He glanced lovingly toward Tara. His woman. Then he smiled at Finn. “We both want to be yours, if you’ll have us.”
13
B
linking stupidly, Finn slowly gazed from Duran to Tara and then back at Duran. This was so far beyond bizarre, and yet their simple request touched him in a way he never would have expected. “I thought you needed the power of a sexual fantasy to take on physical bodies. I wasn’t fantasizing at all. How ... ?”
And why was he sitting here asking such stupid questions when they supposedly really loved sex?
Because he wanted to know. He had to know more about them, to understand why they’d chosen him. If there was something more. Something important he might be missing. About them.
About him.
“Fantasy makes it easier for us to take on solid forms,” Duran said. “But there is so much power here. The array magnifies all of your thoughts; even the simplest mental bursts are amazingly strong. We wanted our chance to see this world before the Gar decide to destroy it.”
“Shit.” He glanced at Tara and then at Duran. “They’re really planning to do that?”
Duran nodded. “They are, but we are a democratic people. We have voted on this. We’re taking a stand here and we will not let them rape this world. Even Zianne doesn’t know, but our plan is simple. We will stop them by disincorporating. Unless, of course, you can somehow help free us as Zianne hoped.”
That didn’t sound good at all. “Disincorporating means?”
Tara smiled and squeezed his hand. “We will scatter our energy throughout space and then return to the heart of Nyria, our goddess. Even without our world, she exists.”
“Sounds like mass suicide to me. Am I right?”
Tara sighed, and he wondered how it was that they knew the human movements, the patterns of speech, the way to behave that left no doubt they were human. “That’s a crude way of putting it, but yes. If we die, the Gar’s ship will die. Our energy is all that keeps it alive.”
The idea made him physically ill, but it said a lot about their character, that they would choose to end their own species rather than take part in yet another world’s destruction.
“Don’t.” He put as much feeling into his words as he could. “Please, not until there’s nothing else left. We’re trying to save all of you.” He practically growled his frustration. “First we have to figure out some way to retrieve your soulstones.”
“They’re locked away from half of our people at any given time,” Duran said. “We can’t get to them. We’ve decided that unless all of us can be free, none will escape alive.”
He said it like it was no big deal. Why such passive indifference to their fate? Yes, it made logical sense that a few should die rather than an entire world if there were no other choice, but until the very end there was always a chance.
Furious, Finn shook his head. “Don’t even think of it. Look, we may be only human, but we’re a resourceful bunch. We’ll figure out a way. Can you trust us to do something to help?”
Tara sighed and smiled at him as if she were talking to a child. “We are but few. You are an entire world. Maybe it’s time for us to end our existence. We’ve aided evil far too long.”
Finn dropped Tara’s hand, lunged to his feet, and glared at the two of them. Then he took a quick step back, shocked by his own surging emotions.
Why did he feel so passionately about people he didn’t know? He never felt passionate about anything. Not even about passion, to be perfectly honest. Not anymore, but his blood boiled, his heart thundered in his chest, and anger surged, hot and furious.
He cared. More than he could imagine, he cared.
Because he did know them, and they knew him. They’d come into his mind, into his room—had searched just for him.
Somehow, having these two people here in his bedroom made everything personal. They’d been in his head, they knew what he was really like, and yet they still seemed to like him.
Hell, he didn’t even like himself most of the time.
Tara stood and cupped his face in her hands. Her eyes had darkened now to a brilliant emerald green. Her lips were red and full as if she’d been kissed for hours.
If this was her first time as a human, she’d probably never been kissed at all.
She smiled. “Show us, Finn. You have what we lack. We need your passion, your desire to fix things. Use your mind to give us strength, your dreams to give us time. We want to know what Zianne found so tempting, so addictive, that she would trade her very soul to come back to the man she loves.”
Tara reached up and kissed him and Finn’s head swam with the sweet scent of vanilla and honey. Wrapping his arms around her, he tasted her lips and thought of cookies fresh from the oven. Working on instinct alone, he turned her toward the bed and they were falling back against the blankets. She was warm and willing beneath him, filling his arms, teasing his senses, her body fitting to his as if made just for Finnegan O’Toole.
