Zoe's Blockade (Destiny's Trinities Book 5) (7 page)

He nodded. “Afterward, in the staff room,” he said. “Remember?”

How could she forget? They had both been reeling with the need for sleep and she had barely been able to put on her coat. Her shirt sleeve had gotten all tangled up. Declan had unsnarled it and straightened up the coat. He’d even zipped it up. For a moment his hand had stayed there just under her chin and her breath had caught.

For once, she had allowed herself to look him directly in the eye, too tired to remember she shouldn’t do that.

There had been knowledge in his gaze. For that little moment, it felt as if her heart and soul was open and he was reading it all there in her eyes.

All he had to do was lift his hand a fraction of an inch and he could have touched her face. They were standing so close he could have just bent his head to kiss her.

He did neither. Instead, after that little moment had lasted for what felt like an hour or two, he stepped away. “Drive carefully,” he warned her. “It’s slippery out there.”

She had stumbled away and driven home in a daze, wondering if she had imagined all of it. Had she projected her own yearnings onto him? Declan was happily married. Even though his marriage was a secret to almost everyone else in Revelstoke, his happiness and general air of contentedness was not. She was a fool for thinking he would consider even for a moment…

“I wanted to kiss you that night,” Declan said, his voice very low. He was right in front of her now. “I don’t know how I stopped myself.” He glanced at Cole. Cole hadn’t moved from the sink. His gaze was steady. “Well, yes, I know why I didn’t. But it was very, very close.”

“Kiss her now,” Cole said, his voice as quiet as Declan’s.

Zoe jumped a little in reaction.

“Forward, not backward,” Cole added.

“Yes, that was then, with all the reasons why we shouldn’t,” Declan added. “This is now.”

Zoe gasped as his lips met hers. That he could touch her at all was a miracle. His mouth was firm against hers just as she had always imagined it might be.

Zoe closed her eyes as the kiss deepened. Her body had spent the morning being whipsawed through extremes of emotions. Now everything came on-line in a heated sweep from her toes to the top of her head.

Declan brought his arms around her, pulling her even closer and she might have cried at finally being in his arms, except that it felt so good she had no capacity for anything other than delight.

He was taller than her. Everyone was taller than her and Cole more than most, yet she fitted against Declan in a way that felt natural. She drew her arms around his neck, holding herself up as he kissed her with a thoroughness that barely made up for all the times she wished he had.

His hands were against her back, sliding over her hip, moving restlessly. Cole was strong and had muscles to prove it, while Declan was solid in a different way, firm against her body….

Zoe gasped and stepped back from him, not quite looking down. Her heart was frantic, her nerves screaming.

Declan, though,
did
look down at the swollen mass in the front of his jeans. “Well, then. That answers that question.” He was grinning.

“It answers mine, too,” Cole said. “I thought I would mind, watching you kiss her. Yet I don’t. It feels….”

“Right,” Zoe finished. “As though that’s the way it should be. It’s as if I’ve kissed you hundreds of time before.”

Declan nodded. “Comparison check,” he declared. He took the two small steps to reach Cole and kissed him. He didn’t hesitate. Their mouths pressed together and Cole rose to his feet almost as if the kiss was pulling him there. He grabbed Declan’s face and held him steady.

Declan’s hand settled on Cole’s hip, his fingers tangling with the band of his pajama pants.

Zoe caught her breath. In her imagination, Declan did not simply let his fingers rest there. She could clearly see him in her mind, pushing the pants down farther, exposing Cole’s hips, his pelvis and the ridge of muscle there, then his cock, which would be upright and throbbing.

She couldn’t look away. Every erotic thought she had ever had about the pair of them, together or alone, seemed to parade through her thoughts now, making her body vibrate. They looked so good together. They always had. Declan’s wild Celtic looks and Cole’s blond, clean-cut wholesomeness played off each other.

Declan groaned and pulled his lips away, breathing heavily.

Cole closed his eyes, just not before Zoe saw tears glittering there. “Just the same,” he said, his voice hoarse.

Her heart squeezed.

“Zoe.” Cole held his hand out toward her.

