Soul Possession(27)

“Want a full body scrub while we’re in here?” Rick asked.

She shook her head. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get out before I become an ice cube.”

He reached behind her to shut off the water and her sigh of relief was audible in the sudden quiet. He pushed open the shower door to find Truitt waiting with a large towel that could probably be wrapped around Jessie twice.

Jessie stepped out shivering from head to toe, her teeth clinking together like ice tinkling against glass. Truitt enfolded her in the towel and began to rub briskly in an effort to warm her.

Rick grabbed another towel and stepped around them to head back into the bedroom. A moment later, Jessie walked out wrapped in the towel with Truitt on her heels.

Rick quickly pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and then held out his arms to Jessie. To his satisfaction she walked right into them and snuggled against his chest.

“Crawl into bed,” he said as he kissed the top of her damp hair.

“I don’t have anything to wear,” she said. “Just what I had on before.”

Truitt reached into one of his dresser drawers and then tossed a shirt across the bed to Rick.

“Here, put this on. It’s good to sleep in.”

Her cheeks blooming with color, she tugged the towel downward and then hastily pulled the huge T-shirt on over her head. The hem fell to just above her knees and Rick decided that he’d like to keep her like this all the time. In just an oversized T-shirt, where he could have access to her in a matter of seconds.

His dick stood up and paid attention to that particular fantasy and Rick shifted to alleviate the discomfort in his groin.

Jessie turned and crawled onto the bed and then burrowed under the covers, pulling them to her nose. Rick and Truitt crawled in after her, pressing close from both sides. After a moment she sighed in contentment and some of the shaking ceased.

“Are you sober enough to hear us grovel?” Rick asked seriously.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been talking to Kirsten. I swear the girl’s obsessed with groveling. A simple apology works fine for me.”

“Does it?” Truitt asked softly. “Because we’re not just asking you to forgive us, Jessie. We’re asking you for more. A hell of a lot more.”

She swallowed visibly and stared up at Truitt and then over to Rick. “How much more?”

Rick put a finger to her cheek and trailed it softly down to her jaw and then traced the line to her chin. “Everything. We want you to be ours. We want to take care of you, make sure you stay off your knee when it hurts, make love to you as often as we can, come home to you after a rough day at work, eat your wonderful cooking. That sound like anything you’d be interested in?”

Jessie blinked rapidly and wondered if this was just a direct result of too much alcohol. Alcohol induced hallucinations, didn’t it?

She suddenly wasn’t so cold anymore. She was warm all the way to her toes and then some. Both men stared at her like…Damn. Like they meant every single word.

“I’m still drunk, aren’t I?”

Truitt chuckled close to her ear. “No, sweetheart. Not that drunk anyway.”

“What do you want, Jessie?” Rick asked, his eyes intense as they scorched over her body. “Don’t think about anything else. Just tell me what you want. What your gut tells you.”

“I’m crazy but I want that too,” she said before she could chicken out. “I don’t even know how to wrap my mind around how such a thing works—”

Rick put his finger over her mouth. “Stop right there. All we need to know, all that is important is what you want. We know what we want. We’ll make it work.”

He sounded pretty darn convincing.

Her mouth trembled and she glanced up at Rick and then back over her shoulder to where Truitt was positioned. “You hurt me.” It had to be said. She had to get it out. She had to be sure that they wouldn’t ever think she could be capable of such a thing again.

Rick looked gutted. Guilt crowded into Truitt’s eyes.

Before they could respond, she took a breath and went on. “I know I probably don’t understand how things work, and you probably weren’t allowed to so much as speak to me. But the way you looked at me, and the fact that you said nothing while those people said horrible things to me in that room—it hurt. I know we didn’t really know each other, but I felt a connection to you both. I mean, you’d both been coming into the pub regularly. And when we finally had sex, it was like…I don’t know. It was like we’d been leading up to it forever and had already been on a dozen dates. I know you didn’t know me. Logic tells me that you had every reason to be suspicious. But my heart was hurt because that night was special to me and I wouldn’t have gone home with you if I didn’t trust you on some basic, instinctual level. I guess I wanted that same level of trust back from you both.”

“No, you’re right,” Truitt said in a quiet voice. “We owed you that much. We did have doubts about you committing murder even in the face of some pretty damning evidence at the time. But we didn’t express those doubts to you. We didn’t give you any sign that we were anything but sure you’d f**ked us over, and for that I’m sorry.”

Rick nodded. “And you were right about us not being able to talk to you or see you. But that was no excuse. We could have said we believed in you. We could have done a lot of things. But we didn’t and it hurt you. We won’t hurt you again, Jessie. At least not intentionally. I know we’re asking for a chance we didn’t give you. But give us one. We won’t make you regret trusting us this time.”