STORY EXCERPT

Shane

I know you’re cheating on me. I found the proof. How could you do this to me? I’ve given you five years of my life and you’re with that whore every time you claim you have a business trip.

I gritted my teeth as I stood there, trying to make the voices go away. They were like tiny little needles inside my head.

“Are you just going to keep standing there?” the guy in the booth asked. His wife sat quietly across from him.

What is this guy, a moron?

That was what the husband thought of me. I had to pull myself together, so I plastered on a smile. “What can I get you guys to drink?”

I wrote down their order then hurried away. This had been happening to me my entire life. Since I was a little boy I could hear others’ thoughts. At first those voices were whispered, like faraway chatter in my head. As I’d gotten older, they’d become clearer, stronger, and I’d developed coping mechanisms to deal with them.

I could still hear the voices, but I’d learned how to dull the pain of those needles. Learned how to stop the nose bleeds. I just wished I’d learned how to stop the voices. It amazed me how nice some people could be and how their wicked thoughts contradicted their outside manner.

There were very few whose voices hadn’t broadcasted to me. Like Nezat, the demon who’d kidnapped me four weeks ago. I hadn’t been able to hear his thoughts, and a part of me was thankful. I wasn’t sure I could have dealt with thoughts from a demon. Casey and Dillon had been in the room with me, and I thought I would be able to hear what they were thinking, but that nasty reverend had been outside the door. All I could hear was his voice in my head, his twisted thoughts about what he wanted to do to Dillon.

Then Delvin had come into the room and rescued me, and all thoughts had quieted. But I’d still been too shaken to focus. I’d just wanted to get out of there. Delvin had placed me in the backseat, and I’d curled up, covering my face and wishing I’d never gotten out of bed that morning.

“Hey, you okay?” Misty asked. She was one of the servers at Bailey’s Bar and Grille where I worked. She had kind eyes. Pretty eyes. She was a bit shorter than me, slim with wide hips and ample breasts. If I were into girls, she would have been my type, and I might have asked her out.

Only, I could hear her thoughts, so that wouldn’t have worked. There was nothing like dating someone when you could hear what they were thinking. Some might think that would be a godsend. In reality, it was a curse. There was a reason that thoughts were private. You weren’t meant to hear everything.

He seems so stressed. He needs to take a day off once in a while.

I smiled at Misty. She was one of the few who always worried about others and rarely had a mean thought about anyone. Still, I didn’t want to hear about how stressed she was over raising a child, her lame boyfriend, or how she was going to pay her bills.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I smiled at her. “Just another one of those headaches.”

And that was what people thought. That I suffered from painful headaches. I had to let them think that, because no one could know about my curse. My parents and sister knew but pretended they didn’t. Or, at least, they knew I used to have a curse. When I’d hit puberty, I’d declared that the voices had vanished. The relief in my family’s eyes told me I could never tell them that the voices remained, could never tell them how wicked most people in Hungry were. They loved this small town. If only they knew the truth.

I could hear the woman on my right sitting at the bar. She was contemplating sleeping with her boss. The guy next to her was trying to come up with ways to get back at his neighbor for mowing his grass at a godawful hour.

“Shane.”

The voices disappeared as soon as Delvin rested a hand on my upper arm. I took a deep breath, wishing I could keep his hand on me forever. I was also thankful his mind was blissfully quiet. I couldn’t hear anything coming from him, not unless he spoke the words out loud.

It was the same with his brother. I couldn’t hear anything when Joshua touched me. For those brief moments, I felt normal, as if I wasn’t cursed to suffer through everyone’s problems.

“Yes?”

“After you finish with your table, go on break.”

“Okay, sure.” A break was exactly what I needed. As long as no one was outside, I could have a moment’s reprieve.

Let me set one thing straight. It wasn’t like I could hear all the voices in the place at the same time. The person had to be close, and I could usually manage to keep my distance, but working in a popular restaurant/bar, I might as well have suffered painful headaches, because my head always killed me at the end of my shift.

Delvin’s hand slid down my arm and stopped at my elbow, lingering there. That was another thing. Ever since I’d started working here, I’d noticed how my bosses looked at me, how they were always touching me. Not in inappropriate ways but innocent touches, like Delvin was doing now. Still, the touches had a way of making my body spark to life.

I had the hots for Delvin and Joshua Bailey. Who in their right mind wouldn’t? Delvin was all dark looks with the prettiest dark blue eyes I’d ever seen. He exuded masculinity, like he would rip someone to shreds if they crossed him. Not that I was into that type of guy, but he’d always been nice to me, kind, giving me as many breaks as I’d needed when my “headaches” became too much.

Like now. I knew he could see how stressed I was as I stood there holding my order pad.

“Everything okay?” Joshua came up on my left, touching my shoulder. The voices were still at bay, and my head was an empty space right now. Wonderfully quiet.

“I just told him to take a break after he finished with his last table,” Delvin said.

