by Cara Adams
Hal wanted to tell her she wasn’t fat, she could eat with them, but it wasn’t his place to do that. And suddenly, like an unexpected punch to the guts, he wanted, no needed, to see her naked. He was certain she’d look really good and he could imagine what an energetic sexual partner she’d be. And a romp in the hay would definitely burn off any excess calories. But again, it wasn’t his place to even think about such things, never mind say anything to anyone.
Well, hopefully he wouldn’t be lying on a blanket on the floor again tonight. Berian had refused to leave Janet last night and that’s where they’d both slept. On the living room floor of her apartment. Maybe he would suggest they go to his house. His parents had a really big bed they could all share. Hmm. Maybe he’d better not even think that.
* * * *
Berian stood up and leaned against the doorjamb of Janet’s office. He crossed his arms and held his ground. “Where do you think we’re going? I told you we wouldn’t be returning to your apartment.”
“Fuck! I’d forgotten all about fucking Malcolm. Just choose a hotel in the city. We’ll have to get a suite, though. I need to be able to work tonight.”
“We can do that for tonight. But it might be better if you thought through the issue now. The court case might take quite a while to be settled and staying in a suite at a hotel for that long is going to be expensive. It might be better if I rented an apartment in my name and we stayed there.” He watched her face as he spoke. She had the most amazing countenance. Her hazel eyes were bright and lit with intelligence. She wasn’t beautiful but her expressions were always changing, her agile brain clearly visible in her hand movements, her raised brows, and her mobile mouth.
Janet dumped her overloaded, oversized purse back on her desk and sat down again. “Fucking hell.”
He hid a grin. That seemed to be her favorite phrase. She sure used it a lot.
Then her body straightened and her gaze seemed to be focused on something only she could see. “If I go and stay with anyone, I’ll only risk dragging them into this mess with me. The same if I stay in an apartment somewhere. Even if it’s not in my name, if Malcolm works out where I am it’ll endanger the other apartment dwellers. But there’s no chance of moving into a gated community any time soon either.”
Hal gave a little cough. Berian turned toward him and guessed he was going to suggest the Simon pack lands. That’d work. For a short time at least. He nodded encouragingly. Hal gave him a smile then said, “Uh, ma’am…Janet, we could all stay in my house on the farm. It’s an old house, very ordinary, but there’s no way your brother would think of looking for you there.”
Janet grinned. Her face was bright with the smile that seemed to light her up from the inside. Damn, when she looked like that she was beautiful. Alive, alert, vital, vivacious, and totally stunning. Berian’s cock lengthened and stretched inside his business pants. He’d already been attracted to her strength and courage. She was a woman who tugged at his brain first and his emotions second. But when she smiled at him and Hal like that he instantly wanted to back her up against the nearest wall, preferably the one he was standing beside, and fuck her brains out. Damn she was enchanting.
“Okay, let’s go. You can drive, Hal, since you know the way.”
He shot Hal a penetrating glance, wondering if his colleague was thinking the kind of erotic thoughts that were filling his mind right now. A night alone with a woman he’d admired for her courage and intelligence right from the start, and who he was fast starting to understand was damn sexy underneath her ordinary exterior.
Hal grinned at him. Okay maybe Hal felt the same as him. There was no rush. They had all night to talk and get to know each other better. And maybe see what would happen if they kissed Janet.
* * * *
Janet sank back, alone in the backseat of the car, and stared out the windows as they drove out of the city. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on a road trip anywhere. Her life was her work. Any journeys she undertook were work related, either to other companies to audit their accounts, or by airplane to corporate headquarters around the country. A farm for fuck’s sake. Oh well, as long as they had electricity she supposed she’d survive.
