Something Sinful This Way Comes [McQueen Was My Valley 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (18 page)

“I
would
mind if you sort of.” Xandra cut her friend off. She immediately felt bad, and lightened her tone. “I’m…sort of falling in love with him, Cass. And I knew I was in love with Nathan a long time ago. I really don’t know what to do.”

“Well, it just doesn’t seem fair. You need to choose one of them and stick with it. And if you loved Nathan first, then—”

Xandra’s tone became firm again. “I want
both
men, Cass! You can’t make me decide because both of them seem perfectly amenable to the arrangement. There has been no jealousy.”

“So far,” Cass said warningly. She waved at a passing fellow in a tux. Some of these fishermen, their idea of formal attire was clipping a plaid bowtie onto their T-shirt. One guy even wore a T-shirt stamped with the image of a tux jacket. “Hey, Ed! You mentioned you were looking for a fly fishing guide? Well, Xandra met just the guy for you.”

Xandra had been introducing Nathan to potential fly fishing clients all night long. She had the feeling he knew next to nothing about fly fishing, but he was sharp and intelligent, a quick study, and could learn enough in a month to fake it, she was certain. Anything to keep him away from his black ops work in Africa. He was obviously suffering some sort of PTSD after losing his partner, Rory, not long ago. Xandra had been grabbing Nathan all night—though she’d like to do much more than grab him—to introduce him to potential clients, and she did so again now.

He had tried to protest that he had nothing decent to wear to the gala. But he had no excuse, because Cass had a closetful of good dinner suits for guests caught unawares, and he was now wearing the hell out of one. He was a bit too broad in the shoulders for the jacket so he left it unbuttoned, the better to catch occasional glimpses of his superlative ass in the form-fitting trousers. It was a huge temptation to slide her hand around the curve of that butt, and she’d done it a few times when she thought no one was looking.

Now she introduced Nathan to Ed and they discussed fish. Julian helped out by providing knowledgeable information about bodies of water in the area.

“The flows have dropped on Cottonwood Creek below the dam,” said Julian, “so wading and fly fishing is better now.”

“Didn’t someone take a few browns there on a red San Juan worm and an elk hair caddis?” Nathan asked Julian.

Fishing stuff was about as exciting to Xandra as the mumbo-jumbo of computer programming, so she turned to leave. Nathan caught her hand and steered her toward an enormous wheel of prawns on ice. He spoke so closely into her ear goose bumps rose on her neck. “My coworker got back to me.” He meant his fellow mercenary at the private military contractor in Washington, D.C.

When they had taken a knife to the back of the photo in Ozzy’s bag, they had discovered what Javier wanted so desperately. Behind there he had stashed a 1913 silver coin with a liberty head on one side, on the back a wreath and lettering that declared it to be worth “V cents.” Obviously if Javier had hidden it and now wanted it back, it was worth more than V cents, so Nathan had taken a photo of it and sent it to Washington.

“Oh? What did he say about the coin?”

Nathan caught Julian’s eye and hitched his chin at him. Julian instantly understood, and excused himself from the anglers.

“Let’s go onto the deck,” Nathan said.

They went to the farthest edge of the deck, where Nathan placed his phone on the railing and looked at his partners meaningfully. He was beyond exquisite in a tie, but all Xandra wanted to do was get him out of that suit. “As we suspected, this coin is pretty rare. Listen to what my buddy had to say.” Nathan pressed a button on his phone, and Xandra and Julian leaned in to listen.

“Hey Nathan, it’s Adrian getting back to you about that coin. You’re never gonna believe this. But it’s either one of only five ever minted, and the guy stole it from one of the five owners, or it’s this fabled missing sixth coin that no one’s ever really seen. One’s in the Smithsonian, so unless your guy is a master thief, I doubt that’s the one. Another two are in some museum in Colorado Springs. Anyway, even if your coin was stolen from a current unknown owner…You better be sitting down, buddy.” Adrian paused importantly, and Xandra looked at Julian with eyes of terror. “The most recent one to exchange hands was in 2010. For
three point seven million
.”

