by R. E. Butler
“Bastard,” Dom said.
“Did your parents know it would happen?” Henry asked, tipping her chin until she looked at him.
“Yes. They saw me after it happened, but all they did was watch me leave. They didn’t let me back into the house, they just packed two trash bags with my things. The scar was bad enough, but their completely loveless behavior made it so much worse.”
He stroked his thumb over the fading marks. “Baby, I’m sorry that happened. I’m not sorry that we found you, but we both wish you’d had an easier road here.”
“If things were easy for me with the nest, I probably wouldn’t be here.” She gave him a watery smile and brushed at her wet cheeks with her fingertips. “I’m not sorry I found you two.”
Dom pushed her hair off her shoulder to expose her neck and kissed it. “Ehrin.”
“Yeah?”
Dom wrapped his arms around her waist and moved slowly, not stopping until his back was against the wall. “Be my mate.”
He kissed her again, and she shivered with a husky purr. “Yes.”
Henry joined them, lifting her hands and kissing her palms. “Be my mate, Ehrin. Beautiful hawk, gorgeous female.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes were glittering with interest, the sadness chased away by the arousal that bloomed between them.
Dom curled his hands in the hem of her top and lifted it slowly, baring her stomach. “Tell me to stop, sweetheart. If you don’t, Henry and I are going to mate and mark you right now. Make you ours forever.”
Henry couldn’t stop the purr that rumbled in his chest. He’d never wanted any female more than he wanted Ehrin. All the romantic advice he’d been given by pride members pushed into his subconscious and he grinned, glad he’d listened.
Her eyes shuttered closed and she let out a soft groan as Dom sucked on her neck. She opened her eyes slowly and met Henry’s gaze, then reached for him, hooking her hand behind his neck.
“I want to save the talking for later,” she said.
Henry wanted to kiss her, so he cupped her face and lowered his head. He brushed his lips across hers and then traced the seam with his tongue, his cat howling in his head when she opened willingly to him. Their tongues touched, and awareness snapped through him. The connection he’d felt immediately with her as his mate was growing stronger. He didn’t know it would feel like this, as if they were made for each other. As if he’d been missing a part of his body but hadn’t been aware of the absence until she filled it.
Deepening the kiss, he played his tongue against hers, smiling inwardly as she writhed against him from whatever Dom was doing. He nibbled on her bottom lip with a groan and ended the kiss, surprised to see her shirt and bra up above her breasts, her nipples tight from Dom’s attention.
“Henry,” she whispered, her lips swollen from their kiss and her eyes bright with passion.
He smiled and lowered his head, kissing both nipples and then giving each a gentle tug between his teeth. He glanced up to see her and Dom kissing, and he lowered himself to the floor, trailing kisses down her stomach before hooking his fingers in the waistband of her jeans, undoing the button, and lowering the zipper.
“Ah,” she said as he started to tug the jeans down her hips. She broke the kiss and cupped the back of Henry’s head. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Done what?” Dom asked.
“Two guys at the same time. I don’t…it wasn’t anything that I’ve ever experienced.”
Henry leaned forward and kissed her navel, then sat back on his heels. “I’m a virgin. I wanted to save myself for my mate, and that’s you. So I haven’t done any of this before.”
“That’s so sweet,” she said. “I haven’t been with many guys, and it’s been a long time for me since I had sex, but I wasn’t sure how this would go between us.”
Dom said, “I’m not a virgin, but once Henry and I realized we would share a mate, I became celibate. As far as what happens between us tonight, and in the future, the males in the pride who share a mate told me that when they make love as a threesome, one male takes her pussy and the other her mouth or hands, depending on the position.”
Henry picked up her foot and pulled off her boot, tossing it behind him, then pulled off her sock and set her foot on the floor before doing the same with her other foot. Settling his hands on the backs of her calves, he smiled up at her. “Whatever happens, however things happen between us, it’ll be perfect.”
