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

  If they walked away from her for good, their magic might not ever fully mature. Or maybe it would. She was clueless, really. No one had ever been where she was, so no one could tell her. She could do only the best she could do as she went along.

  But right then and there, she wanted to be alone. She could encase herself in a bubble. No one would see her then. Of course if either Max or Tony stood next to her, they’d be able to sense her.

  No. I’m not going to use my magic unless I have to. And I’m not just going to stand here on deck and watch Bermuda approach. They’ll figure out that, if they want to find me, they can.

  She knew of a better place where she could be alone, and it wasn’t out in the open on deck. And maybe they needed to feel that magic within them flutter a bit, feel it give them a guiding light. This entire process would be a hell of a lot smoother if they understood that everything she’d just told them was the absolute truth.

  Chapter 8

  “Damn it to hell, I fucked up.” Tony sat back, his anger with himself so fierce he wondered he could contain it. The sudden certain knowledge that he’d better get his temper under control before things started flying pulled him up short. What the hell?

  “We both did. This isn’t just on you. We agreed to confront her.” Max shook his head, sighed, and sat back.

  The table two down from where they were sitting was vacant, and for the moment, there seemed to be no one close by. Tony focused on the saltshaker on that table, a plastic contraption, and imagined it careening toward the floor.

  And felt a sinking sensation inside him when it landed exactly where he’d imagined it would.

  “Holy hell, Max.”

  Max had watched Tony’s little experiment. He took a moment to look around, and Tony knew it was to make sure no one was watching them. Then he focused on the square container that held packets of sugar in the raw and sweetener.

  The container shook, and then it began to rise. Max’s hand shot out, blocking it from sailing off…to wherever it had been going to go.

  “Oh boy.” Max’s tone sounded as stunned as Tony felt.

  “What the hell? Did she do this to us?” Even as he asked the question, he knew he was off base.

  “I don’t think so. What if…what if she was telling the truth?” Max leaned forward. “What if there’s always been power inside us?”

  “We don’t believe in that shit. Remember?”

  “Yeah.” Max looked off to the distance. Tony could see his mind was busy. When he faced Tony again, he asked, “But why? Why don’t we believe in that shit?”

  “It’s not logical. Believing in fairytales and magic is like believing the crazy old lady in the…”

  “On the street corner?” Max looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

  “I was going to say in the home.” Tony sat back and exhaled. “I was about ten or so, I think. My folks took me to visit someone in a retirement home.” He could see it as if the event had happened yesterday. Yet, his conscious mind had forgotten until just now. “I think she was my mother’s maiden aunt.”

  The power in this one is strong. There’s no question he takes after me. He has a great destiny awaiting him. A great destiny. He is the beginning, one third of one third of the beginning of the prophecy.

  He’d never met the woman before, but he recalled being freaked out by her. The woman had been old and frail, and he’d wanted nothing to do with her.

  “Shit.”

  “I only found out well after the fact,” Max said. “That old woman who’d been sitting on a bench at the street corner, as if waiting for a bus, was my grandmother. She’d told me I had power in me. She said I was one third…” Max’s brow furrowed as if he was trying to remember.

  “She said you were one third of one third of the beginning of the prophecy.”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess that makes me another third….” He didn’t finish his thought out loud. If he and Max were each one third of a whole, it meant Cheri was, too.

  Tony recalled what Cheri had said moments before. Destiny is. Magic is. There was a leaden feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I think we need to go and find Cheri,” Tony said. “We owe her an apology.”

  “I think we also need to have a different approach this time. We need to tell her about our dream. Even though it’s hard, thinking back, to make sense of any of it. And the old ladies in our pasts, memories that we each only just remembered.”

  “That dream was certainly strange in places,” Tony said. “I thought we were in Ireland, which is strange because I’ve never been there. I wish I knew why it seemed so familiar to me.”

  “The people didn’t speak with any accent that I could discern,” Max said. “But they were friendly enough.”

  “Do me a favor? If I start to lip off again the next time we talk to Cheri, kick me under the table, will you?”

  Max grinned. “That’s a deal.”

  Just then two men, tall, black haired, and looking enough alike that they could be brothers, entered the cafeteria through the same door as the three of them had used earlier.

  A cold shiver trickled down Tony’s spine. He didn’t like the look of those two men. He didn’t like the look of them one bit.

  Unsure where that feeling…no, knowledge that the two were trouble was coming from, Tony decided to listen to his instincts.

  The two seemed to be wandering around, their gazes sweeping the passengers, as if they were looking for someone.

  One tapped the other on the arm and pointed to a table on the port side of the ship. A lone woman sat, her head bent over a book. No one sat with her, and she appeared to be absorbed in her reading.

  Perhaps it was the fact that she was reading that triggered the initial comparison, but looking at her, he couldn’t help but think of the woman who’d just walked off in a huff. Then he realized there was another reason this woman made him think of Cheri. She has almost the same shade of red hair as Cheri has and nearly the same figure.

  “Max.”

  His best friend had also been watching the pair. He met Tony’s gaze. “We’ll head out there.” He nodded toward the back entrance to the cafeteria restaurant. “Then we’ll find Cheri.”

