Many Blessings

Chapter Eight

Brad awoke to dim, grey light forcing its way through the attic windows. He groaned as he sat up. He’d fallen asleep on the attic couch with the TV on in an attempt to escape answering Ellis’ inevitable questions about Mandaline and what they’d been doing upstairs when he arrived home.

A dark, dense pall filled his senses as he looked around. Everything hurt. Especially his neck, upon which he’d apparently slept wrong.

Maybe I’m coming down with something. It certainly felt like it.

At some point, even though he didn’t remember doing it, he must have turned out the attic lights. Then his eyes settled on an easel at the far end of the room. A large sketch pad sat on it. In the dim light he couldn’t make out the drawing.

He didn’t even remember the drawing.

With a growing sense of dread he stood and slowly walked over to the easel. Hell, even his feet hurt! He’d fallen asleep with his sneakers on, but it felt like he’d walked miles since last night.

The piece was in pencil and charcoal. When he looked at his fingers, he saw the dark smudges on his hands. He had a utility sink up here so he didn’t have to constantly run up and down the stairs. Apparently he hadn’t washed his hands after his somnambulic art session.

The piece frightened him, quite honestly. It looked like something out of the Dark Ages, with an ugly, three-eyed demon menacingly hovering over a cowering woman on a chaise. Terror filled her features as the demon leveled what looked like a shotgun at the woman.

What have I done?

He started to tear it from the sketch pad to throw it away when he looked more closely at the woman’s face.

Without a doubt it was Mandaline.

Instead he grabbed the sketchbook, slammed it shut, and buried it between some half-finished canvasses along the wall. He hurried over to the sink to scrub at his hands. When he sniffled, he realized he was crying.

What’s happening to me? Why am I doing this?

He headed downstairs to the bathroom. It wasn’t quite seven yet, and Ellis would need to get into the bathroom to take his shower soon. He stripped and stepped under water so hot it quickly turned his skin red. He wanted to wash away the feeling, the thick, dark, dirty feeling coating him.

When he got out, he wrapped a towel around his hips and jammed his clothes into the hamper before heading to his room. He grabbed a pair of shorts.

He lost his balance trying to put them on and fell back onto the bed, his legs hanging over the edge.

The way her eyes looked staring up at him from between his legs, the way her hot, sweet mouth had felt while sucking his cock…

He closed his eyes and fisted the covers as he tried to shove the memory out of his head. Yes, it’d felt good, the best blow job he’d ever gotten in his life. But it wasn’t fair to saddle her with his problems.

Was it?

He rolled over facedown on the bed, hands fisting the sheets again as a blue haze took his vision. He had just enough time to realize he was having a seizure before the world went dark.

The loud thump from Brad’s room jolted Ellis out of bed like a cattle prod. He’d awakened earlier to the sound of the shower running, but had drifted back to sleep when he realized he didn’t have to get up yet.

He burst out of his room and across the hall where he knocked. “Brad? You all right?” He waited two breaths for an answer before barging in.

He found Brad on the floor, a pair of shorts pulled halfway up, his body rigid and a glazed look on his face.

“Shit! Brad!” He got him rolled onto his side and held his hand, afraid to leave him and knowing exactly what was going on. Soon, Brad’s muscles relaxed and his eyes fell closed. “You’re okay, buddy. I’ll be right back. I have to get my phone.” Ellis started to get up to go call 911 when Brad’s hand closed on his.

“No,” he muttered.

“Dude, I need to call an ambulance. You had a seizure.”

The hand gripped him harder. “No. Give me a minute.”

Torn between what his friend wanted and what he knew he should do, he finally gave in. This one had only lasted maybe a minute or two from the time he’d heard the thud to when Brad had started coming out of it.

After a few minutes, Brad’s eyes opened again and he looked up at him. “I’m okay,” he muttered.

“You had a seizure,” he repeated, trying to stay calm. “We need to get you to the hospital.”

“No.” When Ellis realized Brad was trying to sit up, he helped him. “I was stupid. I forgot to take my meds last night.”

Somehow, he managed to hold back the flash of anger at his friend. “You can’t do that.”

“I know. I…I fell asleep on the couch up there. I’m sorry.”

Guilt immediately washed his anger away. “No, don’t apologize. I didn’t want to interrupt you last night. I should have checked on you and made sure before I went to bed.”

That dopey smile, the one that could always make Ellis laugh, curved Brad’s mouth. “We need a woman to ride both our asses,” he joked.

More relief poured in. If Brad could crack funnies, he was feeling better. “Yeah, well, not my priority right now.” He helped Brad stand and kept him steady while Brad pulled his shorts all the way up.

