Samhain (Midsummer #2)

11. Carter

11

Carter

I was on set when the lust hit me like a sledgehammer behind the knees. My head went woozy, and blood rushed to my cock. I mumbled something about feeling nauseous before racing back to my trailer and pumping myself twice so I came.

The weird part was…the rest of them vibrated inside me, at the back of my mind like a splinter in my brain. I knew the instant Lex climaxed, a burst of coldness behind my eyes. Ivy came shortly after him, complementing that rush of ice with her special brand of fire. Something broke inside me when Miri finished us out, fresh dew and springtime energy.

Good fucking Lord.

I collapsed on the ground in front of my couch and panted, my face in my elbow, my other hand still down my pants, but my traitor fucking cock only got hard again. And again. And again. Nothing would stop it. The lust had taken me the same way it had in Ireland.

What the hell is happening?

Miri texted me the address, but I hadn’t had a chance to respond.

Miri: Come to DC. We’re waiting for you.

I opened the screen to do it, but another wave of lust hit me so hard, I grimaced against it, banging my fist on the floor.

I’m so screwed.

I still had two days of filming left. How the hell was I going to get through this?

By the grace of God and a helluva prayer.

I told everyone I had food poisoning, and that gave me the freedom to hit my trailer every hour or so, but those two days passed at a glacial pace. I jacked off so much, my skin burned. By the time I was free, I hadn’t eaten in forty-eight hours. My throat ached, my hands were raw, and I was so damn dehydrated, I could barely stand.

I was sure I’d lost at least fifteen pounds by the time I made it to their DC townhouse. The closer I got, the less it hurt.

The tight ball of anxiety in my chest loosened when I lugged my backpack and suitcase up the steps to their front door. If the paparazzi were watching, I didn’t care. I had to get inside. I needed them like I needed air.

“Carter Scott?” one of their bodyguards said.

“Yeah?”

He opened the door and nodded. “They’ve been expecting you.”

“I fucking bet,” I murmured as I entered, my shoulders relaxing, my cock stiffening. Every molecule in my body trembled with the anticipation of seeing them again. The whole house reeked with the tang of sex and the spicy aroma of weed. They had dimmed the lights in the main corridor, which I was thankful for because my eyes burned and ached for sleep. Footsteps raced somewhere on the other side of the wall to my left, followed by a girlish giggle.

Miri.

Another set of footsteps ran after her, this laugh louder and more commanding.

Ivy.

When I turned the corner, I froze.

What a sight.

Miri sprinted through the far side of the house wearing mountains of peach-colored fabric, looking like a Renaissance painting come to life. Ivy chased after her, wearing a pair of trousers, black suspenders, and a fedora.

Lex sat on the couch facing me, his naked feet outstretched in front of him, legs parted in an inviting V that begged for me to drop down between them. He, too, wore trousers and suspenders, but where Ivy ran around bare-breasted, Lex had on a white tank top covering his amazing tattooed chest. One of his arms stretched along the back of the couch and the other bent at the elbow to bring a lit blunt to those perfect pink lips. His head tilted to the side, making the top hat on his crown lilt off balance.

“Welcome home,” he said, inhaling deep, the orange cherry illuminating his chiseled features. Smoke curled around him in tendrils, warping reality as dozens of misty arms stretched out to me, grabbing me, luring me in. He was the king of the circus, and I’d just become his new favorite act.

God, it was so good to see him.

I took a deep breath and clenched my fists at my sides. Desperation poured off me in thick, suffocating waves. I could smell it. Could he?

They’d had each other for the last seventy-two hours. And I…well, strung out didn’t begin to cover it. I hadn’t slept. I hadn’t eaten. I stank to fucking high holy heaven. I could barely stand. The last time I looked in the mirror, my bloodshot eyes had big, dark circles under them and my skin had turned pale and clammy.

Lex looked totaled, but not as bad as me.

I expected him to rip me a new asshole for taking so long to get here. Lex never had any problem being accurately cruel. But he took mercy on me instead.

He held up a finger and waved me closer.

Like the action had complete control over me, I dropped my bags in the middle of the entryway and took a step, shoving my hands in my pockets so I could pretend to be nonchalant about the whole thing. Inside, I was cracking at the fucking seams.

