Danea (18 page)

Was it natural for females to think of how to rearrange furniture? She wasn’t sure where that thought came from as she climbed to the short porch and pulled the glass door wide. The internal door was already open but she definitely was not prepared for the view she received.

Long blonde hair, a miniscule thong trapped between a pair of healthy, tanned cheeks and a very surprised and even slightly annoyed expression on the young face when their eyes met across the room.

“You seem to have lost your clothing,” Danea said, not bothering to conceal her amusement.

“Who’re you?” Demanded a slightly snotty tone.

“Wade
?” Danea called out loudly, curiously and slightly amused.

“Be out in a minute, angel, I’m trying to find a reference. I really should get these things in some sort of order…” came the muffled compla
int seconds before he exclaimed his success. “I could hire someone, I suppose…a skilled librarian who…”

Wearing glasses, head bent and
a book open in his hands, he didn’t see the amused look on Danea’s face. She walked around the almost naked, tall and leggy blonde, her grin crooked. She placed a palm over the open book and went to her toes, kissing him when he looked up, blinking.

“Who’s your friend, Wade?” Danea leaned on the edge of the desk and watched his mouth open at the same time the undressed state of the young woman registered.

She watched his eyes widen and sweep from the student to Danea and back again several times in mounting and very new aggravation.

“Miss
Bently! What…put your clothing on immediately and you’re dismissed. There is nothing I can help you with if this is the type of behavior you intend to display. What is wrong with you?”

“I’m thinking she
finds you as sexy as I do…or she’s having grade issues,” Danea said with a chuckle. The blonde didn’t have the decency to even look embarrassed as she pulled her t-shirt on and whipped her jeans off the chair. Wade, on the other hand, was actually blushing, the book in his hands snapped shut with an explosive clap.

“When you learn that I’m your professor, Miss Bently, feel free to ask my TA for assistance,” Wade glared at the girl.

She offered a casual shrug before grabbing her purse and striding from the house without looking back.

Danea lowered her eyes to the floor, struggling to keep her giggle inside.

“You have to admire her moxie,” she managed to say without losing control. Until he snarled. “You should be flattered,” she attempted, pulling the corner of her lip between her teeth when she met the hazel shaded glare aimed at her through narrowed lashes.

“I’m very pleased this amuses you.”

“Has this happened before, Wade? It’s not uncommon for a student to find a teacher appealing,” she worked to find the right words, standing up and taking the slim volume from his fingers. “You alright?” She moved carefully, turning him to lean on the desk as she moved against him.

His feet parted automatically, his hands easily settling on her waist. He sighed.

“Yes, this has happened before. Obviously, not this same scenario, however…”

“She finds you attractive,” Danea
told him, her palms sliding along the front of his shirt, her nails brushing over the buttons until they reached the opening. “I don’t care for her behavior, but she’s a kid.”

Wade leaned his forehead against hers. “She doesn’t have bad grades.”

“Then you should feel flattered,” she kissed him gently.

“I altered my appearance at the last university,” Wade confided. “Added years and a lot of grey in my hair.
For some odd reason, I returned to myself this last couple years but this…”

“Why does it bother you?”

“Oddly enough, it didn’t used to. It seems like a long time ago,” he shook his head, hazel eyes edged with green gazed through his lenses at her. “Can I hold onto my man-card and still confess that I panicked when I saw her like that and you standing there?”

Danea smiled. “It’s that trust thing.
I can’t imagine either you or Noah working so hard to get me…to get to me…just to throw it away with a student.”

“Required classes have less studious types than my specialty classes,” Wade said wryly. “Thank you.
I have students come to the house only if they need help with assignments and my TA is unavailable. Marcus was out this last week and some of the students from my required history classes are less than diligent.”

“I learned the best students are ones who have to pay for their own classes,” Danea teased. “Being forced to attend college…rarely a good mix. I suppose jealousy did…pop into my head…but if that was what you’d wanted, either you or Noah, you’d have had it anytime.”

“Did I ask why you’re out early?”

“It’s Friday. Laurie and my assistant are taking turns for a few hours off on Fridays. This week was mine. So I packed some stuff and came…here…” she wasn’t sure of the right word.

“Home. It’s going to be home, Danea,” Wade said the words firmly, his palms leaving her hips and framing her face. “Andrea made dinner. It’s in the large crockpot on the counter. Are you hungry?”

Danea forced her hips against his boldly. “Maybe…”

She had been holding her breath until his head lowered, their lips barely touching for what seemed an eternity. She’d felt his arousal, the hard line of his cock pressing against the smooth front of his slacks. He always looked so staid; so proper and scholarly.

Danea closed her eyes when he brushed his lips along her jaw, continuing onto her ear. She felt the sharp bite and shivered.

“Noah brought his clothes and other things by earlier,” Wade let his hands caress gently along her throat to her shoulders. “You look like a lost little kid in these shirts,” he tugged at the over-sized t-shirt.

“I wrestle around on the floor with little kids,” she laughed, crossing her arms over her and pulling the shirt off. She dropped it to the desk. “Better?”

“You’re a seductive wench,” Wade murmured, his mouth moving over her bare shoulder.

“Noah brought lunch to the center.”

“I know. We’ve talked,” he raised his head, his gaze on the small round breasts contained inside the miniscule strip of nylon and lace. “He said you’d wanted to speak with us both about our arrangements.”

“I…I didn’t know who to ask questions of…” she took a slow breath. “We
’ve always been together…the three of us, I mean…I don’t understand how…how it’s supposed to be,” she whispered. “But I didn’t want it to seem I was excluding you by asking him or the other way…and when we’re together, sometimes the questions vanish.”

