by Dani April
“I’m sorry for the way we met the first time,” Kyle told her. “We didn’t mean to come off so strong. We certainly never wanted to frighten a beautiful woman.”
When Luke shook hands with her, she noticed he didn’t offer any apologies. He only gave her that hot-headed stare. She found herself still slightly afraid of both men.
“It’s nice to formally meet you guys,” Arielle told them. She felt nervous and knew she had sweat on her palms as she shook their hands.
“Jason said you’re a good cook,” Kyle told her. “But we brought hamburgers over. It’s our way of saying thank you for helping our brother.”
“I know you guys were very worried about him that day you stopped by,” Arielle said. “I didn’t mean to lie to you that day. I just thought I had a wolf in my house and not your brother.”
“Jason told us about how you met,” Luke said. “I mean how you met him when he shifted back to a man. You must have been pretty surprised at what you had taken into your house.”
Arielle caught herself blushing again. She had met Jason the man for the first time in bed. The two of them had been making love. She wondered if he had shared that with his brothers. “Yes, I was very surprised,” she told them.
There was a moment of silence. She didn’t know what to say to them. She thought both men stared at her a little too long, and it made her uncomfortable. She imagined what their thoughts must be. She wondered if they had some crazy notion born of their shifter heritage about her as their sex partner, too. This was without a doubt the most uncomfortable moment of Arielle’s life.
Jason reached for her. She could never deny him and let him pull her down onto his lap. She felt nervous on his lap in the presence of his brothers. She wanted to talk to him and ask him what he had told them about their relationship, but the brothers were within earshot and would have heard everything.
“Do you trust me, Arielle?” He whispered the question into her ear.
“I do trust you,” she whispered back to him. Then added, “I think.”
He gave her a wicked grin, but let the matter drop.
They ate outside on her lawn furniture. This was a relief. If she had been inside with all three of the men it would have been more than she could have stood. The barbecued hamburgers tasted good outside under the cool mountain air. Arielle only had one, but noticed Jason had two and his brothers ate three apiece. They had brought a twelve-pack of beer to Jason, and the men sat around afterward and sipped out of the cans. Arielle was not much of a beer drinker and declined. She went inside and turned her backyard light on, and the four of them reclined to watch the sun play out its majestic colors on the side of the Teton Range in the distance. Mosquitoes buzzed their faces, and a cool breeze blew off the mountains and ruffled their hair. Arielle didn’t say much, and the brothers mostly talked among themselves. She watched the camaraderie and love between them. Although, she suspected they were a little closed lipped because of her presence.
She wondered if Kyle and Luke watched her as a potential sex partner. She didn’t know whether to feel humiliated or angry. Instead she just felt numb. Perhaps she had already lost Jason, she thought. She noticed he no longer wore the clothes she had bought for him at the mall. He had changed into a pair of jeans and a shirt his brothers had brought over for him. This hurt her. She felt dumb because she knew she shouldn’t have overreacted to this.
She wondered if she should say something to Kyle and Luke, but she didn’t really know them well enough to know what to say. So she kept quiet.
“My leg still hurts, but thanks to you I am getting better,” Jason told her as the four of them sat in her backyard. “I’m able to go back home now.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. In a way she had expected this. “That’s good,” she said but felt nothing.
Then Jason turned to his brothers. “She’s our mate. I’m sure of it,” he told them.
Arielle felt a hot flush suffuse her face. Did Jason realize she was still seated right beside him? she wondered.
“She is beautiful,” Kyle said.
“I want her,” Luke put in.
Arielle squirmed uncomfortably in her lawn chair. She felt like she should say something to interrupt them, but had no idea what it would be. They talked about her as if she wasn’t even there. Embarrassed didn’t even begin to describe how she felt.
“You’ve got to be good to her,” Jason admonished them. “She hasn’t had it easy. She’s submissive, but has never met the right men to submit to. She’s frightened of us because we’re shifters. I think she only barely trusts me, and she doesn’t know the two of you at all yet. We have to take it slow with her.”
She reached out and tried to touch Jason on the arm and stop him. “It’s okay, Jason,” she said to him. “I’m right here. And I guess you’re right, I don’t completely trust you.” She turned her gaze on the other two men and added. “Any of you.”
The men ignored her and continued their conversation. This irritated her. This had to be some macho thing for the three brothers, but didn’t make her as angry as she thought it might. They seemed to be deciding something important for her future at that moment. The three of them were so strong willed, and she felt powerless around them. She was helpless to do anything except sit back and listen to them and hope they came to a favorable decision for her. Her breaths became labored, and she realized to her horror that she had become aroused. She was wet between her legs. When she was around these men, she didn’t feel like herself at all. She became a different person. One who she hardly knew.