“Where are the girls?” My voice sounded gravelly and raw, and my cock throbbed, but I ached to see Ivy. I didn’t know where I stood with Lex, especially given what I’d done with Miri in Malibu, so I reached for the one person I knew would want me no matter what, the one who still wore the sign of my devotion on her finger.

“Around.” Lex gestured vaguely toward the dining room off to the left and lifted the blunt to me.

I took it, my hands shaking as I brought it to my lips and relished the buzz. This thing, this lust, whatever it was, had made me jittery and frustrated and hell, I needed to come.

“Look at you. You’re trembling.” He reached up to grip the back of my neck. “My poor Chicago. Come here.”

I tensed at his touch, at once so familiar and foreign, but I bent when he pulled me down so he could kiss me.

I melted. Immediately. I buckled at the knees and dropped to that vacant space between his legs. His body felt exactly the same. His muscles were firmer, his jaw wider, but his mouth hadn’t lost that mystical quality that drew me to it in the first place. I dropped my palms to his thighs, blowing smoke into his mouth, unable to hold it in anymore. He inhaled it like he could inhale me with him. Maybe he could. Maybe he did.

Lord help me, I still wanted him, after all these years.

I took what I needed, and when I trailed my free hand down his chest, quivering with the weight of being away from them during the grips of this terrible thing, he groaned and tugged me closer. Scrambling for the waistband of his trousers, I tried to undo the button, but he broke the kiss and shook his head.

“No, no, no.” He took the blunt so he could inhale another puff and put it in the ashtray. “I can’t stick my dick in anything else.”

I laughed and hung my head. “Things I never thought I’d hear you say.”

He cupped my jaw and tilted my face back up to him, resting his forehead against mine. “What do you need?”

“Please get me off,” I whispered. “Please. For the love of God. Make this end.”

Lex pushed me flat on the living room floor and straddled my legs, tugging at my jeans so he could get my dick out.

I swear I saw the heavens part when he closed his lips around the tip and sucked me all the way back. I dragged my hands through his soft, thick hair, the way I had all those years ago, and I groaned loud and slow and satisfying. He chuckled but took his part seriously, like he needed this as much as I did.

Had he pined for me the way I had for him? Did seeing me impact him just as much?

I panted and hissed in a breath as the pain mixed with pleasure, bursting up my spine and down my legs to my toes.

It didn’t take long. A few good minutes had me clenching my fingers into fists and coming in the back of his throat, a moan barreling out of the depths of mine. He let me use him however I needed and, once I was a writhing mess, Lex sat back on his haunches and sighed as the spell lifted. The ache in my gut subsided, the fog in my head cleared, and this heavy anvil in my chest finally let go.

Whatever it was, whatever it needed from us, it had finally been satisfied by my arrival.

“Welcome home,” Lex said with a pleased smile, patting my chest.

* * *

“What the fuck was I supposed to do?” I rubbed my knuckles over my eyes as I sat in their enormous bathtub, Lex on my left, Ivy directly across from me with Miri in her lap. “I had to stay to finish filming. I’d breach my contract if I didn’t.”

“You filmed like that?” Miri rested her head on Ivy’s shoulder, grinning mischievously at me.

“The last four or five scenes, yeah.” The thought made me laugh. “I told them I had food poisoning. Thank God for black pants, right?”

“I was in the UK.” Miri sighed, shaking her head. “I ran away. I’m sure my grandmother will send the royal army to retrieve me any moment.”

“We were in bed,” Ivy said.

“Woke me up out of a dead sleep,” Lex added.

My focus drifted to Miri, who wore the same expression of curiosity-laced jealousy that throbbed in my heart. They were in bed? Doing what? I wanted to know, I needed to know, but would I be able to bear the brunt of the truth once I did? What if they were fucking? Would that hurt? Would I be excited?

“You two seem good,” Miri said for me, pointing between Lex and Ivy.

“Surprisingly well adjusted,” I added.

“It’s all a show,” Ivy said, rolling her steel eyes. “Don’t be fooled. Lex and I hate each other even more these days.”

“I don’t believe you ever hated each other,” I said, because what the hell? We might as well be honest with each other. We had too many years of bullshit between us to start lying now.

