DuBois, Edith - Rugged Return [The Rugged Series 2) (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Edith DuBois

  “It’s all right,” Michelle said, reaching for Franklin. “I like having someone close to hold on to.”

  Franklin smiled at her and took her hand. He sat down next to her on the couch, placing a box of Kleenex in her lap.

  She’d cried the whole way to their home, and while she seemed to have pretty good control of her emotions at the moment, Elias thought it probably wouldn’t take much to bring her tears back up to the surface.

  Franklin went in to kiss and nuzzle her neck. At first she closed her eyes and smiled, but then her eyes flashed open. Elias saw the rosiness creeping up into her cheeks as she looked at first Thomas and then him.

  She pulled slightly away from Franklin. “I’m sorry. I’m still a little new at this whole thing.”

  Elias kept his features blank but, with an inward growl of frustration, realized that if they could shift in front of her and mate with her, she wouldn’t have any issues at all with loving all three of them. Something would happen. Some part of the Shoshone curse would seep into her blood when she mated with all three brothers and allow her to accept their relationship a lot more easily.

  He hadn’t believed it until he saw how quickly Elena Ward fit in with her mates, Joseph and Caleb Kinman. He watched the Kinmans interacting with Elena when she came into the hospital for checkups, and he couldn’t help feeling a spike of jealousy every time he saw them together looking happy and so well settled with each other.

  “It’s okay,” Elias said, “We know that you need to take this slow. We don’t want you to feel rushed. We want you to feel safe with us.”

  “I do. I’m just nervous about everything with all of you.”

  “That’s natural and to be expected.” Elias took a step closer to her as Franklin and Thomas moved closer to her on the couch. “But in order for this to work, you have to trust us.” Elias continued toward her as Franklin smoothed his hand over her stomach and smiled when her muscles quivered in response. “You have to trust us implicitly.” Elias moved to stand between her legs, spreading her knees and her thighs wide while Thomas moved his mouth to one of her breasts, sucking and nibbling through her thin pajama top.

  All the while Elias held her gaze, never taking his eyes from her deep brown orbs. When Franklin’s hand slipped into her pajama bottoms, though, her eyes fluttered closed as she lost herself to her pleasure.

  With Franklin’s assistance, Elias lifted Michelle’s hips and tugged off her pajama bottoms. Her body melded into his touch. A small gasp slipped through her lips when he knelt down on his knees and firmly grasped her ass cheeks. Bending his head down, he took a deep whiff of her cunt and felt his bear ripple in answer to the scent.

  Franklin and Thomas had both moved their mouths to a breast and were torturing Michelle’s nipples while her fingers grasped their heads, hanging tightly on. Michelle cracked her eyes and looked down at him.

  “I want to taste you, Michelle.” She swallowed but nodded her head.

  He dipped his face to her cunt and took that first delicate swipe. Her belly shuddered in response. He could see her stomach muscles rippling, and he licked her again, enjoying the way her body responded so forcefully to small movements. He quickened his pace and nudged his tongue a little deeper inside her hole with each stroke. She clenched every time he passed, her pussy trying to catch his tongue.

  “Oh, please. This is unbearable. I need…” Elias thrust his tongue inside and was answered with a low, satisfied moan. He rolled his tongue around, pressing firmly up against the top of her passage. “Yes, I need that. Keep going.”

  She tried to press her cunt harder against his face, but he held her thighs wide open and kept her hips still. Each time her muscles strained against his hold, however, his bear moved inside him in response. The muscles of his back rippled as her flavor permeated the inside of his mouth and sank lower in his body.

  Thomas had moved his fingers to her clit. “Is this what you need?” Elias heard him ask her. His only answer was Michelle’s quickening moans. With each flick of his tongue and each stroke of Thomas’s fingers, Michelle went higher, and Elias felt his own need growing. He had his erection pressed against the couch, and his bear felt ready to burst out of his skin to claim her and mate her.

  Fuck, he needed that.

  He couldn’t, though.

