Blackthorne, Fiona - Moonstruck [Blue Moon 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  “You are lucky,” she agreed. “It must be hard to get medical professionals to come here. Is there anywhere near here with a medical school?”

  Robert laughed and swirled the water around, sending ripples under the surface to tickle her skin.

  “Nowhere in Maine. We’ve always been progressive in many ways,” he said. “We sent our women to become educated as physicians. Since no woman could be born a werewolf, they were free to come and go as they pleased. So, from about 1850 on, Blue Moon had mostly female doctors. In the 1980s, we expanded the hospital, and so we imported more doctors. But, still, to this day, most of the physicians on staff at Blue Moon Hospital are women from here.”

  Ava found herself fascinated by the glimpses of the town and its history. There was so much to learn here. Endless subjects awaited her research. Maybe she’d pick a specialty after her dissertation was done that would allow her to come here to research from time to time. That way, she could still see Robert, Declan, and Sean. The thought of having to leave them turned her cold despite the steamy water. A yearly fling would never be enough to fill the craving that gnawed at her very soul when she thought of them.

  “What else is unusual about Blue Moon?” she asked, clearing her throat and replastering the smile on her face. “I mean, aside from the obvious.”

  “Would you be surprised to know we have a healthy population of South American literary dissidents living on Seal Rock Island in the harbor?”

  Ava surprised herself with an inelegant snort of laughter.

  “They live together in an old mansion they call La Casa de Pais. They’re mostly Chilean, Argentinean, and Peruvian. For twenty years, they’ve been on the island, drinking, writing some pretty abstract literature, and arguing politics. They will never leave and go home to make a revolution. They’ve tried several times to announce they were leaving, but somehow, they never quite got around to packing or buying plane tickets.”

  “Priceless.” She laughed. “I absolutely have to get out there to meet them.”

  “They’d love to meet you,” Robert said. “I’d also love for you to meet more of the people in town. We’re a progressive place in more ways than one.” He reached out to trace the skin of her arm, the slight slickness of the bath oil creating a silky friction that awakened throbs of need in her body.

  “How so?”

  “Well, many people here choose to live in a relationship with multiple partners or to live in Dominant/submissive relationships.”

  She looked up at him, startled, and saw the flash of understanding in his golden eyes about the kinds of questions that she now harbored.

  “We’ve always had a shortage of women here,” Robert said, beginning to unbutton his shirt. “For some reason, and I can’t imagine why,” he added with a faintly sad smile, “most women in Blue Moon tended to have sons. So, men here learned to share. Add in a lot of werewolves who base their entire social structure on dominance and submission, and well, you get our town.”

  Ava felt her mouth go dry as Robert stood up and unbuckled his pants. She studied him, the way his body was thickly muscled, almost morphing the muscles with her eyes into the powerful haunches and shoulders of a wolf.

  Suddenly, the pleasant bubble of her distraction burst, and she was once again acutely aware of the danger and terror that awaited her on the other side of these walls. Here she was, making plans for visiting people and places, setting up an agenda for a future that might not exist. Where would she be by this time tomorrow? Still alive? Possessed? She shivered, forcing herself to swallow back the regurgitated panic from remembering almost drowning that morning.

  Wordlessly, she reached out for Robert, who stepped into the tub with her. He took her into his arms, pressing her against his broad, hard chest. He was real. He was here, in this moment with her. They were alive and together. The need that she burned with turned from blue desire to white hot with the drive to affirm survival.

  She wriggled around so that she faced him and straddled his hips, crushing his lips with hers as she lowered herself onto his hot, hard cock. The sense of completion filled her with the triumph of life over death, of love over fear, of everything that she was set against everything that wanted to destroy her.

  “God, love,” Robert groaned, grasping her around the waist with his large, strong hands. “You feel so good on me.”

