Morteza Read online

  But before he did that, he had to find Ali and force him to tell him how he’d managed to stay in the human world without alerting Alborz.

  He couldn’t go to Ellie and Eli until he’d figured that out.

  Chapter Three

  Ellie was getting sick and tired of waking up in the middle of the night dreaming of being trapped between two big muscled bodies, sick and tired of being celibate, and damn tired of wondering what in the hell had happened to Morteza.

  She knew what had happened to Eli.

  He was avoiding her.

  It had been just over a year since they’d walked out of the house on James Street into the dawn and left Morteza asleep in the bed the three of them had shared. Ellie hadn’t seen her best friend since that morning. Before then, she’d never gone even a week without talking to Eli.

  She missed him. Desperately.

  And she missed Morteza just as desperately, which was odd since they’d spent only that single night together. But there was something about him…

  Something that made him different from any other man she’d met, something that had her calling The Pleasure Club that first morning after, asking them to remove her name from their files, something that had kept her, Elena Ghirardi, celibate for a whole year.

  Ellie hadn’t been celibate for a year since she’d lost her virginity at sixteen. She grinned to herself. She hadn’t been celibate for a month since she’d lost her virginity, and here she was in her longest sex-free spell ever. And she’d chosen it. She was losing her mind.

  There was something, though, something about the combination of the three of them, Ellie and Eli and Morteza, that had changed her life. And it hadn’t simply been the fact that for the first time she’d realized how she felt about Eli.

  She had spent almost all of her life pretending she didn’t want to have sex with Eli, and now it was all she could think about. Though every one of those kinds of thoughts also included Morteza.

  The three of them together—the way they’d been together, spurring each other on from height to height, touching each other as if the three of them were a single entity—had changed everything for Ellie.

  And, she suspected, it had done the same thing for Morteza and Eli, though Eli, stubborn as always, had refused to acknowledge it, refused to admit that the night they’d spent together had been more than special. It had been incredible. It had been life affirming. It had been meant to be forever.

  Eli had spent his life as a confirmed bachelor, and he had also spent his life telling everyone—including himself—that he intended to die in the same state. It was only now that Ellie realized it might have been a case of protesting too much. She knew now that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

  She also knew that he wanted Morteza as much as Ellie herself wanted him. The three of them—and maybe she was the only one willing to admit it—belonged together, and she was going to make sure it happened. She’d do anything to make sure it happened.

  She was also willing to bet that neither of her men had had sex since that night, that they had resorted, as she had, to masturbation. Every single day. Sometimes more often if she had too much time to think about that night. They would be in the same completely unsatisfied state as she was, and they would be trying to replicate their one night together by using their hands. Without success.

  In the shower. In bed in the middle of the night, when they woke up with their cocks hard and on the verge of explosion. In the bathroom stall in their offices in the middle of the day. In the front seats of their cars, having pulled off the highway into an almost empty rest stop. Even in the changing room in the department store.

  They were in her thoughts constantly, and she knew, she knew, that she was in their just as much. And knowing that, she knew that they, like her, were becoming expert masturbators. It was the only thing that would give them even the slightest relief.

  This was obviously her problem to solve because she’d known, when Eli had dropped her at her apartment that morning, that she wasn’t going to see him again. They’d gone somewhere the night before that the two of them hadn’t contemplated, couldn’t have imagined. They had assured each other for years that they weren’t interested in each other that way, that their friendship, crafted from childhood, meant more than sex.

  They’d been wrong.

  But Ellie was sure it wasn’t just Ellie and Eli who had created the magic. It had been the three of them together. Without Morteza, it would never have happened, and they would never have missed it.

  Now she missed both of them with an ache she could hardly bear.

  She had to do something.

  She just had no idea what.

  So she did what she’d been doing every day and every night since Morteza and Eli had disappeared from her life. She went to the drawer beside her bed and she pulled out her favorite vibrator. It wasn’t the most realistic of them, being lime green and hard plastic. It wasn’t even the biggest of them, though it wasn’t small, either. It was, however, the one that most closely resembled the size and shape of Eli’s cock. And his cock and Morteza’s could have been twins, if cocks had twins.

  The vibrator was long and silky smooth over the hardness beneath. It had the tiniest hook at the end, as if it were built to reach those nerves at the farthest reaches of her vagina that only her men could reach. And it, like Eli and Morteza, never ever ran out of steam.

  It was built to pleasure her.

  But it wasn’t enough. Because she had in that single night become accustomed to having two men around her—which meant that a vibrator wouldn’t satisfy her, that a single source of pleasure would never be enough. So even before she settled back onto the bed, she pulled out the string of anal beads she’d seen one night in the sex store up the street.

  She’d looked at them and wondered. She’d fingered them and, despite the round tail-like handle at the big end, had figured out exactly what she might do with them. She’d bought them one night in desperation, one of the many nights when her vibrator wasn’t enough, when the orgasm she gave herself satisfied her for only a few moments. She’d taken the beads home and snipped the tail off of them so the biggest bead sat fat and happy at the end of the string.

