She looked out through the window, her eyes burning with unshed tears. It was just her luck to find that the only two men who wanted her were human and would eventually end up fighting over her. She couldn’t take that. Not again.
“You’ve been where and done what already?” Corbin asked as he reached to grasp her hand again. “Believe me when I tell you that we are nothing like the men here. We can guarantee you that once you have our commitment, you’ll have it forever.”
“Commitment?” Gabby laughed. “We just met and you’re talking about commitments.”
“We move fast in the Cascade.” Vincent picked up her other hand and pressed a kiss into her palm.
“Okay, you two, if you can’t behave yourselves, you’re going to have to leave. I can’t have you molesting the customers in front of the windows. This is a family restaurant,” Sarah said as she set three glasses of water in front of them.
She winked at Gabby. “If it’ll make it easier on you, I don’t know them, but I can tell you they’re shifters. They’re just pussyfooting around the subject because they didn’t want you to think they were lunatics.” She glanced down at the forgotten menus. “I’ll just bring you all a round of cheeseburgers and you can use your time to get to know each other.” Reaching down, she grabbed the menus and tossed them to the booth behind Gabby. “Talk, eat, and then go find a room,” she said as she turned and headed for the kitchen. “I’m getting too old for this crap.”
Chapter Four
“You’re shifters?”
“You know about shifters?” They all said at the same time.
Gabby nodded. “Two shifters saved my life. They both climbed the tree my plane crashed into and pulled myself and two other women out of it before it caught fire.” She shuddered. “I hope everyone else on board was already dead. I can’t imagine burning to death.”
“If they didn’t pull them out, I’m sure they were. We shifters can move fast when we want,” Vince said. He stared down at her hand that looked so tiny in his own. “I believe we all mate for life, as well. That’s one thing that we all do not have in common with most of our animal brethren. Some mate when the urge strikes. We aren’t like that.”
“I—I know.” She blushed prettily and looked away. “That’s why I wanted a shifter mate.” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue.
The action shot sensation all the way down to his crotch and his cock stirred to life.
It was good to know that the damned thing still worked. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a hard-on. He’d grown so tired of meaningless sex that he hadn’t been able to get it up for at least forty years, though he suspected it was more.
Giving up sex wasn’t something he’d planned to do. It just happened. One day, a human woman threw herself at him and he was quite shocked to find that he wasn’t interested. Then, it dawned on him that he hadn’t been interested in a very long time.
“What about shifter mates, as in plural?” Corbin asked. Leave it to him to get right to the point. They had to know. Now that they had found Paradise, they needed to go back to the Cascade and report to the council. There was no great hurry. It wasn’t as though anyone would punish them for taking their time. After all, Corbin was the heir to the throne, as it were.
To his relief, Gabby smiled. “I’d really hoped for two.” Her cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink. “I’ve known for a long time that I wanted two men. I just didn’t know there was a town where it was acceptable.”
“It’s acceptable in at least two towns.” Corbin grinned. “Most of our families have two or three males. There are a few that have even more.”
Vince chuckled when her eyes went wide.
* * * *
“I’m not sure I could handle more than two, but I’d be willing to give it a shot.” She grinned when they both growled. “I can’t believe this.” She really couldn’t believe it. This was a dream come true. Her very own shifter males and they wanted her. “Are you saying that I’m your mate?”
Gabby had almost been too afraid to ask the question. She couldn’t do this again if it didn’t mean she would get a happily ever after. She wanted that more than anything else. She could even throw her morals to the winds and mate with them today if they promised to mate her.
Any other time, she might have thought that just a bit mercenary, but not with these two. She’d met several of the mated pairs and most of the women told her that the men knew they were mates the moment they met. Their love grew after the fact. Gabby knew she could live with that. As long as she knew beyond a reasonable doubt that she would eventually fall in love with them, she could surrender herself before the feelings. Hell, the attraction was there. Some women didn’t need any more than that.
“Yes, Gabby. You are our mate,” Corbin said with a smile. “You are our very much anticipated, long-awaited and soon-to-be-treasured mate.”
“Here you go,” Sarah said as she set their plates down in front of them. “I’ll be right back with a few colas unless you would like something else.” She wiped the palms of her hands on her apron and glanced at them expectantly.
The men shook their heads. “Cola is fine,” they said at once.”
“I’d like an unsweetened iced tea, if you don’t mind.”
“One unsweetened tea and two colas coming right up,” she said as she turned and hurried away. “You three enjoy your lunch. I’ll be right back.”
“Unsweetened, huh?” Corbin asked as he eyed her thoughtfully. “That’s probably a good choice. You smell sweet enough already and neither of us need a toothache.” He grinned and winked at her.” Leaning forward he asked, “Shall we find a hotel after lunch?”
“The Paradise lodge is right up the road. You two can go get a room while I run an errand. I have someone expecting me. I wouldn’t go, but we need to talk,” she lied. What she really wanted to do was talk to the sheriff, Merrick Hunter. He needed to know that there were two unknown shifters in town and she needed to know that she would be safe with them. While she wanted her shifter males more than anything, Gabby wasn’t eager or stupid enough to go to a hotel room alone with them when no one even knew who they were.