“Because we’re mates?” she murmured.
“Yes.”
She whispered his name with an encouraging smile, and he tugged her jeans and panties down her legs. She rested a hand on his shoulder for support, while he pushed her clothes to the side, his gaze riveted on her bare pussy. He leaned forward, dragging his tongue over her mound before pushing deeper to touch her clit. Spreading her lips, he kissed her clit, then licked a slow circle around it.
Running his finger up and down her lips, coating the tip with her arousal, he slid deeper with each pass, dipping his finger into her a little bit more each time. Her hips began to move with his finger, meeting him. There was movement above him, and he glanced up to see Dom removing her shirt and bra so she was entirely naked between them.
He thought his cock would explode right then. He’d never been more turned on in his life, but he wanted to make her come. He wanted to know what she tasted like, what she sounded like when she fell apart.
He added a second finger, her tight walls squeezing him. She clutched the back of his head and fisted his hair, tilting her pelvis. Taking the unspoken encouragement, he sucked on her clit, flicking the tip with his tongue as he fingered her. She panted and moaned as he pushed his fingers into her harder and faster. He watched her, their gazes clashing as she trembled in Dom’s arms. She threw her head back with a loud moan, her pussy clutching his fingers.
Dom growled softly and slid from behind her, grabbing his shirt and drawing it over his head. Henry stood, his legs shaky from how turned on he was, and picked Ehrin up. He carried her to the bed and laid her down, cupping her face for a kiss.
“You’re so beautiful.”
“That felt amazing.” She slid her hands in his hair and wiggled under him, their bodies brushing with the motion. “I want more. I want everything.”
Henry stood and undressed, anxious to mate with her. He glanced at Dom, who was already naked and on the bed with her, kissing her and sliding his fingers into her wet heat. Dom brought his fingers to his lips and licked her glossy arousal. “You taste as delicious as you smell, sweetheart, like sugar and sunshine.” Then he moved up the bed and crooked his finger at her. “Come put your mouth on me, sweetheart. I want your lips on my cock.”
She rolled to her knees and kissed Henry. “Will you mark me now?”
“We’ll make you happy first,” he promised.
“I’m already happy,” she said. “But if you can top that, I’m game.”
Turning to face Dom, she straddled his legs and lowered her head to take him into her mouth. His eyes closed with a happy purr. “You better go fast, man. I’m not going to last long, and I want to take our little bird’s pussy next.”
Henry grasped his cock, silently ordering it to hold on for as long as possible so that this first, precious time with their mate wasn’t over too fast. But the moment he put the head of his cock against her slick entrance, he knew he was a goner. She was too hot, too tight, too perfect. He ground his teeth together as he pushed all the way into her until their bodies were wed. Gripping her hips, he pulled out of her slowly, groaning at how good she felt around him.
Sliding back in, he looked up at the ceiling, called on his cat for strength, and began to move. He set up a fast rhythm, in and out of her perfect heat until the pressure that tingled at the base of his spine threatened to blow.
With the first strike of his climax, he shouted her name, fucking her hard and fast until he’d lost himself in her entirely, every jolt of pleasure that poured throu
gh him a testament to how happy he was to have found his mate. He was vaguely aware when Dom came because he barely contained his own roar of happiness.
Henry slid his hands up Ehrin’s sides and around to her chest, slowly lifting her to her knees. He gathered her hair in one hand and bared her neck as Dom rose to his knees and joined them. That time, it was Dom’s fingers that worked her to a second orgasm, and when she cried out both of their names, they struck, sinking their fangs into either side of her neck. She made only a soft mewling sound when they bit her, and as Henry nicked his tongue with his fangs and swiped the blood into the wounds to bind them forever, he knew this was the first night of their new life together. Whatever plans he’d had for the future before, now Ehrin was the center of his world. Together, he and Dom would spend the rest of their lives making sure she was the happiest female on the planet, and that she never suffered the pains of losing her family as she had before.
