Take Two Read online

  “Side effects?” Sadie clutched the flimsy robe even closer around her throat and listened intently. Here was the core issue—the answer to the mystery that had been driving her crazy.

  “Yeah. The Tandem chips made us too close. We can feel each other’s emotions. Sometimes we catch each other’s stray thoughts. When the T-link between us really opens up it’s like nothin’ I can describe to you. What Holt touches, tastes, and sees I feel and taste and see, and vice versa. It’s like livin’ inside two brains and two bodies at once.” He shook his head, a far away look in the deep blue eyes. “And it’s so good, so right— that sense of completion, of wholeness. It’s like an addiction neither one of us can ever break unless we undergo a procedure to remove the chips.”

  “You don’t want to have the procedure?” Sadie asked, puzzled.

  “We’ve both thought about it.” Blakely shook his head. “But the docs have told us we’re too close—we’ve been tandemized too long. Odds are if we did the detandemizing now one of us would end up dead. It ain’t worth the risk.” He shrugged. “‘Sides, we’re pretty comfortable the way we are. We’re best friends even though we drive each other crazy sometimes. There’s really only one drawback.”

  “Which is?” Her heart was in her mouth and she was concentrating so hard on what Blakely was saying that the voice on her other side made her jump in surprise. She had almost forgotten that Holt was still there.

  “The drawback is that if you take one of us you have to take both,” Holt said in her ear. She turned to face the blond detective, who had put down the packet of lactose spread and was concentrating on her again. His hair looked like burnished metal strands against the collar of the black shirt he was wearing. “You see, Sadie, there were a few bugs in the first Tandem chips, the ones Blakely and I received. The T-link caused by the chips acts like a circuit, a conduit for the energy between us. It’s almost like a sixth sense in a way; I know where my partner is at all times, how he’s feeling, if he’s in danger…and he knows the same about me. But despite all that the circuit is incomplete.”

  “We need a third.” Blakely was pressing closer to her other side, staring at her intently.

  “A third what?” she asked hesitantly, looking from one to the other, Holt tall and shiningly blond and Blakely, muscular, dark and intense. So different and yet so much alike, she thought. Both trapped somehow. The two men looked so serious and sad.

  “A third person to complete the circuit, to fulfill the T-link’s full potential,” Holt said matter of factly.

  “You mean you want someone else to have a chip implanted?” Sadie asked flatly.

  “No, that wouldn’t be necessary,” Holt said. “There are…other ways to link.”

  Sadie looked back and forth between them. “Sex,” she breathed. “So that’s what all this is about.”

  “Yes,” Blakely said simply. “It’s like an empty space, a hole that needs to be filled. We’re only complete when the T-link is completely open.”

  “And it’s only fully open when we’re sharing a woman, making love to her, penetrating her at the same time,” Holt finished.

  “And you chose me. Well thanks a lot.” She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Why me, guys? Won’t any warm body do? All you need is a way to link to each other—a girl who doesn’t mind taking…” she swallowed. “Taking you both on at once. Why not use a prostie-borg?” She felt the prickle of tears threaten behind her eyelids and tried to blink them back. All along they had just wanted to use her to make contact with each other.

  “Sadie, you don’t understand.” Holt took her by the arm and led her to the couch and Blakely followed. Soon she was sandwiched between them, feeling the comforting masculine warmth radiating from both sides. “Blake and I don’t want just any girl to share our lives. We aren’t interested in using someone just to fulfill the link. It’s true that only about one in a thousand women have the sensory capacity to handle the sensations of a T-link joining, but there’s more to it than that.”

  “Holt and I have been lookin’ for a long time for a girl we both care about—both love. Someone we can share our lives with.” Blakely said, taking her hand again. “We started to care for you, a long time before we ever figured out we could bond with you.”

  “Bond with me?” Sadie looked back and forth between them. “What do you mean, ‘bond with me’?”

  “It’s how we were able to heal you last night, Sadie,” Holt told her earnestly, taking her other hand. “Your brain chemistry matches the composition of ours so perfectly that we’ve been able to establish a bond, a mental and emotional connection with you. It’s not as strong yet as the T-link the Tandem chips make possible between Blake and me, but every time we touch you together like this it gets stronger.”

  “I…I don’t believe you,” Sadie said weakly. A bond with these two? The two most handsome, fascinating, aggravating men she had ever met? It’s not possible, she insisted to herself. But was it? She could feel the energy flowing between them and tried to pull her hands away, but they didn’t let her. Sadie felt her body reacting to their presence, to their need and hers even though she didn’t want it to and wished that she hadn’t been so hasty in her choice of clothing. The robe she had on hid nothing and she was sure that Blakely and Holt could see her nipples hardening with desire. Oh Goddess, their mouths on me, tasting me, touching me, making me come…

  “Close your eyes and feel it, sweetheart,” Blakely invited her softly. “I can feel you in my mind—taste you on my tongue like honey and I know Holt feels the same. The bond with you isn’t as strong as our link yet, but it’s there all right or we wouldn’t have been able to pull you back last night. Go on—close your eyes and feel.”

  Realizing that they weren’t going to let her go until she complied, Sadie took a deep breath and forced herself to close her eyes. Concentrate, she told herself fiercely, determined to prove them wrong—to feel nothing at all.

  At first there was nothing but the warm, sensual current flowing between them. Then, in the back of her mind she began to feel a strange sensation, a doubling and trebling of emotions. A bright golden thread of hope and need like a ray of sunshine in her mind—Holt. A solid certainty, an unshakeable love, like a smooth, warm stone she could cup in the palm of her hand—Blakely. Need, desire, love, lust all crowded into her brain. A barrage of emotions she had never asked for and could not block out.

  “No, no! Stop it!” Sadie yanked her hands away from them and stumbled off the couch, nearly falling in her hasty attempt to get away. Too fast, this was all happening way too fast. Hell, she had dated Gerald for nearly a year and a half before he proposed to her. Here were these two, wanting her to submit to the most perverted scenarios she could imagine, wanting some sort of commitment when she hadn’t even known them a month. No, not just wanting a commitment—forcing one. Merciful Goddess, she could feel them both in her brain. In her terror she forgot that she had admitted to herself that she was beginning to care deeply for Blakely and Holt, maybe even to love them both. All she could see was that what they were asking was too much too soon.

  “Sadie, please, honey…” Blakely appealed softly, leaning forward, the pain and need apparent in his vivid indigo eyes. Holt said nothing but Sadie saw the same pain reflected in his light blue gaze—the same need. Worst of all she felt it inside her mind. They wanted her…needed her. I need them too… No! She shook her head to clear away the treacherous thought.

  “Look,” she said, attempting to remain calm and deal with the situation in a rational manner. “I appreciate you saving my life last night even if you did use…some unconventional methods. But I didn’t come on this mission to ‘bond’ with you or complete you or whatever the hell it is you’re talking about. I came for a story and that’s all I came for.” She took a shaking breath and hugged herself tightly, staying far back from the couch where the two men sat, light and dark, day and night, watching her. “Now I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea about me, but I’m t