Xandra gasped, and even Adrian’s phone message paused to allow this to sink into his listeners. No one dared speak, for fear of obliterating what Adrian would say next.

“Needless to say, buddy,
don’t tell anyone.
Put it in a safe. I’ll be flying out there pronto to confirm its authenticity. Just put it somewhere climate-controlled…”

Xandra’s brain faded out as Adrian went into the details of not pouring chlorine over coins. Breathing heavily, she staggered away to lean on another part of the railing.
Three point seven million
. Of course, it wasn’t her coin. Then again, more than likely, it wasn’t Javier’s coin, either. So now they had an entirely new dilemma. How to prevent Javier from coming to Bird in Hand and personally murdering them all with a semiautomatic to get the coin? They needed to keep him away until they could find out where he’d stolen the coin.

They had already convinced the local sheriff to keep the mangled Ozzy in solitary—once he got out of the hospital—and allow him no visitors. The longer they could keep his incarceration a secret from Javier the better.

Nathan came up and stood behind Xandra. He lightly lifted her hair and kissed her neck, then ran his face up the side of her throat, making her shiver again. Her nipples tautened against the cups of her peach silk gown. “I know this is a huge shock.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s our coin. It must belong to someone.”

Nathan murmured, “Unless it’s the fabled missing sixth coin.”

“In which case it’d belong to Javier fair and square. And that’s not fair at all.”

Nathan wrapped a protective arm around her, drawing her to him. She loved the hard planes of his body. He made her feel so vulnerable and feminine. “All right,” he said softly. “It should be fairly easy to find out if one was stolen from one of the private owners. Until then, let’s get out of here. Let’s go back to the cabin. I’m not accustomed to these fancy shindigs. The last time I was around this many people was when we infiltrated a camp of two hundred child soldiers. I’m just not used to it.”

Xandra shuddered, this time with horror and sympathy for Nathan. He was right. She shouldn’t have forced him to attend this stupid gala. For crying out loud, he’d just had his best friend shot down over some godforsaken brutal jungle. Wasn’t it enough that he was engaging with her and Julian as human beings? “You’re right. Fly fishing with two or three people now suits you best.”

Nathan chuckled against her shoulder. “And between you and Julian, I’ve already
got
two hundred clients. Come on. Let’s go back to the cabin and come up with a name for my new company.”

“Okay,” Xandra agreed. “Just one more dance first? A slow one, I promise.”

* * * *

“All right. Just relax.”

Xandra grinned. “How could I not? You do know I trust you completely by now. You’re my ‘handler,’ after all.”

Nathan had already blindfolded Xandra—using the tie Julian had instantly ripped from his own neck the moment they’d entered the cabin. Julian was probably less accustomed than Nathan to wearing a tie, but he sure looked fine now, lounging back on a barstool and watching the proceedings with bemusement. With the dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar and cuffs and a rocks glass of some manly liquor on the counter, Julian would be at home crooning in a lounge.

Nathan straddled Xandra on the couch. Her glossy, full lips were at his crotch level, his prick plump, his balls filling and stretching the absurd dress trousers. But she couldn’t see—Julian’s silk tie was knotted at the back of her head. “You trust us, love, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Xandra said, chipper. She was such an all-American girl, really. She had just stumbled off the path with that Javier douche.

It could happen to anyone. Nathan had consorted with some highly questionable, shady people himself. It came with the territory. His career trajectory, from West Point to his Special Forces army stint to his illustrious mercenary livelihood in Africa, meant that he’d been involved with people who pushed boundaries in one way or the other. Some of his sexual partners had been darkly deviant—even the women. It was almost comical to think that now he was in a well-appointed cabin on the rim of a gorgeous Utah canyon, about to handcuff this pert blonde vixen. It didn’t get more all-American than that.

And I’m in love with her
.

Nathan liked the way her breasts lifted from the shelf of the pink silk gown when he held her wrists behind her neck, so he chose this position to cuff her. At least these were the fake leopard skin cuffs from Xandra’s nightstand and not the cold, hard cuffs Julian had used on Nathan, and she submitted cheerfully.