“Maybe Ivy hated Lex,” Miri added. “But Lex has always had it bad for our Weeds.” She tickled Ivy, who squirmed and sloshed around in the water. Ivy grabbed her hands and trapped them between their bodies, and Miri bit her bottom lip, eyes going from playful to sinful in a heartbeat. Ivy, bless her, reciprocated. Part of me wanted to egg them on, the same part that wanted to devour both of them until we couldn’t stand. But after the last three days, I needed to sleep for at least ten.

“We’re not together,” Lex said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deep before pinching it between his index and middle fingers. “Not the way the media thinks.”

“All of this”—Ivy gestured to the bite marks on her neck and arms—“it’s because of the lust. It only happened a few times after…” She cleared her throat. “Well, just after.”

After the breakup.

After they ended this amazing thing over text.

After they told us never to contact them again.

I looked at Miri because she and I could not say the same. We had fucked each other into oblivion in Malibu.

Until it doesn’t hurt. All we have is us.

That was what we’d promised.

“What about you two?” Lex nodded to me and Miri. “Summer getaways and Malibu Dream Houses?”

“That was two years ago,” Miri said.

“But you were together, right?” Lex raised his eyebrows, expecting a response.

I sighed and ran my hand over the back of my head, trying to find the best way to break this news. “It’s complicated.”

“We were,” Miri said.

“And now?” Ivy’s voice cracked, and she blinked back a telltale redness that threatened to spill tears down her cheeks.

“And now”—Miri stole the cigarettes from Lex so she could light her own—“I’m the duchess of Aberdeen and Carter is the noble knight of Denwater.” She took a deep inhale. “And we speak every month or so.” Miri tapped ash in the crystal ashtray before looking at me. “It was because you broke our hearts over text message, which is so bloody rotten, I can’t even stand it.”

Lex lifted his gaze to Miri before shooting right over to Ivy, who furrowed her brows and gaped.

“No,” she said, looking at me. “Carter sent a group text. It said you two needed space and not to contact either of you again.”

“You called her Weeds,” Lex added. “You called me DC.”

Ivy held out her phone, showing a message I’d never sent from my old number.

“What the fuck? This wasn’t me,” I said, dread filling my stomach. “No way would I have ever done that. I tried for weeks to get in touch with you both.”

“It said the number had been disconnected,” Miri said. “You blocked both of us online.”

“ You blocked us ,” Ivy said.

Utter silence followed as the gravity of this massive misunderstanding settled between us. We’d spent two years pining for each other, all because someone somewhere had purposely driven us apart.

“No,” Ivy said, but it came out like a whisper, like she was just putting the pieces together. She looked to Lex. “You asked your father.”

“I did,” he said. “He didn’t know anything about it.”

Her features dropped. “We never asked my mother.”

“Asked her what?” I cut in.

“After we got the text, and you went radio silent, I suspected our parents might have done this to fuck with us. To keep us from contacting you and risking the marriage.” Lex shook his head, inhaling deeper on the cigarette. “I believed what he told me. There’s a lot more to the story, but I’m too tired to talk about it tonight.”

“If he didn’t, then there’s another obvious choice.” Ivy pursed her lips. “I told you we should have asked her, too.”

“Then why didn’t you just use your little telepathic mind trick?”

“Because yours is less obvious, Lucifer,” Ivy snapped.

“My father still thinks I drugged him.” Lex pinched the bridge of his nose, his agitation rising to the surface. “I’m not doing that shit to anyone else in our family. I told you that already.”

“Okay,” I cut in. “Calm down.” I didn’t even know what they were talking about. Telepathic mind trick? What did that mean? “Look, the point is, we’re back together again. We can spend the rest of our lives figuring out the rest.”

Ivy looked between me and Miri, but I knew what those sad eyes meant. Nothing had changed. She and Lex still needed to get married. I still had a tight filming schedule. Miri had the royal family. And yet…everything had changed, hadn’t it? We couldn’t be apart without this weird wanton compulsion eating away at us.

“How do we stop this from happening again?” I asked. “Because I sure as shit can’t go through that a fourth time.”

“You looked terrible when you got here.” Lex’s attention drifted to me.

“We need to get the band back together,” Miri said. “That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Ivy snorted and dug her fingers into Miri’s waist, making her twist away so she floated over toward me.

“What about you, Romeo?” Miri raised an eyebrow and leaned in to kiss me, soft and tender. “What do you want to happen next?”