She wasn’t flawed. She was perfect.
And he was never going to let her go.
Chapter 6
After he and Henry had marked her, Dom was able to make love to her properly, and it was hands down the best experience of his life. Nothing had ever felt as good to him as her, and he was quickly becoming addicted. They’d all passed out after their second round, her between him and Henry, the sweet scent of her arousal like a fine perfume in the air.
He and Henry had woken up around the same time, but neither had been willing to wake her, especially when she’d been through such trauma with her hawk nest.
Dom didn’t really think it was possible to fall in love immediately. Being an artist, he did have some romantic bends to his personality, but in general he thought that love at first sight was more a fantasy than anything. He knew when he met his mate that he’d feel protective of her and care for her immediately, but he hadn’t expected to mate and mark her, and feel like she was already in his heart, already a part of him that he never wanted to let go.
He’d felt the first bloom of love, and it was sweet. He knew as time went on he’d come to truly love her, but the start of that had already happened. The connection he felt to her was immediate and deep, and mating her with Henry had strengthened their bond as brothers, too.
Ehrin stirred between them, and Dom turned to his side to face her. She covered her mouth as she yawned, blinking her beautiful green eyes at him.
“Morning,” she said as she rolled to her back and stretched. She punctuated her greeting with a squeaking sound.
“Morning, sweetheart,” Dom said.
“Did you sleep well?” Henry asked.
She smiled. “Yeah. It was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in ages. I don’t even remember anything after we made love the second time. I must’ve passed out.”
“Me, too,” Henry said. “I think part of your exhaustion was from shifting. It’s new to your body, and it’s stressful and energy-draining.”
“And also you guys sexed me into a coma,” she said.
“There’s that, too.” Henry chuckled as he climbed out of bed, picked his pants up off the floor, and tugged them on. “I’m going to see about breakfast. Anything in particular you like, baby?”
“Coffee. Like a gallon of it. Do you want us to get dressed and come down?”
“Nah, I’ll bring it up.”
He left the room and she rolled to her side to face Dom. “Yesterday you said your mom is mated to Henry’s dad and uncle.”
“Right.”
“Where’s your dad?”
Dom mentally stifled the snarl that wanted to rip through him whenever he thought about his biological father, or any panther in his mother’s former clan.
He grabbed a pillow and propped himself up against the headboard. Scrubbing a hand over his hair, he said, “You might have noticed that mine and my mom’s hair is white.”
“I did.”
“So the reason for the hair, is because there’s an…I don’t want to say defective gene, because it’s not. It’s just a fluke with our DNA. We’re black panthers. The first time my mom shifted when she was a teenager, her panther was an albino. Her clan was very old-fashioned, run by a psychopath alpha, and when they saw her white cat, they freaked out and chained her up. When she changed back into her human form a few hours later, her hair was pure white. The clan said the white cat meant she was evil, and they branded a huge mark into her back with hot irons. It spans her shoulder blades, and to the average person it doesn’t mean anything, but to panthers, it means she’s evil and was banished. And it also meant she wasn’t allowed to ever have offspring. If she had a child and any clan found out, they could kill her and the child on sight.”
“Because her hair turned white? But she couldn’t control that.”
“They’re backward-thinking people. Not all clans are like that, of course. Some of them are decent and wouldn’t have kicked Mom out for her white fur. But her clan did, and she was left to fend for herself. A little while after she was on her own, she ran into some panthers from another clan. She had sex with one of the guys, and at some point in the night, he saw her brand and nearly beat her to death. She survived and discovered that she was pregnant.”
Ehrin took his hand and lifted it to her cheek, kissing his palm and blinking glistening eyes at him. “She must have been so scared.”
Her sweet concern touched his heart.
