9
Falling asleep with my body wrapped big-spoon style around Bomber was probably as much of a surprise to him as it was to me. I knew things improved between us after I told him my story, but I felt more, understood better what he’d been going through, since he confided in me about his jealousy too. The fact that his jealousy wasn’t about another person catching his lover’s attention, but more about how much easier their connection would be, broke my heart a little bit. It shouldn’t matter who you love, and certainly shouldn’t be any harder for a couple simply because you love someone who happens to be different from the norm.
Bomber’s question continued to play over through my mind during the night as I enjoyed the warmth the dragon shifter put off. Not needing blankets to burrow in was a plus, especially if we were ever without shelter. I imagined camping with Bomber wouldn’t be a hardship and the thought nearly made me chuckle out loud. I held back though because the man was finally resting peacefully and I didn’t want to do anything that would disturb that.
Still, I wondered. Could I love them both? Could they both love me? Would it truly mean that we were all on equal footing with one another, or might jealousy always be a thing we would have to be concerned about? There were too many questions to allow me a peaceful night’s sleep right away.
“Go to sleep,” Bomber finally ordered. “Your thinking is keeping me awake.”
“Are you telepathic or something?” I answered, wondering if he could talk to me through our minds, or hear what I was thinking. That would be awful.
“No, you’re just thinking so loudly that you keep scrunching your hands against my abs. I don’t mind flexing for you, but when you dig in like that with your nails every time you think of something that makes you anxious, it makes me hard. I’m pretty sure we decided that nothing could happen without Brace, so this is me warning you off.”
“Oh shoot!” I huffed out and then ended up chuckling as I peeled my fingertips free of his nicely-defined abs. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Little Precious, just be wary of how you handle me until after you make your decision.”
“Oddly enough, that was what I was trying to do,” I admitted.
“Well, if I can help the decision along, I will, but only so far. We really do need to be able to wait for Brace to be with us.”
“I know. That was very disrespectful of us.”
Bomber chuckled. “I don’t think Brace would quite see it as a bad thing, but on the off chance that he would…” He let the sentiment just hang there.
“I get it. Promise, no more getting handsy with you while we’re on our own.”
Bomber’s only response was a quick huff before he turned over, flipped me so that my back was to his front, and became the big spoon to my little one. “Now, go to sleep,” he demanded once more before huffing into my hairline and drifting right off as if he had taken the magic version of an Ambien pill.
~*~
“That’s it, Tina,” Brace called out to me as my mouth wrapped fully around the base of his cock before pulling slowly back off of it and lightly dragging my teeth as I went. “Oh God, you beautiful woman, how do you always know just what I need?”
“Mmm,” was my only response before allowing his cock to spring free of my mouth with a subtle popping sound. I turned my head to look back over my shoulder where Bomber kneeled behind me. His next thrust nearly knocked me off balance before he gripped harder on my hips, holding me in place as he rutted into me like the domineering animal he was.
Brace reached forward and gently turned my head back to face him. “Don’t worry about him right now. Just feel everything he’s giving you while you put that sweet mouth of yours to use again.” The demand was a dirty one. His voice alone had me riding an edge that Bomber hadn’t yet taken me to with action alone, though he was well on his way thanks to his gorgeous efforts. Brace moved his hand from head and down my neck to my shoulder as I took him back in my mouth. His hand continued to travel over my ass and between my body and where Bomber was hammering his cock into me. A groan from Bomber let me know exactly what Brace’s hand had come into contact with.
“Yeah, squeeze harder,” I heard Bomber grunt as Brace continued to slowly pump in and out of my mouth. Before long, one of the men reached down further and started fondling my clit, trying to ensure that I would reach completion before they both did. The smell of our sex was thick in the air, cloying, and enough to bring me to distraction once again until…
Smack.
“Stop it,” Bomber demanded as he slapped my ass hard before rolling over. “Christ on a cracker, Little Precious, you have me hard as a fucking rock. You can’t moan like that and give off the sexy-time pheromones like that when I can’t touch you yet,” he continued his complaint.
It was only then that I realized he had woken me from a dream where the three of us were having an amazing time together. Not for the first time, I wondered if it would really be like that, or if I was just romanticizing a threesome-style union? There was really only one way to find out. Bravery - or lack thereof - happened to be the only obstacle in my way.
There were no more sleep incidents where I woke up from having sexy dreams or getting my ass slapped in reprimand by Bomber. Instead, we got dressed and on the road quickly after leaving word with Knox and Gray that we would be there later in the evening since we stopped to rest and were taking a longer route back to help avoid detection.
The rest of our trip, we talked about anything and everything in order to pass the time. There were no more awkward silences or jealous hissy fits. Instead, there were talks about one another’s pasts, how a threesome might work, and what we thought Brace was up to since he had no doubt beat us back by then.
