Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (18 page)

“I heard you leave your bedroom and I thought you could use some company.”

“I woke you? I’m sorry.”

“I was already awake.”

“In that case you probably could use this tea as much as me.” Lucy nodded at the table in the center of the kitchen before she turned from him to retrieve another cup and saucer from an overhead cabinet.

Prentice could have used something a lot stronger than tea, but he didn’t want to burst Little Miss Lucy Homemaker’s bubble. Instead, he took his cue, sat down, and folded his hands on the table eager and waiting for Lucy to join him.

When she did finally take the seat across from him, he silently admired the way the peach gown made her skin glow even more than usual.

As soon as Lucy realized he was staring at her, that glow intensified with a blush as blood quickly rushed to her face.

“Why are you looking at me like…like—”

“I want you?”

She put a hand to her face. “Yes, like you want me.”

“Probably because I do want you.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not? It’s true. And if you don’t know anything else about me by now, you know I’ve never been anything but honest with you.”

“Usually.” She nodded.

Prentice grimaced. “Is there an instance when you think I haven’t been?”

“You never answered me before. What happened between you and Ki last night?”

Prentice released a sigh of relief. For a moment there he’d thought that she suspected what had happened in the kitchen earlier, that she’d been about to ask him what was going on between him and her husband. “Nothing happened.”

“I find it hard to believe that the two of you spent a night together in this house without engaging in any intercourse.”

The tea kettle whistled as Prentice coughed to cover his shock before he realized that Lucy meant verbal intercourse.

Still, he peered at her as she got up to retrieve the kettle from the stove.

She came back to the table and bent beside him to pour tea from the kettle into his cup.

Prentice closed his eyes and inhaled the sweet, soothing scent of vanilla and musk wafting from her skin and hair—some wholly modern blend she probably got from Healing Magick mixed with her own intoxicating woman’s scent.

When he opened his eyes, it was to see her sitting at the table across from him, sipping her tea and warily observing him as if he was a man-eating predator.

Prentice reached for his cup and took a sip of the tea, trying to put her at ease as much as possible despite what he’d just told her.

He not only wanted Lucy. He ached for her, imagined sweeping the dainty cups and saucers onto the floor and taking her on the table. He wanted to hear her scream his name. He wanted to feel her nails score his back while he ate her pussy and she clutched his hair in both her fists.

“Is staying here going to be a problem for you, Prentice?”

He laughed. It was going to be more of a challenge than a problem. Good thing Prentice liked challenges. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Just as it had earlier under Prentice’s feet, the floor creaked under Ki’s.

Lucy jerked up her head to look at her husband standing on the threshold of the kitchen.

Prentice took a deep breath, waited a beat, wondering how much of his and Lucy’s conversation Ki had caught. He tried not to panic, tried to calm himself before he glanced over his shoulder to see Ki cross the kitchen floor.

Ki stood at the table for several seconds, looking at Prentice and Lucy in turn before he finally took the seat adjacent Lucy.

“Would you like some tea?” Lucy asked.

“Coffee’s more my beverage.”

“I could make a pot.”

“Don’t.” Ki put his hand on hers to stop her from getting up from the table. “I didn’t come down here for coffee. I came down here for you.”

If he was nothing else, Ki was up-front, Prentice thought. He liked that in a person and grudgingly admitted that he especially liked the trait in Ki.

Who am I kidding? I like him for a lot more than his straightforwardness.

Prentice watched Ki thread his fingers through Lucy’s before he leaned toward her and paused as if waiting for permission.

He held his breath, heart kicking into high gear as he waited. He wasn’t expecting Ki to go through with it, but why shouldn’t Ki kiss Lucy? She was his wife and Ki didn’t seem to be shy about claiming what
wasn’t
his—namely Prentice—much less what was his.

He watched as Ki pressed his lips to Lucy’s, coaxing her mouth open with his tongue before thrusting it in and capturing her lips in a demanding, eating kiss.

Prentice’s cock sprung to life in his underwear. He could only imagine what Ki’s kiss was doing to Lucy.

He didn’t make a move to leave, though, strangely comfortable in his role of voyeur, feeling as if he belonged there, that he
should
watch.

Ki’s hands got into the act, grasping Lucy’s face, burrowing in her luxurious, glossy waves as he deepened the kiss.

Prentice hadn’t thought he could be so turned on by a kiss, especially one in which he wasn’t even a participant, but his cock started to throb and he had to stop himself from shoving his hand in his lap to bring it to heel.

Ki pulled away suddenly and turned to stare at him. It was only once Ki asked him if he was all right that Prentice realized he had groaned out loud.

He got to his feet so quickly he almost overturned his chair. He felt Lucy’s and Ki’s gazes on him—the former’s confused, the latter’s amused—and took a few steps away from the table. “I should be going up to bed.”

“Sure you won’t stay and finish your tea?” Ki asked, slowly, sensually running his fingers up and down Lucy’s bare arm.

Prentice stared at Ki’s hand, noticing Lucy shudder beneath his touch. A finger of jealousy as unexpected as a stitch in his side poked him in the heart. He wanted to be the one shuddering beneath Ki’s touch. He wanted to make Lucy shudder.

What was
wrong
with him?

Absolutely nothing, Prentice.

Hmm,
that
was a matter of opinion.

* * * *

The Summerland

Brielle took a deep breath, trying to hold the tears at bay, but it was so difficult.

