…” She turned back to him, her chin trembling, eyes wide and alarmed. “Go find him, Moana. You two need each other. You love him, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he bit out then turned his head. “But he does not know.”

Somehow, in that mysterious way women had, Lyric seemed to understand what was so cloudy in his own mind and heart. She stroked his arm and nodded, her sweet face drawn and sad. “You’ve got to tell him, then.”

“You are a wise woman.” He kissed her forehead then snatched his shorts from the floor. “We will return.”

She nodded but said nothing, looking forlorn with her dark hair tumbled from their loving and her T-shirt hanging to her thighs. He swallowed hard and had to force himself to move toward the door. He could kill Rahiti for ruining this. He could kill himself for never being honest with Rahiti. The gods had allowed Lyric to come into their lives. There had to be a purpose to all this. He had to cling to that hope, believe there was a way to repair this. After all they’d been through, surely this was just a rough patch in their journey.

As he dashed outside, though, and squinted against the rain that lashed his face and body, he knew that wasn’t true. His friendship with Rahiti had had many rough patches. In their before-lives, they had been constant rivals. As dolphins, there’d been many times they’d almost swum away from each other, only to be drawn back by necessity and loneliness.

Now, if they stayed men, was there any reason for them to stay together? Lyric had broken the curse. She’d freed them from their trapped bodies and maybe from each other. He could not bear to think that they’d come this far just to live apart, alone. Being without Rahiti would be a curse more unbearable than being with him as a dolphin. He had to find his friend, make amends.

Moana tracked Rahiti’s footsteps, which were quickly filling in with rainwater, to the edge of the ocean. Gods, no! He scanned the turbulent, black waters. His chest constricted, and he didn’t dare breathe. But no. When he looked again at the beach, he saw that the footsteps moved away in the direction of the jungle, where the broad-leafed vegetation swayed and bobbed under the force of the rain. Relief nearly felled him. Rahiti lived. He must be going to the pool again.

Midstride on his way to the forest, Moana stopped. No. Not the pool. He knew in his heart where Rahiti was headed. A chill covered Moana’s skin that had nothing to do with the rain. He had to find him before he reached his goal.

It was pitch black, and as he shoved through the undergrowth, he fought to recall which way to go to reach Kanaloa’s tiki. Not far into the dense, black jungle, Moana stumbled and fell, cutting his knees and hands on the small rocks that littered the forest floor. Lurching to his feet, he groped his way, trying to find where the vegetation grew slightly less dense. He cursed ferociously. There was no point, no way… Sinking to his knees, knotting his hands in his hair, he wailed in frustration. He threw his head back and spread his arms wide, begging help from the only source he could think of, the god who had abandoned them long ago. Kane, Kanaloa’s opposite. “Help me, Kane. Do not let Kanaloa win. He has tormented us enough. Help me find Rahiti!”

The flash that burned across the sky made him curl into a ball, but then he lifted his head. Yes! A second bolt of lightning illuminated the jungle around him, showed him in flashes where he should go. The great god had answered him. Praising Kane, he lurched to his feet and followed the path the god had shown him. The stones cut into his tough soles, and the leaves slashed at his arms and legs, but Moana forced himself on. When on the next burst of lightning he saw branches bent forward and broken, his heart leapt. Rahiti’s trail! Ducking his head to squeeze below the low-hanging leaves, he focused on feeling his way along, leaping ahead when Kane’s lightning aided him.

By the time he reached the clearing, blood ran in rivulets down his chest, arms, and legs from the swiping and clawing of the branches. Goaded no doubt by Kanaloa, the jungle itself had tried to stop him, but at last Moana staggered into an open area and saw Rahiti’s proud back bowed in the rain—and then he saw the ancient, vine-covered tiki, the mouth agape and filled with teeth, the evil, oval eyes made huge by a lightning flash. If it hadn’t been so plastered to his skin, the hair on his nape would have risen.

The hope he’d felt upon seeing Rahiti died. His old friend huddled on his knees, head bowed, a fervent murmuring pouring from his hips. The only words Moana could catch were “Lyric…mine…forever…”

Blinking in the unrelenting rain, Moana sneaked up behind Rahiti, his fists clenched tight, although it was unlikely the warrior would hear his approach, so intent on his evil prayers was he. So, Rahiti would bind Lyric to him for eternity, as he had wanted to do with Mohea. Mohea, who had teased them both about their rivalry, whose joy and beauty had drawn them to her like sharks to blood. She hadn’t understood how her innocent flirting inflamed them both and drove them mad with jealousy. Yes, Moana admitted he had been as guilty of that as Rahiti. He’d always envied the other warrior his strength and skill, admired him from afar, and, he admitted now, desired him.

Swallowing hard, he stopped just behind Rahiti’s unprotected back then bent and grasped a heavy stone. The rain on his cheeks felt warm, like tears, and his mouth trembled. It had to end here. He could not be cursed again, and neither would he let Rahiti suffer. Only through their deaths could innocent Lyric be free.

Becoming men again had been a terrible mistake.

“Take me,” Rahiti mumbled to the tiki, his voice cracking as it rose over the pounding of the rain. “Take me, Kanaloa. Spare Moana. Spare Lyric. The curse should be mine forever.”

A blaze lit the sky, casting Moana’s shadow over the face of Kanaloa. Rahiti spun around, his eyes huge, and his hand flew up for protection.

Chapter Ten

Rahiti had seen Moana only in the flash of lightning—a powerful, angry god, streaked with black rain. Now the figure sagged, and Rahiti leapt to his feet to catch him. “Moana!”