by T. S. Ryder
Audrey wasn't sure what she wanted to hear. If they were angry, it would give her a reason to just kick them out and not have to worry about her conflicted feelings anymore. But they weren't angry. Dimitri was nodding in agreement, and they both looked so concerned for her that all the reasons why she fled disappeared. She just wanted to be close to them, wanted them to hold her in their arms.
"I'm sorry. This is who I am."
"No. This is who you think you are. You're so much more than the person you see yourself as."
Audrey's lip wobbled. She threw her arms around Sanjay's neck, lifting herself up his body to kiss him. His hands cupped her thighs, holding her in place as he kissed her back. The feel of their bodies together had her gasping for breath, and the feeling only increased when Dimitri pressed himself behind her and kissed her neck.
"Wait," the vampire king murmured. He pressed a hand to Sanjay's chest, pushing him away from Audrey's willing mouth. "If you're already overwhelmed, are you certain you want to do this?"
As if Sanjay's concern wasn't enough. Audrey actually laughed her heart became so light. They wanted her. And more than that, they wanted her to be happy.
"Yes," she whispered. "I want you. I want both of you. No more running. No more drowning myself in work. Just living my life."
Sanjay kissed her neck. "Where's your bedroom?"
Audrey pointed, and the shifter carried her down the hall. Dimitri skirted past them and opened the door for them. Sanjay put her on the bed and grinned.
"Have you ever done this before?" Audrey asked breathlessly. She looked at the two men with wide eyes.
Neither answered, just smirked. Dimitri pulled her shirt up over her head as Sanjay removed her pants. For an instant, she was caught by the desire to curl into a ball and hide from them, but then their hands began costing over her body. She was soon lost in the sensations that they evoked in her. Her eyes slid shut, a simmering fire glowing where skin touched skin.
"Hold her," Dimitri ordered.
"How many times—"
"Please."
Audrey giggled into her arm as Sanjay shrugged and slid behind her. His arms circled her waist, pinning her elbows to her sides. He nuzzled into her neck as Dimitri kissed down her belly. He pushed apart her thighs, and Sanjay trapped them under his own. Audrey knew why as soon as Dimitri moved lower. A feeling like a coiled snake built in her belly and she thrashed from side to side, crying out. Heat rose in her chest and neck.
It was better than anything she had experienced with her boyfriends before. Everything blacked out around her and she was lost in the pleasure, only aware of snatches around her. Sanjay's breath on her neck. Dimitri whispering that she tasted as good as she smelled. Sounds of zippers coming undone, Sanjay shifting her from side to side as he removed his clothing.
Dimitri stopped just short of her climax. Audrey lay still, gasping for breath, clinging to Sanjay's arms around her.
"I get her first," Sanjay said. "Since you got her to this point it's only fair."
"I don't know. She's still a little tight and let's face it. You're bigger than me." Dimitri winked at Audrey. "It might be more comfortable for her if you were second."
"Or we could have her at once."
Audrey's heart spiked. As amazing as this experience already was, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to take that. Not yet, at least. She shook her head. "I can't. It's been years since I last had sex, and I've never had anal sex. Maybe in the future we can try that, but not today. Did you bring condoms?"
"I brought one," Dimitri said.
"I didn't." Sanjay brushed her hair from her face. "But shifters aren't carriers for STDs. Neither are vampires."
Audrey shook her head. "Like I said, I haven't had sex in years. I'm not on birth control. I don't want to get pregnant like this. Children are special and precious. I don't want mine to ever think that they were an accident."
Sanjay sighed in disappointment. "I understand. Can I at least use your mouth?"
Her eyes closed. She imagined the two moving in perfect rhythm while she took them in at either end and couldn’t suppress a moan. Her men took that as all the consent they needed and quickly moved her onto her hands and knees. Sanjay brushed her hair out of her eyes and smiled at her while Dimitri entered, causing her to moan in delight. He started a brisk pace, holding her in place with his hands firmly on her hips. Sanjay waited a moment before encouraging her to open her mouth.