~*~
When the truck finally rolled into the Dark Leopards MC Compound, relief washed over me. I felt safer here. It wasn’t just about my own safety though. I knew that the two men I had come to care so much for would also have others at their backs just in case Fynn and his men decided to pull something. Not to mention, there was something going on with the council that Brace had been involved in while we were still away. Bomber had received a quick text filling him in, and I hadn’t bothered to ask questions. Chantal had filled me in on some of the nuances of the club life. I wouldn’t ask, they probably wouldn’t tell me, and as long as they came home safe and sound from whatever it was they had to do, I was fine with it being that way. Both Bomber and Brace were good men who could be trusted, that much had been made blatantly obvious to me since coming to stay with the club.
When I came around the side of the truck to wait on Bomber, who was grabbing our bags out of the back, I noticed the clubhouse door open and Brace stepped out. There was a single moment’s worth of hesitation before he was running our way, and to my surprise, he didn’t just tackle-hug one or the other of us. The man scooped both myself and Bomber up in a giant group hug that left me feeling absolutely loved and adored and for the first time since meeting these two amazing men, I realized that the three-some thing could actually work out.
“Were you worried?” Bomb asked with a light chuckle, clearly taunting the man who had been so keen on getting to us.
“Shut the hell up, dragon breath. I’m just happy to see you haven’t killed one another.” Both Bomber and I stiffened, causing Brace to take a step back from us. His eyes roamed between the two of us, back and forth, as he assessed and then he barked out a deep, hearty laugh. “You fucking hooked up, didn’t you?”
Bomber and I both started to protest at once, but Brace cut us off. “Come on, let’s get settled inside and then you can fill me in on everything in private.”
10
Betina and our new relationship talk had to wait. The council was no longer active and something had to be done for the feline shifters who suddenly found themselves leaderless.
Once again, Gentry met us upon arrival at the council’s property and saw us inside. “Were you able to glean anything helpful fro
m Pharell once you took him?” The older man asked as we made our way inside. I glanced side-long toward Brace for a hint at what had occurred before. I knew they had been here and dismantled what was left of the council, but there hadn’t been time to get a full appraisal of what happened.
“Knox is working on it, but no, so far there hasn’t been anything useful.”
“I have something you might find interesting. Grayson and his new family, at the very least, should glance through and see if any of it is helpful to them.” We followed the man to a room that appeared to be a much smaller than all the others we passed by. It was outfitted like a lounge or tiny library with book shelves for walls and sparse furnishings. We didn’t stop there in the room though. Gentry hit a hidden button and the wall popped open, revealing a secret chamber where we followed a set of winding stairs to a subterranean floor and a much larger library that also seemed to double as an altar room.
“What exactly was this room used for?” Brace snarled as he sniffed the air. I smelled it too, old blood stained these floors and the altar.
“Just what you might think. There were sacrifices made, torture for secrets, and we have our own rituals that need to be seen to as far as the council goes. Induction ceremonies and the like.”
“No longer,” Brace huffed as he turned his back on the years of bloodshed that were apparently never cleaned. “This is unacceptable.”
“There were a few in the ranks who thought that keeping the essence of those long gone added to the atmosphere,” Gentry informed him, though each word was laden with a lament we couldn’t quite process. “I kept my daughters far away from the council for a reason.”
“What exactly did you want to show us?” I asked, wanting nothing more than to get out of this hell hole until someone could be brought in to clean it all up.
“Over here,” Gentry called as he moved toward the far wall where there seemed to be a good mixture of old and new texts. The man held his hand out and indicated everything lined up there. It was a bit too dim in the space to read all the titles so I quickly assessed the probability for damage and sputtered out a bit of dragon’s breath at the closest torch to add some light.
“I take it they didn’t believe in bringing the electricity down here either?” I asked as the light from the torch illuminated the spines of the books enough that we could read them.
“No, they felt that it should be as it once was in times of old.” Gentry spat on the dirt floor beneath his feet. “Fools, all of them. They were boys playing at things they didn’t understand.”
“Why didn’t you go to anyone else for help in dealing with their shit?” I asked, curious as to why the man would continue to put up with the corruption and obvious misdeeds of the council meant to protect his own people.
Gentry huffed out a breath of frustration and then turned to me. “When you’re first in the middle of a shitstorm, you don’t necessarily realize you are. The sweeping nature of the things wraps you up as if you were a brainchild of the whole damn thing, and then when you finally manage to spirit yourself away…” He laughed silently. “I found a young girl, in need of my help, who I knew the council wouldn’t care one bit about. She reminded me of my mate. I knew her as a young girl as well. Though, we didn’t mate until we were well past our rights to do so.” Once again, the man spat on the dirt floor, as if cursing the likes of those who weren’t considerate enough to wait on their intended mate to grow up. Possibly for those who forced mates who weren’t intended for them anyway. Betina came to mind and spat on the floor with him. If he could curse bastards like that, so could I.
