Chosen by the Wolves [Werewolf Brides 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
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Werewolf Brides 5
Chosen by the Wolves
Nathanael and Justin Cooper want Siyandra Taylor, but they’ve held back from getting to know her better because they’ve seen how she looks at Roderick Cooper, CEO of Cooper’s Farm and Alpha of the Cooper’s Farm Werewolf Pack. But her time to choose is almost up, and they can’t wait any longer.
Roderick won’t look at the woman he loves because, as Alpha, he believes he has to provide brides for his men before picking one himself. Siyandra has almost run out of time to fulfill her contract and choose a pair of bachelors to marry. She really likes Nathanael and Justin, but she’s attracted to Roderick as well.
Meanwhile everyone is on edge as the werewolves move to buy the BDSM club and put in good managers. But before the sale is complete, they really need to find out who is introducing the evil things there.
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 36,053 words
CHOSEN BY THE WOLVES
Werewolf Brides 5
Cara Adams
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
CHOSEN BY THE WOLVES
Copyright © 2014 by Cara Adams
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62741-298-8
First E-book Publication: February 2014
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2014 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.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
CHOSEN BY THE WOLVES
Werewolf Brides 5
CARA ADAMS
Copyright © 2014
Prologue
Wanted:
Twelve women aged over twenty-one, with excellent written and spoken English, prepared to move to the United States of America for a permanent position as bride to two or three men. As their wife, you will be loved and cherished, and provided with everything you need. But you will be expected to work hard, to integrate into a small, close-knit community, and to obey your husbands.
Short-listed applicants will be interviewed by video-link and must provide photo ID and references.
Chapter One
“We can’t wait any longer, Justin. We need to speak to Siyandra now. Tell her we want her. Ask her to come out with us. Demonstrate up close and personal how much we’ll cherish her if she’ll trust us,” said Nathanael Cooper.
Justin groaned, and then sighed. “We’ve had this conversation before. Over and over. I don’t think she wants us. In fact, I’m almost certain she doesn’t want us. We’ve both seen how she looks at Cooper. How can we ask her when she wants another man? It’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.” He wiggled in his seat, nervous energy consuming him.
“We don’t know she wants him. We might think that she does, but we might also be torturing ourselves unnecessarily.”
Justin could feel Nate’s gaze on him, but he kept his mouth shut, letting Nate finish what he wanted to say.
“Besides, Cooper won’t take her, even if he does want her. She was brought here for one of the pairs of bachelors to mate, and Cooper is much too honorable to take her when there aren’t enough women to go around already.”
Justin grunted, and then tapped his fingers on the steering wheel of the car. They were on their way home from their jobs in Coopersville and had talked about this frequently during the past four months. “It doesn’t really matter whether or not Cooper wants Siyandra. We both know he’ll never ask her because there aren’t enough women for everyone. But it does matter if Siyandra wants him. Because then she’ll never be truly happy with us, and that means none of us will be content. We’ll be upset because we can’t satisfy her, and she’ll grieve for Cooper. So that would just be a disaster.”
“So we ask her out and see what happens. We’ll be able to tell if she’d rather be with Cooper than with us. For a start, there’s a fifty percent chance she’ll say no.”
“I’m not sure we will know if she really wants us, though. I mean, if she says no, that’s a great big clue. But what if she says yes and seems nice and polite. How do we move on from there?” asked Justin.
“We take her to bed.”
“What?”
“It’s obvious, Justin. She won’t go to bed with us if she doesn’t like us. Once we get her into bed, she’s ours. Then we fuck her brains out and make sure she never wants to leave us. Job done. Mate accomplished.”
* * * *
Siyandra Taylor sat on her bed, her head in her hands. She was almost out of time and had no idea how to solve the problem facing her. Hell, it wasn’t just facing her. It was practically nose to nose with her right now.
<
br /> Siyandra was one of the nine mail-order brides who’d come to Cooper’s Farm and signed a contract to marry a pair of bachelors from the farm within six months. Werewolf bachelors. The problem was that the man she was most drawn to, the man she’d most like to marry, was not one of the pairs she was supposed to choose between. Oh, she had no disagreement with the available men. They were all handsome and considerate, and any of them would likely make her happy. The problem was that she craved a man who was unavailable. Not because he belonged to someone else, but because the man was too fucking honorable to put himself up for marriage while so many other men remained without partners.