“Getting back together sounds nice.” I would love to know I had these three people to myself for the rest of my life. Until the end and all that.

“It’s not that easy,” Ivy protested. “We can’t go public with this.”

“Ivy’s running for Congress in two years,” Lex explained.

“I’ll be the youngest in history,” she said. “Younger than my mother. I have a good shot at winning.”

“We can be discreet, darling.” Miri drifted over to Lex and put her hands on his knees to kiss him, slower and deeper than she had with me, but just as affectionate and thereby making her point. We belonged together—the four of us.

“Can you?” Lex pursed his lips at our princess. “The press follows you the most, and you’ve never been one for monogamy.”

“I can pretend.” Miri gave him a teasing little smile. “Ask your boyfriend. We pretended a lot in Malibu.”

He narrowed his eyes and stabbed out his cigarette, grabbing hers to stab out next. Lex whispered to Miri and grabbed her by the back of her neck, bringing her closer so he could devour her mouth. But I shifted my attention to Ivy, my cheeks heating, my stomach dropping somewhere around my knees.

Miri likely meant the comment to be harmless, and if we’d handled this thing like actual adults instead of burying our heads in the sand, it might have rolled off our backs.

But I saw it in Ivy’s expression—the momentary lapse where her guard was down and all of the emotions from the last two years bled through those steel-gray eyes—the jealousy over Miri and me, the equally intense feelings about her and Lex, the lust and the want and the yearning.

Shit, I’m right here.

“Weeds,” I said in that tone that used to get her to drop to her knees.

Now, it brought her gaze to me, and her shields snapped right back into place. She curled her lips into a fake smile, a version of her mother’s politician grin, and stood, water dripping down the front of her body like Aphrodite in the seas of Olympus. All she need do was beckon, and I’d worship every inch of her.

“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I’m going to bed. You guys hang out a while, okay?”

“X?” Lex grabbed her wrist to stop her, and the intimacy in that tiny connection set me off. The way he said her nickname used to be a taunt, but now it sounded like a term of endearment. Ivy said they weren’t together, not in the way the media made it sound. Only a few times. But I zeroed in on his thumb tracing circles around her pulse point while she talked. That meant more than sex.

“I’m fine, Lucifer,” she said, taking a step away. “Just exhausted. I’ll see you in the morning. Love you guys.”

Their hands slid palm to palm as he let her go. It was a small caress, but it said so much. Years ago, he wouldn’t have dreamed of touching her like that. If he did, she’d yank away from him and snarl something about minding his own business. Now there was tenderness. My own words came back to me from that day in Ireland, when I’d pinned Lex under me and made him helpless to do anything except heed my demands.

Because you love her, I’d told him. And you love me, and you love Miri, and what we have is special, even when you want to destroy it.

I’d made him swear to take care of her, to put her back together again when every instinct in him wanted to tear her apart. In that one touch, that one moment of gentleness, I saw two years of his efforts.

She smiled and kissed Miri’s temple before heading toward her bedroom with barely a passing glance at me.

“We have a lot to talk about tomorrow. Have a good night.” She slid the door shut behind her. Miri and Lex both looked at me, and I glanced between them while I struggled with the urge not to strangle Lex. I’d asked him to take care of her, and he had.

Only a few times.

The visual of him fucking her in Ireland assaulted me, but I quickly brushed it away. I’d fucked Miri, and I’d fucked Lex, and the boundaries between us were blurred from the start.

I should go after Weeds.

But how long after she left would I have to wait before it wasn’t awkward?

“That was an invitation for you to follow if I ever saw one.” Miri nodded toward the door.

I looked at Lex. Was I asking permission? Or was I staking my territory? Fuck, I didn’t know, but did it even matter?

“I told you, Chicago,” he said. “I tried, and I failed. She still wants you.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was friendship there now, real friendship, like what I had with Miri.

I ran a hand over the back of my head, considering this. Was that why she’d ignored me the whole night? Was that why she’d barely looked at me? Barely touched me?

I got up and swung my legs over the side of the tub.

“Give us a few,” I said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Agreed,” Lex said.

“Good night, Romeo,” Miri called.

“Good night, Romeo,” Lex mockingly echoed.

Then I went after my girl.