“Did you understand his explanation? That there are no formalities. There
is no right or wrong couplings between the three of us. Noah and I are not bi-sexual,” he told her firmly. “We’re friends, and because of you, we’re entering into a partnership.”

“He explained that what you felt for each other was as if you’d become brothers now…because of me,” she admitted, thinking over the lunchtime conversation
with Noah over gyros in the privacy of her office.

“And that you belonged to us both, together or individually, whenever it suited us,” Wade hadn’t been surprised when Noah had given him a call shortly after lunch.
He’d expected her to have questions and convincing her it was alright to ask them of either of them would take time. “And you held the power in this…” he lifted her hand in his until he could press his lips to the soft, small center. “We both comprehend the word no, Danea. If you crave privacy…if you want time alone, away from us, you must tell us. You must believe that we – the three of us – are not together simply because the sex is phenomenal.”

“I wanted to talk with you both tonight,” she nodded slowly, still baffled at how comfortable it was with them, together or separate. “I didn’t know Noah would be at the center and…I don’t think I’m very good at hiding it when I’m thinking.”

“You tend to telegraph that, angel,” he teased with another kiss to her palm.

“You’re both so very patient…”

“And you don’t believe you’re worthy of that patience, Danea?”

“I expected to get a lecture about your vast age and eons of knowledge,” she teased, slipping to the side and snatching up her shirt.

Wade gripped her wrist before she could move out of range, his sharp tug sending her bouncing off his solid frame. Before she could do more than open her mouth and laugh, she was lifted against him.

“Put your arms around my neck,” he ordered, striding to the front door and kicking it shut before bending just enough to grab the large bag of items she’d brought into the house.

“Wade…I can walk…”

“Noah is off on a hunting run with the local pack,” Wade told her simply, climbing the stairs to the master suite. “And he said to have dinner without him. So I think I’m really hungry at the moment.”

“Oh?” Danea felt her heart start to hammer. She could see the tiny flecks of green sparkling at the edges of his eyes. The thought again ran through her mind on how different and yet alike the two men were. She knew a large part of her attraction to them was the simple determination she felt in them both to bring her into their lives. Yet on her terms.

“Oh,” Wade murmured back to her, dropping her bag to the chair and then letting her legs drift to the floor.

“I want to see him as a wolf,” she said suddenly, distracted momentarily by the fingers opening the buttons of her jeans. “What do you look like?”

His hands stopped, dark lashes blinking behind lenses that he lifted from his face and placed on the high bureau behind him.

“I look like me,” he answered slowly, fairly certain he knew what she was asking.

“As Fae,” she said, her hands finishing the job of removing her jeans. She tossed them to the chair and reached for the buttons on his shirt. The cotton was soft beneath her fingers, a faded tan color that tickled her palms when she spread them against his chest. “Do you look like me? I mean…not me…but…”

“Sit in the middle of the bed,” Wade ordered quietly.

There was a moment’s hesitation before she did as he told her, legs crossed beneath her and hands clasped in her lap. It was becoming easier and easier to be less than dressed around them, she realized, her shoulders stiffening when he crawled over the surface and opened the snap at the middle of her back.

“I want to see your breasts, Danea,” he told her, returning to stand up and remove his shirt. His shoes followed and then socks, leaving only his slacks. “Close your eyes and hold your hand out, palm up.”

She bit the corner of her lip but did what he said, aware of the slightest tremor in her hand. She waited
and it wasn’t easy. Then there was the faintest of weights in the center of her palm and his voice telling her to open her eyes and look.

Only it wasn’t spoken out loud. It was inside her head. Just her head.

Wade decided later that he could have come up with at least a dozen outcomes than the one that happened. His head was still ringing an hour later.

He removed his slacks and shifted, landing lightly in the center of her palm.

Then the earsplitting scream ripped through the house and his senses.

Her other hand had come up and swept at her palm at the same time she bounced to her feet and backed against the headboard while he went head over feet spinning through the air and striking the wall with a thud.

Danea didn’t know what to expect and sat still, waiting. She heard clothing sounds and thought Wade was undressing. That thought made her wet and squirm just a little. Okay, she thought with a smile, more than a little. Her guys knew how to totally arouse her.

Then she felt the buzzing against her palm and the barest of weights in the center. She wasn’t sure if she heard a voice or not because her scream was long and loud. Her free hand came up and backhanded the object in the middle of her palm.

A mouse? A bird? She wasn’t sure but was instantly on her feet before the scream came to an end, her steps backing her against the headboard at the same time she heard the clunk of whatever it was against the wall.

Her chest was rising and falling erratically, her hand rubbing against her hip.

Then she heard the low, plaintive groan of pain.

“Oh-mi-god!”

Her feet fumbled on the surface of the bed, tangled in the blankets and jumping to the floor, running around the bottom and freezing when the hard, loud voice blasted into her head. But not through her ears.

“STOP!”

Her body came to a complete halt, her hands flew to her mouth and her head shook faintly.

“Wade?” She whispered shakily. “Oh, god, Wade did I…I am so sorry! I didn’t…where are you?”

The pleading voice shook and she dropped to her knees, her body curling forward and hands on her face.

“I don’t know where you are…I’m sorry…I didn’t mean…I didn’t know…”

“Stop, Danea, I’m…alright…”

She heard him again, and yet she didn’t hear him. His voice sounded a little different. Closer than it had ever been before and inside her head. He didn’t sound alright, though she did sense he was amused.