“Well, hello there,” Meg replied, her tone of voice losing its edge as she smiled at the very tall young man. “Blimey, who designed you? You’re a gorgeous one, aren’t you? What on earth are you doing in a place like this?”
All of a sudden, Emma wanted to bury her face in her hands and either laugh or cry. This was all too much. Meg had already figured out that there was something special about Cillian, and to add to it, Roth and Laird were apparently about to show up. There would be no explaining to Meg how she’d come to be acquainted with three such men.
As if in response to her quandary, the pub’s door opened and two large figures made their way inside, striding immediately over to the table. Emma turned to face them, her heart leaping into a space very close to her throat.
“Hello, lovely,” Laird said, a warm smile on his face as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. He seemed to be ignoring the man in his periphery who was currently in the process of crawling back to his stool by the bar.
“Hello,” Emma replied. A smile twitched her lips upwards for what felt like the first time since she’d said good-bye to them the previous night. She turned around, gesturing again towards her co-worker. “This is my friend and colleague, Meg. Meg, this is…Laird…and Roth.”
Cillian moved in to say something quiet to Roth, and Meg took advantage of the chance to pull her friend aside.
“What the hell is going on here? What sort of secret life have you been living?” she asked, pressing her face close to Emma’s, her jaw slack as she took in the three men. “It’s like a Sexy Bloke Convention in here all of a sudden.”
“There’s no secret life,” Emma assured her, wondering how starkly the lie must be painting itself on her face. “I only met Roth and Laird for the first time last night. I’ve never met Cillian before just now, I swear.”
“Well, they all seem very, very pleasant. It’s no wonder you didn’t sleep last night, woman. No wonder you were so distracted today.” Meg finally shut her mouth, seemingly thinking it best not to ramble about the men’s ridiculous handsomeness any further while they were standing so close by.
They’d finished their conversation, and Cillian was now in the process of wandering over.
“Meg, I wonder, would you care to join me for dinner so that we could leave these three alone?” he asked, smiling warmly. “There’s a great place not far from here that I was thinking of heading to myself.”
Emma watched him closely. His eyes looked brighter than before, his smile more engaging. No doubt he was doing something to her colleague’s mind, just as Roth had done to her from across the room the previous night. Cillian was probably charming Meg—not that it took much, with such a willing victim. He was splendid-looking, all broad jaw and wicked, cunning eyes. Just Meg’s type.
“Dinner, you say? Yes. Yes, I would love that,” Meg said, grabbing her coat. But she stopped for a moment and turned to Emma, as though she’d suddenly remembered that they’d come to the pub together. “That is, if it’s okay with you.”
“It’s fine with me,” Emma said, laughing. “I suspect that I’ll have my hands full with these two, anyhow.”
“Right. Yes. Perfect. Well, I’ll be off, then.” Meg had already begun striding towards the door. Cillian spun around, shrugging his shoulders at his pack mates as if to say, “What else could I do?” and then they were both gone.
Roth made his way over to Emma and to her surprise, he pulled her close and kissed her on the lips, his tongue slipping past her teeth to greet hers as the ground melted under her feet. It was a passionate kiss, arousing, so exciting that the world spun out of control for a moment. The sort of kiss she might have hoped for later in the evening. But coming as a surprise now somehow made it even more incredible. Any fears that she’d had were shattered with the touch of his lips.
“I’m so sorry we weren’t here sooner,” he said when he’d pulled back a little. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Fine,” she said, looking from him to Laird and back again. “So fine, now.”
Laird, who’d moved over to stand beside them, raised a hand to her face, slipping it under her hair and stroking her neck as each man had done the previous night, sending a sharp, hot jolt of electricity down her body that didn’t stop until it reached her clit. He pulled her to him and kissed her, just as Roth had done, and she was suddenly all too aware that they must be drawing stares from curious pub-goers who wondered how a woman like her could end up getting frenched by two such creatures in the space of a minute.
Still, she surrendered herself to the sensation, kissing him back, her lips hungry for the taste of him just as they’d been for the Alpha.
“Holy shite,” she said, grabbing the table to regain her footing on the wooden floor when Laird had pulled back. She wasn’t normally one for cursing in relatively polite company, but the man’s touch was magic. “You two are full of surprises.”
“As are you,” said Roth, who was still so, so close. “Tell us how you are.”
“I’m fine,” she replied. “So much better now that you’re here, though.”
“You’ve been thinking,” Laird said softly, his eyes exploring hers. “Thinking about us.”
She nodded, turning back to Roth, whose fingers had begun trailing down her chest, slipping under her voluminous cotton scarf to explore the line of her cleavage. He was being so bold tonight, so forward, and she didn’t mind one bit. “Sit,” he said. “Let’s have a drink.”
“I don’t understand you,” Emma said breathlessly as she pulled up a chair. “I don’t understand what you two are. What you do to me. You make me crazy.”
“I—we—don’t do anything,” Roth replied, smiling. “If anything, it comes from you first. But let’s call it a mutual energy. A mutual attraction. It’s far deeper than anything that any of us has experienced. You’re as much a participant in it as we are, I’m afraid. You are the one who drew me to you. Or perhaps I should say that you drew my Dire Wolf to you. The moment he picked up your scent in the park, we both knew that you were the one we desired.”
