Hannah awoke and simply relaxed for long moments, breathing in Julian’s skin as she lay on his biceps. His other arm was banded about her waist, holding her. Keeping her from floating away on bad dreams.
When she opened her eyes, it was to find Vincenz looking at her.
“Would you like to go on an adventure, Hannah Black?” he asked softly.
She thought carefully. Would she?
“What kind of adventure?”
He smiled and she wanted to simply curl into him with happiness.
“Sometimes it might be dangerous. It would involve travel.”
He made it sound like a fairy story. “Would you be there?”
“I’d ask if that was something you wanted, but I think I know the answer. Yes, with me and Julian.”
Julian’s breathing changed and she didn’t fail to note the hard cock resting against her ass. It was what happened in the morning for men, she told herself, even as her nipples hardened.
“Do you know me that well, then?”
“Sometimes.” Vincenz’s pupils swallowed nearly all the color of his eyes and her heart pounded as the moment stretched taut between them. She wanted . . . so much. In the months that she’d ended treatment, she’d entered into talk therapy with Dr. Pesch. The panic had long subsided and every day she gained a little more ground in her head. Enough to feel, so very fully, everything else she’d been stripped of in her time at the labs.
Foremost among those feelings was sexual desire.
And chief among the causes for that popping back into her life lay there in the bed with her. And she felt guilty about it. Yes, they’d made a place for her in their lives and in their bed. They showed each other affection in her presence in a way they never did in front of anyone else. On one hand it thrilled her to be so trusted with such a beautiful and intimate thing. They were so sexy together. And she never wanted to hurt that.
On the other, she wanted those hands on her. She wanted Vincenz to kiss her the way he kissed Julian. Well, not precisely. She found what they had together to be gorgeous. She didn’t want to replace that. She wanted to have it too. In her own way. She wanted Julian’s voice to change when he said her name. Not exactly how he did when he said Vincenz, but the change, the way it was clear he meant something to Julian simply by the way he uttered Vincenz’s name. That’s what she wanted.
Something beautiful and unique and not only with one of them.
So stupid to want such a thing. Stupid to think the way Julian touched her was more than just friendly, or to imagine the desire in Vincenz’s gaze when she moved. They were together and she would never do anything to harm that.
“Where is this adventure then?” she murmured, swallowing hard and trying not to squirm against Julian, whose response to her attempt to get up just a breath earlier had been a tightening of his hold. Which . . . seemed to make her molten inside. It felt so good she wasn’t sure how to respond.
“We’re off to blow things up in the Imperium.” Julian’s lips brushed against her shoulder as he settled her back against his body, and yes, yes, he was still hard.
“You’d let me blow things up?”
Vincenz grinned at her. “Would you like to blow things up?”
“A year ago I’d have denied it. But I can’t lie to either of you it seems. I would very much like to blow things up. But . . . you can’t take me along. I’m not one of you.”
Vincenz moved closer. So close the heat of him seemed to sear her skin through her nightdress. Probably because it tended to ride up when she slept and lodged at the top of her thighs.
“If you’d rather not, we can make arrangements for you to travel to Ravena. You’ll be safe. Protected. Far, far away from anything that’ll blow up. We’ll be back after our mission is concluded.”
“You’d send me away?”
Vincenz closed the last bit of space between them, pressing his body to her front as Julian cradled behind her. A full-body shiver of delight rolled through her along with a gasp.
“If you wanted to go, we’d make it happen.”
Julian spoke in her ear. “But we wouldn’t be happy.”
Was she completely misunderstanding this situation? Was this no more than two friends surrounding her because that’s what she needed? Was the cock at her ass really for Vincenz? Who had an answering hard-on at her belly. Each breath she took was filled with them. The warm, utterly male scent each of them carried on his skin.
She had no words. None that she could utter and not feel like a fool anyway.
Finally, she let herself take a leap. “Take me with you.”
This book is available from Berkley Heat. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
, book 3 in 