She took it and he pulled her close, up against the two of them. Almost as if they had done it many times before, both of them put their arms around her, linking them all together.

They stayed there, until Zoe’s heart eased. It didn’t slow completely, because she was standing with the two of them. The parade of wicked images was playing in her mind, still. Now the thoughts were becoming even more erotic. Just standing here was making her think of possibilities that had not occurred to her before.

“I think,” Cole said heavily, “we should go somewhere there is a door we can lock between us and the rest of the world.”

“The bedroom,” Zoe said, just as Declan did.

* * * * *

Zoe had stepped into the bedroom thousands of time before. Now, though, the room looked unfamiliar. She stopped a few feet inside the door, looking at the fireplace and the big bed and the tall windows.

This had been Cole and Declan’s room, too. Only now did she remember that.

Declan’s hand settled on her shoulder, making her jump. “Stop apologizing,” he whispered in her ear.

“I didn’t.”

“In your head, you did.” He moved around her. His eyes were dancing. “I think if you had walked into this room one night when we were both in it, we would have locked the door behind you and thrown away the key. You’re not an intruder, Zoe. You never have been.”

“She wouldn’t come in here. Not for weeks,” Cole said. “We would sleep on the sofa, downstairs, instead.” He went into the bathroom and shut the door.

“Did you actually get any sleep?” Declan asked curiously.

Zoe could feel her cheeks heating again. “Some.”

Declan’s smile grew warmer. “Who kissed who first?”

“I…don’t remember,” she lied. They had been arguing. It had been nearly a year since Declan’s funeral. Lately, all they had seemed to do was argue, getting more wound up with each passing day, although neither of them had suggested quitting the almost daily lunch dates. The argument had continued out in the restaurant parking lot as Cole strode to his truck, fishing out his keys, his hand shaking with fury. She had followed him, determined to get in the last word and she had. Then he had cut her off by spinning to face her, pulling her up against him and shutting her up with his lips.

The arguments had evaporated after that and Cole had proposed barely three months later.

Declan seemed to see the memories play in her head. “Perhaps you’ll be able to tell me some other day,” he said. “When you know in your heart I don’t mind.”

“Perhaps,” she said cautiously, yet her heart had skipped a beat at the mention of future days. She had barely been able to think beyond the next moment. Days from now were blank wastelands of speculation.

The emotion in Declan’s eyes grew heated. “Although if Cole took care of you the way he always took care of me, then no wonder you didn’t get any sleep.”

Zoe gasped softly.

Declan leaned toward her. “Between you and me,” he said, his voice so low she could barely hear it. “Weren’t you amazed that such a white-bread, morally upright guy could be so inventive in bed?”

Zoe could feel her eyes widen in shocked recognition. The first time they had made love had been in Cole’s truck, barely minutes after that first kiss, both of them shaking with the power of their mutual orgasms. He had only put her aside long enough to put the truck in gear and drive back to the house. His jeans had stayed open, his cock beating against his stomach. His hand had wandered over her as he drove, stripping her naked there on the seat.

Then he had taken her again, parked in front of the house and three more times between the truck and the sofa, where they had finally come to rest.

“Ay, I can see you were,” Declan said. “I never could get enough of him.”

Zoe dropped her gaze and Declan lifted her chin, making her look at him. “Don’t,” he said firmly. “It is what it is. We go on from here.”

“Good advice,” Cole said, as he moved toward them. “Guilt is over-rated.”

“Then we’re agreed,” Declan said. “Now, can I kiss her again?”

It was only when Diego heard voices upstairs that he realized there was a set of stairs at the back of the house, as well as the grand staircase here in the front hall. He listened only long enough to confirm it was the three of them, before shutting his hearing down by focusing on the text on his phone and glancing out through the door pane occasionally.

Even from this far away, Diego could see the moving shapes among the trees. They roved ceaselessly, drawing his gaze. How long until they broke and came at the house? Would they wait for sunset, if they realized the trinity was sealing the bond? Even Diego could feel the building power from the three. There was conflict there, still, mostly from Zoe as a result of their shared history. However, Declan understood the power of the trinities. Diego hoped he would be able to bind the three of them properly. Cole…well, he was the unknown. He was amenable, so far, yet his whole life had been a pattern of outwardly conforming while secretly and flagrantly rebelling against that conformity.