She loved the sensation of having both men inside her, moving in unison on opposite ends. The pleasure was already blinding her, and she was glad to have their voices in her ears, telling her exactly what to do. Soon all three were grunting and moaning with pleasure. Audrey braced herself as her whole body began trembling. Any moment now…
Something snapped deep inside her and her body turned to jelly. She collapsed onto the bed, unable to hold herself up any longer. She was hardly aware of the twin groans somewhere above her as her two men also found their completion. Her eyes slid shut.
I could have this for the rest of my life.
She grinned.
I am going to have this for the rest of my life.
***
The shower was hardly big enough for the three of them, but Audrey didn't care. She felt calmer than she had in what seemed like her whole lifetime. Who knew she just needed a couple of non-humans to claim her as their mate to make her feel worthy of love?
"Will you come back to the palace with us?" Dimitri asked.
"Not tonight. I have to go to work in the morning and deal with some stuff. But I'll be back tomorrow."
Sanjay kissed the top of her head. "I don't suppose we can stay the night."
Audrey's body began to sizzle again. "I need to sleep. With you two here, I won't be able to."
"We can go to the drugstore," Dimitri said, sliding his hands over her hips.
"That's not the point…" Her hands slipped over her stomach and she grinned to imagine it round with the children of her shifter or vampire. Her smile faded quickly. "I always knew that I was an accidental baby. My parents didn't want me. I always vowed that I would never put my own children through that."
"You won't," Sanjay said. "I would welcome any child you bore with gladness and love."
"Agreed," Dimitri said. "Regardless if I fathered the children, I would love them."
Sanjay nodded, and Audrey felt the last of her hesitations melt away. This was more than anything she had ever thought she would find. They were hers. Well and truly hers. And she was theirs.
Who needed work when she had this?
"Forget the drugstore," she said, wrapping an arm around each of them. "I want you to stay the night."
Chapter Eight
Tiana's office was littered with framed articles. Every time Audrey talked with her boss, she envied the litany of reporters that had proven themselves worthy to be hung on the walls. Even if Tiana wanted plenty of the gossipy stuff, she also had produced a lot of good reporters and rewarded them for their efforts.
But somehow that didn't seem so important anymore.
The previous night with Dimitri and Sanjay had been the best she ever had. She still felt a little tender this morning, although she wouldn't trade it for the world. She had a future with them, one where she wasn't alone with just her work to give her purpose. It was worth far more than any framed article hung on the wall.
"Your articles have gotten very popular," Tiana said. "We have people writing in, praising us for providing such a balanced view on the non-humans. A lot of them have questions, too."
"I can incorporate their questions into my further interviews," Audrey said. "And I know you want more information about the woman that was found murdered, but the last article I sent in yesterday has everything I know about it."
"It's not much. Especially considering that you're banging the vampire king."
"Excuse me?"
"You told me that he chose you as his mate. Everybody knows he spent the night with you, Audrey. It's in all t
he gossip magazines." Tiana leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. "Why haven't you used this to your advantage yet?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said coldly
"You have to interview him. You could go even further. A blog about what dating him is like. We would draw in thousands more readers."
Since when was drawing in readers more important than her relationships? Audrey frowned. "I'm not going to use him to advance my career. He loves me."
Tiana snorted. "You've only been there for what? A week? Any man who says that he loved you after that much time is just trying to get into your pants. Which apparently he has."
"Vampires don't work the same way humans do." Audrey glared at her boss. "And neither do shifters. It's less complicated for them. They can smell the person they'll be happy to spend the rest of their life with. You can't think of them in human terms. At least not with everything. Dimitri… both of them. Sanjay, too. They love me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. They're already compromising on things and giving me what I want over what they want." She hesitated, but Tiana was the closest thing she had to a friend. Who else could she share her good news with? "This doesn't leave this room, but they want a polyandrous relationship with me."
