THE FINAL
“Okay,” Nadine said, looking up from her laptop. Dylan and Matthew both turned their attention onto her at the sound of her voice; they had been quietly working on the problem of locating the were-panther that Alex had stolen from in their own ways for the past hour. “I think I have an idea—but I need to run it by you two.”
“What’s the idea?” Dylan put his laptop aside, briefly brushing his palms together and stretching against the back of the couch.
Nadine had been thinking about the problem of how to find someone they didn’t know, and a hiding place belonging to a person they had little information on—someone who was dead, and couldn’t be questioned. She’d spent the previous hour sifting through all of the information she could find about Alex, and trying to compile it into something that made sense, something that they could act on. Nadine knew that she was far from a criminal mastermind—and more to the point, that she really didn’t have any experience in really investigating people. But she had hoped that the skills she’d honed in her previous boring job would transfer into something useful to the life she was beginning to think was something like her destiny.
“Here’s my thinking,” Nadine said slowly. “We have the information from his social media profiles, and we have the little bit of information you got from C and your client.” She licked her lips. “I’ve been going through whatever we can find about Alex, but I think we need to expand our net a bit.”
“How so?” Matthew frowned.
“Well,” Nadine said, gesturing to her laptop. “I’d assume that he probably wouldn’t post anything about any of his hiding spots online—otherwise, it’s not a hiding spot, right?” Both men nodded. “I was thinking that maybe I could find some hiding-type places near the spots we know he used to spend a lot of time around, and then you guys could tell me which would be the most likely ones.” Nadine looked from Dylan to Matthew and back again, her heart beating a little faster in her chest as she waited to hear their opinion of her tactic.
“That makes sense,” Matthew said after a moment, turning his gaze onto Dylan. “We’d know what to look for better than she would; if she can narrow it down to like—maybe five places?” Matthew glanced at her and Nadine nodded. “Then we could narrow it down to maybe three, and then check each of them out.” Dylan’s lips twitched with the beginning of a smile.
“You know, if I didn’t know better, I would think that you’ve just been waiting all this time for an excuse to become some kind of mercenary bad ass,” Dylan said, meeting Nadine’s gaze.
She rolled her eyes. “Not consciously,” she insisted. “But I guess…if I hadn’t been ready to change things around in my life, I probably wouldn’t have gone along with it, would I?”
She was beginning to gain something like a philosophical attitude about the situation she found herself in, beginning to almost feel comfortable with the decisions she’d made and the fact that her life would never be the same again. My life before them was so boring—how did I not even realize it?
“I think that would work,” Dylan said. “It’s as good an idea as any.” He took another quick, deep breath, scrubbing at his face.
“How’s it coming figuring out who we’re going to get the money to?”
Dylan shrugged. “We have a few people,” he said, glancing at Matthew. “There aren’t as many panthers as there are other kinds of shifters—that makes it a little easier.” Nadine nodded; somehow—though she couldn’t say how—that made sense. “Once we have something to offer, we can put out feelers and find out which one of these guys might be our target.”
“How are we going to get to him, that’s the real question,” Matthew pointed out. “I mean, the lions are probably trying to track us even now.”
“We’ll have to arrange a meeting in a really public place,” Dylan said. “That’s the only way.”
Nadine plunged back into her work, skimming details of the areas around the places that the deceased were-lion kept himself to. It occurred to her more than once that in the process of tracing his movements before his death, she was also closer to figuring out where the were-lions met as a group; that, at least, would help them to handle another part of their convoluted plan. Nadine wasn’t certain that she would actually be able to handle the battle with the were-lions, but she understood that there weren’t any options to keep her out of that fight.
She was surprised at how much she had come to simply accept that she was going to be part of Dylan and Matthew’s life. The sex is great, and there’s a lot of excitement, she thought as she pored over maps of the area surrounding one of the clubs that Alex went to the most frequently. But I barely know them. Nadine wondered, more than once as she narrowed down the possibilities of where Alex might have hidden his stolen money, whether she was out of her mind. Would her relationships with the two men stand up to the stress of a long-term attachment? Or would they lose interest in her—or her in them—as soon as they weren’t dealing with constant crises from the outside?
Until she had met Dylan and Matthew, Nadine hadn’t considered herself particularly impressive. She had known that she was reasonably attractive, and that she was fairly intelligent, but she had thought of herself as more than a little weak, and not precisely formidable.
The fact that two men wanted her enough to agree to share her rather than fight over her was flattering, but Nadine wasn’t sure how they could go about their relationship on anything like a practical level. Then too, she thought, as she waited for Dylan and Matthew to come to a conclusion about the information she had gathered and organized, they come from an entirely different culture from me. There are things about them that I will never be able to understand—and how much about me will they be able to understand?
