“I know, my dear. It’s terrible. He’s done it to you before. That’s how I knew he planned to do it again.”
She eyed him. “You were watching us?”
“Yes. I was concerned for you.” He turned his face away. “I care a great deal for you, Ixchel. I may not be one of the B’alam, but you’ve favored me more than once in the past. I’ve treasured those lifetimes.” He faced her once again. Now his chin tipped down and his gaze became meek. “I’ve missed you.”
The words weren’t resonating with her. She sensed darkness from him. It was as if his aura was choking her in black smoke.
“Votan hasn’t learned his lesson. He still treats you as his property. He’s a brute. He’s always been. Then there’s Maximon. He was very serious with another woman before you arrived. Jerrica. He was going to ask her to marry him. Your goddess self disrupted this as a matter of whim. It wasn’t fair to him, or that poor girl.”
“It wasn’t whim.”
He tilted his head sideways and spoke gently. “I’m sorry to say it was. You’ve been alternating between Votan and Maximon for the last ten lifetimes. This time you couldn’t decide, so you bonded with them both. You’d been thinking about doing that for several lifetimes now. You finally took the plunge.”
Her face twisted in disgust. Was that really it? Was she really that petty game player Votan had described?
“It hasn’t worked out. You’ve alienated them both. The right thing to do is to break your bond with both of them.”
“Both of them?”
“Votan wants his goddess. He’ll force you to become her regardless of what you want. Maximon deserves to return to bliss he had before you disrupted his life.” He reached for her with a black gloved hand. Michelle cringed as his fingers connected to her cheek. “Bond with me. I’m here, without your mark on my spirit, and yet still—painfully—in love with you. I can help you break your bond with both of them.” His voice grew lilting. “We can have a beautiful life in my Manhattan condo. I’m just as wealthy as the two of them. And I have work for you. It’s a marketing degree, right? I can put you in the top advertising company in New York.”
Michelle strained her neck to try to get his hand off her face.
“We could have a beautiful life together. You wouldn’t have the strife of trying to reconcile two men who hate each other—who will resent you for forcing them into that situation. Votan already does. Maximon will too once he realizes you’re responsible for it all. Come away with me instead, Ixchel. I’ll treat you as my equal. We’ll thrive together.”
“This is how you treat an equal? Chaining them up?”
The corner of his red eye twitched. “I explained that.”
“I’m not going to attack you. Let me loose.”
Now his brows lowered by a tiny margin. It was enough for her to notice the cruelty in his eyes.
“Tell me your thoughts first. I’ve laid my heart bare to you. I’m aching to know your answer.”
Her gut was wrenched with her fear, but anger gave her the strength to challenge him.
“Not. Interested.”
His voice dropped an octave. “Why not?”
“Who do you think you’re kidding? You and I were never lovers. I can’t stand to be near you.”
He spun away from her to pace a short distance. “You prefer your harem? It shouldn’t surprise me. You always were a whore.”
Oh, fuck. She tried to squeeze her hands through the metal loops.
“You don’t think my dick is as good as theirs?” He strode back and yanked her top off.
“Don’t touch me!”
Her naked breasts made her face and chest redden. She struggled with every ounce of her strength.
Caquix shoved his hand into her bikini bottom. Michelle screamed. He rubbed against the hood of her sex.
“I bet I could make you come. From what I’ve seen, you’re a nymphomaniac.”
“I’ll kill you, you fucking creep!”
She couldn’t bear more than a few seconds of violation. She shifted to her jaguar form. Then it was as if she fell through the restraints and the gravel beneath her. She landed on all fours on top of her stream. Shifting to her true form had restored her power.
She stood panting and feeling sick inside.
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Chapter 11
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Votan stared at Ixchel’s sleeping jaguar form through human eyes. She hadn’t met him in her stream as they planned. The only other place she could be is Maximon’s stream. The thought put a knot in his stomach.
When she took her jaguar form she must have gotten an instinctive memory of what he’d done to her in the past. She wasn’t going to have it during this lifetime. He should have known—forcing her to accept her goddess essence was the crime that had made her leave him before.
Here he was, committing the same stupid mistakes.
Votan rubbed a hand over his face. He loved this damned cat with the whole of his heart, and yet he was too stupid to know how to keep her. He was so disgusted with her games that he was going to commit the same crime once again.
He should have been focused on keeping her. Instead he was focused on ‘winning.’
This was the attitude that kept causing him to be alone. He told himself in jungle, when he was at his darkest moment, when he thought it was better to end this life than to continue without her: if you get her again, cherish her.
Because what else does the mortal world have for him? Once he accepted his god essence the mortal world became pointless. He’d lived too many lifetimes to take joy in anything. Food was sustenance. Beautiful sights had been seen too many times for him to appreciate their majesty. Every shade of mortal life was burned in his retinas.
