Zoe's Blockade (Destiny's Trinities Book 5) (9 page)

Cole rolled back onto the bed beside Declan, bringing her with him. He tucked her into the space between them, almost as if the space had been made for her.

When Zoe could breathe properly once more, she put her hand on Declan’s shoulder and looked over her own at Cole. “Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?”

Alex had always had trouble looking away from Mia, even though when he had first met her, looking at her too closely was a dangerous thing. Even now, when he could look freely, he still found it hard to drag his attention away from her curves and would follow her around the room with his gaze, watching her body bend and flex, the natural grace of her movements and the overwhelmingly feminine shape of her.

He had seen hundreds of pregnant women in his time and they had never provoked any response in him except for polite acknowledgement. Now, however, he understood everything the poets and the baby-mad had been blathering about. For the first time, the baby was starting to show. It was barely even a bump, yet it was undeniably there.

His child.

Their
child, for Wyatt was as fiercely happy about the baby as he was…and where was he, anyway?

Alex stirred and forced himself to look away from Mia as she moved around the kitchen area, pouring hot water, bending and stretching as she went about making herbal tea for herself. “Where is Wyatt?” he asked her. “He should have been home two hours ago.”

Mia shook her head. “Beth sent a call out for any help. A vampeen breakout in Illinois. Her new trinity.”

Alex got to his feet. “You let him go? He was out until three last night.”

Mia halted, her lips pursed, thinning out the natural fullness. Her eyes were troubled. “I’m not the one to talk to him about it.”

“Why not?”

“I’m the one who is pregnant,” she said softly.

Dismay touched him. Of course,
of course
, why hadn’t he realized that for himself? He had been busy—they all were these days, so that was no excuse.

The sound of a key pushing into the lock alerted them both. Mia picked up the tea cup. “I’m going to drink this in the bedroom,” she said and gave him a small smile. “Be gentle.”

Alex nodded.

Wyatt shut the door and bolted it, shifting the heavy duffle back over to his other hand. There was snow in his dark hair and over the shoulders of his heavy winter coat. He had been walking.

Alex waited until Wyatt turned around and saw him.

Wyatt’s appearance was almost a shock. There were dark marks under his eyes and his eyes were bloodshot. Even his face had grown thinner later. Why hadn’t Alex noticed before now?

Wyatt smiled at him. “You’re home. Good.”

“We should talk,” Alex said stiffly. The shock was making it hard to speak naturally.

Wyatt’s smile faded. He put the bag down and tossed his keys into the bowl on the table next to the front door. “About?”

“You.”

Wyatt looked around the room. “Where’s Mia?”

“Sleeping,” Alex lied. “Besides, you won’t hear this if she says it.”

Wyatt came up to him, tilted his head and studied him. “You’re doing that clipped speech thing again, Alex. What’s wrong?”

“You’re working too hard.”

Wyatt blinked. “Isn’t everyone? There are incursions all over North America these days…it’s hard to keep up.”

“Everyone else manages to have a life. Sort of a life,” Alex amended, because none of them were really doing that. “You’re pushing it to extremes, though. How much sleep are you getting these days?”

“You should know. You’re next to me when I sleep.” He was annoyed, now.

“I do know,” Alex agreed. “I don’t think I consciously noticed because I never get tired, so it didn’t occur to me you weren’t getting enough. Maybe four hours a night and that’s on a good night. You go haring off after Grimoré and vampeen every single time anyone sends out a distress call.”

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?” Wyatt asked. His shoulders and face were stiff with anger.

Alex shook his head. “Not at the cost of your health.”

“Why not? That’s what soldiers do.” This time, his temper was obvious. Wyatt crossed his arms, his feet spread. His entire well-muscled body was tight with fury. “You could be out there, too. You don’t need sleep.”

“Mia and you
do
and it’s my job to watch over you while you sleep,” Alex said, as patiently as he could. Wyatt never could process anything while his temper was roused in this way. Alex had to reach past it and there was only one way to do that. Alex braced himself. “You could kill a thousand vampeen, Wyatt. A million of them. It still won’t guarantee that Mia will be safe.”

