“You got a minute?”
“For you? I have hours.”
He flashed a big grin and stood, offering me his hand.
I was startled to find Suraj waiting for us in the living room.
“What’s going on?”
“We need to have a talk with you. An important talk we couldn’t have while we were on the road.”
“About our future,” Suraj said, coming to stand next to Nadir. They positioned themselves side by side opposite me, wearing matching expressions of solemnity on handsome faces I’d prefer to see smiling.
My heart crashed through the floor.
This was it. This is when they told me it was just a fling, that they were actually gay after all, or only in love with each other, or maybe they wanted to get a new client altogether and were done with me. I didn’t understand how much I’d come to care about them or had fallen head over heels for the two men until the crushing realization came to me that I was probably about to lose them.
“Oh,” I said, a genius.
“There’s something important that we kept from you while on the road,” Nadir said, loosening his tie then unbuttoning his shirt. Suraj pulled his polo over his head, revealing bronzed shoulders and sculpted muscle that my fingernails had bitten into just the previous night.
Shouldn’t he have had some scratches?
“Is it a bad thing?”
“No.” His fleeting smile didn’t reassure me. “But it’s something deeply personal, and the kind of thing we only share with someone we love. It’s…” Nadir’s fingers hesitated on his belt.
My brain was already malfunctioning, because I realized he’d just told me he loved me.
“Uh. You guys gotta get undressed to tell me a secret more important than…?” Loving me? “Should I be turned on or weirded out?”
“I’m not keen on ruining an Armani shirt so I’m taking it off,” Nadir replied.
“These jeans cost me twenty dollars,” Suraj said. “I still don’t want to ruin them.”
Was sex between guys that messy? My brain coughed and sputtered, making no sense of their words.
“Should I undress too?”
“Not yet.” For the first time, Nadir’s smile turned uncertain and almost shy. I watched the trepidation mirror in Suraj’s features.
They were afraid. Excitement buzzed in the air, tangling with a very real self-conscious fear. More than I wanted to know the secret, I wanted to assuage their anxiety.
“We’re going to show you this because we love you, and can’t imagine not having you in our lives forever,” Nadir said, stripping off his boxers.
“Love me?”
Love hadn’t come to mind. Not really. But I didn’t think I’d be lying if I echoed his words. I didn’t have much time for soul-searching or to consider how I felt since, in the next moment, they were both stripped bare. My gaze darted from between the two men, one lean and muscular, the other a buff dream with a softness to the gut that I associated with his love for food.
“Just remember that it’s still us,” Suraj said.
Then they weren’t men anymore.
I couldn’t help it. I screamed.
Nadir
Penny backpedaled away from us and violently slammed into the back of the couch. I surged forward to help her, only for her next shriek to brutally remind me that she was rightfully afraid of me and the four-hundred-pound killing machine beside me. I wasn’t nearly as huge as Suraj.
Her chest heaved with her panic breaths. We waited, though every muscle in my furred body told me to hurry to her side and soothe her fears.
It’s still us. I’m still me.
Desperately, I tried to convey that.
“You—you—you changed. You’re a werewolf.”
I remained hopeful. She hadn’t put the sofa between us yet or gone running for safety. The longest silence of my life stretched between us before she finally exhaled a disbelieving, “Holy shit. This can’t be real. It’s not real. None of this is real. Oh God, what was in my margarita?”
Yet she approached us.
One bare foot came near. My heart sang, body starving for a touch from her fingers. Beside me, Suraj practically trembled for the same.
“If I touch you, you won’t bite me, right?”
Suraj bumped me forward with a paw. I knew what he was thinking. I was the smaller, less frightening one, about the size of a medium dog. My caramel coat of long fur lent me the appearance of a smaller wolf.
I approached her one slow step at a time, matching her movement for movement, greeting her exposed palm by pushing my head beneath it. All the air whooshed from Penny at once, and I didn’t dare move a muscle. Even after her fingers slowly crept over my ears and felt my furry face, I maintained a motionless pose.
Finally, she knelt down to peer at me and search my face with her gaze. As her eyes stared into mine, I saw the edge of her terror begin to thaw right before my eyes, as fear melted and was replaced by unconcealed awe.
“Your eyes are still your eyes.” Finally, her attention moved to Suraj and she beckoned him closer, breath hitching when he lifted one huge paw to approach. I had to admire her courage then. The way she overcame her own fear and invited him close enough to cup one of her hands against his enormous face filled me with pride.
Ours.
Suraj met my gaze. I read it in his expression.
Penny was ours.
“Omigod, omigod, you’re huge.”
Her fingers explored his pelt, her attention never on one of us for long before she had to touch the other, almost as if she couldn’t decide which animal body intrigued her more. Her indecision provided all the confidence I needed that we were both meant to belong to her. I sprawled across her lap while Suraj nuzzled her with his furry cheek, stirring her curls with the warm air from his chuff. She giggled and batted at his whiskers.
“Can you become you again?” she finally asked.
We did, both of us kneeling beside our seated woman on the floor, still naked as the day we were born.
“That is us, Penny. We can never separate the animal from who we are, because the animal is us,” I said. “We’re shapeshifters.”
