As he left, David scooped me into his lap. I curled into him and said, “One of us has too many clothes on.”
“Must be me.” He ran his hand over me, breast to belly, then lower. “You don’t have any.”
“Not a stitch.” I grinned at him, feeling light and flirtatious.
“Stop trying to get me to knot you again before Zach gets back.” David settled his hand between my legs, cupped my mound, and squeezed. “We just finished agreeing to share our toys.”
“Am I your toy?” I wiggled my hips, inviting him to do more.
“You’re my mate.” His palm pressed into my sex and my body hummed in delight. Then his lips took mine, and he showed me what that meant.
“Told you not to get too far without me,” Zach said from behind us.
I blinked, feeling blind and dumb. “Didn’t you just leave?”
“Fifteen minutes ago.” He raised a brow at me. Then he started stripping.
I watched. Then I looked up at David. “Shouldn’t you be doing that? I think I mentioned you had on too many clothes.”
“If I hadn’t left them on, I’d be inside you already.” He plunged a finger into my sheath to demonstrate his meaning. I groaned.
“Get naked, both of you, and hurry.”
“She’s so demanding.” David plunked me onto the mattress, stood, and took off the clothes I’d objected to.
“I know.” Zach nodded. The two of them stood over me, looking down at my sprawled body. “We should teach her a lesson, or she’ll be like that for the rest of our lives.”
“Yeah.” David gave me a look that could’ve scorched the sheets. “Maybe she should learn to be careful what she wishes for.”
“Um.” My belly fluttered as the two of them climbed onto the bed and headed toward me, twin predatory expressions on their faces. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Everything we want to.”
I gulped. Then giggled when Zach scooped me up and nuzzled my stomach before blowing a raspberry on my bare skin. “Hey. That tickles.”
“Good.” He carried me toward the bathroom while he grinned at me. “You needed a tension breaker. Speaking of which, I think it’s time for a nice, relaxing bath.”
I looped my arms around his neck and hung on. “As long as you both fit in the tub with me.”
“It’s a large tub.” Zach reached it, kissed my nose, and stood me on my feet. David was already there, turning on the water and adjusting the temperature. He sprinkled some bath salts in, then held his hand out to me. I took it and let him help me in.
I settled back and looked up at them. “Well?”
“How’s your skin sensitivity now?” David asked.
I hadn’t thought about it, but now that he brought it to my attention, the overreaction to cloth and friction from yesterday was gone. “Fine.”
“Want a loofah, then?” He brought out a mitt and slid his hand into it, and I realized he planned to do it for me.
“You’re bathing me like a kid?”
“No. I’m bathing you like my mate who’s been overdoing it and needs pampering.”
Zach slid into the tub with me and arranged us so that I rested my back against his chest. David wet the loofah, added some gel, and began a very gentle massage on the bottoms of my feet. He worked up to the heels and ankles, calves, and as much of my thighs as he could reach with me sitting. Then Zach lifted one of my arms and supported the weight while David gave my hand, arm, and shoulder the same treatment before switching sides.
I relaxed and gave myself up to the novel experience of being attended to in the bath by two lovers. Residual tension melted away. The loofah felt just rough enough to stimulate my skin without irritating. The bath salts softened the water, and when each thoroughly stimulated limb returned to soak, the soothing submersion made me sigh out loud.
Zach leaned me forward so David could scrub my back. I rested my cheek on my knees, eyes closed in bliss, savoring the slow strokes David made up and down my spine, along my shoulder blades, then switching to tiny circles that erased all hints of strain in my neck.
I got lowered into the water to rinse my back, and wet my hair before Zach drew me back against his chest and began to massage shampoo into my scalp. His fingers moved from the front of my head back, working my neck again, then the sides. He finished with a temple rub that wiped out all memory of the headache the day’s dilemmas had built.
Back into the water, floating while Zach’s fingers rinsed away the shampoo. I felt like I was drifting in a dream. A sensual dream that drugged my responses and seemed to slow time down. Hands moved over me, following the curves and dips of my body. Shaping and cupping my breasts, tracing the hollows of my throat, the line of my rib cage, the swell of my hips.
One pair of hands stroked my thighs, first outer, then inner, ending with a gentle petting of my sex. Another pair caressed my breasts and teased my nipples, circling them, squeezing, tugging.
I didn’t resist when my legs were hooked over David’s shoulders. Zach lifted me until my hips rested on the edge of the tub and held me while wandering lips replaced hands. David kissed the swells of my breasts, the dip of my belly, then moved lower. He traced my labia with his tongue but didn’t thrust it inside me or lap at the sensitive bud of my clitoris.
“David,” I whispered. I lifted heavy lids halfway to look at him. His eyes met mine with the expanse of my naked torso between us.
“Mmm?” He planted another kiss between my legs, then drew back.
“I’m glad you’re here.” My throat constricted for a moment. I reached my hand out, slid my fingers through his hair. “I thought I’d never touch you again after yesterday.” Having both of them with me now seemed like a miracle, all the more precious for being so unexpected.
“Same.”