  She nodded once at the vibrator and the beads, then added a small tube of clitoral pleasure gel and reminded herself to replace the rapidly emptying tube the next time she went to Love Naturally.

  And then she ripped off her clothes and lay back on the bed, her legs wide apart and already shaking with her need for release. She ignored the directions on the gel and coated her index finger with much more than the recommended teardrop-sized amount. She wanted it all, every bit of pleasure she could possibly get without her men.

  Her clit was humming with excitement, and she didn’t keep it waiting. She used one hand to spread her lips apart, the finger with the gel rubbing, softly at first, then with more pressure as it warmed, up and down until she purred with the heat.

  She turned on the vibrator and began to run it, slowly and lightly, from the tip of her clit to her pussy, trailing the heat of the gel with it. She wanted it to last but knew she’d never replicate what she’d felt that night, so she just went for it.

  The biggest of the anal beads sat at the mouth of her pussy, and she pushed it in. She held the tiniest bead in the fingers of her free hand and pulled the bead in and out, transferring the heat of the gel inside, slowly, ever so slowly.

  But her patience was rapidly exhausted and she pushed the rest of the beads inside, one by one, and then set up a rhythm, the vibrator buzzing at her clit, the beads in and out, in and out. She pushed up against the vibrator until her ass was off the bed and her back was bowed up from her shoulders.

  It took only a moment.

  Ellie sighed. Nice orgasm, she thought, but not enough. Never enough.

  She needed her men, and she was just going to have to sit down and figure out a way to get them.

  Now.

  It wasn’t going to be di
fficult finding Eli. She knew where he worked. She knew his family. She knew the license plate number on his car, the password he used for everything from his bank card to his email. She knew where and when he went to the gym; she even knew what kind of workout he did.

  She knew when he went to work, when he came home, and what he most likely ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. She knew what movies he liked and what music he played when he ran on the treadmill.

  She knew that he loved polkas and hated rock and roll. She knew that he had dinner every Sunday night with his sister and every Wednesday night with his mom and dad. She knew that he liked his steak burnt and his vegetables raw.

  But that didn’t mean she could simply walk up to him on the street and say, “Eli, it’s time to get over this and admit that…”

  Admit what? Admit that despite their years of denying it, they belonged together? Admit that they’d wasted years of their lives with lovers who really didn’t matter?

  The trouble was that not one of those admissions was exactly true. Yes, they belonged together, but they’d been right through all those years of denial. They belonged together only with the addition of Morteza.

  And they hadn’t wasted years of their lives. If they hadn’t been practicing their sexual skills on a multitude of partners, one or the other of them would have been married by now, and they would never know they were meant to be together.

  Ellie pulled out a brand new notebook from the box under the bed. She titled it Plan for Happiness and then started a list.

  First, find Morteza. This was going to be tough. She would get no information from The Pleasure Club—they’d made that clear when they first became members. Plus, if Morteza had wanted to see them again, he had her number and he would have called.

  The fact that he hadn’t called didn’t mean he didn’t want to see them again. Ellie had convinced herself of that. It only meant that he wasn’t sure of his welcome. Her first job was to find him and assure him that they belonged together.

  She didn’t think he’d take much convincing.

  So her problem with Morteza was really a search problem, rather than an emotional problem. Where did she start?

  Her computer experience was average, and that probably wasn’t going to be good enough. But she did have a contact. Her best friend’s big brother—and when she said big, she didn’t mean older. Big Dave was a big, big man, and he owned the very first Internet café to open in River City. He knew more about computers than any single person in the city, and he owed Ellie. Big time.

  In high school, he’d had a serious pash on her best friend, Jenn. It was so serious he couldn’t even talk to her, so instead he talked to Ellie. It had taken a year, but she had finally gotten the two of them together, and together they still were—Big Dave, Jenn and their four kids, two dogs, three cats, a budgie and twenty-seven goldfish at last count.

  The important belongings, though, were Dave’s computers. And his knowledge of them. Finding Morteza was going to be a snap.

  Eli was going to be a much bigger problem.

  Chapter Four

  If he were Ali, where would he be hiding? For hiding he surely was. Walking away from the Underworld and its new Lord wasn’t an option unless Ali had figured out some way to permanently shatter the link that kept him attached to Alborz.

  Morteza tried not to wonder about why Ali would have done such a thing, because if he started down that path, he’d have to admit that there wasn’t a reason big enough for Ali to give up being Lord of all the demons. Ali had everything a demon could want—including the most important thing of all. Power.

  Because for demons, everything was about power. The more power you had, the more damage you could do to other demons, and the less likely it was that other demons would even try to damage you. Being Lord meant no one challenged you.

  Morteza, being a low-caste demon, had spent his centuries staying hidden. Staying quiet. Staying as safe as it was possible for a demon to be. Because of that, he’d had a lot of time to think. A lot of time to study. He knew everything there was to know about demons and how they worked.

