The Gifted 1: Passions Awakening (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Vincent wasn’t certain where the suite’s legitimate occupants, a couple from Miami, had ended up, and he really didn’t care.

  Magic truly was a wonderful thing.

  Between them, he and Emilio were the most powerful of their generation of the Fortuna family. Until three days ago, they’d believed themselves sacrosanct. Not only were they the most powerful warlocks in existence, period—after their father, of course—they’d assumed nothing would ever threaten the status quo. As it was, theirs was a select and rare species. They’d only ever once come in personal contact with one other family of warlocks.

  Vincent always mentally smiled when he thought of that encounter. He and Emilio had taken care of the one son of that family with little difficulty, taking turns, of course. In the end Vincent had killed the lesser warlock.

  No, they were still the most powerful warlocks in the world. But because Vincent intended to be his father’s successor, they would do what they could to satisfy the old man’s demands now. Especially now, when they’d had a firsthand demonstration of how powerful a warlock Gregor Fortuna really was. Their very presence here was evidence of that power.

  Emilio leaned forward. “I think father is beginning to go the way of Uncle Remis. All of a sudden now there’s a prophecy? Women with power? Those were only the bedtime stories told by old women—and old men. He’s acting as if they’re real! But if any of that shit were true, wouldn’t we have heard about it somehow? Wouldn’t we have felt them at some point?”

  “You’re echoing my thoughts, exactly. The way Grandfather Giorgio liked to hold court, going on and on about the illustrious great-greats, if there’d been truth to that prophecy, he would have said something about it being real. Uncle Remis did go bat-shit crazy when we were kids, and father is his twin.” Vincent sighed. “But I’m not quite willing to put our father in that category quite yet.”

  “That place he took us—yeah, that was a pretty fucking impressive trick. He’s still got more magic than we do. Bringing us here certainly speaks for itself. But that image or hologram he showed us of the woman who’s such a threat to our future? She was nothing more than a tubby little broad teaching a bunch of snot-nosed poor kids in New York City, for God’s sake.” Emilio shook his head. “Do you want to know what I think? I think the old man only got it half right.”

  Vincent gave his full attention to his twin. Emilio didn’t speak much, but he was forever reading and thinking. If any man in his family had studied the past that man was sitting right there beside him. “All right. Give me your take on the situation.”

  “We know that women don’t have power—not our kind of power. If they did, they wouldn’t be able to resist flaunting it. If there had been even one female warlock—or witch, I suppose—at any time in our lifetimes, we would have known about it.”

  “True. It’s the nature of broads to boast and preen and make the men in their lives bow down to them. We would have heard of such a one.” Vincent shook his head. “Father’s words in this are true. It’s better all around to just use women for what you need—sex and sons—and leave it at that.”

  “Exactly. So I’m thinking that woman father showed us doesn’t have the power at all. I think those two latent men do. And unlocking their power might be done simply by popping the bitch’s cherry.”

  “You figure she’s virginal?”

  “You saw her. What do you think?”

  It made a perfect kind of sense. “So all we have to do is be the two men who take her first?”

  “Yeah, and I’m thinking there’ll be a bonus in it for us—a power bonus. Because if screwing her will awaken the power in those two latents, then you have to wonder, what will it do for us, two warlocks of considerable power already?”

  “I never thought of that. Our fucking her first would disrupt the so-called prophecy, possibly give us even more power than we have already, possibly even enough to topple father and take over the business. The only negative I can see is we have to fuck that tubby bitch.”

  “We’ll keep the lights off, brother. Maybe use a spell on her to make her appear as someone else. All cats are gray in the dark.”

  Vincent nearly laughed at his brother’s droll response. “All right. Now that sounds like a plan I can get behind. So we’ll find her in the morning. Likely by now that little magic groupie is sound asleep in her virginal little bed.”

  “You have to figure. She didn’t exactly look like the partying type.” Emilio rubbed his hands together. Then he nodded to the bartender, who immediately delivered another shot of Patrón. “So that gives us the rest of the night to score some primo pussy before we have to take one for the team.”

  This time, Vincent did laugh out loud. “Brother, I never knew you had such a supply of one-liners.”

  Emilio nodded. “Magic isn’t my only gift.” Then he pointed to the blonde woman in the tight red dress, moving her hips to the music, her eyes slightly glazed from too much booze. Her tits pushed the limit of the material mostly covering them. She was one hot package, all right.

  Vincent tuned into the woman’s aura. Anger, hate, and a mindless need for indiscriminate sex hit him like a welcome aphrodisiac. They could do anything they wanted to her, of course. Anything at all.

  Maybe we won’t bother with a seduction spell. Maybe we’ll use a cloaking spell instead once we’re in our suite so no one will hear her scream.

  “Yes,” Vincent said. “We can start with her. I’ve heard that parties on cruise ships go on until dawn. So if we need more…stimulation, it shouldn’t be difficult to find another willing piece of ass.”

  And in the morning they’d find their little schoolteacher, fuck her, and be home in time for dinner.