The two of them helped me all the way out of the tub, and David wrapped me in a towel. Zach dried my hair. Between them they cocooned me in comfort and blotted away the excess moisture before Zach took the damp towels to hang while David carried me back to bed.
“I love you,” I whispered, turning my face into his neck.
“My mate.” He cradled me close, then lowered me to the bed. Both of them joined me, bracketing me between two male bodies that tantalized and mesmerized me. I wanted to wallow in the sheer joy of unhurried contact.
“I didn’t get to do this yesterday,” I told Zach, running my hands over him. “I wanted to do so much for you, and I couldn’t.”
“You have time now.” He pulled me into a kiss that seared my senses. “We have the rest of our lives.”
“Mmm.” I kissed my way down his chin, his neck, his chest, explored his sculpted abs, then touched my tongue to the tip of his penis. I tasted salt and male musk, savored the silky texture of the skin pulled tight over his engorged organ.
I drew him into my mouth and closed my lips just below the ridge of his head. He groaned and settled his hands into my hair. I explored him with my lips and tongue, felt him tighten as I rode his length in and out of my mouth.
“Stop, or you’ll make me come,” he muttered in a voice gone thick with desire.
I worked my way back up to his head, let him slide free of my mouth with a tiny sigh of regret, then traced his length with the tip of my tongue. “You say that like it would be a bad thing,” I murmured.
“It would be. I want to come buried deep inside you.” The explicit words drew a visceral response, making my inner muscles clench in anticipation.
I turned my head to look at David and found him watching me. I smiled at him and moved to give him the same treatment.
“I want to touch you both everywhere. I never want to stop,” I said as my lips touched his flat male nipples and my fingers traced his biceps, his shoulders, lost in discovery and wonder.
I took David into my mouth and felt Zach’s hands move over me, stroking the curves of my buttocks, smoothing the backs of my thighs, sliding between to tease and tempt me before one finger pushed inside my sex.
“Zach. That feels so good.”
“It’s going to feel better,” he promised.
He shifted onto his back and pulled me on top of him. Our mouths met and our tongues tangled in a deep, demanding kiss that sent heat curling through me and made my heart pound in my chest.
Zach’s strength and warmth under me was a heady delight. David’s hands replaced Zach’s, caressing my butt and moving lower, but then I felt something cool and slick stroke over my anus and realized what he intended.
They were going to have me between them again.
While Zach seduced me with kisses and relieved the ache in my breasts by crushing them against his chest, David prepared me to take him. He worked two lubricated fingers into me and scissored them inside in a gentle stretching. The action pressed my sex against Zach’s, and I forgot to breathe, head spinning with the rush from that intimate contact.
They shifted my hips up, and then Zach’s cock probed my labia, aligned, and thrust deep inside.
David withdrew his fingers, positioned himself, and I felt the head of him press into my anus, the lubricant easing that tight entry. He moved forward by stages until I’d accepted all of him and both of them filled me.
Our bodies glided and rocked, met and retreated, moving together in a pattern that became a dance of pleasure. The pace quickened gradually, hearts racing, breath coming faster. Soft sounds, hoarse moans. More. Yes.
They took me and I gave myself to them, each stroke claiming me until there was nothing more. There was tender possession and rough lust and heat that built to an inevitable peak. We spent ourselves, and when release came it came with unexpected force.
I collapsed on Zach, feeling David’s body sheltering my back while both of them remained locked inside me. “Zach,” I whispered his name, kissed his chest. “Thank you.”
His hand found my hair, caressed. “For what?”
“For giving me this.” I stroked his shoulder, the only part of him I could reach without moving. “For seeing what I couldn’t. For sending David to me, because you knew I needed him, too.”
“You cried for him like your heart was broken,” Zach said, his voice low and rough. “I knew you were mine. I could have kept you to myself. But if it was in my power to take away your pain, how could I do anything else? I’m your mate.”
I blinked away moisture. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do.” He stroked my hair, cupped my head against his chest. I listened to the steady rhythm of his heart.
David kissed my shoulder, then carefully withdrew. Zach lifted me off of him and onto the mattress. I sank into it with a soft sound of pleasure. They settled me between the protective shelter of their bodies, both of them holding me close. I clung to them as I slid into sleep, not wanting to let go ever again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“ALMOST PARTY TIME.” ZACH’S VOICE BROKE INTO THE DREAMY HAZE I was drifting in, dozing but not really awake or asleep.
“Mmm.” I stroked his arm and snuggled closer. “Time to get up?”
“Yes.”
Damn. But then, the sooner we settled all of our problems, the sooner we could all go back to bed. I reached for David and frowned when I found the space on my other side empty.
“Where’d he go?” I asked, blinking sleepy eyes at Zach. The sight of him temporarily made me forget everything else. His eyes glowed golden and his face showed the excitement of the hunt. A predator ready to pounce.
“To get ready for our guest.” Zach flashed a wicked grin at me. “She’s on her way. We want to welcome her properly.”
I laughed. “You’re evil.”
“You thought of it.”
“Yeah.” I bumped my body into his. “I’m highly motivated to resolve the cat problem. It’s interfering with my sex life.”
