Book of Love (6 page)

“Oh, I’m way more into your pedantic book reports.”

Elijah slapped his hand on his forehead. “Wounded!”

“You two are online buddies, huh?”

“We are.” Liam felt his cheeks heat. “
Buddies
seems an odd word choice.”

“Well, it’s not as if we’ve been having cybersex,” Elijah murmured.

“No, just real sex.” Shiloh shook her head, her hair sliding over his and Elijah’s skin. “This is nuts.”

“Totally.” A corner of Liam’s mouth quirked. “But fun.”

She smiled, even though she was beginning to look a little uncertain. “Very fun.”

“Hey.” He leaned in, kissed Shiloh’s lips. “Breathe, sweet lady.”

“I am. I think.”

“Good.” He rested his forehead against hers. The situation was bizarre, but there was no sense freaking out about it.

The wind wailed through the room one more time, then abruptly stopped, the quiet eerie.

“Whoa.” Okay, that was fucked up.

Elijah nodded. “We need to figure this out, guys. The town could be in real danger.”

“You’re sure you didn’t… I don’t know, get any blood on the pages?” Liam asked. “Maybe you took it out of the bookstore?”

Her eyes went wide. “I did take it home, but so did you. You have it here, now.”

“It’s in the other room, yeah. But if it was bound to the store, and we didn’t know it…”

“We could put it back.”

“No.” Elijah sighed. “We let it out, and I think we’ve been feeding it.”

“How do we get rid of it?” Shiloh actually looked scared.

“Shh.” Liam stroked her pretty blonde hair, rubbing it between his fingers. “We can do this. We just gotta stop getting distracted. Anything summoned can be banished.”

The problem was it didn’t want to be banished. Not even a little bit.

Liam held his new lovers and pondered just what they were going to do. He guessed they ought to start with Bella at the Minotaur.

“I think first, supper. Something where we can eat, plan.”

“Be dressed.” Shiloh nodded. “This isn’t like me. At all.”

“Me either,” Elijah said.

They looked at him expectantly and Liam shrugged. “I’m kind of a slut.”

They stared at him as one, then cracked up, laughing hard. There. That was exactly what they needed.

“There’s nowhere to eat but the tavern and the lodge. You want to come to my house?”

“That’d be great, Shiloh.” Liam wanted to know more about her. Oh, what he knew he appreciated, from her thick hair to lush breasts to soft thighs… But he wanted to know about her life, her mind, her needs.

“Cool. I— Well, I should wash up.”

He nodded and let her up, let her go.

Shiloh scampered to the bathroom, and Liam grunted. “You think it’s after her?”

“I don’t know. It seems to be centered on her, but…it feels bigger.”

“Yeah. So, how do we shut this thing down, man?” Liam had some ideas, but he knew Elijah was an expert on banishing.

“From a place? Sage and salt, but from a mountain?”

“Yeah. I mean, maybe it has to do with binding back to the book.”

Elijah nodded. “That would be the easiest place to start, I bet.”

“Cool.” He slapped Elijah’s still-bare ass. “We ought to get dressed so we don’t freak her out.”

“Yeah. She’s a little embarrassed, I think. Just a touch.”

“I can tell. We’ll make it right.” Shiloh was sweet as honey, and he didn’t want to fuck things up before they even began.

There was something about her—something that was bigger than the whole bound-by-a-spell thing. Something that said “I’m a girl worth putting down roots for”.

Which, okay. Unnerving as fuck.

Elijah grinned at him. “Pants, Obi-Wan.”

“Oh. Right. Obi-Wan? Really? I’m not that old.”

“I mean the young, hot one as played by Ewan McGregor, doofus.” Elijah pulled on his pants.

“Oh. Oh, in that case…” He grinned. He could totally go with young and hot. And Ewan McGregor was a ginger in the movies.

“Uh-huh.” His jeans hit him right in the face.

“Dude! You could break a tooth doing that!”

Elijah arched an eyebrow. “Cannot.”

“True story. I knew a guy online…”

“Uh, guys? I think we have a problem.” Shiloh’s voice came from the bathroom, muffled a bit by the door. “Does someone have a pair of sweats? My jeans are, uh, ripped to shreds.”

“What?” They both hit the door as one, needing to get to her.

“Look.” She opened the door a crack and passed out ripped fabric.

“Okay, that’s intense. Come on out, honey. Please,” Liam said.

“I think someone was mad.” She sniffed, and Liam went to get her a T-shirt and some sweats.

“Did you get undressed in the bathroom?” Elijah asked the question as if he knew the answer.