“Like werewolves?”
“Somewhat. No one bit us. We were born this way,” Suraj clarified. “My mother was a weretiger, and my little sister is a weretiger. So is my brother. It is genetic.”
“My younger twin sisters are also,” I said. “Both of my parents passed this on to us. It’s who we are. And being with both of us means…having a part of our hearts forever. I’ve had almost two years to fall in love with you, Penny.”
Her mouth fell open again as she stared at me.
Suraj touched her chin, directing her attention back to him. “And one season is enough for me to know you are both all I will ever need.”
“I…” Her shoulders shook with the shuddering breath escaping her lungs. “I didn’t know what to call this feeling. Not after what happened earlier this year. I wanted to give up on men before you two. But love…” She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. “I think I love you both, too. When you first brought me inside, I was sure you planned to dump me.”
Suraj kissed her first, then I followed the gesture with a sizzling kiss of my own, drawing her in against me afterward and holding her close. Her fingers skimmed my bare hips. “We wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Is it weird that I know that?”
“No.”
“Is it a…shifter thing?”
The warmth of Suraj’s chuckle touched my shoulder. “It is, yes.”
Penny sucked in a breath. “You’re not making me feel this way?”
“No, sweetheart. We aren’t. It’s…the way we feel for our chosen mate is something we can’t help but project with our souls. If you trust us and believe in us, it’s because you feel it—not because we forced you to feel any particular way.”
“But it is up to you to choose to accept us. If you do, we are yours forever,” Suraj promised.<
br />
“Forever…” Penny leaned back to gaze up at me. “It’s like something out of one of Nandi’s romance novels. It’s like she—” I watched the figurative lightbulb flash and knew she’d finally caught on. “They are too. All of you are. Are they…?”
“Lions. All of them, babies included.”
“Wow. Like, wow. So, if shapeshifters are real, does that mean witches…?”
“I’ve met several witches near San Antonio,” I offered in a low voice.
“Vampires?”
“Them too. It’s a crazy world out there, full of magic, Penny.”
“And you both want to share it with me.” She swallowed and raised both hands to cup each of our cheeks, looking up at us. “No going back, right?”
“Right.”
“I’ve made my whole career based on risks. My parents told me to go to college for a real job. Producers told me a black girl could never sell punk. Grant told me I’d never find someone as patient as him, that I brought what he did on myself.”
I wanted to pummel that smarmy bastard.
Her gaze and the love I saw gleaming in them re-centered me in the moment.
“What’s one more risk? Do it.”
Penny’s consent was all we needed to practically shred her clothing. Together, Suraj and I were faster than she could have removed her own. I stripped her T-shirt before Suraj sprawled her on the carpet and drew her leggings down her thighs. In my haste, I popped the seam of her panties and turned them into microfiber ribbons.
“Nadir!” she squealed.
“I’ll buy you new ones,” was all I managed to get out before I put my mouth on her. Her hips bucked up, and she jolted in place, gasping a breath of startled surprise and pleased moan all in one. I tasted her as I had a dozen times before since our return to Houston and let my tongue do all of the work.
She writhed on the carpet and buried her fingers in my hair, the reward of her soft, breathy sighs all I needed.
I drew back and onto my knees between her legs, but the moment I withdrew the condom foil from my pocket to suit up, Penny shoved my hand aside.
“I’m on the pill. We’re safe. We’ll be okay.”
I needed no further assurances. I took ahold of her thick thighs and dragged her closer to me. After so long waiting to make her mine, the gravity of the moment surged through me. I needed her. I needed Suraj. He had already accepted my claim with words, but I needed it again, with her. Skin to skin.
We’d already decided who took the first claim with the flip of a coin. Fighting it out as animals gave as much of an advantage to Suraj as duking it out as men would have provided to me with my years of combat training.
A quarter couldn’t be cheated, however, and I’d won the privilege of marking her with my soul first.
I was in heaven with the first stroke, every sense alive, every touch and whispered word seared into my mind and heart. Without any barriers between us, the tension built hard and fast.
“Come here, Suraj. Come here, baby,” she urged him between her panted breaths, until his length was within reach of her. She stroked him and urged our weretiger closer by the cock, leaning up once he was within reach and taking him in her mouth.
Despite all of her jokes about not knowing what to do with two guys, she handled both of us like she’d been born for it. Suraj must have felt the same.
“Ours,” he growled in a rumble I felt in my soul as he steadily fucked her mouth.
“Ours,” I echoed. “For now and always, Penny.”
“Yours.”
One word, so simple yet so full of meaning. I’d waited my entire life to hear it, and my shifter soul celebrated its utterance. There was power in that word and the sweet authenticity of it. Her hips rolled to meet me stroke for frenzied stroke, sweat gleaming over her luscious body and over my heated brow.
The beast took over as I withdrew. When I flipped Penny onto her stomach, she rose to her knees and pushed her ass at me as if she understood and felt the wild desperation inside me clawing to escape. I re-entered in a stroke, and not too long after, climaxed deep inside my mate while her trembling walls squeezed every drop I had to offer.
