Onyx leapt off the bed. Hunter’s prick stuck straight up under his pants where she sat to form a little tent. Onyx flew across the room and yanked Ebony off Jordan’s lap. His fingers ripped out of Ebony’s shorts and left her damp and aching.
Onyx shoved Ebony away from him. “Don’t you even think about starting all that mating for life crap. What do you think you’re doing? This is my sister you’re talking about.”
Ebony sidled closer to Jordan. She swayed her hips and dragged her eyes up and down his body. “Don’t worry, honey. He just wants me. That’s all he’s saying. You should know better than to listen to a word a man says in the throes of passion.” She waltzed closer to him and trailed one hand between his legs. She gave his hard cock a squeeze. “Hey, baby? Do you want to do it with me? Is that what you want?”
Onyx jerked her back. “You stay away from him. He’s not playing around.”
Jordan leaned back and swiveled the chair around. His chest muscles popped under his tight T-shirt. “I’m serious. Maybe Riley and Melody and all the rest of them have got a point. We should be mating for life, just like these Bruins they keep talking about.”
Onyx wrenched Ebony’s arm harder than ever. “See?”
Ebony stared at him. He fixed her with his sharp eyes. “I want you, Ebony. I want you all over, and I want you for life. Is that so bad? Would you like that?”
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Hunter called out from the bed. “You’re crazy, man. You always did have a sick sense of humor. If this is some new idea you’ve got about foreplay, it’s gonna backfire. You’re gonna wind up with no women instead of two at a time.”
“I’ll never have two at a time again,” Jordan murmured.
Onyx flew around in the other direction. Both hands sailed out in opposite directions. “You’re a piece of rotten trash. That’s what you are. I never should have sucked your filthy stick. That’s what I think. Come on, Ebony. We’re out of here.”
Hunter propped himself up on his elbow. “Aw, baby. Don’t run out. You can play with me instead. Don’t even look at him if he makes you so mad.”
Onyx jabbed her finger at Jordan. “Do you think I’d let you anywhere near my sister after what you just said? She’s Midnight, and she’s fluid, and you want to mate with her for life? Over my dead body, you’ll mate with her for life. We jump from tree to tree through the forest and from man to man in bed. That’s the way we’ve always done it, and that’s the way we’ll always do it. Sit there and yank yourself, dick. That’s as close as you’ll ever get to me or Ebony.”
Jordan stiffened. “This has nothing to do with you. Hunter can unload in that mouth of yours, but don’t come spreading your nastiness over me. I didn’t ask for this.”
“You didn’t ask for it! You walked right into it, and now you want to pump my sister full of your mate-for-life nonsense. Get yourself a hole to squirt in. That’s the best you deserve.”
Jordan drew himself out of his chair to face her. “Keep your tongue under control, girl, before you say something you live to regret.”
“I already regret not keeping my tongue under control around your tired ass. Come on, Ebony. I know Damian Dunn is a free agent.”
Ebony shook her sister’s hand off. “I’m not ready to leave. I was having a good time before you interrupted.”
Jordan’s head whipped around, and their eyes met. “I’ll give you a good time, you horny little beast.”
Onyx’s jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me you actually want to go along with this.”
Ebony eyed Jordan. “I don’t have to go along with it. He’s a rock hard stud. You know that. I want to ride him. That’s all. Dang, he makes me so hot, I can’t get enough.” She ran her hand down her stomach to her crotch. She squeezed it and humped her hips in his direction.
Jordan ran his tongue over his teeth, and a squirt of hot sauce seeped into Ebony’s shorts.
Onyx narrowed her eyes at her sister. “You come with me right now if you know what’s good for you, Ebony Archer. Don’t you dare lay a finger on him.”
Hunter called out again. “Right here, baby. I’ll lay a finger on you. I’ll make you forget all about that fool.”
Ebony couldn’t take her eyes off Jordan. She knew exactly where sitting back down on his lap would lead, and she wanted to go there more than anything. She took a step closer, but Onyx grabbed her hand. Before Ebony could argue, Onyx towed her out of the house into the bright sunshine.