She’d known Berian and Hal for two days. Only two days. But she’d trusted them within ten minutes of meeting them, and she’d gotten a firm understanding of their knowledge of their job and their good characters in less than twelve hours. Even this afternoon, when she’d demanded a desk and computer for Berian, who she’d introduced as one of her new interns, he hadn’t complained, but had sat there and tabulated the data she needed for the Abbott account. The papers for that account were a fucking mess. He’d actually saved her several hours of boring data entry.
She was also getting used to having them around her. Instead of irritating her, as she’d expected, she already saw them as a soothing protective barrier against the world. Having them around for weeks or months was likely to prove highly addictive, she suspected.
They’d even convinced her to stop and buy more food. From the day she’d started kindergarten her brother and his friends had taunted her for being fat. The problem was, no matter how much she exercised or how little she ate, nothing was going to change the fact she had a broad skeleton more suited to a man than a woman. But she did have to watch her food intake. She knew she would put on weight very easily because she didn’t exercise enough. She took after her father—and he was her father, no matter what cruel insinuations that asshole Malcolm made—and her build was short and squat, not taller and leaner as Malcolm had inherited from their mother.
She’d expected to see cattle when they arrived at the farm, but the fields they passed through after opening and closing the main gate were bare, without crops or animals. Janet supposed they were simply elsewhere. She knew about the need to rotate crops and fields but had no idea how it worked in practice. They drove past what appeared to be a main farmhouse with several large barns, and turned down a narrow rutted track. She was glad they were in the black SUV the men had rented, not the white car on such a rough track.
The house Hal stopped outside was an ordinary clapboard with a shingle roof and a wide front porch with a number of comfortable-looking wicker chairs on it. Sitting and relaxing on the porch as the sun went down wasn’t the kind of thing Janet usually did, but just looking at the friendly arrangement of furniture made her think that maybe, once or twice, she should try it.
Hal unlocked the door and turned on lights, leading her into an old-style front room with couches and chairs, then through it into a formal dining room, which in turn led into a huge old farm-style kitchen, which appeared to be where he spent his time. There was a large television against one wall with a couple of armchairs facing it, a meal table with a pile of newspapers and magazines on one end of it, and potted tomato plants sitting on the window ledge.
“Wait here while I help Berian with the luggage,” he said.
Janet sat at the table under the overhead light and took her in-tray out of her purse. Some of the items would have fallen out of it into the depths of the bag, but there was plenty of work here for her to get on with.
It was quite a while later, she guessed, when a steaming cup of coffee was pushed in front of her, along with a banana, a carrot, and one of her little containers of strawberry yogurt with a spoon. She looked up and smiled at Hal. “We already ate.”
“That was hours ago. Berian was sure you wouldn’t want pizza, but we thought you might like some of your own food. Or can we tempt you to eat just one slice? It’s pepperoni deep dish.” Hal’s eyes were gleaming and she knew he was deliberately trying to entice her to be bad.
Berian was leaning against the kitchen counter. When Hal finished speaking he brought the tray of pizza over to the table and she could smell the most mouthwatering aroma.
“I’ll get fat.”
“We’ll go for walk before bed. Burn off some of the calories. Go on. Have a slice,” urged Berian.
Jane
t knew she was doomed. It smelled delicious. She tossed the completed work into her in-tray and pushed the rest of the papers to the side of the table, leaving room for the men to join her, then took a slice of pizza. Fuck, it tasted wonderful. She tried to remember the last time she’d eaten pizza and couldn’t. Oh well, one slice wouldn’t hurt, she supposed.
“How did you know there were rats—or anything alive—inside that box?” She’d been wanting to know ever since they’d told her about it, but somehow she’d never gotten around to asking the men.
“When I was fifteen we had a rat plague here on the farm. I’ve never forgotten their smell,” said Hal.
“That would have been terrible. I suppose they ate your crops.”
“They ate the crops and also the seeds for the following year’s crops and they tormented the animals. Several of the cattle miscarried their calves, and the milk cows stopped producing milk. I know now, looking back, it was the beginning of when the farm started to suffer financial stress. Up until then there’d been a shortage of women, but no real problems. As an adult, I can see that the enormous financial costs of the rat plague were what sent the farm into a downward turn that we’re only now beginning to recover from.”
