by Lilly Wilder
“Do not say such things about yourself, for you are our mate,” he said, at last, breaking the silence that had settled between us.
“Mate?” I repeated.
“Yes.”
The magic of the moment was broken and I took a step backward where Roman stood to catch me. “Please, Jane, remember your promise to keep an open mind.”
“Shifters mate but once in a lifetime. As such, we are destined to comb the Earth looking for our one true mate — a soulmate if you would.” As Landon spoke, he was illuminated by the moonlight. Soft shadows played across his face, accentuating his features like he was some sort of gothic statue, which I could not look away from. “And you are our soulmate, Jane.”
“Wait… did you just say ‘our’ as in the both of you?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I know it might seem strange to you and your culture but shifters survive on the rule of three. Things in nature are more desirable when they come in threes.”
“I… How…” I shook my head. “How the hell does that work?”
“Use your imagination,” Roman said with a wink. “And you’ll probably be on the right track.”
“I don’t… I don’t really understand.”
“Simply put, shifters need three to tango,” Roman clarified. “Two is enough to dance but it never results in children. Three ensures that the trio can start a family.”
“So, if we wanted to start a family together then we would need to sleep together? All three of us?” While it was an odd thought, it wasn’t actually a bad one. Just thinking about enjoying both men at once had me all riled up. I had no doubt in my mind that they would take me through one hell of a rodeo and with both of them going at it, at the same time, it would be double the fun.
“Yes.” Landon’s voice pulled me from my fantasies. “And with our pack decimated and shifter numbers dwindling each and every year, it is becoming critical that shifters find their mates.”
“So, the fate of your species rests on my shoulders?”
“No pressure,” said Roman. I couldn’t tell whether he was saying it to be playful or whether he actually meant it.
“Okay…” My voice wavered. “And what happens if I decide —”
“Then we live out our existence and leave you be,” said Landon. “It is as simple as that. We would never attempt to take you by force, if that is what you are implying. The female must be willing and come to us of her own accord.”
“Right.”
We had reached the river. I approached it and bent down so that I could drench my face in its cool water. I tried to make sense of my thoughts but they were so erratic that it only made me dizzy.
What am I supposed to do? I asked myself. I feel an attraction to them, yes, but is it enough to want to start a family with them?
I didn’t know.
“We aren’t asking you to make a decision at this very moment. We simply wanted you to know the truth.” Roman rested a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. When I looked up, I was surprised to see that he was completely naked.
The sight of his body, literally, knocked me off my feet. Like an idiot, I fell on my ass, mouth wide open, in an obvious gawk at his manhood. It was huge and it was hard. It bounced slightly with every step he took before it disappeared underneath the water’s depth.
He just gave me a knowing smile before he began to sweep water over his shoulders. His hands scrubbed at his skin, getting at the grime.
I was just about to spring forward and alleviate him of those duties, when Landon came into my line of sight. He too was naked and the pair of them just worked to take my breath away. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t look away.
“Seems like Jane is liking the view,” Roman said to his companion. “Do you think she’d be willing to join us?” He spoke as if I wasn’t there to hear him. “Because I think we would both, really, enjoy her company.”
Before I realized what I was doing, I had taken off my dress. It was now in a crumpled pile by my feet. Since it didn’t require me to wear a bra, I stood there with nothing but my panties. Of course, they happened to be the skimpiest pair that I owned. The little triangle of fabric did very little to cover my mound.
The boys stared at me with hunger in their eyes, like they were about ready to sink their teeth into me. And frankly, I wanted them to. I had been alone for way too long and it was about time I changed that. Maybe this was crazy but I didn’t care, so long as the end result was happiness and a loving family. And I couldn’t quite explain it but deep down I understood that this was exactly what these men would give me. All I had to do was trust in their crazy world and everything that it had to offer me.
This is a bad idea, came that seedling of doubt but I silenced it by hooking my thumbs into the elastic of my thong and shimmying it down my hips.
Their eyes were glued to my body, like it was the only thing that they could see. It invigorated me to know that I could have so much influence over such powerful men.
Feeling like I owned the world, I sauntered forward, hips swinging from side to side as I entered the water. Since I was much shorter, my breasts grazed the top of the water, floating there. Since the river was on the chillier side, my nipples had already become rock hard. Any harder and I’d be able to cut through diamond with them.
“Now, what were you saying?” I asked, my voice a sensual whisper. I laid my hands on Roman’s rock hard chest and grinned up at him. Never before had I acted this way. My sex drive was in overdrive and there was nothing I could do to slow it down. “Something about ‘company,’ was it?” As I spoke, I slid my hand down the length of his body and found his cock. I wrapped my fingers around his girth and gave it a good squeeze so I could hear him groan. “What’s the matter, Roman?” I batted my eyelashes, like I was the most innocent woman in the world.