“We can make her ours,” Kyle said to Jason.
“It won’t always be easy,” Jason said.
“I want to take care of her already,” Luke said. He stared at Arielle out of lust-filled eyes, but his words were aimed at his brothers.
“Guys, would it be better if I went inside while you talked?” Arielle asked them. She wanted to escape. But Jason motioned her back down, and she stayed where she was. She hated it that she was always so quick to obey Jason in everything, even in this ultimate humiliation.
Arielle remained quiet. She didn’t know how to respond to them. She was frightened by what they said, but a part of her relished their words and the knowledge that they all seemed to want her. Though, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why. She was nobody and definitely not beautiful. In her own opinion she was just barely passable in the looks department. She had a lot of flaws and aspects of her body and her character she needed to work on. Could these men really sit here and discuss her like this? It was like a fantasy.
“So it’s agreed, then?” Jason asked his brothers.
“Yes,” Kyle said as if whatever they agreed on had never been in question.
“Yes,” Luke responded. He gave Arielle another lust-filled stare.
“I told her how shifters live,” Jason said. “About how we all needed to be together to be happy as a family.”
“She didn’t take it very well, did she?” Kyle asked.
“She just doesn’t understand us yet,” Luke answered him.
“It’ll take time, but Arielle doesn’t know how special she is. She doesn’t know how perfect she is for us. It can work,” Jason told them all in his best alpha voice.
“The important thing is that we met her,” Kyle said. He had an easy manner Arielle found contrasted to his two brothers and was intrigued by him as he talked about her, his deep baritone so much like Jason’s. “I was beginning to think we never would meet her. We’ve all been searching for her for so long. She is just perfect for us.”
Arielle couldn’t take it anymore. She thought briefly about throwing them all out of her house. “Stop it!” she shouted at them “Enough!” This finally got their attention at last. She looked at Jason. Although she was angry with him and felt he treated her like a child, she realized she would do anything he wanted her to do. That would likely get her in trouble, but she couldn’t deny him. She made a snap decision and
decided to live with it and have no regrets no matter what happened. But she had serious doubts that anything but trouble would come from the decision she had just made.
The men were silent now. They waited for her to say something. Finally they watched her and acknowledged her presence among them. With all three of their stares directed toward her, new fear rose from the pit of her stomach, and her palms started to sweat. She could barely speak or even look at them from the panic that now seized her.
“All right,” she told them all, but mostly her words were directed toward Jason. She did this for him. She was about to submit completely. “I’ll do what you want. You can have me…You can all have me…” She trembled so bad she couldn’t speak anymore.
She was now theirs for the taking.
“I know, honey,” Jason told her. “It will be all right.” He reached across the gap between their lawn chairs. He took her hand, and she squeezed him with all her might. She needed the strength he gave her. Most of all she just needed him.
Arielle didn’t know what would come next. For a long time she sat in stunned disbelief. She didn’t know how that had possibly been her who had spoken those words. The men continued to speak, each with a voice of confidence and assertion. Arielle didn’t really hear their individual words. Her mind spun, and she could not concentrate. She wondered if they would all have her right then and there. But apparently this was not to be.
The men spoke of more mundane things now. They talked of when Jason would return to their ranch and if they should take him into Wolf Creek to see the town doctor. They finally decided that he would spend the rest of the week at Arielle’s house and that she would drive him out to their ranch on Sunday. Luke looked at her as if to ask her if this was all right with her. She nodded to him that it was, too embarrassed to hold his gaze for long.
Then Kyle and Luke got up. The evening was at an end. She helped Jason to stand on his bad leg, and the four of them walked back through her house. She and Jason followed his brothers across the front yard. Kyle and Luke gave Jason each a pat on the shoulder and let him know it was good to see him again.
When it came time for them to say good-bye to Arielle, she didn’t know how to react. She had just promised to have sex with both of these men. But more than that she had promised to be their mate, and she already understood enough about shifter terminology to know that was a much more serious commitment to make than merely a sexual liaison. It was a life commitment.
Kyle was the first of the two up to her, and he seemed to realize her awkwardness. He gave her a big, wonderful smile and scooped her up into his arms. Her feet lifted off the ground, and he held her for the briefest of moments.
“You’re going to love our ranch,” he told her, and the smile spread across his face.
Luke came next. Arielle could see that he must have felt as ill at ease by the situation as she did. To see that Jason Wildback’s youngest brother felt almost as uncomfortable as she did made her feel a smidgeon better. He gave her an ungainly hug, and she felt lost as his huge body enveloped her much smaller one.
“It’s okay,” he told her quietly. “We’ll all take care of you.” She found that she actually believed him when he told her this, but she did not respond. She had already made the ultimate sacrifice. She had no more to say.