Janet could understand that. Finance was her lifeblood.
“Why does your brother dislike you? Is it because girls are special in your family, as they are among the wolves?” asked Berian.
“Girls are special?” For a moment Janet was confused. All around the world girls were often seen as second-class citizens, an expense to be married off, unlike a son who would carry the honor of the family name. But then she remembered the shape-shifters had a shortage of females. Shape-shifter men often shared a woman. She liked the idea of that. Two men kissing and holding her at once sounded amazing. Quickly she shook off those thoughts and concentrated on giving an honest answer to the men, without hinting at her pain about the situation.
“My brother is eighteen months older than me. My parents were thrilled to have a fine healthy boy as their first child. They adored him, and he was an angelic-looking baby with his big blue eyes and light-colored hair. As we grew, he was always the perfect one. He was athletic, able to throw baskets by the age of about three, and to chatter intelligently to people who paid attention to him. I was…I don’t know. Ordinary perhaps. Not beautiful, not witty, not athletic.”
“But if that made him appear so superior to you, I don’t understand why he wouldn’t be happy about that. Why would he be angry at you,” asked Hal.
“I think he recognized that I was smarter than him. He countered it by always putting me down, and by making it impossible for me to do well in school. I gave up attempting to work on projects at home or asking my parents to buy me things for school because he invariably spoiled whatever it was. When I was in college I was thrilled with how easy it was to get good marks. I did the work, I borrowed library books, I handed in assignments on time, and I got good marks. After years of struggling it seemed to come so easily to me. And then I worked out that Malcolm had known all along I was smarter than him, which was why he’d taken pride in putting me down. He’s very much a believer in the ‘men are superior to women’ ideology.”
“And that makes you work harder than ever, to prove him wrong. It’s why you were sitting here, working instead of wandering around the house or talking to us,” said Berian.
“You’re very perceptive.”
Berian took her hand, forcing her to drop the spoon she’d been twisting and turning. Not that she’d been aware she even had a spoon in her hand, but she regularly found herself fiddling with pens or cutlery or anything lying around.
Hal took her other hand twining his fingers with hers. She looked down at the men’s hands holding hers. They were so much bigger than hers, stronger, tougher. And Hal’s skin was very tanned, likely from working outdoors in all weathers.
Hal tugged on her hand. “Come outside and look at the stars. They’re beautiful at night.”
She stood on the porch leaning on the railing and looking out at the sky. Yes, the stars were beautiful, and much more noticeable than in the city.
Berian stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. Up close to her like this she was very conscious of how much bigger than her these men were. She felt dwarfed by them. Hal stood at her side, his thigh just touching her hip. He felt strong and warm, and when he spoke to point out a star to her, his deep bass voice rumbled, sending sexy shivers right to her cunt. When Berian leaned closer to her, massaging her shoulders and letting the thick, hard ridge of his cock press against her ass, she understood she was being seduced.
She relaxed back against Berian, loving the solid bulwark of his body behind her. Did she want these men to seduce her? Fuck yes! Was it a good idea? Probably not, but she didn’t care. If they became rude or demanding she’d just ask Cadfael to switch them out with a couple of other men. Although she couldn’t imagine them hurting her. They’d had every opportunity to be rough or rude, but had treated her with the utmost care and consideration at all times.
Very deliberately she rubbed her ass over Berian’s cock. “That feels nice,” she said softly, deliberately keeping her comment ambiguous as to whether she meant his cock or his hands gently massaging her shoulders.
Hal pressed a little closer to her. “May I kiss you?”
