He guided her in, gritting his teeth when her hands wrapped around his cock and stroked him. He looked down, enjoying watching her touch him. A light hiss filled the shower when her finger ran over the tip before skimming around the head of his cock.

  He reached down and gripped her wrists when she moved to cup his balls. If he didn’t stop her now, he would be coming like a schoolboy watching his first adult movie.

  “My turn,” he stated.

  “Why is it always your or Kane’s turn first?” she complained with a delightful pout.

  Gabe leaned down and pressed a hard kiss to her lips. “Your pleasure will always come before ours,” he swore.

  “Always?” she asked, her eyes shimmering with emotion.

  “Always,” he promised. “Now, turn around and grip the bar.”

  She looked at him with a confused expression for a second before she turned. Gabe knew if he didn’t have her look away, his efforts to hold on long enough for Kane to join them would be doomed. Alone time with Magna was wonderful, but this relationship was about the three of them. Gabe was wishing now that he hadn’t teased Kane so much. What if he really did take his damn time with those pancakes?

  Picking up the bar of soap, he lathered his hands and began a full out assault on her body, determined to bring her to a peak over and over. His hands ran over her shoulders and down her arms before retracing their path and moving to her breasts. Only when she was panting and rubbing her ass against his crotch did he move further down. He paid close attention to her smooth womanhood. He had guessed that after all she had been through, grooming wouldn’t have been a top priority, so the hairless state had to be natural, but he had asked her a while ago, and she’d told him that the women of the sea people did not have hair between their legs.

  Her hips rocked with his hand movements and soft moans escaped her as she bent her head forward. His hands slid to the rounded cheeks of her gorgeous ass. He reverently ran his fingers along the valley between her cheeks. Curious about how she’d respond, he guided her to bend over more.

  “Put your hands on the bench,” he requested.

  Magna released the bar and placed her hands on the bench. The move opened her up to him. Soaping his hands again, he ran them over her buttocks, kneading them. A smile of pleasure crossed his face when her hips lifted. She was a natural.

  His fingers moved deeper until he rubbed against her tight rosette. A shudder ran through her, but she didn’t resist. His cock throbbed. He wanted to take her ass while Kane buried his cock in her pussy. Where the hell was he?

  “Take her.”

  Oh thank god, Gabe thought as his head jerked up and he noticed Kane standing outside the shower door, staring hungrily at Magna. He could see from Kane’s damp hair that he had taken a shower in the other bathroom.

  Then he hesitated. “She isn’t ready,” he replied in a tight voice.

  “What am I not ready for?” Magna groaned, rubbing against his hand.

  “Both of us,” Gabe replied.

  “Yes, I am,” she groaned, tilting her head back.

  “She is ready. Look at her, Gabe. She wants you,” Kane said.

  Gabe looked down. Magna was rubbing her ass against his hand. The vision of them taking her at the same time burned inside of him. A shudder ran down his long frame.

  He bent and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Go with Kane. I’ll be there in a moment,” he said, pressing a kiss to her shoulder.

  “Not long,” Magna insisted, looking at him over her shoulder.

  “Not long,” Gabe promised.

  A satisfied smile curved Kane’s lips. He opened the door to the shower and helped Magna out. Wrapping a towel around her, he led her into the bedroom. He knew that Kane would get Magna ready for the two of them, and Gabe would be able to hear everything that was going on in the other room. He quickly washed and rinsed, his body thrumming with desire.

  Turning off the shower, he pulled the towel off the rack and dried his body, then opened a drawer, and pulled out the lube and a condom. He cursed when he saw his fingers tremble.

  Walking into the bedroom, he paused halfway to the bed, watching as Magna slowly impaled herself on Kane’s cock. Kane’s hand rose and he played with her breasts, bringing her to a peak and holding her there.

  “Lean forward, baby. Kiss me,” Kane encouraged, motioning for Gabe to climb on behind her. “Kiss me while Gabe gets you ready.”

  “Yes,” Magna murmured.

  Gabe tore the condom package open with his teeth and removed it from the envelope. Fitting it over his cock, he drew in a deep breath. He was so excited; his cock was extremely sensitive and his balls were beginning to hurt from the tension. Flipping the top of the lubricant, he squeezed a little onto the palm of his hand before coating the condom. He climbed on the bed and positioned himself behind Magna. He caressed her ass. Once again, he felt her rock back against him.

  “You are about to feel fuller than you’ve ever felt before, sweetheart,” he warned, his hand sliding down between her buttocks.

  “Gabe,” Magna panted, her head turning so she could look at him over her shoulder.

  “Focus on Kane, honey. Relax, enjoy, and focus on him,” Gabe gritted out as he aligned his cock behind her.

  He slowly rocked his hips, letting her adjust, listening to her quiet pants before he felt her body open and accept him. The feeling of fullness sent a ricocheting wave of pleasure through him. He could feel every movement when Kane began to rock his hips. Gripping Magna, he controlled the rhythm, moving in opposition to Kane until they were in sync. Magna’s cries grew louder and more wild the deeper and faster they went until she stiffened.