“She was, but my mom’s a fighter. She legally changed her name and had me, and we moved a lot, trying to stay away from any panthers. They’re nomadic by nature, so they travel with their clans and move around from town to town throughout the year. She always wore wigs and perfume to disguise her scent. When I shifted as a teenager, my cat was an albino and my hair turned white, too. We never shifted outside, always in the house.”
He chuckled, thinking about the early times when he’d learned how to control his shift, his mom yelling at him not to claw the couch or knock the lamp over with his tail.
“We came here because the sons of one of her cousins were mating a mountain lion female, and I encouraged her to come here and just watch from a distance. Her clan was there, and somehow they realized she was there and watching.”
They’d shown up at the hotel, breaking down the door and tying Dom up. He’d nearly been whipped to death by the psycho leader, and if it weren’t for Henry and their connection as brothers, he would’ve died for sure.
Dom kissed Ehrin gently and brushed the tears from her cheeks.
“It was so terrible what happened to you,” she murmured. “I hope that alpha panther rots in Hell.”
“I’m not sorry he’s dead,” Dom said, “and the clan has a new leader, but they’re nomadic and don’t come around Ashland in their travels. I don’t think we’ll ever see them again, which is fine with me. My grandparents were instrumental in nearly killing me. They wanted my mom punished for breaking the law. They were embarrassed by her white fur and hair, as if it somehow made them less important in the eyes of their clan.”
“I’d say that’s crazy, but it’s exactly how my parents acted with me.”
The door opened and Henry walked in, balancing a tray on one hand. “I heard crying. Is everything okay?”
Dom nodded. “I was just telling our mate about mine and my mom’s white fur and hair.”
“That is a sad story, but it’s got a happy ending,” Henry said, setting the tray on the dresser. “My dad and uncle thought they’d be alone forever, and I didn’t have a brother or cousin to share a mate with. Now how do you take your coffee, baby?”
“Sugar and milk,” she said.
“We’re out of the caramel creamer, so I brought regular milk,” Henry told Dom.
“Damn, I like that stuff.”
“Yeah, so do about ten other people in this house.”
Henry handed coffee to Ehrin and Dom, then brought over the tray holding a large oval platter filled with several wedges of breakfast casserole, sausage links, a bowl of cut fruit, and sliced banana bread.
/> “You made all this when you were down there? You were only gone like ten minutes,” Ehrin said. She sat up and pulled the blanket under her arms.
“I only put the tray together, I didn’t make the casserole. There are a few people in the house who handle meals. We all kind of take turns helping out, but some of us can cook better than others.”
“Wow, that’s really cool.”
She took a few sips of coffee, then leaned back against the pillow she had rested against the headboard. “I don’t understand why some shifter groups make such a big deal about differences. I’m sure I wasn’t the only shifter who couldn’t shift. And a unique color in fur would be neat, not something to fear.”
“It would be nice if that were the case,” Dom said, “but unfortunately there are a lot of small-minded people out there, shifters and humans.”
“Do people make a fuss about mate sharing?” she asked.
“Some do,” Henry answered. “In Ashland, it’s well known that our people share mates, and most accept it without a second thought, but there are those who think there’s something wrong with us. Like we couldn’t possibly want to share a mate with another male, when for us it feels natural.”
“Do all mountain lions share?” she asked.
“Not all. My uncle Rhett has a human mate named Lisa, and he doesn’t share her. A lot of the pride members still living in Pennsylvania don’t share mates either. But our people were cursed by a goddess a long time ago. The females are poisoned by their own kind as children, and they slowly become uncaring. They won’t mate with a male except to have offspring, so for our people, the males are the nurturing ones, and the females are unwilling to have a family or a mate.”
“That seems backward,” Ehrin said. “I didn’t even know goddesses were real and could do things like that.”
“They were real at one time, anyway,” Henry said. “There’s a way around the curse, and it involves a female sharing blood with her mate or mates, but we never knew that. Our people just never mated each other. The females wouldn’t allow the males to mate outside their own kind, so everyone was just alone.”