Chapter 2
Ebony got her head clear enough to jerk herself free of her sister’s clutches. Onyx rounded on her outside Wyatt’s house. “Come on, I said.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Ebony asked. “Don’t you want to do it with Hunter anymore?”
“How can you ask that?” Onyx shot back. “You heard what Jordan said.”
“I heard him. I just don’t understand why you’re flying off the handle about it.”
“He wants to mate for life.”
“Yeah. So?”
Onyx narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you see what this means?”
“Yeah. It means he wants to mate for life. He’ll find himself a girl, and that will be the end of that.”
Onyx glared at her. “He wants that girl to be you.”
“He might want it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun with him until he settles down. Let him say what he wants.”
“He’s throwing a wrench in our cozy little game.”
Ebony chuckled. “Is that what you’re worried about? You’re worried he won’t to do it with you anymore?”
“He already doesn’t want to do it with me anymore. You saw him push me away.”
“So what? Go get your jollies on Hunter instead. You don’t need a man like that.”
“You don’t need a man like that, either.”
Ebony hummed under her breath. “I need a man like that every day of the week.”
Onyx spun her around. “You stay away from that man. Do you hear me? Don’t let me hear you talking about mating for life or any of that tripe. Got it?”
“What’s wrong with it?” Ebony pointed across the street. “Look over there at Rome Powers and Layla Cross. Don’t they look happy together?”
Onyx gritted her teeth. “They look as happy as any other couple that says they’re mating for life.”
“I’ve heard a dozen other couples say the same thing this last week,” Ebony replied. “It’s all over the Moraine.”
Onyx stuck out her tongue. “It must be some kind of contagious disease. These Bruins have infected us with their brain-eating madness, and now every Midnight on the mountain wants to give up being fluid and get stuck in the mud.”
Ebony walked at her side. “I don’t know. It might be kinda nice, I guess.”
Onyx growled through her teeth. “Don’t ever let me hear you say you want to mate for life—not ever.”
Ebony looked around her at the compound falling away. “You gotta admit, though, worse things could happen. It might be kinda nice not to have to go chasing guys who are interested in every other woman on the planet. It would be nice to know you had one steady guy you could depend on.”
“You’re starting to sound like Jordan.”
Ebony hooked her arm through Onyx’s elbow. A little skin contact always calmed her sister down. “You don’t really believe what he said, do you? He’s just talking. Nothing to worry about.”
The girls walked on in silence, but Ebony’s mind wandered back to the room where they left the brothers with swollen lumps in their pants. Could Jordan really mean what he said? Could he really want to mate with her for life?
What was he thinking? Midnight didn’t mate that way—at least, they never mated that way before. Ever since Riley Faulkner brought that Bruin girl back to Midnight Moraine and shacked up with her, strange things started to happen. All signs pointed to Raven Faulkner running off with a Bruin guy, too.
Now this mating for life madness sw
ept the Moraine like wildfire. It passed from mouth to mouth and skin to skin. Maybe Onyx had a point about it spreading like a disease. Every morning, some new couple announced they were mating for life.
Across the street, Rome Powers leaned Layla Cross against a wall. Their mouths met, and their tongues glistened in the sun between their lips. Ebony saw something similar every day of her life on Midnight Moraine. Only one thing changed. These two planned to mate with no one but each other until one of them wound up dead.
Red Dunn, the man Layla used to play around with before she mated with Rome, hooked up with Saya Cross, her sister. Now Red and Saya lived together in the Cross’ big collection of rambling buildings. They had their own room, but they shared meals with the rest of the clan. Still, Layla and Saya’s brother Rip threatened to kill Red if he set foot on the place again. They two came to blows more than once. One of them would have wound up dead if Rip’s own father intervened.
Onyx grumbling under her breath broke Ebony out of her reverie. “I’m gonna get him. I’m gonna get him if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Who?”
“Jordan. Who else? I’ll wrestle him to the ground and force him to submit if I have to.”