“Admit it,” Brad said. “You were staring at my dick.” He grinned.

Yep, he was back to normal. “Dude, I’ve got one of my own I can play with. I don’t need to stare at yours.” Ellis finally stepped away, now certain Brad was steady on his feet again.

But Ellis still followed him downstairs to the kitchen and watched while Brad took his meds. While Brad did that, Ellis started a pot of coffee. “Maybe I should cancel our dinner with Mandaline tonight,” Ellis suggested.

Brad turned to him, frowning. “How’d you know about dinner? I didn’t tell you last night.”

Crap. Busted. “I talked to her on the phone after you went upstairs.”

“Why?”

Now he felt even guiltier. “I wanted to find out what she thought about the house. In case there was anything she didn’t want to say in front of you. And I wanted to talk to her more about the EMF stuff. If she really thought that was what’s going on.”

Did Brad look…relieved? “Oh. Okay.”

“I can’t help it. I worry about you. It’s my job. I’m sorry.”

“We need to get you a hobby.”

He smiled. “You are my hobby.”

“You’re a martyr.” But the smile had returned to Brad’s face.

“Maybe I should stay home today.”

“Nope. I was an idiot, and that’s all. I’ll eat a good breakfast and be fine.”

Ellis studied his friend. He always fought the urge to baby him, knowing Brad might not push back against it if he did, but that he deserved better from him than that. “All right. If you say so. But you call me if you have another seizure. Deal?”

“Deal. I’ll be fine. And we’ll have dinner with Mandaline tonight.”

He glanced at the time and realized he needed to get moving or he’d be late to work. “Okay.” He grabbed a cup of coffee and headed upstairs to get his shower.

Alone in the kitchen, Brad heavily sat in one of the chairs and scrubbed his face with his hands. He wasn’t entirely sure the seizure was related to him forgetting his meds. He’d forgotten a dose of his meds before and hadn’t had a seizure.

His mind flashed to the demon drawing now hidden in the attic. Was there more going on? Was this a developing symptom of whatever was wrong with the house?

I’ll call Mandaline after Ellis leaves for the day and talk to her about it.

Mandaline gave up trying to sleep a little after six that morning. She’d dozed off and on, but every time sleep tried to take hold of her system, so did hot, sexy dreams about Brad…and Ellis.

It didn’t help that even though she knew it was silly, she felt a little guilty about the distraction the two hunks provided her. Julie had only been dead a week, and the tree planting would be held tomorrow. Not to mention there’d be an informal gathering at the store later Saturday night for the full moon.

Sachi had jokingly dubbed their gatherings the “coffeeshop coven” a couple of years earlier, a name that stuck even though they weren’t technically a coven. Some of the participants didn’t even consider themselves witches. They were just a bunch of friends from a variety of belief systems who enjoyed gathering for the sabbats and esbats.

It would be their first without Julie.

She took a long, hot shower. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and called Pers before she headed downstairs. She grabbed his leash and took him on a long walk a few blocks down to the library. It wasn’t completely daylight yet, with purple shadows still tenaciously hugging the depths of trees and bushes. She let the dog sniff around the library grounds to his heart’s content while she sipped her coffee.

It’s not fair. She knew it was a pointless whine on her part, but never in her life had she imagined she’d ever not grow old with her soul sister. That they wouldn’t be together to share life’s ups and downs.

That Julie wouldn’t be there for her to cry on her shoulder, or there to make her laugh when Mandaline once again doubted her life choices.

Until last Thursday, she’d been relatively content with her life. No, not rich, but her bills were paid, she was out of debt, and so what if she was single? She was free.

Now she had a deep well of grief, people depending on her for their livelihoods, an extra furbaby to care for…and thoughts of two sexalicious guys that wouldn’t leave her head.

Not to mention she’d given one of them an accidental blow job.

She laughed aloud at that, making Pers turn to look at her. She never thought it possible to accidentally blow a guy, but damned if she hadn’t proven it possible.

Julie definitely would have laughed her ass off about that.

She looked up at the sky. “Why?” she whispered. “Why these two guys? Why couldn’t you have just pointed me toward a single guy? And why did you mark their case urgent?”

She heard a noise and looked to see Pers nosing around the base of a tree where a shred of paper lay. “Leave it, puppy.” She walked over to take the paper away from him. It looked ripped from a magazine advertisement. In large blue letters, the word BELIEVE was visible.

“Fuck. Me.”

She started giggling at first. That transformed into laughter, followed by the inevitable tears. She crumpled to the dewy grass as Pers climbed into her lap to console her.