  “Damn, Gabe,” Kane groaned, his body stiffening as he thrust upward. “Oh, Magna. Oh, baby.”

  Sweat broke out on Gabe’s forehead while he waited for Kane’s orgasm to finish. Magna’s body was still locked between them. He could feel her pulsing around Kane. With a loud groan, Kane pulled free.

  Gabe leaned forward, his fingers biting into Magna’s hips as he rocked faster and faster. Her loud pants turned to begging as her body reached the precipice again. Her saw her fingers dig into Kane’s shoulders and felt her tightening around his cock as she came. The tight squeeze was his undoing and he emptied the tension of his aching balls in a continuous pulsing wave that drained him.

  It took him several minutes to gather enough strength to pull out of her and slide off the bed. Magna had collapsed on Kane who was holding her tightly against his body. Gabe gazed down at her peaceful face for a moment before he turned to the bathroom.

  “I’ll clean up and get a washcloth and towel to clean her,” he said.

  “Gabe,” Kane softly called after him.

  He looked over his shoulder, pausing in the doorway to the bathroom. “Yeah?” he said.

  “I love her. I’m never letting her go,” Kane informed him.

  “I love her, too, man. She’s ours,” he replied before he disappeared into the bathroom once more.

  The sound of the rain hitting the roof of his truck made Ross glad he had canceled taking his boat out today. He sighed as he stared out of the windshield of his truck. The rain had picked up over the last hour. The dreary weather matched his mood. There didn’t appear to be any chance of him getting close to the woman. Hell, she seldom left the house. The only time she did was to go out on the boat with Gabe.

  He unconsciously patted his front pocket, looking for his cigarettes before he sighed as he remembered he had tossed them out. The last couple of weeks had been brutal, but they had also made him realize that he was still human, no matter how hard his dad had tried to beat that out of him when he was younger. He’d had a lot to think about in that time, and even more to do. His thoughts turned to his mom and he released a sigh of regret.

  While they had never been close when he was growing up, he realized their distant relationship had been because of her fear of his dad, rather than a dislike of having him as her son. He realized no
w that she had tried to protect him the only way she knew how, by letting him run free and keeping him away from the house as much as possible.

  Once again, he wished he hadn’t promised his mom that he would quit smoking. He might be a lot of things, but there was one thing he had sworn he would never do; he would never break a promise he had given. A man was only as good as his word. If he didn’t give it, that was one thing, but if he did… if he did, he needed to live up to it, no matter how difficult or painful the promise was.

  Leaning back, he closed his eyes. He had only made two other promises in his life. The first had come the day his dad had died and his mother was crying. He had been twelve years old when he laid his hand on her shoulder at the cemetery and promised her that he would take care of her.

  That was the day he had started to grow into a man who would never have to live in the shadows of fear and brutality again. He had worked down at the docks and anywhere else he could for the next two years. At fourteen, he started taking his dad’s old fishing trawler out at night.

  He had kept his promise to her until two weeks ago. For years he had stopped by her house three times a week – two days a week for dinner and one day to do any work she needed done. Now, there was nothing left but empty memories and guilt that he hadn’t seen how sick she was sooner.

  He swallowed as he remembered Kane and one of the new doctors in town coming out of her room after quietly talking to her. He had been waiting in the corridor outside her hospital room. Rising, both men had nodded to him in greeting, but he could see the resignation in their eyes.

  Walking into her room, he had been shaken by how fragile she looked against the pristine white sheets. She hadn’t cried, just nodded to him to come sit by her. She had looked tired, and her eyes had silently searched his face.

  Sitting down in the hard chair that he’d pulled up next to the bed, he had held her hand, something he hadn’t done since he was a child. It still tore him up when he remembered the sadness and pain in her eyes.

  “I’m dying,” she had whispered.

  “How… How long?” he had asked, thinking in the back of his mind that it wasn’t right for a thirty-year-old man to want to cry. “How do you know? Surely….”

  His mom had shaken her head and leaned back against the bright white pillow. “I found out six months ago when I went to Portland,” she said tiredly, closing her eyes. “I haven’t been feeling too good for a while. The cancer had already spread.”

  “There are other hospitals,” he started to argue before pressing his lips tightly together when she opened her eyes and stared at him in resignation.

  “Maybe if they had caught it in time,” she whispered. “It is all over my body, Ross. They wanted to do things that would give me a couple of extra months, but I wanted quality, not quantity. I’m in a good place. You’ve made sure of that. You’ve worked so hard for so many years. I don’t… We’ve never had much, but I’ve put money back for years and kept up on a life insurance policy. I wanted you to have something, just in case. I want you to know I love you, son. I always have. You were the one thing in my life that I did right. I don’t ever want you to think otherwise. I’m proud of you, Ross. I always have been. You’ve grown into a good man, despite….”

  Ross opened his eyes, remembering how her voice had faded. He had to give his mom credit. In all her life, she never spoke bad about anyone, especially his father.

  He stared blindly out of the window. It still shook him that after all these years of thinking he had been taking care of her, she had secretly been looking after him. His fists clenched and he looked down at them, trying to lock the grief back in the closet he had pushed it into.