Lust gnawed at my insides. I wanted this and I wanted it bad. Maybe these guys would end up causing me trouble and heartache, but life isn’t without its risks and I was finally ready to live a little. Fuck the past. Fuck every prick that ever damaged me. Fuck the fear of letting someone in. Fuck it all.
All that mattered was the here and now, and as far as I was concerned, I had a couple of hotties to satisfy.
Time to quench this fire.
Let’s just hope they are ready to take the heat.
Chapter 14: Jane
His cock pulsated in my hand and became even harder, filling my hand with a huge chunk of meat.
I ran my thumb along his engorged tip, just to see the look of satisfaction written all over his face. To say that he was enjoying himself would be the understatement of the year.
“Mmm, what are you doing, Jane?” he asked, in a low growl.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m having myself a bit of fun.” I punctuated my words with a squeeze.
I was about to kiss him when Landon came up behind me and took both my breasts into his hands. His fingers immediately found my nipples. He twisted them until I was forced to rise onto my tippy toes. A moan was on the very edge of my lips but he stopped before it could ever emerge. As I settled back down, his hot breath was against the side of my neck. My heart raced like it was gunning to win the Kentucky Derby.
“You should be careful,” he whispered, as his teeth grazed my skin. “Because once you tempt a wolf, it becomes a point of no return.”
I shivered. A point of no return, I thought to myself, wondering what it truly meant. Was I ready to live out my life with a couple of shifters or was I about to make the biggest mistake of my life?
“If you give yourself up to us…”
I could no longer hear a word he said because Roman had bent down to take one of my breasts into his mouth. It sent a flair of electricity through every single fiber of my body. I felt truly alive for the first time in my life. My heart threatened to collapse and my brain turned to mush. How could one single act get me so riled up? Lust boiled in my blood. Landon was r
ight. There was no turning back now.
“I want this,” I said, my voice firm and confident. “I will admit that it doesn’t make very much sense, logically, but in my heart, I know that I am doing the right thing. We were all made for each other and now I want to know what that chemistry can do for us.”
Roman grinned, like he was some sort of madman. “I like the way you think.” All of a sudden, he scooped me up and out of the water.
Naturally, my legs wrapped themselves around his waist, ankles locking behind his back. I wasn’t about to let him get away for all the gold in the world.
He tangled his fingers into my hair and pulled on it, to bring me in to the kiss. And let me tell you — it was the best damned kiss of my life. It melted through to my very soul and had me floating straight up to a cloud. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, he added his tongue to the mix. It explored every inch of my mouth, dominating the space.
I forgot about the whole world around me. Nothing mattered other than the connection I now shared with Roman. That is, until Landon added his fingers into the mix. They started at my shoulder blades and slowly crept up to my shoulders. There, they danced their way to my collarbone. Their progress was slow and meticulous but eventually, they arrived at my stomach.
He lingered there, teasing me with what I really wanted. He edged closer and closer to my mound but never seemed to get there.
I broke off from my kiss with Roman just to beg him to do something but before I could open my mouth, he had already done exactly as I had wanted, almost like he could read my mind or something.
His fingers found my clit. Gently, it rolled between his thumb and pointer finger. I pressed my hips forward as if that would add to the pleasure I already felt. He answered my body’s need for more by pressing a finger into my eager hole. I hadn’t quite realized how wet I had become until he slipped that finger inside of me. He was met with absolutely no resistance.
“Looks like someone’s good and excited,” said Roman.
“I…”
Suddenly, he added another finger into my pussy and together they pumped in and out of me like a goddamn piston. Landon stepped forward and sandwiched me between his chest and Roman’s.
I shook like a leaf, because fuck, I’ve never felt anything quite like this before and I had a feeling that this was just the tip of the iceberg. There was much more to go before the night was over.
Roman pulled my hair until I was forced to tilt my head back and look up at the nighttime sky. In all my excitement, I had almost forgotten that we were out in the open. What would have happened if someone stumbled upon us?
Actually, fuck it, I didn’t care. This was way too fucking good to worry about something like that.
So, I pushed aside any trepidation and gave myself up to the pleasure of the moment. I loved everything about it but most of all, I loved how these two guys could make me feel like the only girl in the world. It wasn’t just in what they did to me but in the way they looked at me too. It was like I was the only thing they could see. The world could have fallen apart all around us and we would have continued our lovemaking because that’s exactly what it was — love.
Not the typical textbook romance that builds over the years but, instead, this was the classic fairytale story, where love is like a spark — spontaneous and the start to a great burning fire.
Roman dug his fingers into my ass, spreading my cheeks apart. As he did so, my breath hitched inside the back of my throat because it was then that I realized the implications of our threesome relationship. One of these men would be using the back door and I wasn’t exactly sure whether I was ready for that.
His finger found its way to my puckered hole. As soon as he applied pressure, I became incredibly tense.