“Is that a complaint? Because the way you came screaming the last time, there, I didn’t think your sex life was suffering.”
“My sex life is fantastic.” I smiled wide, glowing with remembered satisfaction. “Which is why I resent all these damn interruptions. Just once, I want to dance outside or run in the woods with you and David and not have some belligerent panther crashing our party.”
“You sound a little belligerent yourself.” Zach tweaked my nipple, teasing and playful.
“It’s my territory they’re invading and my sex life they’re screwing with.”
“Well, let’s go screw with them.”
“Call me payback,” I said to Zach, jumping out of bed.
He got the joke and laughed, then laughed harder when he saw my consternation at finding no clothes.
“Why don’t I have anything to wear?” I asked him. “I live here now. I should have clothes. That’s another thing all these crises are keeping me from taking care of. I don’t have time to run back to my apartment and pack.”
“You have clothes for today.” Zach padded naked and barefoot into the sitting room and came back with a shopping bag. “Here.”
“My hero.” I kissed him, and it wasn’t good enough so I did it again. Then I took the bag and drew back from the lure of his mouth before I got carried away.
“Am I?”
The serious note in his voice made my head snap up. “What? Yes.” I dropped the bag and wrapped my arms around his waist, leaning in close to press my body against his. His arms came around me to hold me there.
“You helped me when the transition was burning my body up and I had no idea what was happening to me. You helped me understand a world I didn’t know existed. You brought another man into our relationship because you saw that I’d bonded to you both, that I needed him, too.”
His arms tightened around me. “Chandra. I’m a selfish bastard who dragged you into the middle of a shape-shifter war.”
“The panthers and rogue wolves are not your fault,” I pointed out. “You didn’t cause the problem, but we’re going to solve it. And what would have happened to me if you hadn’t had the pack watching me? David wouldn’t have been there to bring me to you when I collapsed. If I’d gone through heat and my first change alone, would I have even lived through it?”
I pulled back to look into his eyes. “Zach, you saved me. You and David both.”
“I wanted you for the pack at first,” he said, his face tight. “Because you belonged with us, and we needed you. Then I got close to you at the mall, and I just wanted you. I wanted you for myself. I wanted you so much I may have influenced your choice when you should have been David’s alone.”
I felt my jaw drop. “Zach, is that really what you think? You think I don’t know my own mind, my own heart? You think I couldn’t tell the difference between compulsion and willing submission?” I shook my head in amazement. “I surrendered to you. I acknowledged you. I gave myself to you. That was my choice.”
He bent his head to brush his lips over mine. “My mate.”
The way he said the words warmed me. “You bet.” I rubbed my nose against his. “This is a macho thing, isn’t it? You think you’re not doing a good enough job protecting the little woman from the dangerous world.”
“I’m not.” The stark declaration boggled me.
“Zach, I killed a man this morning.” Saying it made me cold inside all over again. “The world is dangerous, but so are we. And we have something that makes braving the danger worthwhile.”
We held each other for a long moment. It was hard to let go to dress, but we could both feel the clock ticking. We needed to announce our unconventional status to the pack, get their backing, and deal with an angry cat queen in hopes of gaining an end to the territorial fighting.
The shopping bag held jeans and a soft red sweater that I had to stop and pet because it was cashmere. Socks, underwear, and bra were al
so in the bag. Whoever had been sent shopping had been thorough. I took everything into the bathroom.
When I came out clean and dressed, I found Zach dressed and looking mouthwatering in the sitting room. He held his hand out to mine and crooked a smile at me. “Ready?”
“Ready.” I squared my shoulders, placed my hand in his, and we went down together to face the pack. David joined us in the hall.
“Everybody’s in the library,” he said.
“Is our guest here yet?” Zach asked him.
“Here and secure.”
“How do we do this?” I asked them both.
“We stand with you, and you declare your choice.”
I took a deep breath. “Then what?”
“Then they either stand with us or they stand against us,” Zach stated in an even tone.
Crap. My stomach knotted. “Does anybody already know besides Jack?”
David shook his head. “We’ve been upstairs, but it’s understandable that I’d stay close to you during a crisis. The general assumption we all made last night was that you’d made your choice and it was only a matter of formality to acknowledge Zach.”
“Zach plus one,” I said brightly, trying to stay positive. “Almost what they’re expecting.”
We filed into the library, David first, maybe to make sure it was safe for us to follow, then me, then Zach.
It looked different from the militant atmosphere of this morning in some subtle way. Maybe because the readied weapons were now being kept out of sight.
The pack waited in various positions around the room with serious faces. I tried to get a feel for the mood of the moment. Not the carnal atmosphere of yesterday, when they’d all welcomed me as potential mates in openly sexual competition, and more sober than the celebratory tone at dinner before we’d all changed together and gone out to sing to the moon.
That party had gotten crashed in a big way, and I felt a twinge of regret for that. My first full moon with the pack, and we hadn’t spent it running and hunting together. We’d spent it defending our turf.
I took my position by the fireplace, and Zach and David moved to stand a little behind me to my left and right.
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