  Michelle’s hands flew to his head and held him as her pussy’s inner muscles trembled around his tongue and she arched off the couch. Her warm, creamy liquid covered his lips and his mouth. Never had he tasted anything so powerful. This was their mate. She had to be.

  But he couldn’t be with her, not until she knew about them.

  “Elias,” she said, her breathing unsteady.

  “Yes?” He looked up at her.

  She waited a long moment, staring into his eyes. He knew a lesser man would have been intimidated by such a stare, but he held her gaze, drinking in her strength. Finally, she spoke, and when she did, her voice was low, urgent, and full of heat. “I want you.” Then she looked at Franklin and Thomas, cupping each of their cheeks. “I want you all.”

  Franklin kissed her hard on the lips and began to slip his hand down her body to move between her legs.

  “Wait,” Elias said, cursing himself but knowing what had to be done. Three sets of burning eyes met his gaze. He met first Franklin’s and then Thomas’s. “She needs to know first.” Realization dawned upon his brothers’ faces.

  “Know what first?” Michelle asked, sitting up on the couch.

  Thomas frowned at Elias. Then his expression softened into one of acceptance. He gave Elias a small nod and then returned his attention to Michelle. “Before we can be with you in that way, there’s something you need to know about us, something you should know about this town.”

  “What?” She sat up further, moving slightly away from his brothers, and Elias saw goose bumps ripple up her arm.

  “Now this is probably going to sound ludicrous at first,” Elias began.

  “But please, try and hear us out,” Thomas said.

  “And remember that we care about you. We really care about you.” Franklin tucked a wild strand of her dark hair behind her ear. “But we’re—”

  “—our family is—”

  “Bear-shifters,” Elias finished.

  Chapter Eight

  Michelle almost laughed aloud. At first she thought they’d said bear-shifters. Then she replayed the sentence in her head, and when she listened to it for the second time, she was almost certain that they had said bear-shifters.

  She darted her eyes between each of the brothers, giving each one of them a glare. “If this is a joke, now is definitely not a good time for it.” She waited for them to laugh, to say “April fools!” and to move on. But none of them did.

  “It’s not a joke, Michelle,” Elias said in his cool, even tone, holding her gaze. “We’re bear-shifters. We can shift into bears. Along with a few other families in Savage Valley.”

  “And you should also know that there are mountain lion-shifters here, too,” Thomas added as an afterthought.

  Michelle glared at them again for a long moment. “What the hell are you playing at?” She looked at each one of them and felt her hands shaking. She’d trusted them with her body, with some of her deepest secrets and insecurities, and now they were trying to trick her into believing some fantastical nonsense. Why? Why would they do that? Hadn’t she already convinced them that she was willing to trust them?

  Elias took her hands. “We’re not trying to trick you. This is real, and you should consider yourself lucky that we would share this with you.”

  “Consider myself lucky?” She ripped her hands out of his and was surprised at the near screech that came out of her mouth. “Of all the high-handed, arrogant…you”—she poked Elias in the chest— “should consider yourselves”—she poked Thomas—“lucky that I”—she poked Franklin—“don’t cram my dirty socks in your mouth for speaking to me like this.” She could feel the shakiness spreading from her hands up
into her arms. She was furious. She’d never experienced such anger and humiliation.

  “Michelle,” Thomas said with a pleading tone, “what my idiotic, less-than-eloquent brother meant was that we’ve never told anyone else this about ourselves. We’ve never shared it with anyone because no one has been special enough.”

  “You barely even know me, so I find it highly unlikely that I’m the first one you’ve played this joke on.”

  “Again, it’s not a joke.” Elias said, a hard note creeping into his voice.

  “Besides…” Franklin said with a small grin, “we kind of have a sixth sense when it comes to women.”

  “Comes with the bear territory, you see.” Thomas shot her a lopsided, hopeful smile.

  “That was a stupid joke,” she said, hearing the surly tone in her voice and not caring one damn bit. This whole conversation was stupid. “Let me up. I’m going home.”