  He knew everything about power, except how to get it or why someone would give it up. He couldn’t think of a single reason why Ali had disappeared off the demon radar. Why he would want to give up so much.

  Except, of course, there were Ellie and Eli.

  Whatever had turned Ali was as important to him as Ellie and Eli were to Morteza. That knowledge might help Morteza find Ali.

  Much of what he’d use to find Ali he’d learned as a demon. Oh, he’d have to translate that knowledge to the human world, but he’d learned the most important thing that would make that translation possible. He’d learned about computers from the man who knew everything.

  Big Dave had taught Morteza a whole hell of a lot about computers. How to use them. How to get the best of them. How to figure out a different way to do something when the first or the second or the hundredth time didn’t get you what you wanted.

  Morteza wasn’t sure the time and computers he’d booked from Big Dave were enough. But he had another incentive. Masturbation just wasn’t working anymore. He was desperate for Ellie and Eli, and so he would work as hard and as long as he had to. If worst came to worst, he would give up work at Bar None and devote himself full time to the search for Ali for as long as it took.

  * * * * *

  Three days into his search, despair was setting in.

  He’d found nothing. Not a single Internet footprint. Not a single possibility.

  He’d searched every newspaper, radio, and Internet database in River City for anything that might fit the profile of a demon living among humans. Nada. Zip.

  He’d widened his search to include the whole state. Still nothing.

  He’d tried country-wide searches. He’d wasted hours he didn’t have weeding through false lead after false lead. A big fat zero for three of his four days, and Morteza was way past tired and into exhaustion.

  Demons didn’t get tired. But Morteza was discovering that living as a human, away from the atmosphere of the Underworld, meant that even though he was still a demon, he was at least partly subject to the laws of the human world. And that meant he couldn’t go forever without sleep.

  He couldn’t even go five days.

  And that sucked. Big time.

  After four days without anything, even Big Dave had noticed.

  “Morteza,” he’d said when Morteza started to nod off over the keyboard. “You gotta get some sleep, man.”

  “I can’t. I need to find…”

  Exhausted as he was, Morteza had almost blurted out the fact that he was looking for a demon. He’d managed to stop himself before he said something really stupid, but that near-fatal mistake had forced him to nod at Big Dave.

  “You’re right.”

  “Can I help you, man? Is there something you need me to do?”

  Morteza contemplated asking Big Dave to help him find the ex-Lord of all the demons. Big Dave probably wouldn’t even blink. Before he’d become the computer guru he now was, he’d earned his moniker as a wrestler and a biker and a bouncer, all of ill repute.

  He wouldn’t be surprised if Big Dave was totally down with the idea of looking for a demon in the human world. But Morteza wasn’t ready to admit he was a demon, and he’d have to reveal that if he wanted Big Dave’s help.

  “I’m fine,” Morteza began.

  Big Dave held up his hand to stop him before he got any further. “You’re as far from fine as I’ve ever seen a hacker—and that’s a very long way. I’ve called Sam at the Bar None and told him you won’t be in for the rest of the week.”

  “I have to…”

  “Stop. Just like anyone else, you’re entitled to a vacation. Two weeks a year. And you haven’t taken a single day off since you started working. Sam owes you two weeks, with pay, in case you’re worried about money, and I’ve told him you’re taking three days. That gives you five days to recuperate. Looks to me like
you’re going to need every one of them.

  “You look like you’re on death’s door, man. Go home and get some sleep.”

  Morteza nodded and then let his head fall to rest on the keyboard. He’d go home just as soon as he could stand up. Really.

  Fifteen minutes later, he found himself—and he had absolutely no idea how he’d gotten there—in the passenger seat of Big Dave’s truck.

  “Where’s your pad, man?”

  “1275 James Street.”

  “I know exactly where that is, so go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up when we get there. It took four of us to get you into the truck, so you’re gonna have to wake up enough to help me get you into the house.”

  Morteza spent the short drive in that space between sleeping and waking, that place where his dreams were a hundred times more intense than the reality he was living in, the place where he could direct those dreams.

  This time, though, he was careful to think only of the search. Because he didn’t want Big Dave to notice the erection he got every time he even thought about Ellie and Eli, and they were the only thing he dreamed about, almost the only thing he even thought about. One thought was all it took and he was as hard as a stone and aching for release with every muscle in his body.

  And there it was, not a single moment between thought and reaction. Ellie, Eli, hard as stone.

  It didn’t even have to be a thought about them. All it took was a thought about thinking about them and here he was, hard and desperate.

  Think about something else, you idiot.

  Too late. Once he got that first thought in his head, they wouldn’t let go. And that meant he spent most days walking around with an erection that wouldn’t go away. He’d get a few seconds relief if he got himself off, but five minutes later? Good to go—no, make that desperate to go—again.

  So he’d learned some tricks over the past year to deal with the never-ending erection.

  The first one was to wear knit boxers one size too small. This wasn’t difficult. Even the clothes he bought in the big and tall store were barely big enough. The too-small boxers held his cock close to his body so his erection was less noticeable.