Something to the far left of the bridge caught Diego’s eye. He got to his feet, adjusted the sit of the gun harness around his shoulders and peered through the left-hand side pane. There was movement there that wasn’t the same as the restless circling the hounds were doing closer to the bridge.

He narrowed his eyes, bringing the details into focus.

It was a bear. The creature was sliding down the slopes of the foothills, through the trees there. Its direction would take it right into the clearing in front of the house, where the snow lay thick and untouched.

Diego pushed the door open and stepped out onto the verandah for a clearer view. Bears did not frighten him. He had the strength to tackle one if he really had to and now, thanks to Blake and Sera, he had his guns, too.

It looked as though he might not have to deal with the bear at all. It was ambling through the trees and the hounds were all heading in its direction. The hounds were big, too, and there were more of them. They might encourage the bear to go back to its den.

Den. Winter

Bears hibernate in winter.

Understanding flared in him. Diego clutched the post. “It’s not a bear,” he whispered, staring at the black shape as it loped through the trees.

The hounds met it with growls that rolled out over the snow. Diego’s fangs descended as his animal instincts were prodded by the sound. He made them retract and waited.

The bear lifted a platter-sized paw and batted at the first hound to reach it. The hound was tossed aside, yelping in pain.

So were a third and a fourth. The bear only slowed its pace long enough to swat at each hound it passed, using its shoulders to barrel through them, much as Diego had done with the Mustang.

When the bear reached the clearing and started running through the hip-high snow, throwing up clouds of white with each loping stride, Diego pulled out one of his guns and cocked it. The bear was heading directly for the house.

The hounds stayed back at the tree line, howling and yelping.

Diego moved out to the top step and raised the gun, tracking the bear. When it reached the gravel where the snow had been ploughed away, he said, “Stop right there. These are .45s and they’re silver. They might not stop a normal bear, but they’ll kill you well enough.”

The bear came to a halt, sniffing and breathing hard. Then it lifted up onto its back legs.

Diego watched it change calmly. He had seen shifters change before, only this time he concentrated on keeping his aim steady.

The man was older than he expected. Perhaps in his sixties, which was unusual for a shifter. They tended to die young. He was naked, of course and wrapped his arms around his middle. “I know what you are,” he said. “I came to speak to you.”

“Even though the vampeen control this area?”

He shrugged. “I got through. It’s about the Grimoré. You’re one of them, aren’t you? The trinities, I mean.”

Diego didn’t lower the gun. “How do you know about them?”

“Everyone knows, now. Word has passed.”

Diego nodded. The supernatural world had its own version of the Internet, a combination of word of mouth, telekinesis and other powers, along with ancient instincts that whispered to those who had lived long about unnamed new threats to their survival.

“Shifters are demon-blood,” Diego said. “Why should I trust you?”

“You probably shouldn’t. I have information you should have, though.”

Diego lowered the gun. “Wait,” he said. He went back in the house, grabbed the biggest coat on the rack and came back out. He tossed it onto the gravel. “Put it on. You can talk from there.”

The shifter came forward and Diego could see faint scars all over his body. He had fought hard to live this long. He bent and picked up the coat and slipped it on. “Thank you.”

“Talk,” Diego said. He didn’t aim the gun. He didn’t put it away, either.

The man’s black eyes were fathomless and unreadable, just like his bear soul. “I heard there’s a demon working with you.”

“You said you had news.”

The shifter raised his hand. It was big, just as the bear’s had been. “The Grimoré are moving south. The vampeen with them. They’re driving everything before them. They’re eating anything they can find, too.”

“You came down from the north?”

The shifter’s eyes were troubled. “There are whole villages up there with not a soul left in them and no one left to report the loss.” He wrapped his arms around himself again. Diego knew it wasn’t for warmth this time. “Demon blood. Human blood. Elvish kind…none of us is safe anymore. Even those demons who agree to work with the Grimoré are consumed once their work is done.” He smiled and his smile was bitter. “Finally, the demons are learning for themselves what it is like to make a deal with a devil.”