Triad

by Cheyenne Meadows

  “Not planning on it with that big knot still intact.”

  Dillon scooped up a dollop of Copper’s semen on his finger then licked the digit clean. Copper’s nose flared as he stared with rapt attention.

  Repeating the action, Dillon licked his lips. “Tastes like catnip.”

  Copper snorted before reluctantly grinning.

  Rick licked Copper’s neck. “It could be worse. Dil tastes like kiwi fruit, seeds and all.”

  Dillon met his beta’s gaze and matched his smile. Reading Rick’s expression, he realized they shared the same thought. Copper was their third. Whether the cat realized it or not, he’d found his mates. The word buoyed Dillon’s heart and sent a wave of happiness washing through him. They couldn’t have made a better selection.

  The lion had proved himself in battle, standing in the front lines, coming to the aid of both wolves and suffering a nearly fatal injury in the process. Gloriously handsome and sexy, he added fuel to the flame already between Rick and Dillon. Sure, the cat grumbled and growled, but who didn’t? Everything boiled down to the fact that Copper fit them as if he were a tennis ball to a puppy. Rick had already confessed his feelings for Copper. Dillon heartily agreed. If he didn’t already love the overgrown tomcat, he was on the verge. No one could heat his blood and soothe his cranky moods unless he felt deeply about them. Rick could. Now Copper could as well.

  Copper hissed as Rick pulled out then eased to his side.

  “Did you call me mate?” Copper scooted over to allow room for Rick to stretch out after such an intense climax.

  “Yeah.” Dillon watched the other alpha’s face carefully. “What do you think about becoming our third mate?”

  Copper blinked and remained silent for a long moment. “I thought wolves mated in pairs, for life?”

  Rick shook his head. “Some do. With our band, three is considered optimum and the norm.”

  The lion seemed to consider Rick’s words. “For how long?”

  “Life,” Dillon answered.

  Copper’s gaze traveled from Rick to Dillon and back again. “You sure?”

  “Positive.” Rick rubbed Copper’s nearby thigh.

  Copper sighed. “Okay then.” A grin crept across his face. “But don’t blame me if you’re ready to kick me out the door in a month.”

  Rick snorted. “I’m used to one smart-ass alpha. What’s one more?”

  Dillon rolled his eyes. “We won’t kick you out. Tie you to the bed and fuck your brains out, maybe.”

  “Awww. You do love me.”

  “I’d say so or we wouldn’t be planning on a lifetime with your feline ways.” Dillon grinned while Rick chuckled.

  Copper smiled. “Count me in.” Gaining his hands and knees, he kissed Dillon for a long moment before turning his attention to Rick. “Even if I have to move onto pack lands and live with ass-sniffing canines.”

  Rick beamed. “The only ass we’re interested in sniffing is yours.”

  “Just remember…cats rule, dogs drool.”

  The beta snorted, but a wide smile covered his face.

  Dillon watched the two mesh mouths and felt the last puzzle piece slip into place, making him whole. Finally, they’d found their third. No matter he happened to carry feline genetics. He completed their bond. Together they would share their lives, their love and their bed—a perfect triad.

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  “I’m impressed. Made it through the whole tour and not one wolf sniffed my ass.” Copper grinned as he walked through the door of Dillon and Rick’s cabin on Summit Pack lands. He’d moved in earlier in the morning, found room for all his clothes then followed along on a scenic viewing of the acreage owned by the pack. They’d met several wolves along the way. All had seemed friendly, curious and a bit amused when the pair had introduced him as their third mate.

  They’d planned to live together several weeks back, but Copper had had to remain on the job until a replacement could be found. Afterward, there’d been logistics of combining two households into one. At least now they weren’t driving four hours a couple of times per week to be together. Instead, they’d have every day and night to enjoy one another, especially after Copper had established himself with the wolf pack and settled himself into his new security position alongside his mates. Finally.

  Rick snorted, shutting the door behind him as he pulled up the rear. “They were too busy ogling you and licking their chops with lustful longing.”

  Dillon wrapped an arm around Rick, pulling him close enough to brush a brief kiss over his lips. “Too bad. They’ll just have to find their own kitty. This one’s taken.”