  Tony nodded. As he got up from the table, he kept his eyes on the pair until they became hidden by a partial wall. There was just something about them that raised his hackles. It was as if his inner warrior could sense danger in them, though what kind of danger he didn’t know.

  “I wonder where she is. Do you think she went back to her cabin?”

  Max met his gaze. “I don’t know. Who do you think those guys were? They seemed off, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah.” Tony headed toward the staircase that led them down one level. Together they walked along the starboard side deck, back to the stern of the ship, going under the spot where they’d sat above, intent on at least going in the same direction Cheri had gone.

  “Let’s head up and work our way down, going bow to stern, and back.” Even moving as quickly as they could, it took time to cover the ship. Tony felt a kind of gnawing inside him. The feeling of unease he’d had when he spotted those two men had been growing steadily.

  “This is taking too damn long,” Max said. “Don’t ask me how I know, but those two left the dining room and are getting closer to Cheri. There has to be a better way for us to find her than this.”

  “Do you think…” Tony let the thought drift. Instead of asking Max what he was going to ask, he asked himself. Is there a better way to find Cheri?

  He didn’t really expect an answer. His eyes widened when he got one. He met Max’s gaze and knew in that instant that Max had just done the same damn thing as he.

  They re-entered the ship, coming to an open area, with elevators to their left and large, closed doors to their right. Behind the elevators, the cabins on this level ran down two distinct corridors, to the elevators at the bow end.

  Behind the doors to their right was the ship’s entertainment theatr
e.

  “In here.” Max opened the door and entered the theater.

  Tony couldn’t prevent the sense of nostalgia. He could have been in the old Palace Theater back home. The seats were in three main sections—a large middle section with two “wing sections” left and right. And, judging from the fact that the ceiling just over his head was low, there was a balcony above as well.

  Cheri is sitting in the balcony. He turned toward the stairs at the same time Max did.

  She was standing by the back row, her attention on two men who were approaching her from the other side—the same two men they’d seen in the cafeteria nearly a half-hour ago.

  “Stop right there.” Tony’s words seemed to shock the men. They halted their progress and turned their attention to him.

  He and Max had run up the steps. It took only a moment to reach Cheri.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  “I…yes. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t want to be here,” one of the men, the tallest, said.

  “Go away,” the second said. “You are not needed here.”

  Tony felt a kind of fluttering inside him, a sensation he’d never known before. Along with that feeling, anger arose. He didn’t know how he knew it, but these two meant to harm Cheri.

  “Back the fuck off.” He aimed that at the man who’d first spoken. Both men took a step back, as if shocked by his vehemence.

  “Don’t either of you take another step.” Max’s words seemed to carry a shimmering kind of…something.

  “We have to go,” Cheri whispered, “now.”

  Tony didn’t think. He didn’t reason. He simply reacted. Taking hold of Cheri’s right hand, knowing Max had her left, he headed down the stairs, hopefully toward safety.

  He looked over his shoulder once, surprised by two things. Neither man had moved, but both looked furious.

  * * * *

  “Oh yeah, oh yeah, welcome to Bermuda!” The shout of the town crier and the clanging of his bell put a smile on Cheri’s face. As the three of them waited in the queue to debark, she had her senses open, not sending out tendrils of seeking power, exactly. It was more like she was listening.

  On either side of her, Max and Tony were tense, looking around, searching, she knew, for the two men who’d accosted her.

  Cheri hadn’t expected what had just happened to her. Too late, she’d felt the pull of one of those men as he’d used his magic to enter her mind, as he’d begun to subvert her will. She’d been powerless to move, to fight him, until Max and Tony had shown up.

  The Concilium should have cautioned her and her cousins that there were those who might try and prevent the prophecy from coming to fruition. But they hadn’t. Even so, she shouldn’t have been surprised by this sudden threat. She really should have remembered there were good and bad people in every group.

  She certainly should have remembered there was evil in the world. Just because she so rarely had encountered it didn’t mean it had ceased to be. There was always evil, and likely always would be.

  A sense of cold touched her, just a light caress. The others were beginning to shake off the spell that had held them immobile. She allowed herself one tiny probe more. Her eyes widened when she realized her assailants were both…compromised. They were fighting to shake off the spell, and that was draining their power. It would take them a while to recover, though how long, she had no clue.

  The people ahead of her moved, and with each of her hands held by the guys, she took the steps down to the dock. Cheri closed down her power, feeling relatively certain they were safe, for now. Instead, she focused on her surroundings.

  Front Street was abuzz with life and sound and color. The pastels of the buildings were both soothing to the eye and cheerful looking.

  “I read in the bulletin delivered to the cabin earlier that the roofs are all designed to catch the rainwater because it’s the only source of fresh water on the island.” Max shook his head. “The early colonists must have been determined, if they stayed even without a fresh water source.”

  “Not one island,” Cheri corrected, “but islands. There are over 180 islands that make up Bermuda, and most of the larger ones are connected by causeways.”

  Tony laughed. Then he looked over his head at Max. “I think Cheri is as anal as you are, pal.”