“No.” She shook her head. “I left them on the floor.”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Liam lifted his cargos, but they were whole.

“Me either.”

“Okay, I’m really scared, guys.” She crossed her arms over her breasts, her eyes on the shredded cloth. “This thing has it in for me.”

“We need to go to the bookstore tomorrow. For now, I definitely say we go back to your place, Shiloh, with salt and sage,” Liam said, and began to dress.

Elijah nodded. “Yeah. And we all stay together.”

“Yes.” When she glanced at them nervously, Liam gave her a stern look. “No embarrassment.”

“No. We’re all grownups.”

“Exactly.” Liam hugged her, then Elijah took her arm, leading her out of the room.

Now they just needed to figure out what the fuck to do.

Chapter Five

Shiloh unlocked her house, wondering what the hell she was thinking. Two. Two men at once. One a stunning, dark avenging angel, one a red-haired warrior. They amazed her, and she wanted to get to know them as much as she wanted to hide from them. She felt as if everything were sideways, like she’d stepped into Neverland or Wonderland or some other land not her own.

“Come on in. I think the house is safe.” She wasn’t sure why, but she thought so.

“Yeah? You haven’t had any manifestations inside?” Liam stepped aside and let Elijah in first, who checked the front room carefully.

“Outside. On the front porch, maybe, but I don’t think anyone—anything?—came up.”

“Good deal.” Liam stepped in next. “We’ll still salt.”

“Will plain old table salt work? I have that.”

“It will. We’ll get ’Lijah to work his mojo.”

“No.” Elijah shook his head. “This is no Native American spirit. This is more your thing, Liam.”

Liam nodded. “Then I’ll salt the edges of the house. A little sage can’t hurt, man.”

She stood there, watching them. This was crazy. They were acting as if this thing could really hurt her, hurt the whole town. Had she done this? Just because she was lonely and horny?

Surely not, right? She hadn’t meant to.

“Shiloh, the salt?”

“Right. Right, sorry.”
Fuck.

“Hey.” Liam caught her in his arms as if it was the most natural thing he could do. “No beating yourself up. I think this thing has been around for years waiting for someone to open that book.”

“It’s just…so weird.” She let herself lean, let herself soak up the comfort he offered.

“I bet. We do this stuff a lot and it’s still strange.” He squeezed her again, gently. “Salt, honey. Just to be safe.”

“Gotcha.” She got the big box of salt from the kitchen, the one she used for baking.

Liam took it, smiling at her. “Perfect.”

She smiled back, and if her lower lip quivered, no one remarked on it.

Liam got to work, murmuring softly over the salt, his body seeming to be almost fuzzy for a second. She blinked, just to be sure she hadn’t been drifting off or hallucinating.

He went around, sprinkling salt around the edges of the house, but at the main door, he stopped. “Someone’s already salted the entryways.”

Elijah went to Liam, nodding. “Nice. We ought to make sure everything is sealed up nice and tight, though.”

“I’ll make sure.”

“What do you mean someone already has?” Shiloh asked.

Liam glanced at her, making reassuring faces. Adorable. “Looks like someone who lived here before you, maybe?”

“Must have been my dad.” That actually made her feel better, that Dad was still protecting her somehow. He’d been a bit of a hippie, so he totally would have been into—

“Oh, do I need to warn my aunt? She owns the bakery.”

“Anything happening in the bakery that scared you?”

“Well, you were there. We practically blew the doors off.”

They both glanced at her, and she could see the calculations running in their heads. “Yeah, but you were also there and very much making with the sexual energy, so we can’t say that was magick. What about when we weren’t there?”

“No. No, nothing. Nothing anywhere really when I wasn’t alone, until you guys came.”

“Well, then, no sense in upsetting your aunt right now.” Elijah checked the rest of the windows.

“It’s absolutely centered on Shiloh,” Liam said. “Without question.”

She rubbed her upper arms, feeling as though the wind that suddenly picked up outside had worked its way through the windows. “I’m freaked out, guys.”

“We won’t let it get to you.” She wasn’t sure how Liam even made that promise, but it did bring her shoulders down from around her ears.

Elijah came to drop a kiss on her head. “Show me around upstairs?”

“Sure. Sure, come on up. It’s where the bedrooms are.”

“I like bedrooms.” Liam pinched her ass, making her jump a mile.

She chuckled softly, then headed upstairs with Elijah, the darkness on the stairway finding her reaching for his hand.

He took her hand, his warm, square, his fingers strong. “Don’t worry, Shiloh. We’ll figure this out.”