  Copper rolled his eyes and battled a chuckle. “Hello. I can hear you. Don’t I get a say in this?”

  The beta walked over and patted Copper on the butt with familiarity. “Sure, you do. You get a vote on whether you’re going to top, bottom, or both—this time around. After all, we should christen the new bed.”

  “Yep. Gotta give the springs a work out, make sure they’re up to snuff.” Dillon ambled over to join the group, grabbing Copper’s other cheek and squeezing.

  “And if not?”

  “Then we return it and find another. Because, by damn, we have to have a king-sized bed that can last through some rough and tumble make out sessions.” Dillon traced Copper’s ear with his tongue.

  “Make out sessions?” Copper arched an eyebrow.

  Rick shook his head. “Alphas and their penchant for reverting to adolescence.” He smacked Dillon lightly on the chest. “That’s lovemaking sessions, you dolt.”

  “Lovemaking sessions? Sounds like you’ve been reading romance novels again.” Dillon snorted at the beta.

  “Hey, I happen to like a good book.” He leaned in and bit Dillon not so gently on the earlobe. “Besides, isn’t that what people in love do?”

  Copper blew a breath across Rick’s nape then licked the area where he’d sunk his teeth deep in the throes of passion a few hours ago. Though the wound had already healed, he knew the mark would be a sensitive reminder of their glorious activities at his old home, before they’d shut the door and turned in the key.

  “I’d say so. Otherwise, it’s just down and dirty sex.”

  “I, for one, like down and dirty sex,” Dillon mumbled against Rick’s throat.

  The lion grinned impishly. “To the bedroom.” He emphasized his words with a smart slap to Dillon’s rear. “We’ll make some down and dirty love.”

  Rick’s lips twitched. “Spoken like a true alpha.”

  Dillon kissed Rick hard then pulled back before things got out of control. “Good thing you like alphas.”

  With a jerk on his hand, Dillon pulled Rick down the hall. The beta, in return, latched onto Copper’s shirt and tugged him along.

  Copper couldn’t stop smiling. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined loving two wolves, particularly when one just happened to be a steadfast alpha. Yet, their relationship worked and worked well. Perhaps three was the magic number when it came to mates after all. He could vouch for that very fact.

  Rick sealed his lips over Copper’s, his tongue busily delving deep, entreating the feline into a game of tag. Dillon’s quick hands unbuttoned Copper’s jeans and pushed them down over the lion’s hips. Once they puddled at his feet, Dillon’s lips found Copper’s leaking slit and lapped. All thoughts fled from Copper’s mind as he fell into a pool of bliss, surrounded by his two mates. Bonded for all time.

  Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:

  Spotless: Hide

  Bailey Bradford

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Dorso Rodriguez.

  Adal stared at the unconscious man. Dorso had woken up a few minutes here and there, but he’d only blinked and asked what had happened before sleeping again.

  Dorso Rodriguez. Adal liked thinking the name, and he liked saying it softly. The letters rolled off his tongue, and inside, he went all warm and tingly when he spok
e it.

  He went all warm and tingly every time he looked at or touched Dorso Rodriguez, for that matter.

  The last name especially was almost musical to Adal. He didn’t have a last name, and he didn’t have friends like Dorso did.

  No friends at all. For a moment, Adal wondered what it’d be like to have people care about him.

  “Steven,” he whispered. There was one person in the world that gave a damn about Adal. Steven, his half-brother. Like Adal, Steven had no last name. They were both half-breed shifters, despised by their society for a luck-of-the-draw birth neither of them had chosen.

  But their father Bashuan, a full-blooded Amur leopard shifter, had bred with two puma shifter females, and hence Adal and Steven had been born.

  Steven first, Adal a few years later. Sadness threatened to overwhelm him, so Adal went back to focusing on Dorso. Dorso was, after all, his mate—a fact Adal was still struggling to accept. He hadn’t thought halfbreeds had destined mates. Would have denied it repeatedly, except for the warm fuzzies he got from even being near Dorso. Perhaps he’d been told wrong, but Adal didn’t think so. Looking at Dorso, everything in him called out to some deep, hidden part of Adal.

