Power Up 3: Whispered Words (7 page)

“There’s no you or me. It’s always
us.”

“And that’s a problem?”
he asked with a softness to his voice. God, he hated to see his twin suffering. But hell, Josh had to know they would always be together.

There was no rhyme or reason to it; it just was.

“Not for me or you. But we’re never going to find someone to accept it.”
Josh sounded so heartbroken in his assurance that they’d always be alone. But God forbid Xavier show him any pity. The strong-willed bastard would turn on him like a wounded wolf. Sometimes it was both heaven and hell to know Josh so well.

“Yeah, well, nothing says you can’t try a few women out while looking, right?

Come on, Josh. This is our girl. We know her. At least, we know a lot more about her
than you ever knew about Karen when you started dating.”

“I’m not dating Chloe.”
Josh turned a hard stare in his direction.
“We have too
much shit going on to deal with a stupid romance. Shit, Xavier. Since when did you
become such a pussy?”

“This from Mr. Sensitive?”
Xavier refused to take his brother’s bait.
“How is it
I’m labeled the horndog and you’re the rational one? Calling me a pussy just because
I happen to like Chloe? Come on, Josh. She’s sexy, she needs us, and she’s got a killer
right hook. That’s an awesome combination. Besides, we have chemistry. I swear I
tingle when I touch her.”

He shifted to ease his growing erection, not surprised when Josh did the same.

They both wanted her, but his boneheaded brother refused to see the truth.

“Look. You don’t want to get involved. I respect that.”
Though Xavier didn’t agree with it.
“But why can’t I get some lovin’?”
Josh looked at him for a good while before sighing.
“Fuck it. Fine. You want
her? Have at her. But leave me alone.”

“No problem. Just more of Chloe for me.”
He grinned at his brother’s clenched fists and rejoined Chloe in the living room. She sat by the fire, staring into the flames. He couldn’t explain how he knew, but he did. Without having to ask, he sensed she’d be okay with them both. She felt it, that connection, like she had when he’d kissed her the first time. When Josh had been on top of her, right there with him taking Chloe. “You okay?” he asked her.

She blinked up at him, her light eyes gleaming with hidden secrets in the firelight. “Great. I didn’t have to talk to my boss. Instead, your brother relayed a message for me.”

“You going to get in trouble for not talking to him earlier?”

“Nah. Jack will sputter and threaten, but he’s just a big worrier. A teddy bear of a guy. But don’t tell him I said that.”

Xavier sat beside her on the shaggy rug in front of the fire. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

She turned to look at the fire once more, and he noticed the thick length of her lashes. So pretty, so feminine. Yet she’d kicked and punched him with an experienced hand.

“Tell me how a girl like you joined the police force, then the PWP.” She frowned. “What do you mean, a girl like me?”

“You’re small, beautiful, and sexy.” He couldn’t help looking down her body.

Those breasts were killing him. So full, so perky. He wanted to suck her nipples into his mouth and hear her moan his name.

She swallowed loudly, and he swore he could see her nipples beading against the sweater. “I’m not that small. I’m not,” she said again before he could voice his opinion. “I’m tough. I grew up in Miami in a bad part of the city. My father was a gangbanger who’s currently serving life in prison. And my brother died in a shootout over drug territory. I’ve lived a lot of life you’ll never understand.”

“Ouch.” He clasped her hand in his. To his pleasure, she didn’t tug it away.

“Yeah. Life was hard growing up. Especially because my mom is mixed, black and white. My dad’s Latino, and my brother looked white. I mean, Wonder Bread white. We were like a rainbow family living in a neighborhood where being different could get you killed in the blink of an eye.”

“And you heard voices.”

She sighed. “Talk about different.” She looked at him, her eyes searching. “But the voices guided me. They helped me refocus.”

“Yeah? How old were you when you first started hearing them?”

“Around six or so. But you guys… I didn’t start hearing you until I hit my teens.”

“Thank Josh. He’d see odd flashes of the future and would tell me. I remember that first time. It was weird. I just knew I had to pass on the info to you. Josh and I talk together all the time. But you’re the only other person I can communicate with like that. Without talking out loud.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And in all the time I’ve been talking to you through the years, there was little emotion involved. Like you were this girl but a disembodied person. I didn’t connect with more than your voice, and when I’d hear you ask me stuff, you were muffled, flat, kind of lifeless.”