Emma swallowed hard. His words were so honest, so lacking in arrogance or inhibition. He’d stated, as though it were the simplest truth, that he wanted her. No hesitation. No fear.
Perhaps it was the animal in him that made him so open to his feelings.
He was right about their bond, too, and she knew it. Much as she tried to seek out an explanation, this was something inexplicable. Something more than a sexual attraction. This was a three-way magnetic pull beyond their control, beyond her human understanding.
The men sat opposite her, their eyes exploring her body just as they had the previous night. She pulled her scarf away and set it down, leaning her elbows on the table, aware that they could see the outline of her breasts, the line of her cleavage. This time, she didn’t feel any self-consciousness when they stared with those amazing smiles on their lips.
Just pure bliss.
Perhaps it was time for her to try on the shifters’ brand of honesty for size. “I’ve been thinking about you both all day,” she said, looking from one man to the other and back again. “Both of you. I want you so badly that it hurts. I can’t believe I’m saying it so matter of factly, but it’s the truth.” She pushed her face into her hands and laughed before exposing her features again, tucking her fingers into her hair. “You seem to draw truth out of me. I’m usually so bloody shy, but for some reason I think constantly about telling you how much I want to fuck you.”
“Well, lovely, you know full well what we want,” Laird replied, “and there’s nothing wrong with that. Your mind has already foreseen the pleasure your body would feel in our company. You know, too, that we would protect you for the rest of your life. You probably even know that you would become stronger because of our bond.”
“Stronger?” she asked. Did he mean she would become emotionally stronger? Because it probably took a certain amount of fortitude to jump into a relationship with two men.
�
�Stronger emotionally, physically, mentally, you name it,” Roth replied. “Stronger in many ways. It’s a gift, bestowed by the Ritual. Your blood will flow hotter. Your senses will become heightened. You will become more like one of us, minus the animal inside.”
Emma’s breath caught in her throat as she mulled over the words. Oh, wow. He’d said will. Not would. He was speaking as though this…this bond of theirs was a done deal. For some insane reason, his confidence only served to arouse her all the more.
“Tell me something,” she said, “why do I want so badly to be with both of you? It’s never in my life occurred to me to attempt a ménage a trois. It seems so wild a concept. Not to mention that it goes entirely against my nature as a good girl.”
“Come now, you’re a geneticist,” said Roth. “You know perfectly well that as a woman, you are probably attracted to us both because we each have strengths and weaknesses. The two of us together would ensure that our children share our combined traits, our combined intellect, our physical prowess. Think of it this way: you see in us a way to advance evolution at a more rapid pace. Your clever mind understands it on a subconscious level, as does your body.” He leaned forward and spoke low. “Not to mention that you understand the pleasures of the flesh.” He glanced at Laird, who raised an eyebrow playfully and mirrored Roth’s pose, leaning forward on his elbows, his eyes locking on Emma’s.
“Our children?” Emma said. The words should have terrified her, but for some reason they didn’t. “It doesn’t work like that, though. If I got pregnant, it would be with one or the other of your children.”
Roth and Laird exchanged another look.
“Let me guess,” Emma said, laughing. “The Wild Magic changes all the rules.”
“Something like that,” said Roth.
“How am I not freaked out to be talking about children with two men I met less than twenty-four hours ago?” asked Emma.
“For the same reason that we’re not freaked out,” said Laird. “You feel it. You understand what this is.”
“I understand on some level,” she agreed. “I understand how much it hurts to think of losing either of you. How addicted I seem to be. How much I wanted you with me when I went to bed last night.” Emma looked away for a moment, unable to meet their eyes when she uttered the next words. “I don’t want to say good-bye to you again.”
“We are meant for you,” said Laird. “Body and soul. We are yours, if you’ll have us. You never need to say good-bye, not if you ask us to be yours.”
A hard shot of heat penetrated Emma’s chest with his words. To think that two men like them—two otherworldly, incredible beings—could be offering themselves to her. “You don’t know much about me,” she murmured. “I might disappoint you. I’m very dull, really…”
“We know what you do for a living,” Roth replied. “We know that you’re intelligent. You’re very beautiful, though you think you’re plain, and I can say with certainty that your scent makes my cock as hard as titanium. I can’t speak for Laird, but I know that I have fantasized about claiming your body since the moment I first set eyes on you. But not only because you’re pretty. Not because you have delectable breasts and a fine arse. I want you for a far deeper reason, one that permeates my soul. I knew long ago that some part of you had already claimed me. Perhaps it didn’t happen in this life; maybe it was in another. But at some point you became the woman I was fated to be with.”
The Alpha’s words were laced with eroticism, but beautiful as well. It was all Emma could do not to kiss him again, right then and there, to take charge and claim him—really claim him—for her own.
But no, she wouldn’t do it here. She wanted them in her bed, or on her floor, or her dining table. Anywhere, so long as they could be alone, locked away behind closed doors.
Her cheeks flushing hot, deep red, she glanced shyly at Laird, searching his eyes to see if he could possibly feel the same way that Roth did.
