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  Slowly, he mentally moved his hands over her body, his mind filling in the blanks that did not translate into the ether realm. That was one of the drawbacks of sex in the spiritual realm; he enjoyed the physical aspect of sex, of feeling a woman’s lush breasts, her wet arousal. His voice low, thick, dreamlike as he asked, “Do you remember me?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, her heart rate accelerating in arousal. “You were at the club tonight; you and two others.”

  Armand smiled to himself, or what constituted as smiling in the ether world; the girl did not seem disappointed to have him in her dreams as compared to Vaughn. Perhaps if things had played out differently, he would have been the one to have sex with her in the bathroom of that club and he would have been able to mind wipe her then. And he would have been able to leave a back door in her head for him to visit in her dreams. The good thing about knowing the rules so well was the ability to also know how to break them, something his brothers hadn’t learned.

  “Let me into your body,” he breathed, the syrupy sound of his voice lulling her further. “Your mind.”

  “Yes,” she repeated. He could picture her chocolate hair spread out on the pillows, her face flushed with arousal. He could almost smell her feminine musk.

  His hands moved over her body and he imagined the feel of her nipples puckering beneath his palm, her stomach quivering under his fingers. “Remove your barriers.”

  He felt the rustle as she stripped out of her night clothes, laying herself bare literally and figuratively. An image of Melanie wearing a pair of flannel pajama pants and a tank top flashed in his head and he had an unexpected flash of guilt for doing this to her. He quickly reminded himself that it was for her own good, his brother’s as well.

  Sexual energy came off her in waves, mingling with his energy and fueling his power; her response pleased him, even if her found it somehow lacking; even if he couldn’t explain what he had been hoping for. Forcing himself to concentrate on what he had to do instead of fantasies and wishes he couldn’t indulge, he sent a surge of lust directly to her feminine core. “Touch yourself.”

  When he didn’t immediately feel a surge in her desire he was a little concerned; was she resisting him even in her sleep? But then he felt another energy source and grimaced; she had grabbed a masturbatory enhancer. While it wouldn’t interfere with his spell, it was going to be annoying. The rhythmic pulsing of the droning, electric cock played havoc on a body in the ether realm.

  Gritting his teeth, he continued to send his own pulses of lust through her body, concentrating on the spell he was forming even as her passion built. Ignoring the humming, he continued whispering, “Tonight you experienced a normal New Year’s celebration; there was nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Oooo,” she moaned, the pressure building. He didn’t have much time.

  “You did not meet anyone interesting,” he continued, trying not to rush the words, the spell. “You want to keep your life normal; you have no interest in magic or gargoyles.”

  He doubted she was even hearing what he was saying, which was as it should be. Why, then, was he so disappointed? The spell was doing exactly as it was supposed to do, and in a way that was far less challenging than he had expected. Perhaps that was what was bothering him; he wasn’t being challenged. Her body was tightening as she fought for release; it was time to finish it; finish her association with him and his brothers.

  “You no longer wish to remain in this building and you never want to return. In a few moments you are not going to remember any of this, my brothers, this building; and when you wake in the morning all of it will be a dream that quickly fades.” As he said the last word, her sexual energy spiked and he felt her climax tumble over him, trying to suck him into the abyss and failing to do so.

  He could feel his essence being pulled back into his corporeal body, the coldness that reminded him that he was still part of the living. And as tempting as it would be to remain in the ether world indefinitely, he enjoyed the physical realm too much to give it up all together. Even if he returned with an erection that required a manual release since the spiritual orgasm failed to bring him off. That was strange; usually when he cast a spell of that magnitude, where sex was a necessary element, he returned bodily sated.

  Curling his fist around his cock, he frowned; he felt … betrayed; the girl had proven all too easy to seduce. Her submission was, well, anti-climactic. He had been hoping for more of a struggle on her part; a willingness to fight for Vaughn. All in all, it was best that he was able to ensure her capitulation so easily; she obviously wasn’t worthy of Vaughn’s affection.

  His body still bristled with latent power, power that he thought he was going to have to use and did not. Perhaps he had been mistaken about the girl; perhaps she was just like everyone else. But how to explain her ability to resist his powers of suggestion while he held her in his arms? It had to have been a fluke, some quirk of fate.

  It would be better not telling Vaughn how easy it was to ensure their secrets. It would only hurt him to know the girl wasn’t worth the effort after all; that she would not have been worth the sacrifice Armand was sure Vaughn would have made. In that, he was grateful.

  * * * * *

  Melanie lay in her bed and stared up at the ceiling, Vanessa’s soft snoring was the only sound in the room since Frankie had taken a cab home rather than crash at the small apartment. Melanie’s thoughts tumbled and somersaulted over one another; a few hours ago she had sex in the bathroom of a bar with a complete stranger. The Whimsical Melanie temporarily disappeared and for that moment she had been replaced with the Daring and Adventurous Melanie. The slightly stupid Melanie.

  The sexually satisfied Melanie.