Ebony chuckled. “Good luck with that. He must outweigh you by a hundred pounds.”
“What’s to stop me?” Onyx asked. “I’ve done it with him enough times. He can’t just dump me like this. I won’t allow it.”
“You can’t force yourself on a guy. You know that.”
Onyx spun around. “Well, how do you explain this? How do you explain a fluid guy like Jordan banging everything in sight one day and mating for life the next? It makes no sense. It’s a joke.”
Ebony started walking again. “I can’t explain it. I can’t explain any of it. According to Melody, Bruins only ever mate with one person, their true mate. They can’t get attracted enough to anybody else to do it. Once they actually consummate their relationship, they’re mated. End of story. Jordan has done it millions of times, not only with both of us, but with dozens of other Midnight girls.”
“Exactly,” Onyx returned. “He couldn’t just change overnight.”
“You gotta admit he’s got a point. If two people care about each other that much, why shouldn’t they mate for life? I could get on board with caring about somebody that much. It explains a lot, anyways.”
“Don’t you even think about it,” Onyx snapped. “Midnights don’t do it that way.”
“They obviously do. Lots of them do, and now Jordan is doing it, too. If I want to, what’s to stop me finding a man and mating with him?’
Onyx bared her teeth. “If I find out you mated with him or anybody else for life, I’ll…”
Ebony squared her shoulders. “You’ll what?”
A shout interrupted them. Ebony turned around to find a crowd of people milling around the Archer family compound. They all pressed close to hear the girls’ brother Cole. His voice boomed between the buildings. “Come on. Let’s go. Go get your rifles and meet me at the shed in half an hour.”
Ebony elbowed someone close to her. “What’s going on?”
Cole called over the crowd, “We’ll drive right up to their houses and just start shooting. The moment someone comes out to defend the place, we’ll blow ‘em away. They killed my brother. How many more of us have to die before we act?”
A murmur went through the crowd, and some people nodded.
Another man’s voice answered Cole, “They all didn’t kill your brother. It was that bear that came into the ring, that Azer Mackenzie. He did it.”
Cole whirled around. “Do you think I care if it was him or his grey-haired uncle? He’s a Bruin. They’ve all got to pay for what he did. Now who’s with me?”
“He’s right,” someone answered. “We should go in there with our guns blazing.”
“What are you talking about?” a woman cried out. “We aren’t strong enough to take on a bunch of raving bears. That Azer Mackenzie defeated you men six against one, and you want to take on their whole community? You’re crazy.”
“Yeah,” another man chimed in. “Who wants to travel across the country to get their head blown off? I’m staying right here. I’m not tangling with any bear if I can help it.”
“You cowards!” Cole ranted. “You want to sit here and wait for them to come and get us? You deserve what you get.”
Another voice thundered over the crowd, “You won’t have to go looking for the Bruins. They’re already arming for war against us.”
Everybody whipped around. The crowd parted, and the tall, dark chiseled frame of Jordan Faulkner strode into view. Ebony caught her breath. Every eye gravitated to his face. His short black hair hugged his head, and his dark eyes flashed. The sun set off every muscle under his shirt and his tight black jeans.
His eyes swept the crowd. He stopped next to Cole. Cole hooked a thumb in his pants pocket and shifted his weight on one leg. “What are you talking about, man?”
“Haven’t you heard the news?” Jordan asked. “That Azer Mackenzie you keep talking about was Melody Mackenzie’s brother. He brought news from Bruins’ Peak. They’re moving against us to stop us bear-baiting their people. They could be marching here as we speak.”
Cole shrugged. “So what if they are? That will save us the trouble of going to look for them.”
Jordan raised his voice over the murmurs and whispers, “You’ve all heard the stories about Walker Cunningham and his friends. They want to wipe the Moraine clean and leave no one alive.”
Cole muttered, “That’s not possible,” but everyone’s attention riveted to Jordan.
