by Lora Leigh
She had no idea how hot it made him, having her defy him, having her anger meet his dominance head-on.
"Not even a chance in hell." He grinned tightly. "The only ass I have a mind to fuck is yours, sweetheart."
"Not even in your greatest fantasy." Her arm struck out, her finger pointing back at him furiously. "You can shove your dick up your own ass for all I care. If you're not bisexual, then what the hell did you hope to gain? Is your wife loving you too much pressure? What? What in the hell would possess you to attempt to make me fall in love with another man?"
"I'd like to hear that answer myself." Jethro stepped into the room, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression controlled, his eyes glittering with anger.
Mac almost smiled. These were the two people he loved most in the world. Jethro was like a brother to him, and Keiley, hell, she was his soul, but Mac knew himself. Just as he knew his friend.
"How many women have you shared since I got married?" Mac asked him.
"That has nothing to do with this, Mac."
"Answer the damned question," he snapped. "How many?"
Jethro glowered back at him. "None."
He turned back to Keiley. "When he's gone, will you let another stranger in your bed?
One I'm not certain how far to trust with my wife rather than a lover? Don't you think you'll sense that discomfort?"
"As Jethro said, what the hell does that have to do with anything?"
"Connection and bonding," Mac snapped back at them both. "Sometimes it takes three to make a whole. There's only one man I trust enough to hold you without me, and that's Jethro. And I know Jethro. He was half in love with you when I met you and too damned stupid to do anything about it. This way, we all get what we want and we're damned happy with it."
"Happy with it because it's what you decree?" Keiley yelled back.
"Hell, yes!" That one shut her up. She stared back at him, her lips parted in shock, her eyes wide with it. "I'm sick to death of denying what I am. And by God, you try telling me you'll ever let any other man in your bed with us!"
"And what about Jethro?" she cried out. "Don't you think he deserves a woman who loves him? Just him?"
"Is that what you want, Jethro?" Mac asked him.
"I have what I want," Jethro answered softly.
"What about me?" She was seething now, like a volcano ready to blow. "Do you think I want to live my life putting up with two fucking pricks rather than one? Well, you have another damned think coming, you son of a bitch. At this moment, I'll be damned if I'll let either one of you back in my fucking bed."
Damn, he was in trouble now. She wasn't just screaming, but her face was flushed, her eyes a chocolate brown, and she was cussing. A lot. Keiley wasn't much of a cusser until she was ready to brain some idiot male who had finally pushed her patience to the limit.
Even Jethro was watching her warily now.
"You could have tried discussing this with me first," Jethro muttered.
"Wouldn't have been as effective." Mac shrugged, keeping his eyes on Keiley as she stared between them as though observing some strange, alien set of creatures.
"I'm married to a crazy man," Keiley muttered, shaking her head as she continued to stare at him in dumbfounded confusion. "Mac, have you lost your mind somewhere in the cow shit lately?" Her voice sliced through the air like a razor.
His lips twitched. She was at her most confrontational, her most defiant.
"Not lately," he assured her.
"Somewhere in the past, then, and I didn't notice it?" she asked with false sweetness.
His eyes narrowed on her further as he heard the anger in her tone, her confusion.
Keiley glanced at Jethro. This time, he was the one leaning lazily against the wall, watching the exchange thoughtfully. But Jethro's thoughtful expression was a bit more menacing than Mac's.
Keiley breathed in deeply, smoothed her hands down her dress, then stared back at her husband as confusion swamped anger and left her helpless before the regret she saw in his eyes.
"Why, Mac?" she finally whispered. "Why in God's name would you want me to love another man?"
"Because it completes all of us," he answered her gently. "Because it's the only way I can be certain that no part of the past remains
inside me. It's the only way Jethro can fully give himself. And it gives you a balance, a freedom you wouldn't have otherwise. Because without it, I wake up shaking with the thought of what I could do to both of us. Without it, Jethro would continue on the same damned path he returned to when I left. Not giving a damned damn about life, one way or the other, because the balance is gone."
"And you think you can just make this decision for us on your own?" She shook her head, staring back at Jethro as he lowered his head, his expression rueful as he shook his head slowly.
"Do you love her, Jethro?" Mac didn't take his eyes off her. Jethro's head jerked up, and Keiley saw it. She saw the emotions raging through him, things she hadn't wanted to see before.
"If he left tomorrow, Keiley, would you cry?"
"That's not love, Mac," she whispered, shaking her head herself now. "That's not love.
And I'm not playing this game with you. Not anymore."
She turned and walked out of the bedroom, moving slowly, aware of the two men following her, their expressions counterpoints to each other.
Counterpoints. Balances. A team in a way Keiley had never imagined and couldn't fully understand.
She moved down the stairs, aware of Jethro edging around her, moving in front of her, checking each room before she entered it. But the knowledge was distant, just as the awareness of the two men was distant. Suddenly, Keiley felt more alone than she had ever been in her life. Held suspended, watching events that she couldn't understand how she had become a part of.
As she moved to the stove to check the roast boiling merrily, she was aware of Jethro leaving out the back door, but Mac stayed behind. Her house was becoming a merry-go-round of two men shifting and revolving around her.