  * * * *

  Cheri knew something was bothering Max and Tony the moment she spotted them waiting for her at the base of the stairs. Something about their expressions as they watched her approach seemed off compared to their behavior the night before.

  They weren’t smiling, but they weren’t scowling, either. They looked…thoughtful.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.” Max met her gaze and held it. Cheri felt as if he was looking for something. So she didn’t flinch, and when she felt him pushing on her mind, she allowed it.

  His eyes widened, and he stepped back. Then he met Tony’s gaze and gave a slight nod.

  “We have to talk,” Tony said.

  “All right. Can we get breakfast first? I’m hungry.”

  Both men looked around and seemed a bit embarrassed. They were standing right outside the largest of the cafeteria-style restaurants.

  “Of course. Let’s grab some food and hope we can get a seat.” Max led the way and handed a tray to her. “Whenever I’m in one of these kinds of lines I always feel like I’m back in high school.”

  “I’d have thought you’d say you felt like you were at the hospital.”

  “We’re surgeons,” Tony said. “We have offices and assistants who’ll brave the chow line in the cafeteria for us—or go out to a deli and bring us back whatever we want.”

  “So that joke I heard is accurate?” Cheri could tell they were trying to lighten the mood slightly. She wondered if that was because the three of them were out in the open, where anyone listening could hear them.

  “Which joke is that?” Max asked.

  “The one about heaven appearing to be a place of equality to recently departed Sam until the day a man dressed in green scrubs pushed his way to the head of the dinner line in the cafeteria. Sam was relieved to learn, however, that it was really God who was acting like a surgeon that day.”

  “Ha-ha.” Tony said the two words quietly against her ear. “I don’t think you have a future as a stand-up comic.”

  Once they’d filled their plates, Tony led them to a table for four against the windows. The view was of the deck, starboard side, and the ocean beyond.

  One of the servers came by and poured orange juice in their glasses and set a coffee po
t down on the table for them to share.

  It didn’t escape Cheri’s notice that they’d tucked her into the corner. They had her boxed in neatly. She did wonder what they had on their minds, but she wasn’t particularly worried about it.

  “Last night—last night was special.” Max seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “We both regretted seeing you to your cabin and going on to ours without you. We both really wanted more.”

  “So did I.”

  “We thought for sure that we’d be tossing and turning all night,” Tony said. “But that wasn’t the case. We both fell fast asleep almost as soon as our heads hit the pillows. And then we dreamed.”

  “We dreamed, together.” Max frowned. “We didn’t just have the same dream, Cheri, we were in each other’s dream, and it almost didn’t feel as if it was a real REM. kind of dream at all. It felt as if we had gone on a journey to a place we’ve never been, and yet it was a place that seemed familiar to us, somehow. Several places, actually, and while we were together, we sensed that what we were dreaming was actually taking place over a number of successive…lifetimes.”

  “That’s…fascinating.” Cheri had no idea why or how the two men had this experience. She did know that, sometimes, the two men in a family would share dreams because she knew her fathers had. But she’d always believed that happened after years of being marriage brothers together.

  “You sound like Spock.” Max raised one eyebrow.

  “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to. I just don’t know what to say to you. I have heard of some people who’ve have had a similar experience. Has dream-sharing ever happened to you before?”

  “Never. But when we awoke—feeling amazingly refreshed, by the way—we remembered the dream and the unusual sensations we experienced last night when we had you between us and were kissing you. We both know in our hearts there’s a connection between the two. And so, we need to ask you a question.” Max stopped speaking and looked at Tony, who was sitting beside her.

  Tony moved in closer, his arm on the back of her chair, and lowered his voice. “Are you a witch?”

  She looked at Tony then at Max. She could tell that, while they might be a bit embarrassed asking such a question, they were very serious. “No, I’m not a witch.”

  “You didn’t seem at all alarmed by that question or even surprised by it. You were expecting it.” Max nodded once, as if to underscore his words.

  “Something else then,” Tony said. “Are you capable of…” He waved his hand back and forth, as if the words he needed had deserted him but clearly expecting her to know what he meant.

  Cheri needed to make a decision, and she needed to make it now. She could continue to put them off without breaking the two sacred laws that governed her behavior in this world with these men. But to what end? She had no idea why they’d dream-shared. Maybe it was something the Sylph had facilitated. Maybe there was a reason for the dream. She didn’t know everything. Or maybe the dream had nothing to do with her at all, or with the prophecy. Max and Tony had been friends for enough years that their personalities had melded in a way that wasn’t normal for humans with no power. In her world, such friendships turned two men into two brothers, soul brothers who would then go on to share a wife.

  It felt as if minutes had passed, but Cheri knew only a few seconds had. “The word you’re looking for is magic. You want to know if I’m capable of magic. And the answer to that question is yes, I am.”

  “Have you put a spell on us? Is that why we’re both so damn hot for you? Why we both want nothing more than to have you naked and writhing between us?”