The idiot. As if his men would hold it against him if a woman chose him instead of them. For fuck’s sake, many people would say as CEO of the company he should be finding a partner ahead of the younger men. But no. Roderick Cooper held himself aloof from the marriage list, had not paired up with another man, and hadn’t made himself obtainable for her to choose him.
For the ten millionth time, Siyandra thought about the available pairs of men. They all deserved a wife. They were all good men and she liked them all. It was just that she liked Cooper more than all the others.
Although not mated yet, Katungi and Rafiki weren’t really free. They’d made it quite clear they were interested in Nala. Nala was shy and quiet and unobtrusive, yet the entire community appreciated her and hoped her herb garden became a huge success.
Purvis and Heath were exceptionally good looking. None of the men were less than yummy, but these two could have gotten jobs as movie stars any time they wanted to. And they were nice as well, but they didn’t make her heart race and her panties dampen just by walking past her on the street the way Cooper did.
Justin and Nathanael were a possibility. They both worked in Coopersville so they weren’t around all day like the men who worked on the farm were. That meant she hadn’t seen them as much and didn’t know them as well as some of the others. But after four months, she thought she knew them well enough to be sure they’d never intentionally hurt her. They were gentle and welcoming, friendly and helpful. If she had to pick someone—and time was running out, so she really did need to make a choice—these two appealed to her the most. She was sure they’d make her happy. But she was even surer that if Cooper just loosened up and agreed to marry someone, he’d make her even happier. Oh well. It wasn’t going to happen. She’d waited long enough. She’d just have to get to know Nathanael and Justin better and forget about Cooper.
* * * *
Roderick Cooper ran his hands through his salt-and-pepper hair, tugging on it, trying to make his brain work harder. He was certain that the information on who was behind the problems in Coopersville was hovering right there just out of reach, like a word that he knew as well as he knew his own name, but couldn’t think of at this moment. All the facts were before him. First, the kidnapping of his second-in-command, Okapi, which all the werewolves were convinced was actually a failed attempt to kidnap him for a much larger ransom. Then the incident at the Hightower restaurant. That was clearly a second probable attempt to kidnap him. Add that to the evil coming out of the BDSM club, where they were letting anyone pay money to whip a woman, plus signs of it being used as a brothel under the guise of BDSM activities. The data was there. Right before his very eyes. Why couldn’t he work out who was behind the trouble? There weren’t that many people in Coopersville who it could be. Oh sure, the town had close to a quarter million people in it. But even so, there weren’t that many truly rich people. Or people who acted like they had bucket loads of money. He had to be able to figure out who it was.
His IT staff, Gowan and Yaro, had been delving into every financial transaction they could find, and seemed to think perhaps Jeremy John Rinehart III might have a finger in the pie somewhere, but Cooper wasn’t convinced. There was no denying Rinehart seemed to get divorced mighty frequently. He was up to his fourth wife, and rumor was she wouldn’t last much longer. But he was also extremely rich. The Rineharts owned a lot of Coopersville, so paying alimony to three or even four ex-wives shouldn’t be that big a deal to him. Although his tastes were every bit as expensive as those of his wives’.
Cooper stopped tugging on his hair and jumped to his feet, pacing his office, taking care to avoid banging his hip on the edge of his desk on every pass. It was true that Green, Rinehart’s henchman, did seem to be involved in the surveillance on the farm that had happened a while back before they’d closed off the access road. It was also true that Rinehart’s accountant, Sammy, while possibly never ever having done anything illegal, had a tendency to push the boundaries. But that didn’t make Rinehart a bad man. It might mean that Sammy was the silent partner at the BDSM club, though. That was a thought.
He leaned over his desk and picked up the telephone. “Okapi? Are you free to come in here for a minute please?”
“On my way.”