Arielle and Jason went back inside after the two had driven off. She looked up at Jason. She wanted him to say something to make her feel better. Instead he just took her in his arms and held her. That worked, too, and her fear quickly turned to lust in his arms. He took her back to the bedroom and they made love.
He turned her over his knee once again. She was naked, and he spanked her long and hard. It amazed her that she actually looked forward to the spankings now. The orgasms she achieved from them were different than any she had ever had before. In a way it felt like he taught her about sex all over again. She experienced a warm, sweet climax when he penetrated her and fell asleep in his arms. For the moment, in the afterglow of sex, with Jason and held firmly against his body, everything was right with her world. But she suddenly had a new future to think about, and every time she thought about life on that unknown ranch with the three lusty shape-shifters, at their beck and call, she was filled with fear.
When she moved out to the ranch with them, did they expect her barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen all the time? Oh, my God, she thought, what had she gotten herself into?
Chapter Eight
The next morning Arielle was up early. She showered but didn’t get dressed right away. Instead she took her coffee out to the back yard. Jason was still asleep. She thought he slept a couple hours later than she did. Though, she was not sure because she had to run off to work each day and leave him behind.
Outside it was a beautiful early summer morning. She stood in her bathrobe and watched the mountains. Somewhere up there was Shifter Valley. That’s where she would go. That’s where a new life waited for her with three men. She had taken a crazy chance on Jason and his brothers. Every time she thought about what she had agreed to do, she still felt numb. What would it be like with three men? Would they even want her? Would she be able to, if only for a little while, submit and enjoy what fate had thrown her way? The questions buzzed through her mind like flies, and she didn’t have an answer to a single one. All she had was doubt and worries. But also anticipation.
There was a side of her that yearned for this experience, though she would never admit it out loud. There was an unexplored part of her that wanted these three powerful men.
She swallowed hard and wiped some tears from her eyes. She didn’t even know herself anymore. It had only been three days, and look what had become of her already. But no, it had been much longer than that. The loneliness had been building in her for two years ever since she caught her fiancé, Gary, in bed with another woman. The need to submit to a man strong enough to take her had been with her for her entire life.
When the last of the tears were gone, a small smile played over her lips. She had surprised herself. That’s something she thought she had lost the ability to do. She was stronger than she thought she was. The real test would come up in those mountains, back in that hidden valley. It was there she would find out if she was strong enough. But she knew one thing with certainty. She didn’t want to be afraid anymore. She didn’t want to hide. She wanted to face life.
When she turned to go back inside and get ready for work, Jason was behind her. He had come up on her quietly. He took her possessively in his arms and gave her a rough hug and passionate good-morning kiss on the lips. His hands were already under her robe.
“I may not let you go to work,” he teased her.
“Didn’t you get enough of my body last night?”
“I’ll never get enough of your body.” His fingers were torturing her flesh beneath the bathrobe. All he had to do was give the command and she would miss a day of work for him. “I need your Suburban today,” he said.
“How will I get to work?”
“I’ll drive you in and pick you up when the clinic closes.”
“Why is it so hard to say no to you and so easy to give you everything you want?”
“Because you don’t want to say no.”
She laughed as she rested her head against his naked chest and smelled the clean air of the mountains mix with his scent fresh from the shower. Back in the forest the first birds of the morning began to chirp.
“Is your ranch this nice?” she asked him.
“Much better,” he said with pride. “Speaking of my ranch, when was the last time you had a vacation from the animal clinic?”
“Never,” she told him honestly. “The clinic doesn’t make enough for me to hire another person. I could never afford to hire another full-time vet. I’m sorry I can’t take any time off to be with you, darling.”
“You’re taking the time off,” he said, and his voice would brook no argument.
“There are animals in the kennels that need to be fed every da
y and their cages cleaned.” She attempted a weak protest, but knew in the end he would get his way.
“Leave all of that to me,” he said. “I’m going to take care of everything. This is your last week to work for a while. You’re taking the next two weeks off and spending them up at my ranch. We leave this Sunday.”
“Okay,” she said. “But you better not let any of my animals starve when I’m gone.”
“Do you trust me, baby?” he asked her. He asked her this all the time now.
This time she did not hesitate. She gave a firm nod of her head and held onto him all the tighter. “I trust you.”
“That’s the answer I want to hear. Now go get ready and I’ll drive you into the clinic.”
She ran. She knew he would swat her on her butt again if she was too slow. It still burned from the spanking he had given her the night before. He laughed at her playful stride across her patio and back inside her house.
She was worried that he would not be able to drive well with his broken leg, but he handled the Suburban just as well as she could and got her to work on time. He pulled her against him for a last kiss before he let her out in front of the clinic. He drove away into downtown Wolf Creek without an explanation as to why he needed the car.