The new thing this lifetime was the technology, but that just angered him. He didn’t want to speak to people with tiny characters on tiny phone screens. In previous lives he had only to watch out for pickpockets in Italy. Now the Internet brought thieves into his email and through viruses into his computer. There was no pleasurable novelty here for him to savor. Just annoyance.
There were far too many people in the world. He’d never seen things this crowded, the roads this congested. How is it that every seat in every plane was always full?
Ixchel never got as jaded as him. It was part of the reason he needed her. She always preferred to remain as the human she was born. She’d see the world through a fresh set of eyes and allow him to once again take some joy from it. Hadn’t she done that already with the dinner?
It made him warm inside to think of experiencing this rest of this lifetime beside her.
And he’d almost ruined it.
Wake up, Votan.
He wished he could trust himself. Ixchel always made him crazy. That was the problem, wasn’t it?
He didn’t think straight when his beloved was back in his arms.
Now he had to find a way to keep her there.
***
Max opened his front door slowly, like a cautious cat fearful of the family dog. He paused to listen. There was only quiet.
He stepped in and took a few soft steps towards the bedrooms. When he saw they were both empty he finally spoke up.
“Anyone here?”
Had they gone out to dinner? It was past eight o’clock.
A sickening thought struck him.
What if Votan had kidnapped her?
“Damn it.”
He strode back toward the kitchen to finish his search. That’s when he found the note.
Votan refuses to talk here.
Going to his hotel.
Back as soon as I can.
My Cell: XXX-XXX-XXXX
Max took a deep breath. Well, now he didn’t have the luxury of panicking. He knew where she was and how to reach her.
He had to wait.
The guest bed w
as in disarray. They’d had sex there. Votan had probably been as desperate as he was when he first saw her. At least with the act done he could talk with her sensibly. If she denied herself then the tension would never abate. There could be no reasoning with him.
Something struck him. He wasn’t jealous. Why wasn’t he jealous?
He tried to picture Votan mounting his beloved to stir up some anger. He thought of him thrusting vigorously on top of her.
His cock got hard.
Max took a steadying breath. Was it that he didn’t really love her?
No. He’d been thinking about her during every spare moment he had during the day. Her sweet smile. Her frank innocence. He thought about going to her hometown to get married. That way he could see where she came from. It was important for him to befriend her parents. He wanted them to trust him.
He’d been planning their whole lives together. He never did that with any of his girlfriends. Michelle was real. His final girlfriend.
His wife.
Max dropped onto his couch. His erection subsided, but the longing inside him remained strong. He wanted her to be here now, even if it meant putting up with Votan. He wanted to gaze into her beautiful goddess eyes.
And no. It seemed he didn’t care if she had sex with Votan. As strange as it was it felt like a familiar situation. Votan somehow had more of a claim on her than he did. He first felt this disconnect when he was in his jaguar form with Michelle. There were memories of her inside his muscles, but even more memories of being without her. Her presence was a gift that he could only occasionally cherish.
It was strange how dealing with his own kind transcended what he’d accomplished in his mortal life. He was the millionaire and Votan was the lowly jungle cat. Yet, there were godly dynamics at play that he could only sense the extent of. What he expected to feel was tempered by what his god essence knew.
Maybe it could work out, this threesome. He had more hope for it now than when he’d left that morning.
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Chapter 12
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Michelle bolted out from under Votan’s human hand the moment she awoke. She sprinted into the bathroom, took her human form, and jumped into the shower. For a few moments she adjusted the handle until the water near scalding water doused her. She scooped handfuls against her crotch.
Votan stepped in through the open bathroom door. She hadn’t pulled the shower curtain closed. There was anguish in her face, but also in Votan’s. She looked at him with tears mingling into the water droplets on her face. Did he know?
The large man drew nearer. “Ixchel.”
“He touched me.”
His anguish broke into an expression of confusion. “Maximon hurt you?”
Michelle tried to answer, but her throat became choked with virulent emotion. She turned off the water.
“Not Maximon,” she said through hiccupping sobs. “Caquix.”
“Caquix!” His yellow eyes grew wide as saucers.
She pulled a hand towel from the nearby rack to wipe her face. “I never got to the spirit world. He—he pulled me into some desert world.”
Now Votan’s eyes narrowed. “The underworld.”
“I was tied up. He was trying to get me to leave both you and Maximon and become his mate instead. I said no. Then he ripped off my top. He shoved his hand in my underwear and started rubbing me and…” She trailed off for a fresh bout of sobs.
Votan smashed his fist into the wall, crumbling the fine white tiles. He gave a bellowing snarl.
“He will die! I’ll rip his fingers out of the joints one by one!”
Michelle wrapped herself in a large towel and emerged from the tub. “Hold me.”
Votan looked at her through an almost palpable haze of red fury. His face contorted in anguish once more. He drew her into his powerful arms.
“My love—I’m so sorry.”
She let herself sob quietly against him. The shower and now the comfort was drawing her out of the pit of shame Caquix had plunged her into.