  Cheri tried not to let Tony’s question, or his tone of voice when he asked it, upset her. She’d even anticipated it—intellectually, that is. It was a logical thing for any man to ask of a woman of power to whom he was inexorably drawn, especially if he’d never been so drawn before in his life.

  But…

  It did hurt. She wanted to ask him to clarify his question, wanted to know if it referred to the fact that she wasn’t supermodel thin or classically beautiful. Oh, emotions could be such sneaky bastards, wending their way into matters where they would be best left out. She knew he really hadn’t meant it that way.

  She felt a stinging at the back of her eyes. I will not cry. Crying would just make her even more of an object of pity that she already was.

  She shut her emotions away—or tried to act as if she had. The only thing she could do right now was to focus on answering the questions in a clear and concise way. “No. That would be breaking one of two sacred laws. I’m forbidden from using my magic in any way to influence your feelings for me.”

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Tony seemed like a dog with a bone.

  “I guess you don’t. You can believe me, or not.” She really had hoped to have gotten farther down the road in their relationship before they’d asked her that question.

  “What’s the other one?” Max held his head, tilted, and appeared to be completely focused on her.

  “The other one what?” This keeping your emotions in check is a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be.

  “You said using your magic to influence us would be breaking one of two sacred laws. So what’s the other sacred law?”

  Cheri had no choice. She had to answer. “I can’t lie to you—to either of you.”

  “You mean while we’re questioning you now, about all of this?”

  “No, I mean not ever.” She would not tell them it was because they were to be her mates. She really didn’t want to go there. But she doubted at this juncture they’d ask her that.

  Max and Tony looked at each other for a long moment. Then Max turned to her. “We want to believe you,” Max said. “But we both felt something…something supernatural last night. We even talked about it with you, and you seemed to understand what we were talking about. And then we had that dream. You can’t deny that magic…” He shook his head. Then he sat forward. “Listen to me! I’m a scientist by nature, a surgeon by training. I believe in natural laws, physics, biology, chemistry, and logic, and yet, I’m actually considering that there’s something more. That magic really does exist.”

  Cheri tried to look at the situation from their perspective. She captured a sense of what they might be feeling, by thinking back to her own disillusionment when she’d first arrived in this realm. Television and movies and music she’d enjoyed at home had given her an image of what life here would be like, but the reality had not been what she’d imagined. So she kept her tone gentle as she responded. “You feel that way because there is something more.”

  “You have to understand our point of view.” Tony looked more than a little peeved. “Neither of us likes the idea that magic, or destiny, or whatever the hell you want to call it is at play here, manipulating the situation—manipulating us and our feelings. We make our own choices in this life, and our own decisions, thank you very much.”

  Now that just pissed her off. Despite her assurance that she hadn’t used any magic on or even near them, these men doubted her. Well, they have only known you for such a short time.

  There was her mother’s voice again. In that moment she knew that, while she was alone here, on this ship in the Atlantic Ocean, she wasn’t alone, not really.

  I could use some help here, Mom. The echoing abyss of silence in response to her mental plea showed her the men weren’t the only ones coping blindly through a situation, hobbled by restrictions. In her case, she was separated from her family and, at that moment, even from her sisters who were in this realm. The men were challenged by their adherence to their “logic” and their “science.”

  Cheri put her attention back on Max and Tony. It was an effort to keep her voice down and her temper at bay. “Of course you do. No one is going to interfere with your right to make your own decisions. You can choose to get up from this table right now and walk away and never look back. So, by the way, can I. But before you do, there is something you should know. Whet
her you like it or not, whether you want it to be true or not, destiny is. Magic is.” She blew out a breath, looked out the window for a moment, and thought she could see a bit of land in the distance. Then she turned her attention back to Max and Tony. “And as for that something supernatural you felt last night? I’m not the only one sitting at this table who has a core of magical power within them.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  There was no reason not to tell them everything. They would, as Tony said, make their own decisions and their own choices. “I agreed with you last night, yes. When you spoke of knowing there was something more inside each of you. You would have sensed it all of your life. The magic is in you, too. And it’s only going to grow, now that we are in the same place, at the same time. Now that we have met, that ember of power that has been within you since you were born, an ember that has remained mostly dormant, has begun to come to life.” She looked down at her plate. “This isn’t the way things were supposed to be. We weren’t supposed to reach this point until you at least knew me enough that you’d know I’d never…” Cheri couldn’t finish the thought. She’d believed last night they had reached the point that they would trust her, believe her, and believe in her. She already trusted and believed in them. And the fact that they could think she’d use them, or make them act against their will, it didn’t piss her off. It just hurt. “I’m sorry. I’m just not hungry anymore.”

  And because she said she could, she got up and walked out of the restaurant. I need some air.

  There was only one place she wanted to be, and that was back in the homeland. But since that wasn’t possible, she opted to go out on deck. According to the ship’s itinerary, they were due to dock within the hour in Hamilton, Bermuda.

  If those two males wanted to find her, they’d be able to, now. Whether they liked it or not, they were connected. Yes, that connection could be ignored, and over time, it would fall silent.