Roderick realized he was messing with his hair again and deliberately sat down at his desk and picked up a pen to fiddle with. He’d be bald before he was forty-five if he didn’t learn to stop torturing his hair. Not that forty-five was all that far away anymore. Only about a year. He’d always expected to be mated and have a couple of kids by now. Even allowing for the fact that only one-third of babies born to werewolves were female, with three girls the right age for him to mate, it seemed logical he’d be happy with either April, May, or June. But it hadn’t happened. None of them had lit his pulse with the urge to marry them, and all three were now happily mated to other members of the pack. It was the right thing and he was happy for them, but he still felt pain from time to time at not having a mate of his own. Pain that had gotten a lot worse since the mail-order brides had arrived and he’d seen Siyandra in the flesh. But that wasn’t to be. She would choose a pair of bachelors to mate, as was right and proper.
“Yes, Cooper?” Okapi stood in the doorway to his office.
“Have the accountants sent back all the paperwork on the proposal for us to buy out Tom Moore’s share at the BDSM club yet?”
“Yes. They’ve agreed with our estimates. Three-quarters of a million is a bit high but it’s a fair place to begin the negotiations, and six hundred thousand is too low, but it’s a reasonable first offer. They suggest we should settle for around six fifty or six seventy-five.”
“Good. We can raise that amount without running ourselves down too low. Three-quarters of a million was going to be a stretch for us, but cutting a hundred thousand off the price will make all the difference to our cash flow. I was planning to put in a couple of our men as managers. If there are two of them they should be able to stand up against the minor partner and stop all the nonsense that’s happening at the moment. I see no reason why we can’t make a fair profit by good management instead of by engaging in dubious practices. I want that club to return to its respected status as soon as possible.”
“Who are you thinking of choosing?” asked Okapi.
Roderick looked at his second-in-command. He trusted Okapi both for his genuine hard work and quick mind, but also for his integrity. “I haven’t decided. What do you think about Purvis and Heath? They’re strong willed yet sensible, and between them they have a good knowledge of how a BDSM club ought to be run. Besides, they don’t seem to have chosen a bride and might find one if they’re based in town.”
Roderick watched as Okapi’s brown eyes darkened and his forehead creased in a frown. “I agree. They’re an excellent partnership in that the skills one doesn’t have, the other does. Between them I believe they could be an indomitable team and easily able to outthink and outargue the minor partner. I have the distinct feeling he bullied and browbeat Tom into making changes Tom didn’t want to make. Having two werewolves there as joint managers gives them the power of knowing someone’s always got their back. It’s a smart decision.”
“Has there been any progress on learning who the minor partner is?” asked Roderick. He seemed to ask this question far too often, but he wished he knew the an
swer. They had to be really close to working it out.
“No. The front man at the club only carries out orders. He’s very firm though, and refuses to deviate a hair’s breadth from his instructions. I think that annoys Tom the most. Sometimes just a tiny change would make things better. The man at the club is an automaton though. He does exactly as he’s been told and carries instructions out as if he’s a steam train running on a rail. Nothing and no one, far less logic, stops or diverts him.”
“Tell our lawyers to begin discussions. Also tell them to call in Sierra Bond if there’s any negotiation to do. That woman has to be the best young lawyer in America today, and she’s very active in werewolf cases. She’ll be worth every cent she charges if we need her advice.”
“Can do. Do you want to talk to Purvis and Heath as well?”
“Not yet. Let’s keep it all quiet until we’re close to signing the paperwork and then we’ll give them all the facts. No, wait. Hold that thought. Maybe I should send them there to sniff around and see what they can learn. I’ll tell them to get a feel for the place. That way when it’s ours it’ll be easier for them to begin thinking how to make it profitable without going against any of the safe, sane, and consensual rules of BDSM.”
Okapi nodded and left. Roderick pulled the piles of paperwork waiting for him into the center of the desk. Someone famous once predicted a paperless society by the twenty-first century. How wrong they had been. It seemed like there was more paper involved in his day’s work now than ever before. Even though all the scheduling was done online with text messages sent out to the various wolves instead of letters, and most accounts were paid online, there still seemed to be a never-ending pile of papers that he needed to read and action. At least all his instructions went out as e-mails these days. That was something he supposed.