  If she were to get involved with Vaughn – she loved that name, it suited him so well – she would be able to retire Simon. She would never have to bring herself to orgasm again. Hell, if she continued to have sex with Vaughn, she knew that personal, sexual gratification was going to disappear altogether because nothing she did to herself could ever compare to how it felt having Vaughn between her thighs.

  She could still feel his cock deep within her and she was pretty sure he had been very well endowed. Sadly, the only thing she regretted from their encounter was the fact that she didn’t get to see him naked, didn’t get to see the cock that had impaled her and made her body burn. A small shiver whispered through her body just thinking about what she had done and who she had done it with; she was still a little tender from Vaughn.

  With her brain still buzzing with the aftermath of having sex with a perfect stranger, she knew she wasn’t going to be getting to sleep any time soon. How could she sleep when she was torn between euphoria and anxiety? Having sex with Vaughn was so outside the realm of normal behavior for her; what had she been thinking? And when would she be able to see him again?

  Heaving a sigh, she flung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, stretching and feeling a pleasurable ache between her thighs. A small smile played at her lips at the reminder of just how phenomenal the sex had been. Making sure Vanessa was covered, she walked the short distance to her kitchen and turned on the hot water maker. She was going to make a cup of hot chocolate, sit down at the kitchen counter and try to figure out where the hell her brain went when she had sex in the bathroom with a man she hardly knew.

  Granted, she had drunken a bit more than usual but she had been by no means drunk, just slightly tipsy. She had gotten far drunker before and not ended up in the bathroom with a gorgeous stranger between her legs. But even before she had her first drink she had been tempted by Vaughn, before she even knew his name. In fact, it was his fault that she had drunk so much to begin with; not that she was blaming him for what she voluntarily did. He had simply been the… inspiration for her recklessness. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure she still would have had sex with him even if she had been stone-cold sober; he had been that intoxicating.

  Would she have had sex with him had she still been dating P
eter? A rush of guilt swept over her as she realized she would have seriously considered it; thank God they had broken up all of those months ago! Although, he had left a strange message on her machine sometime before she got home; he was planning on coming over to ask her something in the next few days. Hopefully he was all right; they had parted on such good terms and she had even seen him around town. He had looked happy and she briefly wondered if he was okay.

  With a shrug, she dismissed her thoughts of Peter; she would listen to whatever he had to say and then maybe she would tell him to give Vanessa a chance. Vanessa would help loosen him up a bit and he could be a stabilizing influence on her. She felt like she should be uncomfortable with the idea but she was strangely okay with it, almost as if Peter and Vanessa belonged together. Maybe she had been standing in the way of true love for all of those years, maybe….

  Vanessa started to moan and Melanie looked up from pouring hot water into a mug. At first Melanie thought her friend was having a bad dream. But the moaning was quickly sounding like moans of pleasure, of ecstasy. Stirring the decadent chocolate powder into the water she was grateful to her friend for distracting her from her depressing thoughts.

  With a wry smile, she took a sip of her hot chocolate. Maybe that was the reason why Peter had been so down on Vanessa when the two of them were dating; he was secretly in love with her. Thank God he had been too honorable to cheat on her to pursue a relationship with Vanessa. Of course, Melanie probably shouldn’t have been feeling so pleased with herself since she had admitted, even if it was only to herself, that she probably would have slept with Vaughn had she met him before.

  She wondered when she would be seeing him, seeing Vaughn, again. While she knew that it wasn’t likely to lead to anything permanent – after all, how many one night stands turn into something more? it didn’t even matter because there was that nearly combustible spark that flared between them and he practically gave her an orgasm by looking at her. Of course she knew that lust didn’t last but she was hopeful that there could be something more than physical desire; that whatever was between them might lead to something more.

  “Yes,” Vanessa’s sleepy voice filled the small space of her apartment, making Melanie jump from the unexpected sound. Had she spoken her thoughts out loud and woken her friend?

  No, Vanessa was still asleep; at least her eyes were still closed. Odd, there seemed to be a faint mist covering her friend’s lithe body. Even as she watched, Vanessa grabbed the hem of her slinky top and whipped it over her head. Squirming, she pushed the covers away as she pulled her panties off her body. Melanie’s eyes widened in disbelief as Vanessa writhed on the bed in all her naked perfection.

  Wow; that had to be some dream. Melanie almost felt that she should leave her apartment and give her friend some privacy and she was about to until she heard the soft, seductive voice. Even though the words were barely audible and almost seemed to be coming from another world, she knew at once who it was: Vaughn’s brother, the black-haired one. Armand. It was eerily similar to the dance they shared a few hours before.

  Much to her shock and alarm, Melanie saw Vanessa twist around in the bed, reach into the bedside dresser and pull out Simon. She watched in horror as her friend slid Simon between her slender thighs and began pleasuring herself. The mug of hot chocolate slipped from her fingers, clunking down on the countertop and spilling the hot liquid over her front.

  “Damn it!” Melanie swore, not sure if she was swearing about her hot chocolate-stained tank top or Vanessa stepping way over the lines of friendship. Grabbing a few paper towels, she mopped up the mess, her attention morbidly focused on the scene that was taking place on her bed and she strained her ears to hear what the man was saying.

