3xtasy Lake 2
Embraced by Fur
Carol never expected to attract the attention of one, let alone three, gorgeous men. She’s in town to help a friend out and never planned for a permanent change. Ecstasy Lake has secrets around every corner, and living here might end up more dangerous than going back to a normal life in the city. Can she break past her own insecurities and accept a triple dose of love?
Jaxon, Kaden, and Sloan Henderson are known for their closeness and loyalty to each other, but lately the three of them have been fighting over everything. Now that they’ve found the woman of their dreams, how are they going to share her if they can’t have a civil conversation with each other? Can they get this big-city girl to give up the life she has known and come live in a small town with them?
Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 55,678 words
EMBRACED BY FUR
3xtasy Lake 2
Corinne Davies
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
EMBRACED BY FUR
Copyright © 2011 by Corinne Davies
E-book ISBN: 1-61034-987-3
First E-book Publication: November 2011
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
For the two newest members of my family. Welcome to the world, Logan and Emily. Love, Aunti Corinne.
I am blessed with so many people who support me during the creation of a book.
My husband, for his constant support and encouragement. I love you, Honey!
Jason Lorbetskie, for answering all my questions about the inner workings of Algonquin Park.
All my wonderful friends and Righteous Perverts who are always there when I need to Rant and get things off my chest.
Tracy and Heather, who critique my books and gently point out all the mistakes. Those commas. Oh, god. All those commas. J
Diana, who is always there when I need to ask a question, and the staff at Siren-BookStrand, who work together to make the best publishing house, ever.
EMBRACED BY FUR
3xtasy Lake 2
CORINNE DAVIES
Copyright © 2011
Prologue
The large cat scented the hunter long before he ever saw him. The pungent scent of a fertile moose doe caught his attention. The knowledge that a doe shouldn’t be in heat as the summer days shortened drew him into the hunt. He pawed over the pine needles and leaves without a sound. Keeping low to the ground, he used the thick underbrush as cover as he stalked forward. The fresh scent of pheromones hung heavy in the air, leaving an artificial tang against the back of his throat. The artificial call of a female moose used by the hunter echoed in the trees around them.
The acrid scent of gun oil and human carried on the breeze. Instinct drew the cat’s gaze up into the trees, and there he found his prey hiding. Silence fell over the area as the forest waited to see what happened next. The stupid human didn’t realize that the area around him was too quiet—that he wasn’t the only predator in the area.
My home, trespasser. No one hunts here but me.
A bull moose crashed through the trees, attracted to the false call and nature’s irresistible draw to that smell. The human male sat up at attention, lifting his large rifle in the direction of the noise.
The tiger gathered his strength in his haunches, and at the precise moment before the weapon fired, he launched himself at the hunter’s back.
Chapter One
“Help me!” Aaah. “Sweet Jesus, help me!” Panicked, high-pitched screams sent flocks of birds from the trees to the sky in a rush of squawks. A spray of gravel kicked up when Jaxon Henderson jumped on the brakes of his truck with both feet. The vehicle fishtailed, narrowly missing the man who came tearing out of the forest. Dressed from head to toe in what looked to be brand-new camouflage clothes and a large rifle in his hand, the man waved both arms above his head to gain attention as he ran on the gravel road. As the hunter moved up the passenger side of the vehicle, Jaxon dropped the window.
“Sir, what’s the problem?” The foul stench of human bodily fluids and an incredible amount of moose estrus hammered his sensitive nose through the open window. Thankfully, he didn’t smell any blood. Jesus, he hoped the city cowboy hadn’t shot someone with the thirty-aught-six he was carrying. Moron wasn’t wearing an orange vest either which was asking to become a target.
“A fucking tiger! I was attacked by a fucking tiger!” The hunter grabbed the passenger’s handle of the truck and began to yank on it. “It’s huge! We have to go. Go now! Open the goddamn door!” His eyes wide and panicked, his shrieked tones were enough to almost pop Jaxon’s sensitive eardrums.
“Fuck, not again.” Slamming his hand against the steering wheel in frustration, he put the truck in park before opening his door. He really didn�
�t need to deal with this kind of shit today.
The man paused in his dash back around the front of the vehicle.