“Josh’s visions? Did he ever see me?”

“No.” Josh answered for himself as he joined them. He sat down behind them on the couch and stared into the fire. “I only ever saw what Xavier described. A kind of faceless person. My visions would show me the people and places around you but not always with clarity. I mean, I know Jack Keiser, the PWP, and a few of your friends. But I don’t know how many of them are working here in Bend.”

“Do you see other futures? Not just about me?”

“Only those that help me and Xavier.”

Xavier nodded. “Like a heightened self-awareness. Josh usually sees futures that have to do with ours. Except since the accident—”

“Not an accident. Werlin bombed us on purpose.”

“Since the
bombing
, we’ve both been off our game. But we know it’s only a matter of time before Werlin tries to take us out.” She blinked. “As in, kill you?”

“Yep.” Xavier liked that her hand squeezed his. “So you aren’t in the safest place you could be right now.”

“Yeah, well, neither are you. That guy I met in the warehouse was there to kill me.”

“I know,” he and Josh said at the same time.

Chloe nodded. “He’s going to come after me again. I can feel it.” Josh frowned. “But I can’t see it. I don’t doubt you’re right. When I knocked into him, I could feel the crazy bleeding off him. But he was too fast for me. Plus, I was more concerned about you than him that night. I’m sorry to say he ran away from me.”

“Maybe. But you distracted him.” She bit her lip, and Xavier wanted to take the flesh and soothe it with his tongue. “Thanks.” Josh looked at her. “You’re welcome.” The heat in his gaze was impossible to ignore, but then he blinked and banked it.

The dumb-ass needed Chloe. Xavier could feel it. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time Josh had gotten laid. But it wasn’t simply for the sex. Josh needed the intimacy. He needed to feel a part of more than just Xavier. Sometimes it felt as if Xavier had the responsibility of tying his twin to the rest of society. And it got tiring to constantly reel him in.

Chloe could ground them. Both of them.

“What?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Why are you looking at me that way?”

Xavier cleared his throat. “I, ah, lost my train of thought. Damn, Chloe. You’re pretty.”

She blushed.

He wanted to kiss the blush away. “Sorry. So, how about a game of cards?”

“Cards?”

“Yeah. Do you know how to play cribbage?”

Josh groaned. “Come on. Not that again.”

To Chloe, Xavier said, “He’s just tired of losing. And since we have no television and he’s not into books…”

“No television?” She frowned. “There was one up here the last time I visited.”

“Yeah, back in June. When the weather turned cold, we took it out. Didn’t want it to freeze up without anyone here.”

Josh uttered a long-drawn-out sigh. “I love the outdoors, but I could really go for some sci-fi.”

“Me too.”

Better and better. Chloe liked science fiction?

As she and Josh started a debate about the merits of alien movies versus shows about monstrous alligators, Xavier started devising ways to throw the two of them together. It wouldn’t be hard. There was only so much room in the cabin, but he didn’t want to rush Chloe or scare Josh off. He had to play this one carefully.

“I’ll get the cards.” As he set up the game, the two of them continued to argue.

So far so good.

* * *

Josh didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Two days was too much, in his opinion. Knowing Chloe was theirs, the one who’d completed their odd psychic circle for the past fifteen-plus years, still shocked the hell out of him. He’d never in his life thought they’d find her. Not that he and Xavier had actively looked.

They had enough on their plate with the job.

Cannon—the name of their family and the family business—catered to those in need. Since their father had inherited a sizable trust from his parents years before Josh had been born, and their mother was hell on wheels when it came to investing, they’d never wanted for money. But the Cannons had a driving need to help the community. Raised from the get-go to serve others, Josh and his siblings used their special gifts to make the world a better place.

How the hell his father got them into so many scrapes still boggled the mind, but at this point, Josh accepted his father’s need to right wrongs. To hear his dad tell it, Mike Cannon heard his own special voice. And with it, he’d made a lot of underground contacts throughout the world that helped his team do the job.