“Shh, we’ll take it nice and slow, I promise. You have nothing to be worried about. Landon and I are going to take really good care of you.”
As I looked into Roman’s eyes, I knew that he was telling the truth. His eyes were clear and honest. This was someone I could trust and I wasn’t about to let that go.
“I know,” I whispered in response, as I was carried back towards the bunker. All of our clothing had been left behind at the river so up ahead, Landon was completely naked, as he chose a path for us to follow. He seemed totally comfortable in his own skin, like he was accustomed to this sort of thing and maybe he was.
He opened the door and ushered us inside. Towards the back was a bend that I hadn’t noticed earlier. It revealed another part of the hideout. It was a maze of different bedrooms. “Wow…” I muttered more to myself than to anyone else. “How many people can this place accommodate?”
“Two hundred or so — the general population of our pack before the massacre,” answered Landon. “Many of our men and women spent years building this place so that we’d have a safe place to go in the case of an emergency but a fat lot of good it did us.”
The mood darkened. I could feel the heaviness of the air settle onto my shoulders.
All these empty rooms…
They all represented a loss that I would never fully understand.
“I’m sorry…” Was all that I could say.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Roman spoke up, for the first time in a while.
“If there is anything I can do —”
The two men looked at each other with such fierceness that I stopped mid-sentence. They seemed to be communicating with one another but I couldn’t hear a word that they said.
We reached a door that seemed a little more ornate than the others. It opened with a groan, like it hadn’t been touched in a long, long time. Beyond it was a big open space, in the form of a circle. Dug into the wall were dome-like structures that appeared to function as fire pits. “This is where my bloodline would gather,” explained Landon. “Instead of having individual rooms, we wanted this communal area, so that we could all be together in our time of need.”
“Oh…” The emptiness here was real. It permeated through the space and became something tangible, like an object I could hold in my hand. Landon and Roman had lost their entire family in one fell swoop. I couldn’t even come to imagine how heartbreaking it must have been for them to go through such an ordeal.
Sure, I’ve had some shitty boyfriends in the past, who had abandoned me and left me feeling broken but it really was nothing by comparison. I had thought my life so miserable but now, I realized, I needed to count my blessings because it could have been much, much worse.
Landon had finished collecting up all the furs and gathering them into a pile. The result was a makeshift bed that looked softer than a cluster of clouds.
Roman eased me onto the soft bed of pelts and the luxury of it surpassed my expectations. “Mmm.” I fell back and melted into the softness.
When I next opened my eyes, both Roman and Landon had knelt down beside me. They took my hands and held them in theirs, like I was the most precious person in their entire universe. “You asked how you could help us,” started Landon. “And there is a way but I need you to understand the ramifications of choosing such a path. Once you choose it, you may not revoke your decision.”
Roman squeezed my hand and it garnered my attention. I looked over and found myself trapped within the depths of his eyes. “What Landon is trying to say is that you could help us by becoming our mate. You’d bring our pups into the world and help rebuild our numbers.”
“So… essentially the fate of the pack is in my hands?”
“No pressure,” Roman attempted a chuckle but it sounded strange. There was a jittery sort of nervousness in the way that he sat there, waiting for my response.
“So, how does this mating thing work exactly?”
“We form a bond and it is something that can never be broken,” said Landon. “You will, forever, be ours. And we will be, forever, yours.”
Forever. The word echoed inside my head. I had thought that happily ever after was so
mething I could only dream about but, with these men, I had a chance of actually making it happen. I just had to believe that they meant what they said.
“Oh, and there’s one more thing.” Roman rubbed the back of his neck. “And try not to freak out.”
His words only worked to make me apprehensive. What was he about to tell me?
“Spit it out,” I demanded.
“If you mate with us then you will become one of us.”
“One of you?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”
He looked over at Landon who nodded his head and in the blink of an eye, he had returned to his wolf form. He was so big that he took up most of the communal space. His head nearly brushed the ceiling.
I stared in awe at the massive creature now standing in front of me.
During the fight, I had been too caught up in the action to really admire what Landon had become. And while I knew he was a potential killing machine, I didn’t fear him, for I knew he would do nothing to harm me.
I stepped forward and reached out my hand. He responded by pressing his snout to my palm.
“Are you not afraid?” asked Roman.
“No,” I answered without a moment’s hesitation. “I am not.”
Landon howled and it shook the entire room and filled me with adrenaline. Perhaps, it was crazy of me to think that this would work but I wanted nothing less than to shed the mundanity of my old life and adopt one of glory and wonder. I wanted to become a shifter, just like them and experience the world through fresh eyes.
“I want this,” I said at last. “This is much too beautiful. I cannot let it end here, so I will do whatever it takes to help you rebuild your pack.”
“And you are sure about this?” asked Roman. “You realize that this is a life-changing decision, right?”
