Page 18 of Eternally Theirs

“But I will, Ever. You know I must.”

He only rocked her in his arms. And tried to resist the knowledge that the unthinkable would surely happen, just as she said. It was the one thing he was helpless against. Her darkness. Her shadows. The death that hovered always over his love, and that eventually, he would not be able to fight.

“Mercy.”

Deo’s voice came to her from some faraway place.

“Mercy!” It was a roar of sound now. It hurt her ears.

“What is it?”

“You wouldn’t answer, love.” She felt Deo’s hand on her cheek, stroking the tears from her eyes. Had she been crying?

She sat up, holding her fingertips to her damp face. Her heart was thundering madly.

“Ah, Ever!”

She turned to him and found his eyes squeezed shut.

“I would not have you see this.” Ever blinked, his black gaze darting from her face to Deo’s and back again. His jaw was clenched tight. “I would not share that part of my past with anyone. I do not. I never have. Never.”

“And yet we saw,” Mercy said quietly, “and felt it with you, Ever. My poor Ever.”

She swept her palm over his face, the sharp angles, the lusciously curved lips. She watched as his expression shifted so quickly she could barely keep up with the changes— confusion, tenderness, a little anger, a little fear. And something else that might have simply been love for the vampire who had made him, and whom he had lost in some terrible way. But was perhaps more…

“Ever.” Deo’s voice was as gentle as hers. “We all have our pain. This is yours.

We would never judge you for it.”

“No, of course not. I understood that instantly. I know it even more now.” Ever sat up, wrapped a hand behind Deo’s neck and pulled him upright. With his other hand he pulled Mercy in, slipping it around her waist. “There is something about the two of you— I am still trying to figure out what it means. I find that I am…vulnerable with you two in a way I am not with anyone else. I find that I feel more, more than I have for a very long time. I don’t want to. And yet I cannot help myself. I want you both in a way that

completely overwhelms me. And I want to be with you.”

Mercy smiled, her chest filling with a lovely, bubbling joy. “Yes, Ever. We want the same.”

“Is this usual for a vampire?” Deo asked. “To feel so much so quickly, so completely? It seems as if I have known you, as if Mercy and I together have known you, for months. Years.”

Ever nodded. “Time passes differently for immortals. It is too infinite for us to have the same sort of comprehension we once had of it as humans. And it is perhaps also part of the same connection we feel during sex, and when we drink from one another.”

“Yes. There is more to it than the images. They’re like a movie,” Deo said. “A movie with all of the senses intact. The emotions, as though it’s happening to me. It is the same for Mercy.”

“Ever.” Mercy took his hand in hers, held it to her breast. Even now she could sense the shadows in his mind, the doubt. The pain of his past, and the weight of his many centuries. She understood in some strange way how one could drown beneath that weight, becoming buried under the years, and all one must witness and experience. She didn’t want that for Ever, not for anyone she loved. “We will not let you lose yourself in this darkness.”

She felt the words like fire in her veins, a flame that burned as hot as her desire for him. She could not imagine her world without him and realized she had felt that way almost since the first moment she’d seen him. As if she were meant for him—or he was meant for them, herself and Deo, the three of them together. It felt as if they were only truly complete as a triad.

“I must tell you, I have carried my darkness, as you call it, for a very long time. It draws me in, more lately than ever before. There are times when I’m uncertain I will be able to resist it forever. I no longer know if eternity will be mine. If I can stand it.”

Tears stung her eyes. “Don’t say that. Please, Ever. Let us try to help you.”

Deo pulled Ever’s face to his and laid a kiss on the old vampire’s beautiful mouth. Mercy’s body stung as though shot with a dozen needles of pleasure. But more than that was the rapid beating of her heart. The emotion she was feeling. The love for them both. Deo released Ever, and he feathered a quick kiss over Mercy’s lips before she leaned in to kiss Ever. He sank into her kiss, surrendering something of himself, and she knew he was allowing this, giving some sort of silent consent to their adoration of him, to the connection between them.

Deo’s arm slipped around her waist, bringing them all together in a tight embrace, and desire seeped through her veins. Ever sighed into her mouth, his hot and wet, his tongue going from soft and sweet to demanding, clever. She was torn with need, with love for her two lovely men. Her two vampires. Her body burning for them both, she sighed as they all came together.

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