She made it back to the shop twenty minutes later after tucking the piece of paper in her pocket. She’d also picked up after Pers, the little container of poop bags attached to his leash making it impossible to forget them.

She needed to change her jeans, which were soaked through at the seat from the wet grass. But first…

She unhooked Pers from his leash and let him roam free inside the store. She went upstairs and stopped before Julie’s altar, which sat on a dresser in the living room.

It was one of the things she didn’t have the heart to move yet.

She took the piece of paper and put it on the altar, weighed down with a small amethyst crystal. Eventually, she’d put her own altar there, with some of Julie’s pieces incorporated.

For now, this felt right. “I’ll believe, Julie,” she said, “but there’s only so much my frayed nerves can take.”

She was downstairs working on paperwork when Sachi arrived an hour early. Sachi leaned against the office doorway. “So?”

“What?”

“Any new developments since last night? Any unintentional orgies I should know about?”

“Perv.” But she smiled.

Sachi grinned. “Hey, at least one of us is getting lucky around here. I think tomorrow night’s gathering needs to include a ‘sex magick 101’ chant or something for the rest of us suffering through a dry spell.”

Mandaline had made the mistake of trying to sip her coffee. She managed to get most of it back into her mug as she laughed without choking or spewing it all over the computer. “And how, exactly, do you plan to do that?”

Sachi made a serious face and held her arms up toward the ceiling. “Oh, hail, Dildous, god of the Mighty O. Send us your celestial vibrations.”

Pers came running at the sound of Mandaline’s peals of laughter.

Sachi grinned and pointed at her. “You think I’m kidding. You just wait and see. I’m going to do it.”

“I believe you. That’s what’s got me worried.”

A little after nine o’clock, Mandaline still worked in the office when she heard the front-door bell tinkle. She heard Sachi greet the customer, then a familiar voice sounded. “Can I speak with Mandaline?”

Ellis.

She jumped up and nearly ran into Sachi, who was coming through the doorway. She tried to ignore the sexy mraoow Sachi made under her breath as they did a quick back-and-forth dance while Mandaline tried to get past her and out of the office.

She pasted on a smile that was probably too big. “Hi, Ellis. How are you?”

“Good. Um, can we talk for a minute?” He glanced at Sachi. “Alone?”

“Sure.” She led him back to the smaller room and shut the door behind them. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to give you a heads-up. Brad had a seizure this morning.”

She gasped. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he wouldn’t let me call an ambulance. He forgot to take his meds last night.”

A wave of guilt washed through her. She could guess why he’d forgotten. “If you want to cancel tonight, I understand.”

“No, I just wanted to let you know what was going on. It’s been like a year since he last had a seizure. I don’t know if it’s related to everything else going on right now or not.” He looked like he wanted to say something else. He reached out and touched her arm. “Look, I—”

Holy fuck! She stared up into his blue eyes, transfixed. She knew what was going on and had already prepared herself for it even though she hadn’t honestly expected it to happen.

She usually wasn’t that lucky. Yet the white-hot sensation, centered over her clit, poured through her body.

She waited for Ellis to make the first move. He grabbed her with his other hand and pulled her to him, crushing her lips with his.

She let out a soft moan as her arms found their way around his neck. He wrapped his around her, grinding himself against her. She felt the stiff bulge of his cock rubbing against her through his slacks.

Christ, they’re both big!

He tasted like coffee, and she could smell the shampoo he’d used that morning. His cheek felt smooth, freshly shaven. He turned and backed her toward the table. They’d almost reached it when she heard a cell phone ring.

She opened her eyes to see him still only touching her arm with the one hand, a look of disbelief and shock on his face.

He let go of her as if scalded before he fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone. He glanced at the screen before silencing it.

Their eyes met. He licked his lips, started to say something, then changed his mind.

She wouldn’t say it. He was the skeptic, so he’d have to say it.

“I…uh…” He stared at her.

She nodded. “Yep.”

“I…We’ll see you tonight.” Before she could stop him, he had the door open and hurried out.

Mandaline drifted over to the table and collapsed into one of the chairs. She had trouble filling her lungs.

She still felt the warmth of his lips on hers.

Sachi stuck her head in the doorway. “You okay, boss?”

Mandaline slowly shook her head.

Sachi frowned, then her eyes widened. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, leaning against it. “Oh, frak! It happened again, didn’t it?”

Mandaline slowly nodded.

She grinned. “That’s great!”

“Great?” Sachi’s enthusiasm had finally broken through Mandaline’s stupor. “What’s so damn great about it?”

“Oh, please. Spare me. Have you seen those two hunks? Damn, you lucky bitch, I’d gladly be the filling in their sandwich.”

Ellis practically ran down the sidewalk toward his office. FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK!