  Adal touched Dorso’s fluttering pulse point. The skin of his neck was warm and darkly tanned. “Wake up, please,” Adal urged. The silence and utter aloneness was driving his nerves into the ground. “Please,” he added again as he stroked Dorso’s chest.

  He’d dared to remove the man’s shirt and pants, along with his boots. That had left Dorso in black boxer briefs and red crew socks with pink hearts all over them. Adal was charmed by those pink hearts, and he couldn’t explain why. Maybe because it made Dorso unique, or unlike any stereotype Adal could imagine.

  Dorso’s chest was broader than Adal’s, his upper body more muscular. He had swirls of dense brown chest hair, not so thick that his large cocoa-colored nipples were hidden, though.

  Adal wanted to touch those nipples and see if the skin there was as smooth as it appeared to be. He didn’t do any such thing. It was wrong to fondle a guy when he was sleeping, even if the man was Adal’s mate. Dorso knew none of that, not what Adal was, or what they were to each other. Adal wouldn’t take advantage—he wasn’t a pervert or without morals.

  He did look—at Dorso’s chest, at the deeply sculpted abs, the slightly protruding belly button, the narrowing line of hair that disappeared beneath Dorso’s underwear. There was a substantial bulge beneath those briefs that made Adal’s mouth water when he glanced at it.

  Adal did know that the light sheen of hair on Dorso’s legs, chest and arms was softer than he’d expected. He knew Dorso’s elbows and hands were chafed, likely from working on engines and crawling around under vehicles. There was a long, fading scar on Dorso’s right knee, from an old injury or surgery of some sort.

  Another scar higher up, on Dorso’s belly, was probably from an appendectomy. Shifters didn’t have such issues, but Adal had seen that scar and panicked. He’d called Bae Warren, who was mind-boggingly nice, all things considered, and Bae had told him what an appendectomy was.

  It made Adal’s guts hurt just thinking about it. Humans were just so fragile, it was frightening.

  Especially when one of them had been knocked unconscious and wasn’t waking up fast enough to suit Adal. He had no idea about human healing times, but a shifter would have been over the head injury in a matter of a few hours.

  Dorso had been hit the day before.

  By Adal’s brother, Steven.

  Steven didn’t know then. He didn’t know Dorso was my mate. If Bae and Isaiah hadn’t told me, hadn’t confirmed what I was feeling was something real—

  Adal wasn’t going there. He’d had too much happen in the past twenty-four hours himself, too many changes to his life that he’d never, ever have thought would happen.

  Steven had left him, vowing to kill their father Bashuan before Bashuan could send more guards out to kill Adal and Steven. Adal was very much afraid Steven would fail. Bashuan was evil incarnate, the rest of the world just didn’t know it yet. There was a chance that Steven would survive, but Adal couldn’t picture his life with Bashuan no longer a threat to it.

  He had no intention of letting his mind meander into the darkness, as it so frequently did. There was hope, a spark of it at least, burning in Adal’s soul.

  If he and Dorso could vanish somewhere Bashuan would never find them, if Steven did succeed in killing Bashuan…if if if! So many ifs, and nothing I’m sure of, except that Dorso Rodriguez fascinates me as no one has before.

  Adal curled the fingers of one hand against the cool chest hair. “Please,” he begged again with less pride than before. “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t know how to be alone here. If I were locked in our room or chained to the wall, I would know how to accept that.” He sank into himself then, retreating from the horrors of life into the beauty of imagination. His was probably quite limited, but he could fantasize about being free, or being someone else, someone who’d been born into a family and was loved.

  Dorso coughed, or cleared his throat, Adal wasn’t sure which and either way, it startled him into a yelp as he tumbled off the bed. His butt hit the floor and the impact jarred him all the way to the top of his head.

  “What the hell?” Dorso rasped. “Goddamn, my head…”

  Adal scrambled up to his feet. His heart alternated between fluttering and slamming as he looked into Dorso’s pretty pale green eyes. And found himself unable to speak beyond, “Uh.”