  “New Year’s….” Armand’s disembodied voice murmured, the drugging quality wrapping itself around Melanie’s mind. But a few words made it through the fog that seemed to have coalesced around her: “Ordinary…. Normal…. Magic…

  “Gargoyles.”

  That word forced Melanie’s attention back to the present. Vanessa was humping Simon as her long, slender fingers moved him in and out of her body. Swallowing the bile that was rising in her throat – it was time to replace Simon, if nothing else was true – Melanie forced herself to listen to what the black-haired man was whispering in Vanessa’s ear and ignore her friend’s actions.

  “You no longer wish to remain in this building and you never want to return. In a few moments you are not going to remember any of this, my brothers, this building; and when you wake in the morning all of it will be a dream that quickly fades.”

  Melanie sucked in her breath, the spilled hot chocolate forgotten. He had tried to make her forget her apartment and his brothers earlier. The auburn-haired man – Rhys – had tried to do the same thing only she thought they were playing around. She had no idea that they were serious, nor how far they were willing to go to make her forget.

  But why would they want to do such a thing? She loved this building and the three gargoyles that guarded it. She was hardly what anyone would consider a threat. Besides, if they were trying to cast some sort of… spell, well, that would mean that magic truly existed and she wasn’t completely crazy for believing in it. But then, that would mean magic truly existed and that was actually a scary thought. If they could use their power to make a little nobody like her forget that she just had the most amazing sexual experience of her life, than what else could they do with that sort of power?

  Perhaps make it so the roof of her apartment building was warm in the middle of a Minnesotan winter.

  Pacing the short distance between one wall of her apartment to the other, very consciously avoiding the area surrounding her bed, Melanie tried to untangle the thoughts whirling around in her head. Once they realized the spell didn’t work, or rather, that it was cast upon the wrong person, they were going to try again. She had to figure out a way to protect her memories from outside forces, at least until such a time that she could convince the three brothers that she wasn’t a threat.

  The thought of her being a threat to those three muscular demi-gods was almost laughable, except they obviously considered her one if they were willing to make her forget. Okay, so how did a girl go about convincing someone that she was not a threat? Especially when she wasn’t a threat at all. Oh, she didn’t have a clue!

  Absently, she noted that Vanessa was still once again, a satiated grin curving her lips. Her fingers were still wrapped around Simon, which lay on the bed next to Vanessa’s slim thigh. A shudder tripped down Melanie’s spine at the thought of ever using Simon again; she was going to throw him away as soon as she could bring herself to touch him.

  Maybe while she was out trying to find some way of preserving her memories – and her ability to stay in her apartment with the three gargoyles – she would pick up a new bedroom buddy, maybe get the next size up because Vaughn proved that she could take quite a bit more than simple Simon.

  An uneasy bubble of laughter escaped her at the thought. Was Vaughn part of the plot to make her forget? If so, why didn’t he try anything when they were alone in the bathroom? She was pretty sure if he had suggested something immediately after bringing her to a powerful release, she would have complied. It would have been later that she would have regretted any capitulation but that was neither here nor there. Not that it would have mattered; she wouldn’t have remembered but, no, she was almost certain Vaughn was innocent. At least, if not innocent than not guilty.

  Pressing her hand over her stomach, she tried to ignore the caterpillars squirming within her gut as another horrific realization hit her: they hadn’t used protection. True, she was on the pill, because even though she and Peter had always always always used a condom, she didn’t want to take a chance on getting pregnant before she got married. She must have realized that she and Peter were not meant to be together because she had never imagined a little Peter in her arms.

  How sick was it that she could easily picture a baby with Vaughn’s gol
den hair and golden eyes suckling at her breast? She had never considered breast feeding before – or anything to do with babies. But the fantasy of nursing a baby Vaughn had immeasurable appeal. Even while she was still reeling with the knowledge that his brother cast a spell to erase her memory. And magic was real. And the fact that she had sex with a stranger and they hadn’t used protection. Her stomach cramped as that thought echoed in her head.

  Hopefully, he was clean. And the pill was probably effective against Vaughn’s excessive virility; though women have gotten pregnant while taking the pill before. The idea was so ludicrous that she fought against another crazed giggle. She wasn’t even sure whether she would be allowed to remember Vaughn in a few days and she was already imagining his baby! How much would it suck to have her memories of him wiped from her brain only to end up pregnant and not knowing – literally – who the father was?

  Of course, she would just assume it was Peter’s and they would end up married and when a golden eyed baby smiled up at her she would know that Peter wasn’t the father. But it would be too late, they would have been married. And she would be stuck in a loveless marriage with mediocre sex and a baby that she didn’t know from where it came.

  Okay, so she was getting way, way, way ahead of herself; she could almost guarantee that she wasn’t pregnant. Besides, she still had to figure out how to prevent her memory from being erased; at least, long enough until she could convince Vaughn and his brothers that she was not a threat.

  Maybe it would be best if she didn’t return to her bed. In fact, it might be in her best interests not to fall asleep at all. What if the black-haired man were to realize his mistake and take measures to correct it? Melanie would wake in the morning with no memories of her most unforgettable New Year’s Eve ever!