She raised her head to him and smiled, reaching up to pull him closer to her mouth. Berian turned her slightly to give Hal a better angle, and then the huge man was kissing her so sweetly it was almost enough to make her cry. His touch on her cheeks and lips was so gentle, as if she was made of the finest china. He placed one hand on the back of her head, and the other on her chin, tilted her head, and deepened his kiss. She opened her mouth, wanting his tongue, and he slid it into her, teasing her all the way.
The kiss got more potent very quickly as his tongue thrust in and out of her mouth and his fingers moved her head this way and that, giving him complete access. Meanwhile, Berian pushed his hands up inside her shirt, and underneath her bra until he cupped one breast with each hand. He rubbed his thumbs over her skin and then teased her nipples. Cream dampened her panties and she had to pull her lips from Hal’s to grab a breath.
Once again she relaxed back against Berian reveling in the sensations his hands were sending through her body as he played with her nipples and the globes of her breasts.
“Are you enjoying the stars?” asked Hal. She was absolutely certain he didn’t mean the ones in the sky, but the ones behind her eyelids as the men touched her.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I think we can do this much better in the bedroom from here on out,” said Berian, swinging her up into his arms.
Chapter Four
Janet gave a little shriek and wrapped her arms around his neck. She wasn’t used to being carried. Men didn’t lift fat women like her. Berian was very large but still. “Don’t pull a muscle. I’m not light.”
“You aren’t heavy and you feel very good in my arms.” Berian kissed her lips. He tasted of pizza and coffee, but subtly different from Hal who’d eaten exactly the same snack.
Hal led the way into a big bedroom at the front of the house. He closed the curtains, turned on lamps on both nightstands, and took what seemed to be a homemade quilt off the bed, laying it over a chair.
“Tell me that you want this. That you want us—both of us,” said Berian, setting her on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“Oh I do. I’d be very disappointed if you left the room now.”
Berian started throwing his clothes off onto the floor. Janet watched him and had to struggle not to laugh. It seemed as if he was in a race against time to get naked. Much more slowly she slid her feet out of her shoes and removed her shirt and pants, looking around the room before laying them on the top of the dressing table. She noticed Hal had disappeared. She supposed he’d gone to get condoms. It was possible he was shy and was getting undressed in private, but to her, bringing them condoms see
med a more logical reason for his absence.
She straightened her bra so she could undo it, and then added it to the pile of clothing, before sitting on the bed and watching Hal return to the room and strip out of his clothes. As soon as he stepped out of his dress pants she noticed the tattoo on his side. It was a tribal pattern that swirled across his right hip and ended at the thatch of black hair surrounding his cock. And what a very fine cock it was, too. Thick and long, the head red with need and just a little shiny as if he’d already released a few drops of pre-cum.
Berian’s cock was just as large, but his cock had a flatter head and the curls surrounding it were as fair as the hair on his scalp. Fuck, she was a lucky woman. Fancy two such amazing men being interested in ordinary her. It was just as well she’d watched some of the porn videos her brother had downloaded on her computer. At least she had an idea of what to do with two men simultaneously. If it was left up to her own personal experience she’d be completely unaware of how to manage now.
Berian pulled her back up to her feet. “You do understand that we both want you?” he asked.
“You asked that already. I understand.” Apart from that, she’d seen them exchanging glances as they all stood together on the stoop. It was clear they’d made some plans while they’d prepared the pizza even if she hadn’t even dreamed about what they intended to do until ten seconds ago.
“I guarantee you’ll have the most intense orgasm of your life,” he said.
She smiled. That wouldn’t be hard to arrange. Her brother had made sure men stayed away from her when she’d lived at home, and when she was at college she was too busy learning everything she could to give a great deal of emotional effort to her few relationships.
Hal was pulling her panties down. She had a momentary twinge of uneasiness about what he might think of her belly, which was definitely not flat, but then Berian was kissing her again and she leaned into his touch. His lips pressed more firmly than Hal’s had. He was more businesslike, less tentative, but still an extremely good kisser. Besides, the bedroom was the one place where she didn’t mind a demanding man.