“I said it already, but I can say it again,” he told her. “I thought Roth was quite mad when he told me he’d found our mate. I didn’t anticipate my feelings for you, which were so immediate and intense as to be almost frightening. I didn’t expect…” he stopped for a moment, his jaw clenching. Emma thought she even saw his bright blue eyes turn misty. “I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect to feel so attached to someone, not in this lifetime, yet here it’s happened in the space of a day. I want you so badly, Emma, that it pains me.”
Emma grabbed the edge of the table and squeezed, trying to prepare herself. She had to be certain of her next words, because some part of her knew there was no turning back once she told them what she wanted.
Chapter 12
“Could we get out of here?” Emma asked, her voice so tight in her throat that it was a wonder she managed to get the words out.
She was well aware that she didn’t really need to ask the question. Both men were well attuned to her emotions; without being able to explain how, she could feel them inside her, reading her as though her heart were an open book that spoke its words aloud to their minds.
“Of course we can,” Roth replied, rising to his feet to extend a hand towards her. Wordlessly Emma took it, rising to her feet, her eyes locked on his. She felt protected, somehow, just standing here in front of him and Laird. Nothing would happen, no harm would come to her, so long as she was with these two men; of that she was certain. They’d become an impenetrable, inextricable part of her in the short time that the three had known one another.
The Dire Wolf shifters were her armour.
“Come,” Roth breathed as he looked her up and down, the same deep, dark hunger in his eyes that she felt coursing through her own body. “We’ll get you home.”
“Then what?” she asked. “What will happen when we get there?”
All of a sudden, she wanted to hear the answer in no uncertain terms. She wanted to know that she could claim them tonight. If they left her again she might go mad.
“That will be entirely up to you,” Roth replied. “You choose your fate tonight, Emma, as well as ours.”
They left the pub without another word and walked towards Emma’s flat. She found herself quickening her pace with every step, more eager than she would have liked to admit to open her door and discover what pleasures awaited her on the other side.
“No need to hurry,” said Roth, striding along beside her. He and Laird had such long legs that they had no trouble keeping pace with her quasi-jog. “We won’t disappear on you.”
“Sorry. I’m a little nervous, I guess.”
“So let’s talk,” said Laird. “Ask us a question. Anything. It’ll pass the time.”
“Do you two work?” Emma asked abruptly, a quiet chuckle making its way past her lips. “Wow. I can’t believe I’m asking you that now. I mean, it’s not that I care about your incomes or anything. I’m just curious.” She was tumbling over her words now, her tongue in knots of excitement. If she’d felt drunk the previous night, tonight she just felt a sort of confused elation.
Which was almost the same thing as drunk.
“Some shifters do have official jobs, of course,” Laird replied. “But we don’t. Rather, we don’t have jobs that pay. Not in the traditional sense, at least.”
“Really? So how do you live? This city is sodding expensive. My flat costs me almost everything I make, and that’s after my parents gave me a massive down-payment as a gift for my twenty-fifth birthday.”
“Old money,” Roth replied with a wry twist of his lip. “Very old. Among our kind, there’s loads of it. I suppose the term we ought to use to describe the members of our pack is ‘independently wealthy.’ Call it an inheritance, passed down through the generations. That’s not to say that we don’t actually do anything, of course. We work constantly. But we do it in secret, and it’s rather difficult to explain to the British government how our income tax ought to be sorted.”
“I’m never going to understand any of this, am I?” Emma laughed, relieve
d to be taking her mind temporarily off the place between her legs, which had been aching since the men had first walked into the pub. “You two are a part of this universe that I never knew existed. For a scientist, that’s rather mind-bending, you know. In a good way, of course.”
“Always happy to bend your mind, and indeed any other parts of you,” said Laird. “I’m looking forward to seeing how flexible you are, in fact.”
“Enough,” Roth growled softly, and Laird clammed up. It seemed that his Alpha wanted to remind him that Emma should be the one to decide exactly how the rest of the night unfolded. If she was to bend over, it would be on her terms.
When at last they reached her house, the men guided her up her steps to the front door just as they’d done the night before. “It just occurred to me that I don’t actually know where you two live,” she said. “Are you nearby?”
“There’s a condominium building not too far from here, where a number of our pack have taken up residence,” Roth replied. “Temporarily, I suppose you could say. The Trekilling Pack purchased the entire building some time ago, to accommodate the city’s growing Dire Wolf population. You should come by sometime. It’s very nice. But of course Laird and I intend to move into something rather more substantial when…well, when the time is right.”
When the time is right, thought Emma. I hope that time is very, very soon, and I hope I’m included in the equation.
“I’d very much like to see your temporary flat sometime,” she said, turning away to insert her key into the lock. When she’d opened the door she turned back to them, a surge of renewed need filling her. “But what am I saying? Let me show you mine. At least more than the foyer, which you’ve already seen. Will you come in, at least for a little?” The question was polite, casual. But for Emma it was swollen with meaning. Come in, she tried to command silently. Come in, make yourselves at home. Kiss me again. Pull my clothes off. Have your way with me, so that I can have mine with you. Please.
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