He had no idea what happened. One second he was talking with Mandaline, and the next it was like he’d stuck his dick in a light socket and all hell broke loose. He would have sworn he’d grabbed her and kissed her, but then when his phone rang, they were still just standing there.

She’d looked as shocked as him. But it hadn’t happened.

Had it?

He barely slowed as he passed the receptionist. “Hold my calls, please.” He rushed into his office and slammed the door shut, locking it behind him.

Collapsing into his chair, he tried to slow his racing heart.

Okay, think this through, Fargo. You didn’t really kiss her. You were just standing there talking with her. You must have imagined it.

He tried to latch on to that thought, even though it didn’t feel completely right.

And his cock still uncomfortably throbbed inside his briefs.

“It was my imagination working overtime,” he whispered aloud. “That’s all.” He’d met a really sweet woman he felt extremely attracted to. It didn’t help he’d had all sorts of sexy dreams about her the night before. In fact, until he’d heard Brad collapse, he’d been thinking about waking up enough to rub one out before his shower, with Mandaline as the star of his sexy fantasy.

“That’s all it was,” he said with a little more conviction. “Just my imagination.”

He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out again. “Just my imagination.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure he believed that.

And still, his cock throbbed.

It’s going to be a long damn day.

Mandaline finally made it back to her office. She needed to call Brad, both to check on him and to tell him what just happened with Ellis.

She grabbed her cell phone and let out a little yelp when it rang in her hand. Brad’s number appeared on the screen.

She stuck out her foot and shoved the office door shut with her toe before she answered. “That’s freaky. I was literally just getting ready to call you. Had the phone in my hand.”

She heard the smile in his voice. “I hope that’s a good thing?”

She closed her eyes and pictured his sweet brown eyes and playful smile.

And delicious cock. “A very good thing. How are you feeling this morning?”

“I’m okay.”

“Ellis just stopped by and told me about the seizure.”

“Oh.” He sighed. “Yeah, I’m an idiot. It’s no big deal. It’s why I’m not supposed to miss any doses.”

Incredulous, she asked, “How can you say a seizure isn’t a big deal?”

“Because I know why it happened and it didn’t last very long. Seriously, it’s okay. If I’d thought it was a bad one, I would have let Ellis call the ambulance.”

She was the one avoiding the issue now and she knew it. “We need to talk.”

“I thought we were.” She loved how she could pretty much hear him smiling from his tone of voice.

“It happened again.”

“What happened?”

“With him. With Ellis this morning.”

“What…oh.”

She felt fifty shades of crappy. “Yeah.”

His next question, however, surprised her. More, the tone with which he asked it. Hopefully. “Did you give him a blow job?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Wh…” Her jaw flapped open and closed a few times. She imagined she looked like a goldfish. “What?”

“I’m not jealous.”

From fifty shades of crappy to fifty shades of confused. “What?”

He laughed. “You are fun to tease, you know that? But seriously, it’d be okay.”

She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Let’s back up. No, it didn’t go that far with him. It was like the first time with you and me, where it felt like he grabbed me and kissed me, but his phone rang and woke us out of…whatever it was.”

“Aw.” He sounded disappointed.

“Aw?”

“Mandaline, you and I know something is going on. Poor Ellis is probably sitting in his office and practically shitting himself, worried that he’s losing his mind and trying to figure out a rational explanation for it. If it’d gone all the way, at least he couldn’t deny what happened.”

“Oh. I guess I should walk over there and talk to him.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“He’ll get defensive and even more entrenched in his belief that nothing happened. Let him stew.” He laughed. “And I’m hoping that something else happens tonight.”

She felt her face heat to supernova proportions. “I feel like you’re pimping me out.”

“Let me ask you a question, and do me the favor of giving me an honest answer. Or you can tell me to go to hell if you want. Are you attracted to me?”

“Yes,” she mumbled. “I should have thought that was obvious.”

“Okay. Are you attracted to Ellis?”

She didn’t want to answer that.

“Mandaline?”

“Okay, yes. Fine. I’m attracted to him, too.”

That answer seemed to please him. “Good. Then what’s the problem?”

“What’s the…seriously? Seriously?”

His tone did, in fact, turn serious. “I’m lonely. He’s lonely. I’m not going to deny the thought of the two of us being able to love the same woman instead of trying to find two women to put up not only with us, but with each other as well, turns me on.”

“I…” Her jaw snapped closed. “Love? We barely know each other!”

“We’ll see you tonight,” he said, the smile back in his tone. He ended the call, leaving her staring at the phone as her heart raced and she tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Maybe I’m the one ready for a padded room at the VA.