“Sir, stop right where you are.”
“I saw it! We have to go! It was right behind me.” The man looked wildly around him, both hands on his rifle, ready to shoot…at anything by the looks of it.
“Sir, there are no tigers in Algonquin Park.”
“But it attacked me! I saw it with my own eyes.” Jaxon watched the hunter swing his rifle around, uneasy with the number of times it pointed in his direction. “Sir, place your weapon on the ground. It is illegal to approach an officer with a loaded weapon.”
“Fuck the gun! Get me out of here.”
Jaxon drew his pistol and pointed it at the hunter. Great, now he could add another hour of paperwork to the end of his shift because he drew his weapon. This was no seasoned hunter, but it was always better to err on the side of caution. Too many officers were caught off guard and ended up shot by a hunter wanting to escape prosecution for illegal poaching.
“Sir, place your weapon on the ground in front of you. Now.”
Having a gun pointed at him seemed to take a bit of the wind out of the man’s sails, and Jaxon’s tone caught his attention. He stopped and looked at the rifle in his hand. “Oh, shit, yeah, I forgot. Sorry, officer, but the tiger freaked me out.” He unloaded the weapon and left the action open before laying it on the ground and raising his hands. “I wasn’t going to shoot you, but don’t put your gun away because you might need to shoot at the cat if it comes out of the trees.”
Right, because a handgun would stop a tiger. “Sir, place your hunting license on the hood of my vehicle. Take two steps to your left and place your hands on the hood.”
“What the fuck is this? I didn’t do anything wrong!” It took a few minutes for the man to dig through all his pockets before he slammed the license down. “Don’t you get it? I was afraid for my life, and you’re treating me like some criminal! We need to get out of here or we’ll be tiger chow.”
Jaxon fought the urge to gag at the scents coming off the man. “Sir, you approached an officer with a loaded weapon, and you are attempting to illegally poach in a Provincial park.”
“Park Rangers are supposed to see to the safety of everyone in the parks.”
“I’m a Conservation Officer, not a Park Ranger.”
“I was hunting coyote, not poaching.” Now the idiot decided to pay attention. It took him long enough to realize he was in deep shit. “It’s legal to hunt in the park.”
“You are carrying a thirty-aught-six semiautomatic rifle, which is complete overkill for smaller game. If you were hunting coyote, you wouldn’t need anything more than a twenty-two.” Grabbing the license off the hood, he retreated before the smell made his eyes water. “You reek of a synthetic moose hormone, and you have a call hanging around your neck. Do you honestly expect me to believe a word you’re saying at this point?”
“I’m not lying. I was practicing for moose hunting in a few weeks, but I wouldn’t have shot anything now.”
“Are you certain you saw a tiger, sir?”
“I know what a Bengal tiger looks like. Do I look stupid to you? It was huge and orange with white legs?”
“Black stripes?”
“Yeah…no. I mean they weren’t really black, more like dark red.”
“Bengal tigers have black stripes.”
“I know that!”
“We’re in North America, not Asia. There are no tigers indigenous to this continent.” Except for the asshole I live with. “And even if there was, it’s not tiger season.”
The hunter stilled and looked at Jaxon in fascination. “There’s a season for that? How do I get a tag?”
It took every bit of his deeply ingrained control not to bare his teeth and growl at the stupid human. “Stay standing there. Don’t move.”
Jaxon got back into his vehicle and closed the window, hoping to block the atrocious smell from the hunter. Too bad his brother, Kaden, wasn’t working today. They would’ve been able to contain this situation better. He called in the license and then the nearest park’s office. Let the Ontario Provincial Police deal with the “citidiot.” He had enough paperwork to do at this point. At least they could charge him with a long list of offenses, starting with endangering the public safety as the camp grounds were only eight miles south from here.
Four hours later, his mood remained as foul as the hunter’s boxers when he pulled up in front of the large house he shared with his two brothers. Make that one soon-to-be-dead brother. Sloan didn’t look like a regular tiger, which was why Jaxon knew he wasn’t dealing with a rogue. He didn’t know where his brother came from because he never heard of anyone shifting into a rare “strawberry” tiger. They didn’t know who his parents were because their brother was an abandoned baby.