  Elias put his hands on her shoulders and held her down. “Not until you hear us out.”

  “Get your paws off.” She winced at the unintentional pun and could tell that Elias held back a smile. She shrugged her shoulders violently against his restraining hands. “I mean it. I want to go home.”

  “You would leave without at least giving us a chance?” Thomas asked, injecting a hint of hurt into his voice. She thought it was probably to make her feel bad, and she wasn’t falling for it.

  “Yes. I would. You’re being cruel.” She struggled against Elias again, but he held fast. She stopped for a moment, looking him in the eyes. “I trusted you.” She wanted to sound righteous and accusatory, but her voice came out strangled and hurt. “I don’t understand why. Not at all, and now I want to go home. Please, Elias. Let me go.”

  If possible, Elias’s eyes grew darker, and much to her surprise, she felt his grip slacken, and then he rocked back on his heels, giving her the space she needed to get away from them. She waited for a moment, making sure it wasn’t another trick, and when he made no move to grab her again, she stood and walked to the door.

  “What the hell, Elias?” Thomas asked.

  “She doesn’t trust us. If we don’t have that between us, she doesn’t deserve to know.”

  Michelle almost turned around to give him another earful since they were the ones who’d betrayed her trust but then decided it was probably best to keep going and not look back.

  She’d almost reached the front door when a shape blurred in front of her to block her path. “Franklin!” She jumped back a little in surprise. “What the—”

  He put a finger to her lips and looked over her shoulder at his brothers. “Don’t let her outside.” Then he turned and walked out the door, closing it with a resolute slam.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Where’s he going?” She started to wrench the door open, but Elias and Thomas were both there in an instant, stopping her and dragging her over to the huge plate of glass that made up one side of the walls in their living room. After a moment she gave up struggling, knowing she would never get away from both of them if they didn’t want her to.

  A second later, Franklin walked from around the side of the house to stand in front of the glass. He didn’t look inside as he walked. He stopped about twenty feet away from the window with his back to the three onlookers inside. First, he took his shoes off and tossed them a few feet away. Then he took off his shirt and his jeans. She felt her cheeks flush when she realized he wasn’t wearing any boxers, and his muscled buttocks appeared silver edged in the bright light of the moon.

  His body was awe inspiring. Even in the moonlight, she could make out his breathtaking proportions. The broad expanse of his shoulders, the tapering of his waist, the elongated muscles of his legs, everything about him was perfection.

  Those rigid muscles began to shake. She saw his shoulder blades press together, and then his whole body exploded outward. First his skin split along its edges, and black fur exploded from within. Then his chest blew out. His legs transformed into great, muscled haunches, and his arms rolled upward into large outstretched paws, the edges glinting and sharp against the bright silver moon.

  Michelle jumped back away from the window with a scream. Where Franklin had been standing only moments before now stood a huge, ferocious-looking black bear.

  The bear whipped around, a snarl curling its lips, and trotted up to the glass. It looked back and forth, unable to see inside because of the bright floodlights glowing outside. The lights went out, and Michelle jumped, noticing that Thomas had left her side to turn them off.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Turn them back on. It can see us!”

  Elias put his big, warm hands on each of her shoulders. “Michelle, look closely. He’s not an ‘it.’ That’s Franklin, and he wants you to see him like this. Look.” He nudged her resisting body forward.

  “Elias, I’m scared,” she whispered.

  “Look in his eyes.”

  Shaking, she stepped forward, fearing that the huge bear would somehow break through the glass with his huge paws and gobble her up. But Elias nudged her again from behind, urging her forward while hanging back.

  The bear kept its eyes on her, and when she got close enough, she could see that they were the same unending depth of black as Franklin’s, as Elias’s, and as Thomas’s.

  “Franklin?” she asked, not knowing if he could hear her or if he would understand her if he could. Taking for granted that he was, in fact, Franklin.