  She had slipped into a coma that night and died three days later. He had sat by her side, talking to her. For the first time in his life, he shared his dreams, talked about his fears, and hoped that she could hear him. The funeral had been yesterday afternoon. Only a handful of people had come out in the rain to say goodbye, but he hadn’t cared. He had been there and he had kept his promise. Now, there was nothing tying him to the small town. Nothing but an unusual woman who he just wanted to know whether she was real or not before he left.

  Picking up the card the funeral home had created, he looked down at the picture of his mom when she was young. The second promise he had made had been to himself. He had sworn that he would never hurt a woman the way his dad had hurt his mom. Deep down, he knew that Magna didn’t want to be found. He had seen the fear in her eyes when he had grabbed her arm. It had been more than being exposed as some strange creature. There had been a deep sadness in her eyes that he had recognized in his mother’s eyes.

  Drawing in a deep breath, he pocketed the obituary and leaned forward to start his truck. There were some things in life better left unknown, he reluctantly decided. Perhaps, she was one of them.

  Putting the truck into drive, he slowly pulled out from where he’d been parked along the edge of the road down the hill from Gabe Lightcloud’s house. A new sense of peace, one he had never felt before swept through him. He would put his affairs in order and start looking for a new place to live. He had always fancied living on an island somewhere in the world.

  Somewhere warm, he decided as he drove away.

  He drove by a dark sedan, unaware that he had been the focus of a quiet surveillance. The woman behind the wheel watched him drive by before her gaze turned to the house on the side of the mountain. A frown darkened her brow and she pulled up her phone to access the address. Several minutes later, she had accessed the database at work. Gabe Lightcloud, former Army Ranger, decorated war hero, worked for the government at the United States Fish and Wildlife Department. No arrests. Yet, he was definitely someone of interest, she thought as she watched the white SUV that had been following Ross Galloway for the past couple of weeks. What did the CIA want with Ross? Missing persons within the United States were usually handled by the FBI. Nothing that she had researched had shown Ross to be an international threat – hell, the guy had never been out of the country before.

  She watched as another SUV came down the road and turned up the drive. She recognized it as another vehicle of interest to the CIA agent, because it belonged to Dr. Kane Field.

  Tonya Maitland reached into the passenger seat next to her and pulled up the report she had on Asahi Tanaka. It felt strange for her to be following one of the government’s agents. Granted, it was her job as an investigative reporter. In her mind, they all worked for the same cause – to keep the people safe.

  “What is the connection? Mike Hallbrook said Ross Galloway wasn’t behind the disappearances, yet, he has the attention of the CIA. Not only that, we now have a decorated military hero and a local doctor with military experience involved. Curious, very, very curious,” Tonya murmured, starting her car and doing a U-turn.

  She paused at the bottom of the hill. Tanaka was turning left, which meant he was returning to the motel. Deciding that she had a better chance of learning something from Ross, she turned right and headed toward town. Glancing at the clock on the dash, she decided it was about time to offer him a cold beer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The rains from last night had cleared and the sun was shining. Magna grinned as she walked beside the two men along the brightly colored shops lining the street. Kane had talked Gabe into taking a day off so they could go shopping together. She knew her excitement was as much about seeing her new world as it was about buying anything. This was her first trip out among the residents.

  Gabe had not been happy when Kane decided that she needed more clothes. He had argued that he was perfectly happy with her not wearing any at all. Kane had not been impressed with Gabe’s reasoning. Gabe on the other hand said that if she insisted on wearing any clothes, his shirts worked just fine. At that point, Kane had dragged Gabe into the kitchen.

  “I want to take her places,” Kane argued. “She can’t do that wearing your shirts.”

  “What kind of places do you want to ta
ke her to? She goes out on the boat,” Gabe retorted.

  The sound of Kane gritting his teeth had Magna wincing. He only did that when he was really upset. Standing in the passage between the kitchen and dining room, she had bit her lip to keep from pleading with Gabe.

  “She deserves more,” she heard Kane finally respond in a quiet voice. “I want to take her to dinner, to the movies, and show her some of our world. She deserves that, Gabe. She was held a prisoner long enough. I don’t want her to ever feel like that with us.”

  Gabe’s face had tightened into a stiff mask before he released a long breath and his shoulders slumped in resignation. She knew he was afraid for her, and that knowledge warmed her heart.

  “You’re right,” he muttered, running his hand over the back of his neck. “It’s just….” his voice faded when he saw her watching him.

  “It’s just what?” she asked, gazing back at him.

  His face softened. “What if someone realizes that you aren’t human?” Gabe muttered.

  She smiled, knowing that wouldn’t be an issue now that she was strong again. Walking over to him, she wound her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. He immediately wrapped his arms around her, tightly holding her against his broad frame. A moment later, she felt Kane’s warm body pressed up behind her, sandwiching her between them. She released a contented sigh. This is what it felt like to be loved. Tilting her head back, she looked up at him with a serious expression.

  “I can use a glamour spell,” she assured him. “No one will be able to tell I’m not human, I promise. I have also been watching your magic box so I know how people speak in your world, not that I am likely to talk to anyone. Your world and mine are really not all that different,” she added with an excited expression.