Wyatt hit out, just as Alex had expected him to. Alex got his hand up and Wyatt’s fist smacked into his palm. He closed his fingers around his fist and held on.

Wyatt struggled to free his arm, his face working. “What would you know about it?” he ground out.

Alex caught Wyatt’s jaw in his hand, using just enough strength to make him grow still and actually look at him. “Mia isn’t Julie, Wyatt. I’m here, you’re here and I promise you, no one will get
near
Mia while I am standing.”

Wyatt stopped struggling suddenly, all the violence and anger draining from him. His eyes glittered. “I know that,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Only, these fuckers are ten times worse than the thing that killed Julie….” A single tear escaped and rolled down his cheek.

Alex drew Wyatt to him and held him. “This time you’re not alone,” he said quietly.

Wyatt shuddered against him. “God, Alex, I get so afraid sometimes!” His voice was muffled against Alex’s shoulder. “There’s more and more of them and nothing holds them back.”

“We’ll work it out,” Alex assured him. “All of us. We’ll figure it out and Mia will be safe.”

* * * * *

It seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to lie on her side, her back against Cole’s chest and listen to Declan talk. The three of them had sat up into the small hours of the night, talking just this way, many times in the past. Only, they had never been naked and never had Cole held her this way while Declan spun his tales.

Declan laid on his back and sometimes rolled onto his side to look at them. He had always been the one to tell the stories and until now, Zoe hadn’t realized how much she had missed the stories and his voice falling softly. Sometimes she thought she could catch a glimpse of Irish brogue, even though Declan’s family had been in Canada for generations. She had decided it was the cadences of a practiced story-teller emerging.

“Did Cole never tell you the story of how we really got together, then?” Declan asked.

She shook her head. “You told me. About the joke Valentines and how it got you both thinking.”

Declan rolled into his side and raised his brow. “Then you’ve only heard the public version.”

“That’s not the way it happened?” She looked at Cole over her shoulder. “You never said anything.”

Cole’s jaw worked. “It’s not exactly romantic,” he said.

“Hell, no,” Declan said. He touched the end of her nose. “You wanted to know why we never did this before now,” and he waved to encompass the bed. “The whole unvarnished truth might explain it for you.”

“You met in college, yes?”

Declan sighed and rolled onto his back. “We shared a house together, along with three other students. Split five ways, the rent was still crippling yet we could get by. Just. I was first year pre-med and Cole was studying computer science on his military scholarship.”

“That much I know,” Zoe said.

Declan rolled his head to smile at them both. “Ah, but what you don’t know is that whenever we weren’t studying and sometimes when we should have been, there were women.”

Cole laughed. “Mild understatement.”

Zoe shrugged. “I figured this out, too. You both give off those signals that make every head in the room turn when you walk in. Both male and female.”

Declan propped his head on his hand. “Cole’s a big, muscle-bound jock and he never failed to get laid. I didn’t have much trouble, either.” He grinned. “It wasn’t until we both ended up in bed with the same woman that the train really got rolling.”

“Oh…” Zoe breathed. “So you worked together to get women?”

Declan’s smile became a mild grimace. “We didn’t have to work at all. I sometimes think women have a secret telepathy and can pass on word about men. ‘Avoid this jerk. That one is a prick. This guy is hung like a horse. And those two in the science division will blow your brains out if you let them.’.”

Zoe laughed. “Women do talk,” she admitted.

Cole sighed. “It worked, whatever it was.” His fingers were trailing in lazy circles over her shoulder, dipping down toward her breast, making her replete nerves twitch and fizz.

“We fucked women like crazy,” Declan said, with an utterly candid tone. “Sometimes two or three in a day. While everyone we knew was bullshitting about how much sex they were getting, Cole and I had to figure out instead how to keep up our energy to cope with it all. Good thing I was in pre-med.”

Zoe’s laughter was subterranean, making her shoulders shake. “What happened?”

“One of the more adventurous women said she would find it even more arousing if Cole and I kissed in front of her.” Declan rested on his back, smiling with a faraway expression in his eyes. “As our motto back then was ‘whatever melts her into a puddle goes,’ we manned up and kissed.”

He fell silent.

“You liked it,” Zoe said.