  Max nodded. “And she’s as hot tempered as you are, my friend.” Then Max met her gaze. “To my reckoning, that makes her perfect for us both.”

  He’d dropped his voice the way he did sometimes. The deeper bass sent shivers down her spine.

  I thought I was anything but perfect for them at first. Then she looked from one man to the other. “So, where to, now?” Before debarking, the men had suggested she throw her bathing suit and a couple of changes of clothing into a bag. She hadn’t packed a lot, but she had a carry-on style suitcase that she emptied and then packed. Considering what they’d just escaped from, Cheri just did as they asked. She found it endearing they insisted she accompany them to their cabin while they did the same. Max had made a couple of phone calls while Tony packed for them both. The men were clearly in warrior mode, which was a hell of a lot better than having them pissed with her.

  She knew Max had been planning a route to explore Bermuda. She didn’t know much about the British Overseas Territory—just that it was British and an archipelago that ringed an undersea caldera.

  The teacher in her looked forward to exploring and sampling all that was here. The woman in her really looked forward to being alone with these two men.

  And the Gifted in her needed time away from any threat to assess the situation.

  Max cupped her chin. “The presence of those two men changes things. We sensed them, Cheri. We saw them in the cafeteria and knew something was off about them. Didn’t you?”

  “Not until they got close.” She felt her face burn with embarrassment. “I’d put a lid on my powers because I was…” How did she say what she was thinking tactfully?

  “Because you were pissed with us,” Tony said. “No, not pissed. You were hurt because of the way I all but accused you of putting a hex on us when I knew, I knew that whatever was happening to us didn’t have anything to do with you. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”

  “I accept your apology.” Then she looked from Tony to Max. “I could ‘look’ for those two, but there’s a danger. If I do that, it would be like sending up a flare. I’d find them, but they’d find us, too. Otherwise, from now on, if they come close, I will know it, regardless. Power sends out a signature. I guess you could liken it to static electricity. Like the sensation you get just before a lightning bolt comes down from above.” Then she exhaled. “I can tell you that they’re recovering from our encounter. We need to talk about that.”

  “We will,” Max said. He took her hand in his and led her toward a waiting taxi. “The ship’s here for four nights, and we’re going to spend all of those nights elsewhere.”

  The taxi ride was short, even with the winding tour of the city—and even considering the lower speed limit. At twenty miles per hour, it felt as if they were barely moving. Cheri kept track of their direction of travel. Fifteen minutes later, the taxi pulled into what looked like a resort.

  Cheri didn’t say anything until the door to their suite was closed behind them. She turned to Max. He smiled and relieved her of her suitcase, which he then gave to Tony. Then he eased her into his arms. “Come here. I need to kiss you, which is how we should have started our day off in the first place, this morning.”

  “Oh, yes, please.” It felt like days instead of hours since she’d felt the wonderful, floating feeling that came over her when one of these two men kissed her.

  Max’s lips settled on hers, but instead of the gentle, questing buss she’d expected, his mouth devoured hers. Wet heat and tropical desire spread through her body like a racing tide. Cheri could only wrap her arms around Max, could only return all he gave her with everything she had.

  Arousal, sweet yea
rning arousal, filled her, teased her, and pushed her to demand more. Tiny sounds emerged from the depths of her soul, and though she had no idea what they meant, she guessed both Max and Tony did because Max growled and Tony melded himself to her back.

  Max released her mouth, and she opened her eyes to encounter his lust-filled gaze. The sensation of fingers combing through her hair and of a firm, masculine grip stole her attention.

  “Give me that heat, woman.” Tony’s words caressed her lips a heartbeat before his mouth descended on hers. His tongue, sleek and sultry, wooed hers into immediate surrender. And all the while she returned Tony’s kiss, she felt Max’s nimble, talented fingers opening the buttons of her blouse.

  Tony lifted his head and flicked his glance down to where her blouse hung open and her bra cupped her breasts. “We didn’t get to see you last night.”

  His hands moved. When the closure of her bra sprang open, both men worked quickly to strip off her clothing, baring her to the waist.

  “I thought we had to talk.” Cheri had never known she could tease, but damned if these two men didn’t inspire her to new heights of devilry.

  Max cupped her face, and the fire burning in his eyes drew her, a moth to his flame, unable, but also unwilling, to look away.

  “We’ll talk. After.” He used his thumbs to brush her cheeks. “I need to be inside you. We both need to be inside you.”

  They were drawn to each other on so many levels, and every single one of them was right and natural for them. Cheri kissed his thumb as it caressed her lips. There would be time for talk…after. Except for one tiny fact that really wasn’t so tiny after all.

  “I need you both, too. But doing this, making love—my taking you each into my body—that will begin to bind us together even more closely. It’s not something to be done lightly, Max. It has consequences. Consequences that you need to be aware of.”

  “I know.”

  He must have read the doubt in her eyes. “I do know, Cheri. And so does Tony. Maybe not the exact details, but we know.” He nodded. “You said it. Destiny is. You’ll be bound as surely as we. Are you sure?”