She was still moaning and writhing in pleasure as Suraj and I exchanged places, her cheek on the floor and round ass in the air for him. I watched the muscles of his powerfully built body tighten when he claimed her from behind, all the while growing hard again.
“Yours,” he said before release took him as well.
It was everything I wanted. Penny shuddered between us, her body bowing into mine, her hands tightly clenched against Suraj’s chest.
Today, she was ours in the way of our shifter customs.
Maybe one day she’d be ours in name and law as well.
Chapter Twenty
Penny
Summer couldn't come fast enough. Not only for beach weather, but for less busy days. Working on a new album meant long hours at the studio with my band working on new songs, and less time with my guys. With my stalker dealt with, I no longer required a round-the-clock guard.
Then again, from what my lawyer told me, Randy swore up and down that he was innocent.
“Of course he’s saying he’s innocent,” Harper sneered when I voiced my thought aloud during a call. “No one is gonna fess up to something like that. But they found all your stuff on his laptop, so his word means shit.”
“Yeah, I know. I guess it just bothers me, is all. He was always so nice and treated me like a normal person.”
“You see the best in people, Pen. Anyway, I gotta go. The plumber is supposed to be here soon, or so they told me an hour ago. Building management here really sucks. See you tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow. The guys and I are going to head down to Moody Gardens for the weekend, remember?”
“Oh yeah. Take pics for me. I need to see what they consider swimming trunks.”
“I’ll take pics, but they’ll be mine, all mine.”
“Selfish hag.”
“Nympho.”
“Hehe. Love ya, girl. Have fun.”
Ending the call, I tossed the phone on the couch and hopped up, only to give it a second look and snatch it right back up. It was true that the guys and I had a weekend of fun planned, but the talk with Harper had also brought something else to mind, namely the condominium that had emptied out only a few days ago. Ever since we’d come back from tour, Harper had dealt with a whole slew of maintenance problems at her apartment complex. They came in, did a half-assed fix, and then gave her the run around when she tried to get them back in.
Harper didn’t just need an upgrade, she deserved it.
I called down to the front desk and asked to be transferred to the management office. A minute later, a cheery voice picked up.
“Amanda Pierce, how may I help you?”
“Hey, Amanda, this is Penny Wallace—”
“Penny, how wonderful to hear from you! How can I be of assistance today?”
“I was actually hoping you might have a few minutes to show me the unit next to mine sometime today or next week.”
“I can head up right now if you like.”
“Oh, all right, that would be great. I’ll meet you out in the hall.”
Habit had me reaching for my phone to call the guys, but I stopped myself before I pressed Nadir’s number. This was their day off and I wasn’t leaving the building. I wasn’t even leaving my floor. Technically I didn’t need a bodyguard watching my every step at home. So I slipped my phone in my pocket and stepped out into the hallway to wait, bristling with barely contained excitement.
Amanda arrived about fifteen minutes later, the ding of the elevator announcing her arrival. She spotted me from down the hall and smiled wide, then closed the distance between us with quick steps.
“Sorry about the wait, but I had to discuss something with Carter at the desk,” she said while smoothing her hair back from her face.
“It’s fine, really. I appreciate you coming up on such short notice,
especially since I know the place hasn’t officially been listed yet.”
“Anything for our residents. You look lovely today, Penny, as always.”
“Oh, um, thanks.” I wouldn’t ever classify my cut-off shorts and old college sweatshirt as lovely, but I guess they took treating their residents politely very seriously. Amanda was always bubbly and complimentary. Overly so, truth be told. I did my best to ignore it and tried to act normally. She unlocked the unit down the hall and gestured me inside ahead of her.
“Each penthouse on this floor has a different layout. This one is three bedrooms rather than two like yours, so the living room space is a little less than what you’re used to.”
“I’m sure that’s fine.” I’d forgotten how huge the floorplans looked when there was no furniture cluttering up the place. The entry hall was wider than mine, opening up into the main room and a large, open kitchen that I knew would get a ton of use. Harper loved baking. Her spaghetti was as bland as cardboard, but she could whip up a gorgeously layered cake and fluffy scones without breaking a sweat.
“It’s a lovely condo. Not as good as yours, of course. I took special care to ensure you were offered the best layout on the floor when we heard you were looking to buy. Turned down a slew of offers for the place.”
“Uh, I…” Hadn’t known that.
“There are so many possibilities open for you by adding this space,” Amanda continued with hardly a pause. “You can knock down this wall here and double your space quite easily. I can push the permits through with little problem.”
“No, no, no,” I said quickly. “Actually, I wanted to get this unit for Harper.”
Amanda pivoted on one foot, blonde hair swishing around her face, and looked at me. “I see.”
“She’s been talking about finding a bigger place for a while now.”
“Yes, well, I’m not sure Ms. Mitchell would be able to meet the financing requirements.” Amanda laughed. “It isn’t like she’s the lead of the band.”
Wow. Judgmental much? I folded my arms across my chest and met her gaze. “Of course she can, but that’s not a worry because I will be the one buying the place.”
Jackal of All Trades (The Wild Operatives: MacArthur Security Book 1) Page 14