"Hmmm." Tiana peered at her. "Look, Audrey, you are in an amazing position right now. How many reporters out there would kill to be close to the vampire king? You have the ability to—"
Audrey shook her head. "Stop."
Her boss fell silent. If only for a moment. "Wait… you're falling in love, too, aren't you?"
"Not falling. Fell. Hard." Audrey took a deep breath. "I was terrified at first, but that was because I never thought that they would actually want me, and my feelings were getting too strong to deny. I love them, and I want to be their mate."
Tiana's face creased. "What about your career?"
"There are more important things than a career. For the first time in forever, I feel like a real person. There are people who love me for me, not because I wrote a fantastic article."
"You're in deep."
"Yes. And loving every second of it."
***
By the time her meeting with Tiana was done, Audrey was exhausted. She drove back to her apartment with heavy eyes. It probably wasn't the best idea to drive all the way back to the palace in this state of mind. As much as she wanted to go home to her vampire and shifter, safety came first. She was too tired to drive any distance. A quick nap would take care of that.
Once in her apartment, she checked her phone. A frown crossed her brow. There were a half-dozen missed calls from Dimitri. She quickly phoned him back as she kicked off her shoes. It only rang once before he answered.
"Audrey, are you okay?"
"Yes."
"You weren't answering your phone."
"I was in a meeting with my boss. Why? What's wrong?"
There was a brief pause, and then the phone call took on a slightly echoing quality that indicated that Dimitri had put it onto the speaker. Sanjay's voice came over the line.
"Have you seen anything suspicious?"
Audrey's heart began to beat faster. "No. Why?"
"Another woman was murdered this morning," Dimitri said. "She was seeing a shifter. They were both killed and dumped at the palace gates."
A cold ball of dread hit Audrey hard. She clutched her phone tighter, trying to calm her racing heart. "I'm coming back right away."
"No," Dimitri said. "We'll come get you. Our relationship is all over the tabloids, I wouldn't be surprised if you were being watched. It would be too easy to run you off the road on your way here and take you. Lock your doors and sit tight. We're already on our way. We'll only be fifteen more minutes."
"Okay." Audrey pinched the phone between her ear and shoulder as she rushed around her apartment, stuffing everything she needed into her laptop bag. It was a good thing she had left most of what she needed at the palace when she left yesterday.
"You have to tell her," Sanjay said over the phone, his voice lowered like she wasn’t supposed to hear.
Audrey stopped her frantic packing. "Tell me what?"
Silence.
"Tell me what?"
"Dimitri has received a lot of threats of late."
"There are always a certain amount of threatening letters written around the time of the Harvest Moon Festival," Dimitri interrupted. "There have been more than usual this year. The most recent ones we've received have stated that there will be more murders unless all the women who participated in the festival are ejected from the vampire palace, and all vampires with human mates are handed over to human authorities on charges of rape."
Could the Fist of Humanity people really be so deluded as to think that Dimitri would bow to such demands? Let alone the humans who had vampire mates. They would never accept it.
"They aren't concerned about the women," Audrey realized. "Otherwise they wouldn't be murdering them."
"Exactly." Dimitri's voice was grim. "We're almost there, hang tight."
Audrey opened her mouth to confirm she was ready as soon as they got there, but never got the chance.
There was a loud crashing behind her. The door flew off its hinges, splinters of wood shooting every which way. Half a dozen men wearing ski masks and carrying semi-automatic weapons surged into the room. Audrey screamed. One of the men yanked her phone from her hand while two other grabbed her arms and began pulling her out.
"King Dimitri, I presume," the man who had taken her phone said. He chuckled and dropped the phone, crushing it beneath his foot.
"Let me go!" Audrey screamed. They didn't so much as slow down as they dragged her towards the stairs.
Chapter Nine
When the men took off their masks, Audrey knew they meant to kill her.