Behind her, Mac pulled out a chair, and she heard his sigh as he sat down.
"I was five when I first realized what hatred was," he suddenly said.
Keiley swung around in surprise. He always refused to discuss his childhood.
"Dad was insistent that I make friends with this kid on the other side of town. Tobias Blackwood." He wiped his hand down his face. "A shadow of a kid, though I didn't realize then the ghosts he lived with or the reason my father insisted on the friendship.
See, Dad liked an audience when he really got wound up, and showing another kid what a pussy his son was made him feel like a man."
Keiley felt the horror reflected in Mac's eyes.
"It was late. After dark. Tobias and I had stayed outside as long as we could. We didn't talk much, batted around the hills some, played some halfhearted basketball. But then we couldn't put it off any longer. It was time to go in.
"He got started on Mom during dinner. He asked her what she had done that day. See, he had sent her to the store for groceries while he did chores outside." His expression became distant. "She told him what she did, who she saw, how much the groceries cost, and the state of the damned vegetable bin. And I could see the fear building in her eyes.
Was the owner there, he asked her. She shrugged and said she hadn't seen him. And that crazy light lit his eyes. And I knew what was coming."
As Mac spoke, he stared around the kitchen. Once, the table had sat where the washroom was now. His mother had kept eating, small bites that she pushed into her mouth as her husband accused her of fucking the grocer. How long had it taken? How many times did she think she could do it and not get caught? He couldn't walk in the store without the grocer smirking in amusement. Didn't she know what a whore she was? An embarrassment.
Mac had chanced to look up at Tobias. The motherless boy was staring at his plate, his hands in his lap, unable to eat. And then Mac's fath
er had glanced at him.
You fucking bitch, look how you've ruined that kid's meal. You ruin everything. I'll have to go to another town just to buy groceries because you can't keep your skirt around your fucking knees.
Tears had streaked her face and he had raged over that. As the meal drew to a close he turned to Mac. Johnnie, make sure your woman's not a whore when you get one.
Then he had just stopped. His expression had evened out, and he began talking as though he hadn't been raging for nearly an hour. As though he hadn't just revealed the hell Mac lived with in front of another kid. A kid who could tell it. Who could go to school and relate his mother's shame.
"He never said anything." Mac shook his head. "Tobias never told, and I made sure I never had company after that again. But I learned hatred. And I swore it wouldn't happen to me, Kei."
He didn't whine. He didn't beg. He lifted his head and he stared back at her, his jaw clenched.
"I'll never speak of this again. I never want to discuss it, ever again. Over the years, it grew steadily worse until one day Mom got sick." He couldn't look at her. He inhaled roughly, remembering his fragile, timid little mother. "She got a fever and tried to say it was just a cold. Three days later she couldn't get out of bed. Dad picked her up and carried her to the truck and took her to the doctor. They wanted her in the hospital, but he wanted her home. So she came home. She died the next evening."
"It wasn't your fault," she whispered. "She should have left him. She should have killed him."
His lips twisted. "I told her the same thing." He raised his gaze to hers, the pain and fury at the pain crashing over him. "She said she made the vow. It was her mistake. In sickness, in health, for better or worse. It was her mistake and God would take care of her when she couldn't live with it any longer."
"God!" Her hand capped over her lips as she stared back at Mac, horrified.
"I have him in me," he said softly. "That filthy bastard's blood runs through my veins.
After Mom died, I left. I left him alone. And I swore I'd let him die alone. I went to college on a scholarship. Being away from him, I didn't have to hide girlfriends. I was free. Or so I thought."
His first lover had been a tall, slender blonde. She had been sexual adventurer and filled with life. And the first time Mac had seen her talking to another man he had terrified himself. The words had been hovering on his lips, the insults in his mind, the destructive paranoia blazing through his consciousness.
"A friend of mine saw it," he said softly. "He was a few years older than I was, and he knew something about the darkness that inhabits men's souls. And he introduced me to my first ménage."
He leaned back in his chair, staring around the kitchen. After his father's death he had had the place completely renovated. It looked nothing like the dark, squalid home he had lived in as a child.
He could still feel his mother, though. When his father wasn't around, she would laugh.
She played games with him as a child and talked to him as a teenager. Her gentle voice still filled his dreams sometimes. Her tears filled his nightmares.
"How did it evolve to this?" She waved her hand to encompass the situation they were in now.
"Jethro." A mocking smile twisted his lips. "I met him at the Law Enforcement Academy. We applied to the FBI the same day. He was like this other side of me. The darkness I kept hidden showed on his face. The softness he kept hidden, I knew how to give my women." He shrugged tightly. "It just evolved. When you and I married, I thought it would go away. I thought I could force it away."
He stared back at her forcefully then. "I haven't let you see or know what raged inside me because I love you, Kei. I love you more than any man has a right to love a woman."
"Mac." She swallowed tightly. "The past is no excuse—"
"The past isn't why I do it now." He shook his head. "It's not some kind of damned crutch, Kei. And it's not just a handy excuse. That's what started it. That's how it evolved.
