My brow furrowed as I stared down at my hands. Hart's uncomfortable look when he had seen the tattoo raced through my mind. He had accused me twice of being someone other than Frankie Gardiner. He was adamant. When he had seen the tattoo, he looked blindsided.
“What do you hope to achieve?” I asked bitterly. “I can't stay here. I'm temporary. You'll never see my true face. I could walk past you next week, next year, and you would never know it’s me.”
Jae smiled softly and shook his head. “Mara,” He chided. “We’d know it was you.”
I pouted. “Unlikely. I'm a master of subterfuge.”
Jae snorted. “Right.”
“Seriously.”
“Of course.”
I reached over and tugged the blanket over my shoulders. Turning my back of the Nephilim. I closed my eyes.
Jae pushed himself onto the now-vacant sofa and got comfortable.
After a moment of silence, I spoke. “I’ve noticed your bookshelves are looking a little bare...” I allowed my words to trail off.
Jae swore under his breath. A Korean curse that I did not know, but I recognized the tone of a dirty word when I heard one. Hart shifted in his sleep.
“You’re the one that’s been stealing my erotica?” He hissed. Keeping his voice low.
I hummed but did not answer.
Something hard dug into my back, and the skin under my ear tickled. I reached up to push my hair away from my face, only to encounter a mass of russet strands that did not belong to my host’s body.
Callum Hart’s hair had fallen out of his ponytail holder in the night. The poker straight locks tumbled around his shoulders. I was envious of the quality of his hair. Frankie's was wavy, but when I had tried to brush it, it had gone out of control.
Some of the products in her bathroom had worked, but it had been a case of trial and error. Even following the instructions, my host's hair did not look as good as the beautiful black women on the bottles.
Hart looked more peaceful than I had ever seen him. His rosy lips parted in sleep.
I wriggled, feeling too hot, as I kicked off the comforter. It took a second to realize that someone had come up behind me, cocooning my body with their warmth. Jae had slipped off the couch in the night and had joined us. I was sandwiched between Hart, tucked into his large body, and pressed against the leonine, more feminine frame of Jae. And Jae's erection was pressed against the small of my back.
Jae had reached over in the night, his hand rested on Hart's. Their entwined fingers told me that it wasn’t the first time they had slept in the same bed. My brows raised. I had not expected that. Though Jae and Hart were similar if I really thought about it. Somehow their intimacy both intrigued, aroused, and warmed me.
Jae shifted. His breath tickled the hollow of my ear. Deep and slow. Still asleep.
My eyes fluttered as I debated whether to go back to sleep. The sunrise had cast the room in dim light. My sleep had already been erratic. Thrown from many dreams.
My eyes met Hart's orange ones. He was awake. His expression was soft and vulnerable in the morning light. Far from the stoic man I typically saw.
We were close enough to share the same breath. I couldn’t have said who had moved first, but Hart's lips pressed against mine. His stubble tickled my chin, his tongue pressed against mine tentatively, as if seeking permission.
Hart rocked his body into mine. The evidence of his arousal pressed into my stomach. I raised a leg and hooked it around his waist. Feeling his hand pressed against my hip, still entwined with Jae's.
I squirmed as the kiss grew more profound. Our heads tilted. Our chests pressed together. Disturbed, Jae began to wake. His hardness pushed into my back and reminded me of his presence.
The two men shifted, pressing against me.
A light brush of fingers moving my hair away from my neck. A fluttering set of lips pressed against the seam of my jaw. The physical sensation was too much. I was lost in it. The taste of Hart's lips. The tingling of the soft skin of my mouth and his divine taste. The undulating press of Jae's magic, as it rolled down my body. No words needed. Hart and Jae untwined their hands. Hart reached up to grip my cheeks. To position my head where he wanted. His touch loving, as if he did not want to let go lest I dissolve into nothingness.
Jae's fingers spread until his hand spanned across my flat stomach. With a jarring oomph, he pulled me back into his body until there was no room between us.
Slowly, his finger teased the waistband of my trousers.
“What is it that you want, my love?” The endearment was said in Korean.
Nae Sarang.
내 사랑
I broke free from Callum Hart's kiss to take a breath. The large man moved his lips to the column of my throat. Laying laboriously slow kisses along my pulse line.
“I want to be touched,” I admitted. Closing my eyes as I revealed the most profound truth. “Touch me. Don't stop touching me.”
I was drunk on the slow, sliding, feeling of Jae's rough fingers as they explored my soft skin. Dipping under the waistband of my cargo pants, but not removing them. The tight press of another man against my front, combined with the confinement of clothes, meant that Jae's movements were restricted. Somehow it made the light brushes of his tentative touching all the more elicit.
Jae rose up, bending over until his lips pressed to mine. I craned my head back to meet his mouth. His taste was different from Hart's. His kiss felt different too. Hart was deep and tender. Jae was an unleashed, raw, clacking of teeth. A fiery passion. Needy and frantic.
Hart's fingers dipped under the hem of my cotton t-shirt, bringing the fabric up my torso until it rested on my collarbone. My nipples were already hard, but the cold air and their exposure made them tingle and throb. Begging to be touched.
Hart's warm mouth wrapped around the stiff peak, his hand gripped my other breast, and his callused hands tweaked my nipple. Making my body jolt and core tingle.
The realization that I was bleeding from my vagina like a wounded soldier was enough to break through the fog of my lust. Making me flush in embarrassment. I had never been touched in a way that set my soul on fire before.
But was I really being touched?
It wasn’t my body sandwiched between two men that had escaped death with me the night before. It was Frankie Gardiner’s.
They didn’t know the true me. The real me.
The flames of my arousal were doused with an ice bucket of realization.
As much as I wanted them. Hart, Jae, and Hugo. It could not happen.
I gripped Jae's wrist. Halting his teasing motions, pulling it free from my waistband. I kept my eyes down as I broke away from the two men. Shifting to the edge of the bed without a word. I righted my clothes.
“Frankie?” Hart sounded adorably confused, his words tinged with worry for me. Jae held out his hand, halting his friend's movement towards me.
“It's okay,” Jae assured me. “We can stop.”
I nodded, the movement frantic with my need to run. My eyes darted to Hart's and then back to Jae's.
Jae got the message. “Callum, could you step outside for a minute?”
The mountain man opened his mouth to argue, before deciding against it with a solemn nod. He smiled tightly as he stepped out of the room.
“Are you alright, Mara?” Jae scooted forward, decidedly not touching me. He used my real name for the first time in the whole evening, I noticed. He had not called me Mara in front of Hart. A fact I now realized I was grateful for.
I blinked slowly. My tongue felt too big for my mouth. “It’s not my face,” I whispered, pressing the meat of my palms into my eye sockets and rubbing until I saw a dancing kaleidoscope of colors. “You’re touching me, but not me.”