She stayed hunkered in the back of a nondescript van with tinted windows, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. The only chance she had at escape was if their concentration lapsed long enough for her to bolt. But where could she go in a moving vehicle?
The city skyline soon disappeared, replaced by trees. They were taking her out into the bush to kill her. There was no doubt in her mind that these men were the Fist of Humanity. Would they torture her like they did the first woman they killed?
"Do you think your precious king will listen to us if our message is written in your blood?" one of the men asked, a crooked grin on his face. "Rumor has it that he's chosen you as his mate. Is it true?"
Audrey didn't look at him. What would Dimitri and Sanjay do when her body showed up at the gates of the palace?
"Ah, it is true," the man purred. "Do you know why he chose you? Not because he cares about you. Vampires don't care about anybody but themselves. You're a reporter. A popular one, too. All that your precious Dimitri wants from you is to have you in his bed and for you to spew out your ridiculous stories of women flocking to the Harvest Moon Festival every year, so the vampires can corrupt them."
It was exactly what she expected to hear. Audrey turned her face away. If she pretended to agree with them, would they let her go? Or was this all just words, trying to provoke her? If they truly believed that Dimitri didn't care about her, why take her in the first place?
Her heart ached as Dimitri and Sanjay's faces came to her mind's eye. How close had they been when she was taken? Had they seen these men drag her into the van and take off? And if they had… would they be following?
Don't cling to hope, she told herself. Think. There has to be a way out of this.
"He threatened to kill my parents and sister if I didn't write those stories," she said, making her voice waver. It wasn't hard, although making herself say the words was. If she could make them think she was on their side, she might be able to get out of this. "If I didn't… mate him, he would have killed them. I didn't want to, but he didn't give me a choice."
The man laughed. "We've done our research. You don't have any family. He wasn't blackmailing you, you're just like all the rest. Wo
men who want to tear down what makes society, destroy our families."
"I thought you just said that the vampires corrupted the women that came to the Harvest Festival."
"Think you're smart, hey? Well, you're good for one thing at least." He smirked. "Let's get started."
Another of the men pulled restraints from a black bag he was holding. Audrey stared in horror. What were they going to do? Didn't matter–she wasn't going to give in without a fight!
Audrey lashed out, but they caught her wrists and twisted them behind her back. She screamed–and the van jolted to one side. A screech, deep, terrible, and totally inhuman, echoed through the air. The men cursed, pulling away from her. Audrey looked up just in time to see a massive cat leap over the front of the vehicle. It sank sink its claws into the roof of the van. Metal screeched as it tore the roof clean off.
"Sanjay!"
Gunfire erupted, making Audrey scream. She pressed her hands over her ears. Sanjay jumped back. His body was as big as the van, fur a tawny-gold with bold black stripes. His tail twitched and he yowled, his massive paws batting at the van, shaking it from side to side.
The back doors opened. Audrey opened her mouth to scream again when a pair of arms wrapped around her. A couple of the men started to turn. One of them pointed a gun in her direction. And then Sanjay was back on them, tearing the side of the vehicle open.
Dimitri pulled Audrey from the van. He tucked her into a ball in his arms and ran. Gunfire, Sanjay's howls, and screams followed after them. Audrey clung to her vampire king's arms, protests of leaving the Liger behind getting caught in her throat. The vampire bolted through the forest, jumping over logs and ducking under branches to put distance between them and the kidnappers.
Eventually, they emerged from the trees again. A white Lexus sat on the road, doors open and the engine still running. Dimitri slid her into the passenger seat before leaping over the vehicle and getting into the driver's side. Audrey could still hear gunfire among the trees.
"Stop," she gasped as Dimitri threw the car into gear. "Dimitri! Stop!"
The vampire ignored her, eyes sharp as he scanned the road ahead of them. They were off within seconds. Dimitri's foot pressed the gas petal flat to the floor. The forest whipped by around them, making Audrey feel sick to her stomach. She clutched at her seatbelt and the armrest. But she knew better than to try to open the door.