Abandoned shifters were a massive concern because if they didn’t realize what they were, often they could be caught in their animal form after their first shift. Teenage panic and massive confusion altered their ability to make proper decisions, and that usually lead to death because they didn’t know how to hunt. What usually happened was they were killed by a larger predator or by man.
Found under a stairwell of a library in Nova Scotia, Sloan floated through the foster system for years, never adopted. Shifter children tended to be wilder than most, and he couldn’t imagine how crazy Sloan would have been as a child. He was thirty-five now and still acted like a teenager sometimes.
They might never have known if Gordon didn’t actively monitor the foster care system for children that exhibited the characteristics that drew his attention. Gordon sent Jaxon’s parents to meet with the boy, and it took one scent for his mother to decide to adopt him into their family. It was a risk putting a young feline predator into a family of wolves, but at the time there weren’t any other families in the position to take him in.
He and Kaden were already close and didn’t mind the carrot-topped child who, with his endless enthusiasm for life, bounded his way into their hearts.
Jaxon marched into the house looking for someone’s ass to kick. His brothers’ combined laughter floated though the house, leading him to the source.
“One growl and this guy shits himself so bad I could smell him for miles.”
Jaxon pushed open the screen door in time to hear the guilty confession. As if there were any other strawberry tigers within a hundred thousand miles of here. Kaden stood by the barbecue with a beer in hand, while their younger brother sat on the railing of their deck, nursing a cold one himself.
“Hey, Jaxon, steaks are just about done. You hungry?”
“Do you have any idea what that stunt of yours could have done?” Dinner be damned, he was hot and pissed off at the immature action. “Ecstasy Lake is supposed to be a safe haven, Sloan. You put us all in danger!”
“Oh no, did you have to deal with him? Did he still smell as bad with a human nose?”
His brother erupted into another gale of laughter and then drained the bottle in his hand. Jaxon thought for a moment of pushing him off the railing and letting him land on his ass, but the little shit would only land on his feet as usual.
“Don’t you think you are overreacting a little bit, Jaxon?”
He turned on Kaden and growled at him. “I had to leave a man freaking out about tigers in the forest with the O.P.P. When we end up with CityPulse24 up here doing a full report on exotic animals being let loose in the park, I’m handing both your asses to Gordon.”
“Oh, come on, like anyone is going to believe him.” Sloan hopped off the railing, walked over to the beer case, and dropped the empty bottle into it. “Lighten up. He was stoned out of his tree.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Granted, the overpowering foul scents masked anything else, but he wouldn’t have missed something so obvious.
“Kaden talked to a couple of the guys working shift today, and they said he was completely under the influence. By the way
, they’re thinking of making the Conservation Officers pay to have their car detailed. That guy made a mess of the backseat.”
Knowing that the tiger story would be contained took a load off his mind, but he still couldn’t shake the mental image of finding his brother with a bullet between the eyes. He reached down and pulled a beer from the cooler. “Sloan, I’m telling you now, you keep this shit up and you’ll endanger us all. The leaves will start turning in a few weeks, and you can growl at the hunters in the fall. At least you’re camouflaged by the changing leaves, and they think they’re about to be eaten by a bear or wolf.”
“What fun is that?”
Jaxon stepped up into his brother’s space and growled low in his throat. His demeanor demanded that his brother acknowledge his place in the house and that Sloan wasn’t dominating enough to be the leader. They stood there having a stare-off. The air around them shimmered with tension. Sloan broke off first, chuffing at him as he rolled his eyes. “All right, it’s not like they don’t deserve it. Fucking poachers.”
Jaxon grabbed Sloan in a one-arm hug. They all hated the poachers in their woods, but Sloan had to realize that taking them on face-to-face wasn’t the answer. Jaxon would never forgive himself if his brother got hurt. “You realize that many of those asshole poachers are carrying enough firepower to take down your cat?”
“You worry too much, Jaxon. I’m a big boy and a bigger cat.” Sloan elbowed him in the stomach, and he retaliated with a jab to his brother’s upper arm. That was all it took to ignite their tempers.
Davies, Corrine - Embraced by Fur [3xtasy Lake 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 1