ADULT EXCERPT

My arms pinwheeled and I let out a squeak when I was rolled from the couch and landed on the floor. Not a hard landing. It was a soft one, and now I was lying under Joshua, who was completely naked, his arm under my head like a pillow.

“I’m already undressed.” He lowered his head, and oh my god, I’d wanted to be kissed by him since the night we’d made each other come with our hands and mouths. His lips were exploring, as were his hands, and I melted into him as a part of my brain registered the fact that Delvin had gotten up from the couch and clothes were falling toward me like rain.

Delvin’s clothes.

He was getting naked right there in the living room.

My heart tripled in beat as Joshua’s hands slipped down my back and cupped my ass. Even through my clothes, I felt his hard steel press into me. Joshua wanted me, was turned on by the idea, and I had a feeling I was about to get the ride of my life.

I kissed him hungrily, so pent up with need that I thought I would explode right there on the floor. I couldn’t stop squirming, trying to get impossibly closer, like I was trying to climb right inside the guy.

My body jerked when hands touched the waistband of my pants.

“Just concentrate on me, babe,” Joshua said against my lips. “Focus on us.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d uttered those words to a bed partner. His voice was too in control, too reassuring, but I slammed the lid on the thought of them being with someone else. Nothing, not even jealousy, was going to spoil this night. Besides, if I turned out to be their mate, I would be the last guy he uttered those words to.

Delvin and Joshua would be mine.

My pants and underwear slid down my legs, scraping at my ankles before they disappeared. Joshua rolled, pulling me on top of him, and then I felt a face press into my ass. I froze then turned to liquid as Delvin’s face pushed harder into my ass. His tongue lapped at my hole. I cried out into Joshua’s mouth. Joshua, the prick, smiled against my lips. We were chest-to-chest, and I was wiggling, gasping, because, nope, no one’s tongue had ever touched me there before.

And I loved it. Loved feeling Delvin’s tongue swirling around my tight entrance, loved feeling his hands spread my cheeks apart, and, oh god, loved feeling his tongue push inside of me as my cock wrestled with Joshua’s.

“Do you want to take this to a soft bed?” Joshua asked, still kissing me, still torturing me with that mouth of his.

“I-I don’t want… No move.” The two were turning my brain to mush. I rocked back into Delvin’s mouth as Joshua devoured mine. I couldn’t even touch him. I had to use my hands to keep myself from falling right against Joshua, and I had to concentrate to keep them planted on the floor on either side of his head.

“Take my shirt off.” Because I felt silly still having it on.

Joshua’s hands slid up my sides, forcing me to sit up. Delvin’s mouth was gone, and he was helping Joshua to remove it. Then I collapsed against Joshua, our chests touching, our mouths fusing, as Delvin probed at my hole with wet fingers. Had they stuffed some lube close by before they’d fallen asleep?

I arched my back and hissed into Joshua’s mouth. Two fingers inside of me and I was ready to come. Already my balls had drawn up tight. This was literally a fantasy, something I’d started thinking about after being hired by them. Too many times I’d thought of the different ways we could get it on, and always, the two of them were all over me, making me cry out their names.

Now it was reality and, damn, so much better than anything I could have thought of. The reality felt a hundred times better, too. My stomach was doing backflips as my cock pulsed against Joshua’s gut. Delvin kissed his way up my spine as his fingers did wicked, wicked things to my body.

My kissing was distracted now. I wasn’t even sure if I was kissing Joshua’s lips or his cheek. My mind was too busy visualizing what Delvin was doing to me back there. His thick fingers crooked, grazing over my kill zone, and I would swear to anyone that my dick started drooling.

“He’s ready,” Joshua said as he tilted his head back.

Ah, my lips were on his jaw. That was where they had gone. I was nibbling along his beard, mouthing his Adam’s apple, an electrical storm building inside of me, touching every nerve ending I owned.

I’d never come with just fingers in my ass, with no one touching my dick, but I was so close to blowing any second. I desperately wanted relief but also didn’t want it, because that meant things would end, and I never wanted this to end.

The blunt head of Delvin’s cock tapped at my hole. Joshua was right. I was more than ready. If I didn’t get a cock inside my ass, and soon, I might be the one turning into an animal.

Delvin worked the head in, pulling me back slightly, one hand on my lower back. Joshua wrapped his hand around my cock. How? I wasn’t even sure. Our bodies were pressed together, but he somehow managed, distracting me from what Delvin was doing to me.

I didn’t want to be distracted. I wanted to feel every little thing they were doing to me. Every touch. Every kiss. Every squeeze of Joshua’s hand on my dick. Every inch of Delvin’s cock inching inside of me. I might have been experiencing sensory overload. I wiggled backward to impale myself, but I was also thrusting forward to fuck Joshua’s hand. It was as if my body couldn’t decide what to do with itself.

Then Delvin rocked me back until I was on all fours. Joshua’s hand hadn’t left my cock, but now I could see him clearer. I was staring right into his dark blue eyes, into his handsome face. He cupped my jaw seconds before he pulled my head down for a kiss.