  Dorso blinked slowly, as if he wasn’t going to actually open his eyes again. “What happened?” he asked, his voice just as gruff and broken as it had been the first time. He reached up with a shaky hand and touched his left temple. “Fuck.”

  The grimace he made and the way his skin lightened a couple of shades knocked Adal from his stupor. He caught Dorso by the wrist and gently tugged his hand down. Dishonesty didn’t occur to him. “You were hit, by my brother Steven.”

  “Why?”

  That wasn’t as easily answered, not because Adal was evasive, but because it was complicated. The truth was going to make Steven, and himself, look like the worst sort of people. Adal just hoped Dorso would let him explain it all, eventually.

  “Do you want some water?” Adal asked, reaching for the glass he’d sat beside the bed. “You’ve been out of it for a full day and night, well mostly out of it. You should keep hydrated.”

  Dorso watched him for a long moment, and Adal tried not to shiver. While he managed to keep it inside, more of an internal quivering, Adal’s discomfiture seemed to make the words spill out uncensored. “Your eyes are so oddly colored.” Heat flared over his face as he heard himself speak. “I mean—I didn’t mean that bad. They’re very…nice…” He tapered off, wishing he could just melt away from the embarrassment.

  He couldn’t avert his gaze. Dorso’s eyes weren’t just a pale green, they were kind of grayish, too, and ringed in a shade of smoky blue. “Mine are just brown,” Adal babbled, nervousness giving the words wings even though he’d rather that not have happened. “Plain brown, not gray and blue and green like yours.”

  Dorso’s lips twitched. Adal’s head actually buzzed with dizziness when he saw them stretch into a lazy smile.

  Dorso was devastating, handsome in a rough, real way that Adal hadn’t quite grasped until that moment. There was nothing pretty about Dorso. He didn’t have any softness at all when it came to the shape of his features. His eyes were wide, but they were topped with bushy brown eyebrows that leant him a rather harsh air. His nose was a little too large, with a bump that bespoke of a break or two, and he had a wide jaw with a squared chin that gave him a stubborn look.

  And he had stubble, lots of it, something Adal never had. Body hair was just that for him—body hair, it didn’t extend up to his neck or face. He didn’t have much of it, either, and could never grow a beard.

  “Just brown,” he said again, then shook himself literally, because if he didn�
�t get his act together, Dorso was going to think Adal had taken a hard blow to the head, too. “I’m Adal. Just Adal. I don’t have a last name. I— Sorry. I’ll… Water. Here.”

  Well, that wasn’t a whole lot better, but at least he didn’t start trying to make up poems about Dorso’s eyes. Adal lifted the glass and brought it to Dorso’s lips.

  Dorso quirked a brow at him and Adal blushed again. He’d been foolish not to think about a man’s pride. Of course Dorso would want to hold the glass himself, even if his hands were shaking.

  Adal waited until Dorso had a grip on the glass. Their fingers more than brushed together—Dorso closed his hand around half of Adal’s. Adal started to pull his hand back, then couldn’t figure out how without causing Dorso to drop the whole thing.

  And Dorso just kept giving him that amused look.

  Adal’s cock grew erect while he watched as Dorso tipped the glass and took a sip. It shouldn’t have been erotic, watching a man drink, yet Adal was suddenly and fiercely aroused. His pulse raced and he wanted things he didn’t even know how to wish for. It was Dorso, just Dorso, and whatever he’d do with Adal, to him, that Adal craved.

  Dorso’s eyes went darker as his pupils expanded. He moved the glass away from his mouth, then licked the moisture from his lips.

  The moan slipped free before Adal could censor it. He barely caught the glass in his grip when Dorso suddenly released it.

  Adal was fast. He had a shifter’s superb senses, except for when he was ill. Usually. His brain must have been addled by the hyper-arousal he was feeling because he didn’t even see Dorso reach for him. One second Adal was fumbling the glass, the next he was grabbed by the shirtfront and jerked down.

  The glass went flying, Adal dropping it and letting it fall to the floor. He didn’t resist at all as Dorso brought him down. Adal could only stare at those wet, parted lips and yearn for something he’d never thought he’d have.