“He’s grown bold. He’s condemned to his hell-world. He can’t do anything outside of it, so he has to pull you in to hurt you. I’ll go there. Hunt him down—and make him suffer.”
A stitch formed between her brows. “He’s not trapped down there. He was in the mortal world too.”
Several moments of harrowing silence followed. Michelle’s heart began to race.
Votan pulled away from her slowly. He held her back with large hands on both her shoulders. His angry face had turned stony.
“What?” The solitary word dropped like a fifty ton boulder.
“He was…I mean, I saw him in his human form in the mortal world. Before I found Maximon I was sitting at a café outside his work. Caquix showed up. He talked to me. He was trying to convince me to go with him to his condo.”
Votan’s lower lip began to tremble. She could hear his slow breaths.
“When I refused he tried to drag me with him, but Maximon showed up and chased him away.”
“How do you know it was him?”
She pursed her lips. “Well…I felt him. And he transformed into a big black bird.”
Votan turned from her. “Damn.”
He walked out of the bathroom. Michelle saw a stagger in his step. She dressed and then followed.
Votan sat hunched over on the foot of the bed. His forehead rested in his hands.
“This is why you did it,” he said without looking up. “This is why you spirit bonded to both of us. You sought to bring both of us together. It was no game. You foresaw this.” He shook his head. “I should have realized. I thought so little of you—but you had a reason for what you did.”
She stood a moment, taking stock. It should have struck her before that Caquix’s presence in the mortal world was something catastrophic. Dread from his presence scratched at the back of her mind since the incident at the café. No…before that. Hadn’t she always known something big was coming? Isn’t that why she searched so desperately for her purpose in the texts of the B’alam? Votan’s reaction horrified her—but it didn’t surprise her.
“What does it mean, Votan?” she said softly.
“No.” His large shoulders rose and fell with a sigh, then he sat up. “We can’t talk. His demons are always watching.” He dragged himself to his feet curled the edge of his lip in revulsion.
“We have to go to Maximon.”
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Chapter 13
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Votan led the way to Max’s front door, despite Michelle protesting that she should be the first one to see him. He stood glaring at Max in the doorway for several moments. Michelle couldn’t see past him to gauge Max’s expression. Eventually Max stepped away.
“Come in,” he said.
She came around Votan so she could see her other beloved. Max smiled grimly at her. She returned this, despite feeling stricken. She belonged to both of them, but right now it felt as though Votan had sole rights to her. It was all she could do not to race into Max’s arms for a kiss.
He offered them seats at the breakfast bar in his kitchen. Michelle perched on the stool; Votan did not.
“You want something to drink?”
“No, thank you,” Michelle said.
Votan didn’t answer. He was still glaring at their host. Max eyed him before turning to pour himself some orange juice.
“Look, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this situation. I’ll be honest—“
“Shh.”
Max darted him an angry look. Votan remained somber.
“We can’t talk yet. I need twelve sheets of paper and something to write with.”
Michelle swallowed. Max was looking at her for an explanat
ion. She merely pursed her lips.
“Okay.” He set down his drink. “I’ll get those, uh…” He stepped out of the kitchen. “Papers and whatever.”
Max and Michelle watched as Votan stacked the twelve white sheets of printer paper and uncorked a marker. On the first sheet he drew their symbol, the symbol for the jaguar, in blocky Mayan style. Next he drew a stylized bird, then a monkey, then a woman. He continued drawing runes Michelle recognized from the books of the B’alam until he finished with a man on the last sheet. Votan arranged them in a circle around the couch and armchair in the living room. When he placed the final sheet a golden ring of light appeared, uniting each drawing, then rising upwards in a flash.
Max stepped into the ring of papers without pausing. Michelle took longer to move. Magic was still amazing to her.
She entered the ring, careful not to disturb the papers. When she perched on the couch, Max sat next to her before Votan could claim the spot. Her larger mate lowered onto the armchair before them. She could see Max was annoyed. He cleared his throat before speaking in an even tone.
“All right. Are we good now?”
“Yes,” Votan said.
“Look, it was as I was saying. I don’t like this situation any more than you do, but today I realized the thought of you being with Michelle wasn’t devastating to me. I don’t know why that is, but I accept it. I want to make this thing work for Michelle’s sake.”
She took his hand. His yellow eyes lingered on hers or a moment of sweetness before once again facing the stony glare of Votan.
“That’s not what we need to talk about.” The words were measured, as though he teetered on the brink of rage.
Max’s brow rose.
“Caquix is in the mortal world.”
She saw the color slowly drain from Max’s face. Harrowing realization was settling over him the same way it had her. Things were becoming clearer, but far darker than they’d realized.
“Yes. He…was in the square in front of my building.”
“And he was in the underworld, just now, dragging Ixchel there with him, and putting his hands on her body.”
Max looked at her with parted lips. “What? What did he do to you?”
Mated to the Jaguars - Paranormal M/F/M Menage Page 6