“I hope so. This is so weird. Completely.”

“It’s a strange one, for sure. I would bet thanks to the hot springs this is a place for convergences, though,” Liam said.

“Convergences? As in…places where the world is coming together?”

“Something like that.” Liam had followed them up and was pawing through her chest of drawers. Nosy butthead. “Places where the earth’s energy flows more strongly.”

“Stay out of my underwear drawer, turkey.”

Something rattled downstairs, and Liam frowned. “I’ll go check it out.”

“Be careful,” Elijah warned, pulling her against his side.

“I will. Promise.”

She heard steps down the stairwell, then quiet, not even wind for a second. Then someone opened a door.

A startled shout came from outside, a strangled sound that only Liam could be making.

“Shit!” Elijah pushed her down on the bed. “Stay here.”

“No way. No way. I have a bat!”

“Don’t hit me!” Elijah pounded down the stairs, making a beeline for the front door while Shiloh scrambled for a weapon.

She barreled down after him, the storm raging, the rain so hard that she couldn’t see anything. Even at this time of year, this kind of storm seemed freakish, the howling wind raising the hair on the back of her neck.

“Liam!” Elijah’s shout flew back at her on the wind.

“Liam! Liam, where are you?” She held on to the rail, the wind trying to pull her off the porch.

“Here.” He was off to one side, not out on the front sidewalk. Shiloh saw him, trying to climb to standing.

It looked as if he’d been yanked off his feet, taken and shook.

“Damn it!” Elijah slid around the corner of the porch and grabbed Liam, the two of them leaning hard against the wind.

“You leave him alone!” she screamed. “Right now! You back off!”

Liam slammed up against Elijah, both of them falling down, but the wind died out, the rain spattering gently now.

“Boys? You okay?” Oh, God. God, scary.

They climbed to their feet and limped together to the porch. A thin trickle of blood ran down Liam’s face from his temple.

“Liam? Can you hear me?” Shiloh asked.

“Helluva wind.” Liam tried a shaky grin, but it failed. “I might need to puke.”

“Powder room is right inside the door.”

“Thanks.” He stumbled inside and made for the bathroom.

Elijah came to her, hand on her cheek. “You okay?”

“Fine. A fucking terrifying demon thing is hurting people because of me. I’m great.”

“Hey. You just happened to read the book, okay? I mean, not that I wouldn’t want you if I was a demon.”

She looked at Elijah, just stared for a long moment, then cracked up.

He hugged her, and Liam came out of the powder room, looking pale but okay. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing.” She had to laugh or she’d scream.

“Oh. Laughing hysterically at nothing is a bad sign.” Liam’s smile gained wattage.

“No shit, man. Today’s been a lot of signage.”

“And then some.” Liam grimaced. “Do you have any ice or frozen peas?”

“I have both. How about a bag of peas and a beer?”

“Heck yes.” Liam gave her a grateful look. “I like a girl who stocks beer.”

“I’m a superhero.”

Elijah kissed her chin. “You are. Get the stuff while I get his ass on the couch?”

“You got it.” She headed to the kitchen, leaned over into the freezer for the peas before she dug out three beers. She stood up, turned toward the living room, and there it was.

Clear as day in her garden.

A huge man with the horns of a bull and a raging hard-on, legs covered in dark fur. The eyes were black, totally, piercing and wrong.

She screamed, the beer bottles crashing to the floor. As if she was a horror movie queen. What the hell else was she supposed to do?

“Shiloh!” She heard them coming, feet pounding, but she couldn’t look away from those black eyes.

Elijah almost skidded right into her, panting. Liam shouted, running for the window. “Shoo! Go away! Run.”

Elijah stared for a second, then joined in. “Get the fuck away from her, you asshat!”

Shiloh didn’t know whether to jibber with fear or dissolve into laughter. Her stalwart protectors. The…dude…stared at her, then shimmered, seeming to dissolve.

“Woo.” Liam fist-pumped the air.

“I…” Okay. Those beers were skunked.

“That guy was… Whoa.” Elijah put an arm around her waist. “You okay? I seem to be asking that a lot.”

“I need to clean up the beer. Here’s the peas.”

“Oh, I can do that. Liam, go sit with Shiloh.”

Liam turned to face her, swaying a bit.

“I have you.”
Please God, don’t let him fall.

“I’m okay, darlin’.” His Irish was so back. “Couch.”

“Uh-huh. Couch.” She helped him move. “What was that thing?”

“I’m going with demon.”

“Yeah?” Just like that, huh? She guessed demon was better than god.