“Betina was the reason I stuck around afterward. She was my ward, of sorts, but the only way to get the help of the witch, Solarin, was if I vowed to come back and work with the council. I had a plan to take out the entire claw I found Betina in, but the council prevented me from carrying it out.” He shook some long-lost memory off and turned back toward the books he had taken us to see. “These books, they will be very helpful in understanding shadow cat lore. There are documents tracing families known to produce them as well. I don’t think they have complete and accurate histories, considering how secretive the families are, but there may be information that Grayson’s woman finds helpful for the future.”
“We will take them back to the girls.”
“Agreed,” Brace added. “I don’t want them here.”
“What will you do with the council now?”
“I think Brace would make a fine start to a new council. He’ll have everyone’s best interest at heart,” I offered up my two cents even though I had no say since I was dragon and not of a feline shifter breed.”
“Actually, I was thinking that we need a more diversified approach to things. Shifters all have their own little niche rulers, but there’s no one overseeing the shifters as a whole. I don’t mean to lord over them or rule them, but just as a check and balance system to ensure that all are being treated fairly and not being stomped on by other sets of shifters.” Brace’s eyes met mine and I knew what he was getting at. My kind were few and far between thanks to overhunting of my kind by humans long ago, but also by other shifter breeds who were searching for the hoards that dragons amassed in their exceptionally long lives.
“Bomber, as one of the few dragons left around these parts, I think it would be imperative to get your input too,” Brace continued. I turned to see what Gentry thought of this and found the smiling between the two of us.
“That sounds like you’re off to a great start. Don’t allow the new council, no matter what kind of incarnation you make of it, fall into the shady practices that we found ourselves neck deep in.”
“That’s why we need a good group of people who want to further our shifter species together and not particular breeds over one another,” Brace retorted. I knew he would be perfect for this type of thing. He turned in a full circle to check his surroundings. “This shithole needs to be cleaned up though.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw this as a fantastic hidden spot for my hoard to be placed. “Is this the only secret space?”
Gentry’s eyes gleamed at the question. There are two more, including one under the chambers that Raven used as his own.”
“Show us,” I insisted and that’s just what he did. Having my hoard directly beneath our bedroom suite would be even better than having it where someone else might accidentally gain access to it. Gentry had a few of the staff box up the books in the underground lair while we checked out the rest of the space. The higher ups from the council and staff had already been taken to the clubhouse to sit in our facility, awaiting further questioning.
“What do you think will happen when we move in here together with Betina? How will everyone take having a polyamourous group living here and maintaining the integrity of the shifter world?”
“That’s why you make a good candidate, Brace. You can normalize relationships for those of the shifter community who lost their mates, or never found them. Maybe you can give them hope that happiness is still attainable. At the very least, you can give them a bit of hope for something different and still attainable and comfortable for everyone. Anything that doesn’t involve taking a person against their will or creating a breeding program like the old council was attempting to do.”
11
With Brace and Bomber gone dealing with council drama head on, I’d been spending most of my free time with Chantal, Charlotte, and Kid.
I missed my boys, but I knew they would take care of each other, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t loving this time just relaxing and enjoying the easy friendship these three provided. Thanks to Cannon and Rune, I was back to not being able to feel Fynn. That alone had me in a much better frame of mind than I’d been in since the girls were kidnapped.
Word had already gotten back that the council was no more, and that our men were already on their way to the clubhouse to decide the future of feline leaders. This news wasn’t surprising for anyone in the Dark Leopards MC’s inner cir
cle of course, but it did still leave us all with a lot of questions.
Corruption amongst the feline elite was something that had become almost normal, and none of us were sure how well other leaps would handle the overthrow. There had also been whispers that the next era of the council would govern all shifters, not just the cats, which was sure to cause an issue for more old-fashioned, elitist shifter cats who hold our species in a higher regard than other species. Archaic as it may sound, discrimination and segregation were rampant in our world too.
Knowing that our men were already on their way back from the council building, and that they’d be stressed out over the drama and where to proceed, Chantal, Charlotte, Kid, and I decided to wake up early and both deep clean the place, and prepare a nice dinner for them to enjoy upon their arrival. After we cleaned, Kid offered to make burgers, and Charlotte was all too eager to offer up her assistance. Chantal and I exchanged knowing glances, trying hard not to giggle out loud. We’ve been noticing a budding companionship between the two that seemed too sweet and natural for anyone to try and interfere. Kid had a heart of gold, a strong work ethic, and a great sense of humor to boot. He may have had a baby face, as his nickname so indicated, but he also had the kindest green eyes and a broad, toned build. His shaggy hair often fell into his face when he laughed, and you could tell it drove Charlotte crazy. Then of course, Charlotte was a bombshell herself, also known for her tenderness. The two would make an undeniably sweet pair, and Chantal really needed her sister around too.
The B Team: A Dark Leopards MC Novella Page 7