  He began to raise and lower her, setting the primal rhythm for their lovemaking. Ava heard the door to the bathroom open and quiet footsteps approach the tub. She felt the water rise around her as she realized Declan had joined them, kneeling behind her and reaching around to cup her breasts. Sean sat on the steps by the tub and took her mouth with his.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped. “I…I feel so much!”

  She had come within a word of saying that she loved them all. Only raw instinct had kept her from blurting it out. How could it be true? Wasn’t it all just a by-product of a curse and, well, some amazing sex? She couldn’t say it and not be absolutely sure that she meant it. Robert, Declan, and Sean deserved better from her.

  “You saved my life, sweetheart,” Declan said softly. He nipped at her earlobe with his teeth, the slight ticklish scraping sprinkling shivers of pleasure from her nipples to her toes. “If you hadn’t gotten me out of that seat belt, Robert would have lost precious seconds in trying to get me to the surface. I probably would have died, or at least suffered massive brain damage from a lack of oxygen. I owe you my live, Ava Bell.”

  He fell to kissing her tenderly from the secret spot between her earlobe and her jaw all the way down her neck to her shoulder. His teeth sunk gently into the skin of her shoulder, a slight bite of pain heightening the awareness of all the pleasure that now surged and crashed through her body. His hands rolled, lightly pinched, and brushed her nipples, making her squirm on Robert’s cock.

  Robert began thrusting his hips up, driving his cock deep into her, slipping against her G-spot as he pulled out. Ava shuddered and bowed with the growing urgency of her arousal, reaching forward to grasp Robert’s shoulders for support.

  “When I saw you under the water,” Sean said quietly, leaning in to kiss her lips tenderly, “I felt my own heart stop. You looked so faraway, so lost to me already. I knew in that moment that if anything ever happened to you, my life would be over. Without you, there would be nothing to live for, nothing to keep me from walking into the dark. Baby, you’re my life now.”

  A sob escaped Ava’s chest as the deep, impossible love she felt for these men welled up, spilling over the walls around her heart and filling her completely. She wanted to tell them she loved them, and yet still, she could not form the words. Too much unfinished business hung over her head, too many deadly questions standing between her and the freedom to love as she wanted.

  “We’re never letting you go, Ava.” Robert growled—how she loved the way he growled all the time when he was aroused! “We are meant to be, and we will fight to keep you with everything we have.”

  “I…I don’t know,” was all she could manage to gasp as his fingers found her clit and lovingly caressed it slowly and firmly, bringing forth pounding throbs of near-ecstasy.

  “I think it’s time we show Ava whom she belongs to,” Declan said, running his hands down her sides to her ass.

  “Here,” Sean said, handing Declan the bottle of sandalwood oil.

  Ava felt the resonance against her back of Declan’s wickedly seductive chuckle. She smelled the heavy, woody perfume of the sandalwood and then felt his slickened fingers at the tight ring of muscle in her ass. She thought she would die of bliss as first one finger, then two were worked up into her.

  “I’m so close.” She gasped as the double fullness between Robert’s cock and Declan’s fingers began to roll her toward the edge. She closed her eyes to experience the fullness of the sensations running riot in her body, and she felt the head of Sean’s cock on her lips.

  Greedily, she opened for him, loving the way he hissed and fisted a handful of h
er hair as he slid into her mouth. She used her tongue to tease and torture him, sucking him hard, all the while bucking back and forth between the fingers in her ass and the cock in her pussy.

  She groaned around Sean’s cock as she felt Declan slip his fingers out of her, then froze as the tip of his cock tapped against her hole. Her chest tightened with panic, the fear of both wanting to feel him inside her ass and not wanting the pain depriving her of air.

  “Easy, sweetheart,” Declan cooed, kissing the line of her spine as Robert held her up and tilted her forward toward him, thrusting her ass out above the water. “Breathe through it. This will feel so good, I promise. You just have to breathe and imagine all your muscles relaxing around me.”

  Even Sean pulled out of her mouth and began to kiss her to help her through this new and terrifyingly arousing experience.