“So did I,” Cole said. “It was a watershed moment.”

“Ay, I could see it in his eyes,” Declan said and sighed. He propped himself on his elbow once more. “So we did the lady justice and sent her on her way…and that left us the rest of the night to figure out what the fuck had just happened.”

“So you stopped screwing women and got together after that?” Zoe guessed.

“You’re rushing the story. Hush,” Declan told her. “And no, we didn’t exactly stop screwing women. It was too much fun.”

“Except it wasn’t the same, after that,” Cole added.

Declan nodded. “We both liked it well enough, except I already knew, a month after we first kissed, that Cole was the real thing for me. So having Cole in bed with me and a lady who I didn’t know that well, who was just there for the fun…well, it just didn’t feel right.”

“That’s why neither of you would make a move on me?” she asked. “Because you thought it wouldn’t feel right?”

Declan looked surprised. “Are you daft?” he said hotly.

Cole tugged on her shoulder, making her roll back so she could see him properly. “It’s because we knew it
would
feel right, with you of all people.”

“And that would change things, all over again.” Declan sighed. “Years wasted because we were too fucking scared to risk what we already had.”

Zoe touched his shoulder. “It is what it is, remember?”

Declan picked up her hand and kissed the back of it. “I remember.” His voice was rough.

Cole was stroking her again and she drew in a trembling breath as nerves fired and excitement flared, deep in her belly.

Declan turned his head to watch as Cole ran his hand over her, from knee to shoulder, teasing and arousing. After a while, as Zoe twitched and gasped, squirming under his hand, Declan turned on his side to watch.

“You take her,” Cole said, his voice low. He flipped Zoe over and pushed her up against Declan, so that her ass was pressed against his hips. Declan steadied her hip, then teased her himself.

“Torture,” she breathed, wriggling.

“Not yet,” Declan told her. He pushed her top knee forward and ran his fingertips along the back of her leg.

She arched and moaned as his cock pressed up against her from behind. It was hard and insistent. He pushed into her rear entrance in slow degrees.

Cole stared into her eyes the whole time, his own filled with raw, heated lust. As Declan settled behind her, fully inside her, Cole picked up her bent knee and slid his hips beneath it.

His cock eased into her pussy and Zoe sighed at the incredible sensation it gave her to have both of them in her in this way. “And how…” she said, pausing to sip a fast breath, “are you both going to move with your hips anchored like that?”

“We don’t have to,” Declan said, his hand settling on her hip once more. “You’re going to do all the work.”

“How—oh!” She pulled in another gasp as Declan slid his hand between her body and Cole’s. His fingers pushed up against her clit.

He began to stroke in firm, short touches that stole her senses and zoomed her concentration down to the pleasure building inside.

“You’ll come so hard, you’ll make us come, too,” Declan whispered in her ear.

She didn’t have the breath to spare to respond. She was almost panting and she couldn’t keep still. Every muscle in her body was squeezing and her nerves screaming. As her climax built toward the peak, she saw that Cole was watching her, his face taut as the pleasure took him, too.

That made it even better.

She soared into her climax, her throat straining as she screamed silently in pleasure.

* * * * *

Declan’s arm felt heavy over her waist, which pointed more surely toward his non-ghost status and the power of the trinity than anything else she had seen this long and strange day.

Cole’s arm was laying over both her and Declan, also a deadweight.

Zoe realized she had drifted. Perhaps she had even slept for a moment. Cole’s eyes were closed and she didn’t want to move to check on Declan, because they were both still inside her and it was too good a sensation to disturb them and lose it.

A tiny face was peering at her from over Cole’s big shoulder.

Zoe parted her lips and very nearly spoke. Then she remembered something that Diego had said about Lindal, the elvish prince in the first trinity.

She closed her mouth again and spoke in her mind in firm, loud words.
Are you looking for protection?

That had been the primary concern of the little pixie who had attached herself to Lindal.

As soon as she “spoke”, the little thing flickered over Cole’s shoulder, her wings fluttering. She hung in midair between Cole and Zoe, just above Zoe’s face. Images and feelings came at Zoe, appearing in her mind is if they were her own thoughts. Yet they were alien and carried information she had not known until now.