Cookies were the last thing on his mind, though he wondered if she tasted the same everywhere. If she were truly real, or merely a construct of his thoughts—if both of them were fantasy.
Though it almost hurt to pull away, Finn ended the kiss, trailing smaller ones along her throat, across her collarbone. He glanced up. Duran stood silently beside the bed, watching as Finn kissed Tara, but he didn’t attempt to join them. It was as if he didn’t know what to do next. Then Finn realized that maybe it was because he—Finn—didn’t know what to do.
This was as new for him as for Duran.
“You’re welcome to join us.” He scooted over to make room. “I’m just as new at this as you are.”
“New to sex?” Duran raised one dark eyebrow. Finn laughed. “New to sex with a man. I’m good to go with women.”
A big man, equal in height, in strength, Duran nodded as he stretched out next to Finn. “We quickly discovered that her human form and mine are different. Zianne said as much.” He shrugged. “I like this form.”
“Good. I wonder where it came from.” Finn studied him for some sense of recognition, well aware he was half lying on the man’s partner. “I don’t know anyone who looks like either of you.”
Tara raised her head and kissed him, tangling her fingers in his hair. “But you do. Sort of. I’m a composite of those women you’ve loved, the ones you could not entice to your bed.”
Chuckling, Finn pushed her thick hair back from her eyes. “There can’t have been all that many.”
“Ah, but there are.” She had a beautiful smile. “You convince yourself you’re not interested in the ones who deny you, but your heart knows differently.”
That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. It made him sound like a bigger flake than he was. He glanced at Duran. “Then what about him? Where does his body and face come from?”
Tara leaned across Finn’s belly and kissed Duran. His eyes lit up and he kissed her back. Finn watched the two of them, all lips and tongue and teeth. Instead of feeling left out, he was more turned on than before.
Duran broke the kiss, leaned back, and stared at Finn. “That is amazing. We have nothing like it in our own form.”
Rolling to one side and scooting back against the headboard, Finn crossed his arms over his bare chest and shot a glance from Tara to Duran. Then he focused on Tara. “You were going to tell me where he came from?”
She laughed, and he wondered how they knew laughter. Then she scooted around until she was sitting cross-legged between Finn’s and Duran’s legs, like she wanted to see both men at once. “Duran is all the men you’ve admired over the years. We took them from your memories. Duran’s face and body are what we ended up with.”
He didn’t know quite how to feel. They had stolen his thoughts, though for the best of reasons. That was, after all, why he was here—to provide those visuals that would make them whole. Their bodies were constructed of his memories, and yet their minds, their personalities, were their own.
At least it explained why they seemed familiar.
Why he wanted to trust them both. It didn’t really explain why he wanted so much more from them. He was growing more aroused by the second. He glanced at the clock. Almost two hours until his shift. So much he wanted to know, to experience.
Two men and a woman could do an awful lot in two hours. He turned his attention to Duran, but before he could make a suggestion, somewhere along the line of how much more comfortable they’d all be as soon as they got out of their clothes, he felt Tara’s naked breasts against his chest, her lips on his shoulder, and the rest of her body lying along his.
By the time he caught his breath, Finn realized that Duran had somehow lost those silky pants he’d been wearing, too. Curious, Finn imagined Tara’s lips trailing across his groin and she moved lower, falling perfectly into his fantasy. But was it what she wanted, or was she merely trying to please him?
Whatever. It was beyond pleasing. But what of Duran? Finn knew what men did together—he wasn’t an idiot—but what did he, personally, want to do with a man? And just as important, what did he want to do
for
Duran?
Something that would show the man what kinds of pleasure this body was capable of. Finn curled away from the headboard and planted his hand on Duran’s broad chest. Gently he shoved him to his back and leaned over him. Tara moved to lie across Finn’s legs, still using her mouth on him. Part of Finn’s mind was tangled up in Tara’s amazing touch, but he stared at Duran’s groin for a minute, working himself up to the next step. Just as Tara sucked Finn deep, he cupped Duran’s balls in his palm, wrapped his other hand around the base of Duran’s flaccid cock, and gently squeezed.