  “I don’t know.” She whimpered into his kiss, biting off a groan as the initial stretching burned her muscles. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Breathe, Ava,” Sean ordered, cupping her face in his hands and forcing her to look into his eyes. “You can do this. You were meant to be loved like this, fully and without anything held back from us.”

  His words stirred her heart at the same time as strange new sensations of arousal swept through every part of her body.

  “Oh damn, she’s tight.” Declan growled, his hands digging into her hips as he seemed to fight for control. “She’s so hot and tight. It’s never felt like this before.”

  Ava closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe and imagine her muscles relaxing to allow Declan in, and inch by inch, she felt herself loosen enough to allow him to enter her fully.

  There was something amazingly, beautifully fragile about being taken like this. She had always thought it would be gross and degrading, but now, she was inundated by new and startlingly powerful feelings of vulnerability, trust, and love. Her body seemed to pulse around Declan, feeding the electrical current of her desire until her body seemed to spark with the flashing arcs of need.

  “Easy now,” Robert said as he began to lower her back onto his cock. “Just keep breathing and relaxing. Oh damn, this feels good, love!”

  Ava lost all power of speech at the double penetration, and all she could think of was wanting to share herself with all of them, taking Sean into her mouth again. Her nipples burned, her pussy throbbed, and she moved frantically to drive each arc of arousal higher until the moment when the ultimate ecstasy turned her inside out.

  The power of her climax robbed her of sight and sound, leaving her only dimly aware of Robert, Declan and Sean finding their own completion in quick succession to her. She swallowed around Sean, shaking and thrashing as Robert’s fingers on her clit kept drawing out each delicious throb.

  As she slowly sank back to earth from the orbit of her orgasm, she began to feel Robert, Declan, and Sean gently kissing and touching her as they pulled out. She sighed in mindless contentment as Declan took her in his arms and leaned back with her against the other end of the tub.

  “My beautiful sweetheart,” he murmured into her hair. “You are so brave and so generous.”

  “I feel hollow,” she mumbled, closing her eyes and snuggling into his chest. “And my legs are like strings of spaghetti with lead weights on the ends. I don’t think I can move.”

  “You don’t have to, baby,” Sean said, sitting down on the steps by her and reaching over to take her hand in his. “We’ll do everything and take care of you now.”

  She wanted to object to such an archaic construction of gender roles, but nothing snappy seemed to come to mind, especially when her mind was full of happy pink fluff.

  “Let’s wash you off and get you into bed,” Robert said, leaning forward and soaping up a washcloth. “You need to rest, and later, Zara said she would be by with dinner.”

  “Hot damn!” Sean exclaimed, grinning. “We oughta drown Declan more often if it gets us Zara’s cooking!”

  Declan growled deep in his chest, but he grinned right back at Sean.

  “That really shouldn’t be funny.” Ava laughed. “Don’t you guys cook?”

  The three of them gave her a stunned look then looked at each other, seemingly puzzled by the concept. She sighed.

  “We’re in big trouble then,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Why?” Robert asked.

  She looked at each of them to say what she couldn’t yet express in words.

  “Because I don’t cook, either,” she replied.

  Chapter 21

  “Stop squirming, baby,” Sean grumbled sleepily as Ava wriggled against him.

  “I’m hot,” she complained in a hiss. She was, too. Sean could feel the heat radiating from her body. She was almost scorching to the touch.

  “You got a fever?” he asked, rousing himself in case he needed to take care of her.

  “No, it’s too much body heat from the giant wolfmen in my bed,” she whispered grumpily.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Declan said, rolling over and half raising himself to peek down at Ava.

  “I’m too hot,” she announced, abandoning whispering as both men were now awake. “You guys are cooking me out of bed!”

  Sean glanced guiltily at the heavy quilt that he had insisted on putting on top of the covers. He had been so afraid that Ava had gotten a chill, despite her hot bath. He chuckled ruefully as he pushed the quilt off the bed and glanced at the fire in the fireplace. Yeah, he hadn’t really needed to build such a raging inferno to warm up the room…but he had.

