“So…” Travis reached out and lightly stroked the inside of her leg with his thumb. “…you’re half right.”
His touch was distracting but then, she could see from his smile that his touch was supposed to be distracting.
“Momma was a siren,” Brandon continued, shifting enough to watch his brother trace patterns up and down her leg. “And we split the power between us.”
“Split…?”
And then Brandon’s hand curved around the inside of her other leg and her knees buckled from the rush of sensation. Travis’s grip shifted up her leg, sliding up under the edge of her skirt to hold her hips, as she folded forward, knees going to the couch, her sex rubbing against the rough edge of denim over his erection.
“Takes both of us to make it work.” Brandon’s voice was a low, heated growl at her ear and she moaned as he dragged his tongue over her neck.
“Your name…it was the name Ulysses gave the Cyclops.”
“Same story,” Travis grinned. “Different chapter. Since Momma never said who our father was…”
“If it is no man, then it must be by the will of the gods.”
“Good girl.”
Brandon was behind her now, straddling his brother’s legs, pressed up against her back, arms around her, hands working the buttons on her shirt.
This was where she could stop it. Should stop it. Should pull the business plan she’d drawn up out of her bag and…
She knocked Travis’s hat off and bent to devour his mouth as he hiked her skirt higher with one hand and slid the other under the scrap of silk and lace. He tasted like honey and sunshine and she could feel him still smiling against her lips. When she pulled away, fingers buried in his hair, he murmured, “We never saw a lot of point in singing ships onto rocks.”
Then Brandon took hold of her head and turned it. “This is a lot more fun,” he breathed against her lips just before he claimed them. He was rougher than his brother, his tongue demanding entry. She opened for him and rocked down against Travis’s fingers as Brandon fucked her mouth. When he finally moved along her jaw and scraped his teeth against the sensitive skin where her neck met her shoulders, she fought to bring at least one or two brain cells back on line, reminding herself this wasn’t all she wanted.
“I’m not the only one who knows what you are.” Her voice was husky, needy, desperate, and she was actually more than a little impressed she managed to complete the sentence.
So was Travis. He wrapped fingers wet with her own arousal around her wrist and stopped her from opening his fly. “Who else?”
“Michael Richter. He owns Vital Music Group…Oh God!”
“Brandon!”
Brandon snorted something unintelligible against the back of her neck and stopped rolling her nipples between his fingers.
“Go on, Alysha.”
Go on where? Right. Mike. “One of Richter’s people was here tonight, in the club, wearing ear plugs.”
“Ear plugs?” Brandon straightened, his hands going from her breasts to her shoulders, lightly stroking the skin exposed when he’d pushed back her shirt, the motion somehow holding all three of them at that moment.
Held suspended between them, Ali dredged up a bit more of the myth. “If you sing and no one reacts then you have to throw yourself into the sea…”
“Metaphor.” Travis’s teeth flashed white. “If we sing and no one reacts then we surrender to an outside power. Mythically, the sea. As things stand right now, not so much.”
“Surrender?”
“We give over control.”
Ali frowned down at her reflection in Travis’s glasses, the expression looking out of place sharing her face with swollen, spit-slicked lips and blown pupils. “That’s what Mike wants. To control you. To make you sing up what he desires.”
“Isn’t that what you want, Alysha Bedford of Bedford Entertainment?”
“No. Not control, manage. It’s not the same thing.”
“A difference of degree,” Brandon noted.
“I don’t want to control you. I don’t want to use you, Mike does. Some day, now he knows about you, I guarantee you’ll do a gig where he controls the audience and then he’ll control you.”
“Good thing you showed up to protect us then.” Travis’s lip curled mockingly.
“We don’t mind being courted,” Brandon noted, fingers tightening on her shoulders, breath stirring her hair. “But we don’t like being threatened.”
“Threatened?”
“Someone else knows what we are. Someone else wants to control us. You saw a man in ear plugs and yet, we see only you.” Travis’s hand rose to his glasses. “Your timing sucks, Alysha Bedford. Should have waited until we finished to make your pitch.”
That she wholeheartedly agreed with, but it didn’t change the fact she had to convince them they were in danger.
“You can’t…”
Travis slipped the glasses down and his eyes flared gold.
Ali came back to herself in a parking lot two blocks from the Atlas, standing beside her car, clothing more or less decently arranged over her body—the buttons on her shirt were off by one, but that was a minor point. She remembered everything up to the moment Travis lowered his glasses. Whatever mojo his eyes performed, its effect seemed limited. Twice now, he’d used it as a way to essentially say, we’re done here.
She had a feeling the Noman brothers weren’t cuddlers.
Teeth gritted, she pulled out her keys and unlocked the car. The bastards were mythical creatures and they didn’t believe her? She had half a mind to let Mike have them. A few years under his beck and call, paranormal control issues added to his usual iron-clad contract, and they’d be sorry they hadn’t listened. Fortunately, the other half of her mind was well aware that the brothers weren’t the only ones who’d suffer.
Working together, Brandon and Travis could get whatever they wanted.
Working for Mike, they could get whatever Mike wanted. At the moment, Mike wanted to exercise his power in the music industry but he sure as hell wouldn’t stop there.
She’d have to save NoMan in spite of itself. If she could save Bedford Entertainment at the same time, so much the better.
Mike wouldn’t try his plugged-ear ploy at a concert, there’d be too many variables to control. It would have to be a private party. The brothers might not care much about money, according to Steve, but Mike could offer enough to tempt the significantly more saintly.
Tom had left the bar before the concert ended so he’d already accomplished what he’d had to do. Since he hadn’t spoken to either brother, he’d probably left an envelope with the bartender to be handed over when they were paid. Mike wouldn’t waste any time; his offer of a private venue where they could connect with the industry brass would be in the envelope. There’d be nothing about Vital Music Group, and, while he’d definitely be present at the concert, Mike Richter wouldn’t be hosting. The number on the offer would be large enough that the other three members of the band would insist on accepting and the Noman brothers wouldn’t see the harm. They’d been doing this for so long, they’d clearly gotten careless.
Too careless to listen to warnings.
She’d have to get invited to the party.
Tom’s office was about the size of her office and Glen’s office and Brenda’s reception area combined. A plush, deep-blue carpet acted as a stage for ebony furniture—probably the color, not the wood, although given the depth of Mike’s pockets, Ali wouldn’t swear to that.
Head down, dark hair falling forward over his eyes, Tom kept working as she crossed to the desk, her sandals making no noise against the thick nap. As far as she was concerned, the whole I told my secretary to let you in but I’m far too busy to actually pay any attention to you was a childish power play but she wasn’t going to call him on it. She needed him to feel superior if this was going to work.