“I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour. Just tell the desk to give me your room number when I get there.” She hoped Merrick could get the information on them in an hour. It shouldn’t take him too long once he had the name and driver’s license number of the man who rented the room.
The men agreed, but they ate in silence after that. Gabby wondered if perhaps she had upset them or if they really weren’t what they seemed and were plotting to kidnap her even now.
Nervous, Gabby pushed her food around her plate. She ate little and wanted less. She couldn’t wait for them to let her out of the booth. She would go to Sarah for help if she must. She knew the older woman and the cook would help her if she needed it.
“Have you changed your mind?”
Not on your life, buddy. If you’re who and what you say you are, I’ll be there. Take my word for it.
“Of course not.” She smiled to ease some of the tension she could feel building between them. “I’ll be there with bells on, just as soon as I make sure that everything is as it should be with my friend.” She wasn’t about to tell them that the friend she planned to visit was a lawman. Gabby might be a lot of things, including loose with her favors, but she had never been careless or stupid.
They finished their meal in continued silence and the men escorted her out. They stopped her next to a huge SUV and, for a moment, Gabby feared they planned to pick her up, dump her in the truck and leave. Instead, Corbin cupped her cheeks and stared down into her eyes. “Come back to us, beautiful. We’ll make it worth your while, I promise.” He kissed each of her eyelids. “Just to prove to you that we are who and what we say we are, each of us is going to kiss you and initiate the mating heat. Once you begin to feel it, there will be no doubt in your mind that we belong together.”
; Slowly, he tilted her head back and gently pressed his lips against hers. Gabby’s world tilted and her head spun. He swallowed her gasp of pleasure as he thrust his tongue into her mouth. He tasted of the mints Sarah gave them after lunch.
Reaching up, she thrust her fingers through his hair with one hand and cupped his cheek with the other as he pulled her tighter into his embrace. His cock hardened, lengthening against her as he continued to stroke her tongue with his.
Slick cream seeped from her channel, making her panties damp. Her stomach flip-flopped as he arched into her, pressing his cock against her mound with a groan.
Slowly, Corbin ended their kiss and set her down. It was a surprise to find that he had lifted her off the ground.
“Come back to us. Now that we’ve kissed, you’ll hunger for me if you don’t.”
“I know,” Gabby said as Vincent pulled her toward him. “I know.” Gabby stared up into Vincent’s sapphire gaze as he wrapped her in his arms. She could feel his erection pressing against her. She marveled that these men could get aroused as they watched their women with their best friends. She couldn’t do it. Gabby knew from experience that she didn’t play well with other women. She didn’t like to share.
“Yes, Gabriella. Come back to us, or we’ll all suffer from the mating heat.” He stared down into her eyes, his expression solemn. “You do know what happens when we ignore the heat, don’t you?”
“I know.” She nodded. “I hear it’s not pretty. Eventually, we will seek each other out and come together with violence.” There was no way she wanted that. Either way, that would be a no-win situation for her. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
And she had no intention of breaking that promise if they were who they said they were, and now, she supposed she would know as soon as the mating heat set in—if it set in.
Vincent lowered his mouth to hers. As heated as Corbin’s kiss had been, Vincent’s was just as gentle. His lips brushed against hers as soft as butterfly wings. Tilting her head back, he gently coaxed her mouth open, his tongue slipping between her lips to tangle with hers.
His hands cupped her rear, pressing her against his thick erection and they both groaned. For a moment, Gabby was tempted to throw caution to the wind and skip her talk with the sheriff—but only for a moment.
They were both panting when Vincent set her on her feet. He held her shoulders for a bit, until she gathered her bearings and stopped swaying back and forth.
“Go now,” Vincent said against her lips. “Before we can’t bear to let you go.” He sighed as he set her from him. “We are much older than most other shifters we have met. As you may or may not know, the heat is much stronger in older shifters.” He stared at her as though trying to convey his meaning. “We are much older than we look. Every minute away from us will cause us pain. Soon it will cause you pain. Please keep that in mind if you decide to run.”
“Really, you two, I do not plan to run.” I only plan to talk to the sheriff so he will know who to hunt down and kill if someone finds my mutilated body in a ditch.
“That won’t happen, sweetheart. We can’t harm you. You are our life.”
“Wait just a damned minute here. Did you just read my mind?”
Holy crap! No one told me about that!
Chapter Five
Corbin watched as the color drained from his mate’s face. “There’s nothing to be alarmed about, sweetheart. A mental link is a normal and intimate thing.”
“Can anyone else read my mind, or only you two?” she asked as she bent over, rested her hands on her knees and took several deep breaths.
“Just the two of us can read your mind. We couldn’t until we kissed you, though. We needed the beginning of the mating link to do so.”
“Oh.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “So that’s why you both kissed me. You wanted to see if I was lying to you.”