He jumped up on a stump and bellowed out loud. “All of you listen to me. I want to mate for life, just like the Bruins. We’re no different from them, and we’re not bear-baiting anymore. They don’t know that, or they wouldn’t be talking about fighting us. We should send a message to Bruins’ Peak and make peace with these people. We could turn the Bruins into allies instead of enemies we can’t beat.”
As soon as he finished, the place erupted in conflicting opinions and emotions. People shouted back and forth. Jordan pointed to the back of the crowd and bellowed over the din. “Back me up, Rome. You, too, Layla. Why should we fight another shifter species that’s just like us?”
People yelled back at him. Tensions ran high, but Ebony couldn’t make out what they said. She couldn’t take her eyes off Jordan. Who was this man? He was no shiftless slacker without the motivation to get off the couch. Maybe he wasn’t hunter enough to go after bears in the forest, but he had something no one could ignore.
Onyx murmured in her ear, “That man is so fine.”
Ebony sucked in her breath, but her heart quailed when she saw her sister. Onyx watched Jordan with the same fixed expression. Onyx fell under Jordan’s spell, too. Onyx still wanted him, even after he said he wanted to mate with Ebony and didn’t want Onyx anymore.
“Onyx…” Ebony began.
Onyx spun away on her heel and set off for the house. “I’m gonna get him. I’ll slam him ‘til he can’t think straight. You’ll see.”
Ebony hurried after her. “Come on, girl. Let it go.”
Onyx faced her sister. “I’m gonna get him, and you’re gonna help me.”
Ebony started. “Me? No way.”
Onyx nodded. “You have to. You have to help me bring him to his senses. We’ll team up and bring him to his knees, just like we used to.”
Ebony looked away. “I don’t know…”
Onyx grabbed her hand. “You’ll love it. Nothing could be better. We’ll do it to him two at a time. He loves that.”
“You heard what he said. He doesn’t want to.”
Onyx chopped her hand through the air. “We’re doing it, and that’s final. We have to show him what being fluid really means.” Onyx froze and fixed her flashing eyes on Ebony. “Unless you really want to go along with this madness. Is that why you keep hedging around?”
Ebony held up both hands
. “I never said that.”
“Then what’s your problem? Why don’t you want to jump him like we used to?”
“I don’t know. Something…I don’t know. Something’s different now.”
“Yeah. He’s loopy. He needs a good whipping to bring him in line.”
Ebony couldn’t respond to that. She couldn’t explain to her sister what was different any more than she could explain it to herself. The thought of jumping Jordan Faulkner never excited her more than it did right now, but not the way Onyx wanted to do it. In a matter of seconds, everything changed. How did that happen?
Ebony dreaded admitting the truth even to herself. She wanted him all to herself. She wanted him as much as she ever did, but she wanted so much more than his body. She wanted his eyes boring into her soul. Jumping him and running away didn’t excite her anymore. She wanted his voice and his hands and his…well, his everything.
Chapter 3
Jordan noticed the Archer girls hanging around the edge of the crowd. Ebony’s eyes on his face fired his energy more than anything. He talked only to her. He spoke to her from his heart. Maybe, just maybe, she would hear and understand.
God, he couldn’t get enough of her! She wore her shiny black hair cut sharp across her cheeks in a slanting bob. Her tight T-shirt rode close around her apple tits so anyone could see her white bra’s lace detail underneath. Visions of his hands under those lacy cups haunted his dreams so he couldn’t rest. Her skin-tight shorts hugged drop-dead curves to die for.
Jordan could circle his fingers around her slender waist, and her hips flared out around her perfect pumpkin ass. Ebony was more slender built than her sister, with finer features and a high melodic voice.
She never haunted his days and nights as never before the last four or five days. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, even when he was with Onyx. He watched her sway to his brother’s rhythm, and he imagined he was inside her. He imagined it looking at her right now.
The crowd broke up. Some men went with Cole, but most drifted away in knots of casual conversation. Jordan remained standing on his stump. No one paid him any further attention—no one except the Archer girls.
Bruins Peak Bears Box Set (Volume II) Page 38