He’d expected to feel awkward about touching a man, but with Tara’s mouth taking him higher by the second, he discovered that watching the surprise in Duran’s eyes, sensing his pleasure, was a turn-on all its own. Duran groaned and arched his hips, and his cock immediately filled Finn’s grasp. Within mere seconds he was as thick and hard as Finn.
Duran rose up on his elbows, eyes wide open, and stared at his erection.
“Amazing how that works, eh?” Finn winked. Then he lowered his head and took Duran’s broad crown into his mouth. He’d never sucked another man before, had never fondled any balls but his own, but with Tara’s lips doing to him exactly what Finn was doing for Duran, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to take as much of that thick shaft as he could inside his mouth.
He felt Tara’s lips and tongue on his own package, and she moaned softly as she licked and sucked, but he was being selfish, wasn’t he? Finn wanted to please both Tara and Duran at the same time. There was something addictive about their taste, but even more arousing was the shared look of wonder. Their joy.
This was all new—not only for Finn, but for the Nyrians, too. He’d never felt like this. Never wanted or needed this much, this quickly. He moved away from Duran and tugged Tara around until she was lying with her head against the pillow. Then he lifted her hips and ran his tongue between her soft folds. At the same time, he used his imagination, showing Duran how he could kneel behind Finn and make use of the tube of hand cream beside the bed.
Finn had definitely not done this before, but there was a first time for everything, right? He wondered if he should move aside so Duran could make love to Tara, but both of them were in his head, so caught up in the here and now, and he felt their gentle denial and the focus on what they were learning now.
That could be the next lesson—showing Duran how to make love to Tara. Picturing the two of them together sent another spike of arousal coursing through his body, but a very focused Duran was already spreading the soft cream over Finn’s ass. He shivered.
Then he glanced over his shoulder, at Duran kneeling behind him, and took a deep, calming breath. It appeared this was going to be a first time for all of them. Hoping he’d not just made the biggest mistake of his life, Finn focused on Tara, on making her first time feel truly special.
He hoped like hell he didn’t make a fool of himself. Duran’s fingers slid over his ass and he shuddered, as much from pleasure as from nerves. Damn. What if it really hurt? No, he couldn’t go there. He had to look at this as a new experience. A learning experience, the same as for the Nyrians.
They still had over an hour. That should be enough time, at least for this first lesson, but in the back of his mind, Finn wondered—who was the teacher, and which of them the student?
Then he felt Duran’s fingers pressing harder at his back door and figured he’d better concentrate on the woman beneath him. It was a lot easier than thinking about what was coming next.
As Mac pulled away in the four-wheeler, Morgan raised his fist to knock on Rodie’s door.
She screamed.
He tried the handle. Locked. So he put his shoulder to the door and shoved hard. The door popped open. The floor plan was just like his, and he raced through the main room to Rodie’s bedroom in back. Skidded into the room and flipped on the light.
Rodie huddled in the corner of the bed, surrounded back and side by wall and headboard. Her arms were wrapped around her pillow with just her nose and eyes and a tangle of dark curly hair showing over the top. Breathing like she’d just run a mile, she stared at the opposite wall where a glowing tower of gold and blue energy crackled between the floor and ceiling.
“Rodie? What happened?”
“Morgan!” She launched herself across the bed and into his arms. He stumbled back a step but caught her against his chest and held her tight. Her bare legs wrapped around his waist and her arms went around his neck tight enough to strangle.
“Okay, sweetie. You’re okay. It looks like you’ve got a Nyrian in your room. Any idea if it’s anyone we know?”
She shook her head against his shoulder but didn’t look. “I don’t know. I just got off my shift a while ago, and I was so tired I went straight to bed and must have fallen asleep right away. I woke up and there was a man in my bed. At first I thought it was you, and I rolled over to kiss you, and it wasn’t.”
She burst into tears. “Oh, shit. I feel like such an idiot. I know it’s okay, but I woke up and he was naked and I could feel him against my belly, and ...”