They’d done work for the government, for foreign governments, and for the old man in town threatened with a foreclosure on his property when land barons jeopardized his livelihood. No matter how big or small, they took the jobs that felt right. And God help them, but their little brother Kyle had inherited their dad’s gift as well.

But of all the jobs they’d done, the Werlins had been particularly upsetting.

Otis Werlin and his hick kinfolk had done their best to level a town. Lawlessness had haunted the poor people of Lenton, Idaho, until Josh, Xavier, and Dana, their older sister, had put a stop to it. Fortunately, Dana had disappeared on her next mission before Werlin had set off the bomb that had rocked his and Xavier’s world.

The bastard.

Now the man had a score to settle. With several sons and cousins dead, a dozen others in federal custody and on the run from the police, Werlin had nothing left to lose as he came after Xavier and Josh. Which made Chloe’s presence a real hindrance.

He didn’t like thinking about her in harm’s way.

He stared at the ceiling as the fire crackled, the nighttime more a bother than a welcome relief from Chloe. He’d been hard for two days straight, and Xavier’s lust wasn’t helping. Then the idiot kept sleeping next to her, all innocent like, as if Josh couldn’t feel how much Xavier wanted to fuck her.

God,
he
wanted to fuck her. Not nice and slow, but fast and hard. To come inside her while Xavier took her ass. To own that mouth while his brother spent in her pussy.

He groaned and tried to think about anything else. The Werlins, his family, hell, Chloe’s file. The woman had more male friends than his brother had bad ideas.

All but one of the agents from the PWP with whom she worked were male. And the few times she’d talked about her boss, it had been with respect and a measure of liking that annoyed him.

Locking his hands behind his head on the couch, Josh closed his eyes and tried to fall back asleep. The perimeter alarms were quiet. The sound of the fire and the low howl of a wolf outside should have soothed him. But instead he felt restless.

Hungry. Out of sorts.

He still didn’t know how Xavier had talked Chloe into sharing a bed with him.

For Christ’s sake, the man was a predator. Nothing about Xavier looked nice. Hell, they were twins. Sharp, edgy, and aggressive. Sure, Xavier could do charming every now and then, but they weren’t model handsome or anything. Women had on occasion called them sexy, but then, they hadn’t realized that these Cannon brothers were freaks. Men who needed one woman between them to really get off.

Brothers who had to fuck a woman together to make a relationship work.

He could still hear Karen screaming at him as she’d left that last night.

Hurling insults and nasty cracks. The words
incest
and
gay
and
freak
echoed as if she’d just said them. The freak part he couldn’t deny. But he’d never in his life had an urge to touch his brother sexually. And though he had no problem with men liking men, he had no desire for the male gender at all.

No, he wanted a woman. But try as he might, he couldn’t envision a life with such a woman without Xavier by his side. And what woman would want that?

Threesomes weren’t accepted in society. And most women interested in a kinky three-way weren’t in it for the long haul. As if the sex wouldn’t be weird enough, the psychic crap iced the cake.

Depressed and wishing he could turn his thoughts off, he wasn’t aware of another presence until something brushed his leg.

He jackknifed, knocked the intruder to the floor, and rolled on top of him—her.

“Sorry, sorry,” Chloe whispered as she gasped beneath him.

“Chloe?” He blinked down at her. She wore flannel pajamas and looked so damn cute in them. The fire painted half her face in shadow; the other half shone with an exuberance he’d done his best to ignore. But it wasn’t working.

Just feeling her curvy little body beneath him brought his erection back with a vengeance.

She froze and blinked up at him. “Josh?”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I was thirsty.” She took a deep breath, and her breasts brushed his chest.

He had on overwhelming urge to see what her nipples would look like under the firelight.

“So unbutton that shirt and find out.”
Damn Xavier.

“Why are you avoiding me?”

He barely contained a groan. “I’m not avoiding you.” 

“Yes, you are. You find more ways to be outside and spend time in other rooms with books you supposedly don’t like than with me. What do you do all day, Josh?”
Besides think about you
? He glanced at the fire, but the feel of her hands on his cheeks snapped his gaze back to her face.