  At her question, though, the bear’s head dipped once and then came back up. The bear’s—or Franklin’s, rather—breath cast a wide circle of foggy moisture on the glass, and Michelle placed her hand on the window.

  Franklin licked the glass where her hand was, and she jumped back. Realizing the silliness of her action, she laughed nervously. Franklin let out a couple short and stilted breaths on the glass.

  “Are you…” Realizing he wouldn’t be able to hear her, she turned to Thomas and Elias. “Is he laughing?”

  “Looks like it,” Thomas answered.

  “Can he understand me? Or you? When we speak, does he know what we’re saying?”

  “Yes, we all do, but nothing’s quite the same in bear form.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, when I’m a bear, when people speak to me, it’s like another language that I have to translate first before it makes sense in my head. Thoughts are more disjointed but in a way more free flowing as well. The thoughts and actions are based more on instinct rather than the logical thinking that you and I are used to employing in our everyday interactions.”

  “If I go out there, will he attack me? Wouldn’t that be a bear’s instinct?”

  “First of all, don’t go out there,” Elias said. “You won’t like what happens when Franklin gets a whiff.

  Michelle barked out a laugh. “Yeah right. You think I’m going out there with a bear?”

  “Second of all,” Elias said, ignoring her question. “No, he wouldn’t attack you—”

  “At least not in the way you’re thinking,” Thomas interjected. Michelle met his eyes, but he’d pressed his lips together despite the smile tugging at the corners.

  “Michelle,” Elias said softly, taking both her hands in his. “We want you to be a part of this. I think I speak for all of us when I say that I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you.” Thomas nodded. His eyes, joking and teasing a moment before, were now blazing, boring deep into hers. “But there are things you need to know about us—about this—before we can truly be together,” Elias continued. “Just hear us out, and if you decide that you don’t want to be a part of this, a part of us, we’ll leave you alone. We’ll never bring it up again, and you will be free of any unwanted attentions from us. Is this an acceptable proposition?”

  She thought about it for a moment and then tersely nodded. “But Franklin should be here, too.”

  “He’s coming,” Thomas said. Michelle looked out the window and saw that Franklin was back to human form and putting on his clot
hes again.

  She pulled away from Elias. “This is crazy. This can’t be real. This is absolutely insane.” She paced back and forth, knowing what she saw but also unable to fully comprehend how it could ever be possible.

  “Michelle, it’s okay to be scared at first,” Elias said in a matter-of-fact tone. “We’ll answer any questions you have.”

  Franklin burst through the door. “Michelle! Wasn’t that incredible?” He strode over to her, oblivious to the tension in the room, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, lifting her up and spinning her around a few times.

  When he set her down, Michelle didn’t say anything, only glared up at him.

  “What?”

  “Michelle’s not buying the whole bear-shifter thing.”

  “What?” Franklin asked, frowning at her. “I shifted in front of you. What’s not to buy?”

  “It’s just…” Well, when she thought about it rationally, when she remembered the sight of Franklin shifting in front of her, she had to believe it. Then again, she was thinking about it rationally, and when she remembered that people transforming themselves into bears was completely and utterly impossible, she couldn’t fucking believe it. “It’s a lot to swallow,” she said with a helpless shrug.

  “All right…okay…” Franklin paced back and forth in front of her. “Let’s all get comfortable, and we’ll talk this out.” He guided her to the couch, fluffed up a few pillows, and spread a blanket over her even though she wasn’t cold. Then he sat down next to her, taking one of her hands in his and tucking it tight between both of his. He grinned over at her, hitting her with the charming force of his white teeth and full lips, his disarming smile, so that she couldn’t help smiling back at him. Just a little.

  “How about we start with the history of our family, how we came to be part bear, part man, and then we’ll go from there. Sound good?” Elias asked, pulling up a brown, silk-upholstered chair so that he could sit close to her. He put his hands on the tops of her legs and stroked up and down in a comforting way. She liked it when they were all touching her. She couldn’t deny that, couldn’t deny how perfect it felt to be snuggled between the three of them.