“We knew you were lying to us. To a shifter, lying has a smell. To you—“
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Us lowly humans can’t smell anything with this tiny bulb in the middle of our faces.”
“I wasn’t about to say that.”
“Then what were you about to say?”
“I was just going to say that it has no scent to humans. It’s not because you’re inferior. It’s because we have all evolved differently. Humans evolved to use their brains, eyes, ears and strength more than their sense of smell. According to our scientists, even your sense of taste is less pronounced.”
“Great, so we’re inferior all the way around.” She shot him a thumbs-up. “Thanks for telling me. I don’t think I could have lived another moment ignorant of that fact.”
“Your sarcasm is misplaced. You do not have to don it and wear it like a cloak that protects you from injury. I merely wanted to convey the fact that we shifters are different. Not only did our brains evolve, but we somehow were able to keep the good parts of the previous evolution. Our animal sides need the sense of smell and the superior hearing for the hunt.”
“Yeah, whatever.” She waved her arm. “I’m not really offended. I’ve seen the men here act the same way. The only thing that I don’t understand is how it works to change a human into one of you.”
She bit her lip and his stomach clenched. Gods he wanted her. He wanted to feel those lips and that delicate pink tongue all over his body, and damn it all, he wanted to map her body with his own tongue. In fact, his mouth practically watered to taste her. He couldn’t wait to push her down on a bed, any bed, and ravage the succulent pink flesh of her pussy with his lips and tongue.
“Hurry back, love,” he said as he cupped her cheek and ran the pad of his thumb over her full bottom lip. “I’m not sure how long we can wait.”
They both watched her walk down the sidewalk, climb onto a bike and ride away. His beast roared with anger that he’d let her go. Fisting his hands at his sides, he opened the door to the SUV. “Let’s go get that damned room and pray that she doesn’t run.”
The heat already seared Corbin’s insides. It moved slowly through his blood, burning him from the inside out. It was a silent, insidious thing that he knew would only get worse as the day or days wore on. He’d seen men lose their minds because of the heat. He didn’t want to be one of those men.
“We need to go get our room and then seek out the enforcers of this town. Something tells me that our mate is thinking of leading us on a merry chase and we’ll need to insure that we don’t go mad and harm her or someone else.”
“You’re right.” When Vince climbed in next to him, he inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine. “We can’t risk going feral. We could kill her or someone else. No one has seen the likes of us in a very long time. We need to keep it that way.”
Both of them became Caspian tigers when they shifted. As far as anyone knew, their animal species had gone extinct roughly fifty years ago. Since it should be impossible for them to exist, it was imperative for them to keep their heads.
Even the shifter community thought them extinct, and Vincent didn’t know if their council wanted others told that they were alive and well living in the northwest. After all, they had already seen their full animal counterparts hunted to extinction. No one wanted to see that happen to their clan.
Unlike their full animal counterparts, his people enjoyed living in close-knit communities. Never having been fond of the human penchant to call a group of tigers a streak or ambush, they called their small community a clan. It was what they were. A clan of people doing what they must to survive.
Usually, they lived in their small town, keeping to themselves. Occasionally, though, they would retreat to the Cascade, where they could shift and hunt without worry of discovery.
The Cascade was a space within a space, not unlike Paradise. The only difference was that humans managed to stumble into Paradise, some of them finding their mates. Not so with the Cascade. One must have permission to enter and even then, a shaman from their clan must op
en the gate. The trip through the gate felt as though one fell through a waterfall into the community that housed those who could never live in the ordinary human dimension.
Some of those destined to live out their lives in the Cascade had been damaged during the great hunt in Mother Russia. The humans hunted the Caspian tiger to extinction, and if grievously injured during a shift, such as losing a body part, the individual was left with the inability to shift back into their full human form. Some of the elders were stuck mid-shift and consigned to forever living in the Cascade with no hope of ever finding a mate. Unlike other shifters who could shift willy-nilly, their species couldn’t shift under duress.
Vincent glanced at Corbin. “Where to? Do we get a room first, or talk to the sheriff?”
“I think we can get the room. The sheriff can wait. I doubt that we’ll go feral in the thirty minutes or so it will take us to rent a room at the local inn.”
“You have a point,” Vincent said with a chuckle. “I was just deferring to your good judgment.”
“Right.” Corbin shifted into reverse and backed out of the spot. “Now where did she say that inn was located?”
Chapter Six
Gabby entered the police station and smiled at the decorations. A family of goofy-looking moose dressed in Halloween costumes dressed the far corner while electric Jack-O-Lanterns decorated the floor next to the sheriff’s desk. Black and orange streamers crisscrossed the ceiling and spider webs covered the window behind him. It seemed as though the sheriff’s wife had been here asserting her wifely rights upon his office. She knocked on the open door.
Merrick sat behind his desk frowning at a stack of papers in front of him. She could see why Gemma was so enamored of her two husbands. What wasn’t there to like about tall, dark, and handsome? “Can I talk to you for a minute, Sheriff?”
Halloween In Paradise Page 2