Elijah nodded. “It’s feeding on sexual energy.”

“That means we have to stop, then, right?” Damn it. She wasn’t usually so full of desire. Then again, she wasn’t usually the center of attention of two beautiful men.

Liam looked so disappointed. “For the time being, yeah.”

“No fair.” She helped Liam get the frozen peas against the back of his neck.

“Oh. That’s good. Thanks.”

Elijah handed her a beer. “I think we all need this.”

“Yeah. Can he have one with a concussion?”

Liam grabbed a beer from Elijah. “I’m fine, love.”

“Yeah? He… It? Hurt you.”

“Trampled my ass but good.”

Elijah snorted. “You’re still mostly intact.”

“Mostly. I think.”

She giggled, the sound hysterical. “I’d offer to check, but…”

“We’re supposed to be good,” Elijah said sternly.

“I think we might need the book, though.” Liam sighed. “And to talk to Bella. See if she ever had any issue with it.”

“I think we need supper too.” For whatever reason—be it stress or sex or just the fact that it was past dinnertime—she was starving. Her belly rumbled, and both of her boys stared at it. “What? A girl can have a grumbly tummy, too.”

The guys laughed at her, and the tension eased, along with the storm.

Maybe they could have supper as real people, and she could pretend they were really here for her. That would be nice.

She had pasta, she thought. Some frozen broccoli and Italian sausage. She could whip up her go-to last-minute company meal, which didn’t happen near as often here as it had in Texas.

There was even French bread in the freezer, and possibly a salad in the fridge.

She could manage this.

“I’ll get some water started.”

Elijah smiled. “Want company?”

God, she totally did, but she didn’t want to leave Liam alone.

Liam waved them off, obviously noticing her hesitation. “I could use some dark and quiet for a minute, huh? I promise not to slip into a coma.”

Elijah grumbled. “Better not. Come on, lady.”

“Thanks.” She grabbed a blanket and the remote for Liam, and then went to open a bottle of wine and get the water started.

Elijah had her pasta pan out, filling it in the sink. “He’s gonna have a helluva shiner.”

“Yeah. Pasta makes everything better, huh? Y’all aren’t vegetarians, are you?”

“No. Not a bit.” Elijah smiled, his hard face softer with the expression. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m totally wigged, but…I don’t know. I feel safe in here.” She cut the sausage into rounds, cut up the onions.

“You want me to chop the broccoli?” He grabbed a knife from the same drawer she’d used. “I like your house. Someone worked hard to make it a sanctuary.”

“Please. And it was my daddy’s house. He loved it.”

“I’m sorry. That means he’s gone, doesn’t it?” Elijah chopped, the broccoli all neat and uniform. She would bet he worked in restaurants as a youngster.

“Yeah. It was very sudden. Boom.” Heart attacks sucked.

“It was that way with my
abuelita
. I lived with her for years, and then she was just not there.”

“Yeah. It’s not right.” She put the sausage and onions in the skillet, washed her hands and put the broccoli in the water. That would blanch a little, then come out and pasta would go in.

“Smells good. Do we put cheese in?”

“Parmesan. Is that cool?”

“Yes. I love that stuff. So nutty and salty.”

She laughed, leaned over and took a kiss impulsively. He tasted of broccoli a little, but underneath that was spicy. Almost chili and sunshine. Elijah kissed her back, one hand sliding into her hair.

She opened up, pressed into his hold, his kiss dizzying. He had this slow, gentle but insistent way that made her want to lie down with him for hours, touching and rubbing and listening to his rough noises. She settled against him, the touch threatening to addict her.

When his big hands grabbed her butt and lifted her, Shiloh spread her legs to get some friction on her clit, the seam of her pants pushing.

Elijah moaned, leaned against the counter and held her against him, rocking them together.

“Hey, you two are being naughty!” Liam stood in the doorway when she glanced over her shoulder, laughing at them.

“We’re cooking. Making food.” Elijah didn’t look the slightest bit ashamed.

“Cooking with oil, you mean.” Liam came to tug her away from Elijah, kissing her lightly. “Behave. Both of you. Storm is just starting to let off.”

“No fair.” She needed him. She also needed to stir the sausage.

Elijah let her go, his reluctance evident in how long it took to pry each finger from her skin. She sighed, going back to her pasta and all, while Elijah volunteered to make salad.

“Do you have bread?” Liam asked. “I make wicked good garlic bread.”

“I have some French bread.”

“Cool.”

How weird to have two burly, hot guys in her kitchen helping her cook. They all worked together, a well-oiled machine moving around one another easily.