When we married I left it, and I learned some things about myself. I learned that I missed it. I learned that I can't watch your pleasure and give it to you at the same time. I learned that I need the balance I had left back in Virginia. My psyche was warped before I ever shared the first woman, and age only intensified it. You have all I am now. It's up to you whether you can live with it."
"You're asking me to love another man." Her voice was filled with helpless confusion.
"This isn't just sex you want, Mac. Think about this. If I ever have children, you'll never know if they're yours. Our children would endure the gossip and the talk Mac, what you're asking is impossible."
"Is it? Or do you just want to think it is? How we deal with it is what matters. How you want to deal with it. I can live without it, but I won't deny I want it. I want you to share not just your body, I want you to share your heart."
"Why? Damn you, you haven't given me a reason why."
"Because he's as lost as I was before you loved me. Because he's the only fucking brother I've ever had. Damn it, Keiley, because it brings us all three of us pleasure and it by God completes us and you know it."
Mac came to his feet, fighting the surge of frustration eating through his soul. He inhaled roughly.
"I've lived a violent life. I've made enemies. I've been undercover so many times, for such long periods of time, that sometimes I wondered who I was. Jethro was always there. He was always a reminder. And he's here now, protecting you when I can't.
Covering my back and yours. You're not losing anything if you accept this, you'll only gain, Keiley. You'll be loved until the walls are bursting at the seams with emotion.
Loved and sated, completely. Think about that. Think about it, and then let me know if you really want to lose it."
"It's not a good enough reason," she cried out.
"It's the only fucking reason I have, Keiley," he yelled back. "I need you. I love you until it burns through my soul, but son of a bitch, I love you even more when I see you with him."
"Why? Why?" she screamed.
"God damn it, I don't know why," he snarled back, raging, an inner fury she had never seen in him before burning through his eyes, his expression. A pain, a blistering agony that Keiley felt ripping through her soul. Because she had never known it existed.
Chapter 18
"Do you know what I see when I see him taking you?" He advanced on her, his larger body taut, tight with tension with a sudden lust she had never glimpsed in him before.
He backed her into the counter, his arms bracketing her, his chest raking her breasts through the dress she wore as his breath sawed in and out of his lungs. The eroticism of the position stroked along her senses like invisible fire.
"I see perfection," he growled. "I see his hands touching you. And I don't see a whore. I see beauty. I see life. I see you giving into the most perfect passion ever created. And I get to watch it. I see a woman so filled with passion and love that she gives herself to it. I see love, Keiley."
His head lowered, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a grimace of remembered pleasure as his eyes darkened and gleamed with it. Remembrance marked his expression.
But it also marked her arousal. It was burning through her, reminding her of the fantasies she had allowed to build over the years and the hunger Mac was brewing in her now.
"Mac—"
"Deny that the nights it takes me all night to sate the arousal inside you, you don't wish for more." Knowledge tightened his expression. "I see your eyes then, baby. I see the need. I see the fires burning inside you. Don't tell me you haven't craved it."
She wanted to whimper and only barely managed to hold it back. Sometimes she knew he saw too much, knew him too well.
"Fantasy." She swallowed tightly before licking her lips to ease the nervous dryness.
"Fantasy shouldn't count."
"Fantasy always counts, Keiley," he crooned, his smile slow and heated. "You're fantasies mean eve
rything. Anything you want. Everything you need. It all matters to me, darlin'. Don't you know that? Your fantasies." His lips smoothed over her brow. "Every hunger." His voice deepened. "Every dream."
A tremor raced up her spine as she drew in a hard, deep breath.
"He's taking what's yours," she whispered, feeling the heaviness in her breasts, between her thighs, at the memory of Jethro taking her, at the feel of Mac against her.
Mac shook his head slowly. "I don't possess you. I don't want to take from you, Keiley.
I want to give to you. I want to give you enough pleasure to wipe every preconceived notion of passion out of your head. And I want to watch it. When I fuck you, I'm sucked in. Sucked into that sweet hot pussy. Sucked into your kiss. Sucked into your heart. I can't see or feel anything but the explosions of sensation in front of my eyes. But when he touches you, when he takes you, I can see. And I can see it turns you on. It makes you burn. You love it. Admit you love it."
His lips were hot, rasping with such pleasure that it sent shudders racing through her as he stroked them over her jaw. Soft kisses, black velvet rasping over sensitive flesh.
"I love it," she panted, breathless as one hand dropped from the counter to her thigh.
"But it's not natural."
"Says who?" His lips brushed down her cheek, his voice guttural, savage. "Does it feel natural, Keiley? Does it feel like he should have been here all long, loving you with me?
Keeping you warm from one end to the other? Keeping you sated, held?"
It did, and that terrified her.
"Someone's going to get hurt," she whimpered. "I don't want any of us to get hurt. I don't want to be hurt."
The thought of the gossip, the rumors, of everyone knowing a part of her intimate life, was worrisome. It wasn't panicking her, though, and it should have. She should be half hysterical at the thought of people whispering about her sex life. About acts that were considered beyond the norm. Beyond respectable.
But she wasn't. What was more frightening, the fact that she wasn't frightened? Or the implications of that lack of fear? The implications of the fact that she was already half convinced?