“Got my cuffs, don’t ya?”

Julian took it upon himself to respond. “And they look real pretty on you.”

“Which one of you boys swiped them from my nightstand?”

Nathan shared a panicked look with Julian, then remembered.
I’m the one in control
. He needed to relearn how to dominate another person without fear he was somehow endangering them. The night before their fateful mission in Equatoria, Nathan had dominated Rory to new heights, and now he had the fear of God in him to play his superior hand. Putting furry cuffs on Xandra instead of the metal ones was a minor step toward regaining his power, his control, without fear of spiraling into some sort of doom.

“Doesn’t matter who took your cuffs,” Nathan snarled, yanking the cuff strap tightly behind her neck. “Are you questioning us?”

Her head bobbed on her neck loosely, and the smile fell from her mouth. Julian perched with interest on the edge of the stool, and Nathan was further aroused to see his cock pulsate inside the crotch of his trousers. “No, sirs. Why would I question you?”

It was a fine line to walk, trying not to remind her of Javier. But her shiny, pouty lips were just inches from his straining cock, and Nathan needed to regain this part of himself. It was entirely different exerting control over Xandra than dominating Rory. They weren’t in Africa, for one. And apparently it turned Julian on, so Nathan slid his hand round the back of Xandra’s skull and urged her face into his crotch. The fly of the borrowed trousers became perversely smeared with her lip gloss. “You shouldn’t question anything we ask of you.”

He lewdly gyrated his hips against her face. She willingly opened her mouth and he could feel the ridge of her upper teeth against his taut glans. She was trying to say something, but all that came out was “Malg algh.”

This encouraged Nathan to gyrate his prick even more firmly against her open mouth. “What’s she trying to say, Julian? I can’t understand a word because her mouth’s full.”

Eyes shining, Julian stood behind the couch. He could have easily grabbed Xandra’s jaw and forced her to mouth his bulging prick, too. Instead he avidly drank in the scene, leaning against the couch with crossed legs displaying his nicely packed erection. “I think she’s saying she wants you to release your big prick so she can swallow it whole.” To assist in this, Julian reached over and unknotted Nathan’s tie. “She’s saying she wants to see everything. Your beautiful, strong throat. The silken chest hair on your powerful, flexed pectorals.”

Of course it was Julian himself who wanted to see that. Being desired like this pumped Nathan up even further, as if his ego needed the additional stroking. He lost no time in flicking the stupid dress belt open and unzipping his fly. By now Xandra was scrunched down low in the crook of the couch. With her hands cinched behind her neck, all she could do was eagerly mouth his erection through his boxer briefs. When Julian hopped onto the back of the couch in order to whip Nathan’s tie from his neck and unbutton his too-tight dress shirt, Nathan nearly lost it.

When Nathan yanked down the briefs his greedy, hot-blooded penis burst forth, nearly braining poor helpless Xandra. It was admirable the way she shook her head briskly to clear it of the stray locks of her hair plastered to her face. She chased Nathan’s cock around with her mouth, but Nathan was distracted by Julian.

He had successfully peeled Nathan’s shirt from his torso, and now Julian had his mouth glued to the pit of Nathan’s throat. Guzzling and slurping, his mouth hungrily made its way down the rise of Nathan’s pectoral. Nathan gripped the back of Julian’s head and pulled him close, offering his nipple. Julian eagerly lapped and nibbled at the nipple, making Nathan’s cock jump.

“
Bastards!
” Xandra gurgled from her corner of the couch. “What are you doing? I want to see! Goddamnit, Nathan, I swear if you don’t take off this blind—”

Nathan’s other hand gripped the back of Xandra’s skull and he plunged his prick into her open mouth.

Now she
really
snorted and grunted as he plugged her mouth with his pulsating cock. With Julian nibbling at one nipple and tweaking the other, lust shot down his abdomen straight into his groin. Instantly his balls felt near to bursting. Xandra got a good suction going on his prick, and he set up a swinging fucking rhythm. He grabbed a handful of Julian’s ponytail and yanked his head back. Julian’s pupils dilated with excitement as he looked into his lover’s eyes.