  “Can we open a window for a minute?” Ava asked crawling over him to get out of bed.

  Sean took full advantage of the moment to run his hands over her sweet, soft body, feeling every line of her under his fingertips. His heart swelled with the deep, unshakable love he had for her. She was it, not just a woman from a legend that would set them free, but she was Ava. His Ava. Their Ava.

  “Here, sweetheart,” Declan said. “At least wear this.”

  He got out of bed from his own side and came around to give her his T-shirt that he had thrown over a chair. Ava sighed and put the T-shirt on. She went over to the window and struggled with the latch.

  “Here, let me do that,” Declan said, making short work of the stiff old window. Soon, blasts of cold, clean night air were filling the room, and Ava stood at the window, taking in deep breaths.

  “Is Robert still out there?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Declan replied, pulling on his jeans.

  Realizing it might be some time before she went back to bed, Sean sighed and got up, pulling on his own clothing. He came to stand by Ava at the window and tried to follow the line of her gaze. She seemed to be looking out at the trees of the forest that stood between their house and White Farm. It was almost impossible to distinguish any one tree from the other in the moonless night. Only his supernatural animal vision allowed him to see the variations of gray that delimited trunks and branches. He could hear the faint shushing sound of the water on the rocks with his sensitive ears. He wondered what Ava could see.

  “I feel so bad for him,” she mused, biting her bottom lip in a way that made him want to kiss her and taste those sweet lips for himself. “I feel bad for all of you, taking turns and going out into the cold to run around the house and the woods.”

  “What’s really bothering you, baby?” Sean asked, slipping his arm around her waist. “Don’t hold back. The only way we’re going to get through this is if we do it together. No secrets. No brooding. We talk it out.”

  She sighed and pressed her fingers to her temples.

  “Does the night seem heavy to you?” she murmured. “It’s so…so pitch black and oppressive. There’s no light anywhere. Just darkness all around. Thick darkness, like a curtain you should be able to push aside, but there’s just no end to it.”

  She laughed bitterly. “No wonder people quietly went mad in the old days. A lifetime of pushing against the darkness with only candles would drive anyo
ne to the edge.”

  “Are you on the edge?” Declan asked quietly.

  “Yes,” she said on a huge exhaled breath. “I go from being so numb that I can laugh about everything from werewolves to demons, to being so scared that I think my heart will stop from the sheer terror. My brain freezes and shuts off.”

  “So…you were having a panic attack in bed just now?” He pushed a little harder, and Sean grinned and had to admit that Declan was an insightful bastard when he wanted to be.

  “Yes. No. I really was too hot, but I thought I would scream if I couldn’t move. I feel trapped. Not by any of you, but by everything. Suddenly, everything in my life seems like a trap, and I don’t feel smart enough to figure out how to escape.”

  “You are smart enough,” Declan whipped out. Sean recognized him trying to use the voice trick of Robert’s that made people instantly obey, but with only partial success. He felt Ava tremble in his arms, and he sent a warning glance to Declan, who pressed his lips firmly together and nodded once.

  “You are smart,” he repeated normally this time. “Without knowing anything, you’ve prepared yourself in the best way possible for facing all of this. You can do this. You just have to think it through. We will help you, and we’ll keep you safe. Nothing will hurt you, Ava. I promise.”

  “But what am I supposed to figure out?” she snapped, shrugging out of Sean’s arms, leaving a momentary hollowness where she had been. He refrained from going after her as she began to pace. She needed the room to think, to work out all the junk and the fear so that her incredible intelligence and instinct could have a clear path.

  “You tell me, Professor Bell,” Declan retorted coolly, and Sean knew that his brother was deliberately poking at her. “You’re the one with the analytical brain. Or is it that academics nowadays can only be analytical with stuff that’s been preanalyzed and published by some pompous windbag of a tenured professor?”