This assignment was the most demanding one with which she and Caith had been charged since their arrival in the Summerland. In more than two decades they had never had to deal with issues so close to home, emotions so close to the surface because the individuals involved intimately belonged to them.

She had known the time would eventually come, that she and Caith would have to face their own demons, face their pasts, but it didn’t mean she had looked forward to it. Two decades was too soon and the wound from Prentice’s past cruelty and treachery was still fresh.

No, she wasn’t a saint, far from it.

Caith wrapped an arm around her and drew her close to his side, which only made her want to cry even more. “I know that was hard for you,” he murmured.

“More than you can imagine.”

“You’re strong, Bri. You can get through this. I’ll help you through it.”

“I wish it were that simple.”

Caith drew back to stare at her. “What is it?”

“I just realized something about the spell and why Prentice had been able to follow Thayne, Cade, and Maia back in time.”

Something in Brielle’s tone and look must have given her thoughts away because Caith gasped and squeezed her shoulder as if that could stave off the truth.

“You don’t believe…”

“That Prentice is our son, too? No, not literally, anyway, but the basis is there. I think he was adopted by the Teagues, and that he’s a descendant of one of our family lines, maybe a distant cousin or nephew. It’s the only possible explanation.”

Brielle closed her eyes and silently recited the incantation in her head, the one that had initially helped her sons and Maia escape Prentice’s wrath.

Unlock the desires of your heart

Release your wishes from the dark

Through land, space, time, and water

Take flight and soar my sons and daughter

She opened her eyes to see Caith frowning and imagined the wheels spinning in his head the same way they were spinning in hers.

Her only sibling had been Aura, and Aura had been childless. Caith had been an only child. Maybe there was something in her and Caith’s parents’ pasts, however, that she and Caith weren’t aware of.

Goddess, she wished Aura was still alive so that she could ask her. Would the Goddess allow her to communicate with Aura as she was communicating with Prentice, though?

This was all supposition anyway and it really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things whether or not Prentice was actually their “son” by default or not.

What mattered was the here and now and keeping Prentice safe and alive long enough to realize his destiny.

With that character who had shot Ethan running around free and determined to succeed where he thought he had failed, however, Prentice’s survival was looking grim.

Ki assumed the first position then bent at the knees and lunged. He thrust the blade of his épée at an imaginary opponent in front of him and made a slashing motion across what would have been his enemy’s torso.

He had been at this for the better part of an hour, a fine sheen of perspiration on his naked torso that he would have liked to have acquired from a totally different kind of physical activity.

Four days and he had yet to have bedded his new wife. The situation was ridiculous and unheard of and he didn’t know why he continued to tolerate it, but he did.

Ki wanted Lucy to come to him of her own free will. He wanted her to want him as desperately as he wanted her, so desperately that she couldn’t stop herself from making the first move. Lucy, however, remained the epitome of restraint. Ki was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t discipline but maybe Lucy actually didn’t find him attractive and didn’t want him at all.

He shook his head at the thought.

Ki didn’t believe in false modesty. He realized this might be interpreted as conceit by some but he knew his worth. He possessed several attributes that a bevy of beauties in this town as well as far and wide found extremely appealing. He was a catch, after all.

That Lucy had been consistently eluding his advances every night with nothing more than a word or an elegant shrug of her shoulders baffled his mind and remained a crippling blow to his admittedly healthy ego.

Ki turned on his heels, began his routine again—
en garde, prêt, allez—
before lunging and slashing the air with graceful, well-placed flicks and strokes of his blade. He growled in frustration that he didn’t have an actual flesh-and-blood adversary to strike. Having a tangible target on which to take out his aggression would have been so much more satisfying than merely hacking at air.

Engaging Ethan in banter didn’t even hold the same appeal for him anymore for the mere fact that he wanted the young man as much as he wanted Lucy, and Ethan was just as elusive as Ki’s wife, if not more so. If he sought to alleviate the coitus embargo with Lucy, turning to Ethan certainly wasn’t the answer. At least it hadn’t been so far.

He had had fun the other night though, baiting Ethan, trying to make him jealous by giving him the impression that Ki and Lucy were more intimate than was actually the case. Not that kissing and caressing his wife had been any great strain on his thespian skills, but he would be the first to admit he had hammed it up trying to get a rise out of the younger man.

Ki tried to look at the situation as if it was a case he was preparing to argue before a judge or present to a jury. He just had to approach Ethan and Lucy like hostile witnesses, or better still like a jury he had to persuade to see things his way. He had to make them
want
to give themselves over to him. He was going to have to turn on the courtroom charm more than he ever had before. Most of all, however, he needed to continue to be tolerant. He did not want to lose his patience or give either his prospective paramour or his wife the idea that his displeasure was in any way their fault, even if this was the case.

“My, my, my, what has gotten your undies in a twist?”

Ki pivoted and almost lost his balance when he saw Ethan leaning against the doorjamb, legs crossed at his ankles as he bit down into an apple like he didn’t have a care in the world.

He had never seen the stripling looking so at ease and he knew that he had been to thank for any of Ethan’s previous anxiety. Ki had to admit that he liked keeping Ethan on edge to a certain extent, and he really enjoyed seeing the younger man’s olive cheeks flush with color when Ethan got flustered. Ethan, however, hadn’t been giving Ki the satisfaction lately.

“Was there something you wanted?” Ki asked, idly swinging his épée, feigning boredom.