Dylan and Matthew decided on three spots out of the half-dozen that Nadine had picked out as likely spots for Alex to have hidden his stolen cash. Nadine wasn’t sure whether his fellow lions had checked any of those places or whether they had simply counted on Dylan and Matthew to know more than they did; but they had to have something to go on. They had to put this threat behind them—or none of them would ever have any chance at anything like a normal life.
Then they were piling into the car, and Nadine felt her nerves tingling, her whole body reacting to the excitement and the apprehension she felt. “Hey, guys?” Nadine had insisted on taking the back seat for their first trip. There was something about the way that Matthew constantly assumed that post that bothered her, though she couldn’t say what it was.
“Hm?” Dylan looked over his shoulder at her for just a moment, acknowledging her question.
“I know I’m kind of jumping ahead on things,” Nadine said slowly, “but how exactly is a relationship between the three of us going to work?”
“What do you mean?” Matthew half-turned in the passenger seat.
“I mean…like, day-to-day,” Nadine said. “Our routines, things like that.”
“Ah,” Dylan said, and Nadine saw him smile briefly. “You’re worried that we’re going to eventually get bored of you, and after completely throwing your old life away, you’re going to end up with nothing.”
“Not in so many words,” Nadine said, smiling ruefully. “But basically, yeah. I mean—we barely know each other at all.”
“Did you notice anything different about the sex last night?” Matthew held her gaze as he spoke, a softness in his expression that Nadine hadn’t seen before.
“Other than that it was the best sex of my entire life?” Nadine shrugged.
Something inside of her tingled at the question, though, and she licked her lips, thinking back onto the night before. It had been the best sex, but it had also been the most intense—in ways that were difficult for her to put words to. She realized that she felt more connected, in some way, with the two men she had agreed to share herself with than she had before.
“We mated with you,” Matthew said, his tone still soft, but a little more level than it had been before. “The sex…it wasn’t just sex. And before you get upset—we didn’t do it on purpose. It was instinct.”
“What is the difference between mating with me and just sex?” Nadine’s heart beat faster in her chest as her mind reacted with impulsive fear at the thought that she had done something irrevocable.
“It bonds people,” Dylan explained from the driver’s seat. “It’s not as obvious to you as it would be for someone who was raised as a shifter, but you feel it—I can tell you do. I feel it, and Matt feels it. We’re bound.”
“What does that mean?” Nadine looked down at her body as if she expected to notice some mark she had never had before, some kind of stigmata or mole that somehow signaled the two men’s ownership of her.
“You feel closer to us, right?” Nadine looked up and nodded at Matthew’s question. “We’ll get to know each other better over time—don’t worry about that just yet.”
“The important thing,” Dylan said, “is that Matthew and I are never going to get bored of you. It’s not something we can feel, now that you’re really and truly our mate.”
“Why not?” Nadine frowned in confusion. Every time I think I understand a pretty good bit of their lives, they say something that proves that I have no idea.
“It’s instinctive,” Matthew said with a shrug. “It’s not something we can control. We’ve taken you as our mate, so we are bound to you—and you to us. We will always find you distractingly desirable. We’ll always want you.”
Nadine shook her head. “I’m not sure I can totally understand that,” she admitted. But the words had had an effect on her nonetheless, something in the certainty in both men’s voice told her that they weren’t just making it up—they weren’t just saying what it would take to convince her to stay with them for a little while longer. They really believed—whether or not they were right—that they would never get bored of her.
“You don’t have to understand it,” Dylan told her, grinning at her in the rearview mirror. “All you have to do is enjoy it. You are going to be the most sexually satisfied woman in the county.”
“More than other shifter women?” Nadine grinned back at Dylan.
“Oh, totally,” Matthew said, nodding quickly. “Because your standards started out way lower. So what people like us consider to be just normal, standard stuff is even better to you.”
Nadine laughed, shaking her head again. “Okay,” she said. “I will accept that until I find anything different.”
***
“This is the last place we decided to look, right?”
Matthew nodded in response to Nadine’s question as the three of them climbed out of the car, looking around at the scrubby wasteland. It was a few miles away from one of the places that Alex had frequented; the outskirts of a natural preserve area that Dylan and Matthew both agreed was likely a running ground for shifters in the area. Nadine wasn’t certain it was their best option of the three; if there were other shifters in the area regularly, it wouldn’t make sense for someone to hide something there. But the first two places they had checked—one an abandoned house, the other a spot tucked away near a beach—had proven fruitless.
“Definitely a couple of lions have been here,” Dylan said, looking at Matthew and then at Nadine. Nadine felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she sniffed at the air, even though she knew her sense of smell was nowhere near acute enough to detect the scents that Dylan and Matthew could pick up on so easily.
“One of the scent marks smells like Alex,” Matthew agreed. “So he’s definitely been here.”
Nadine looked doubtfully at the underbrush and low shrubs, the high grass and tangling weeds that made up the area they’d come to.
“Stay close to us,” Dylan told her, as if reading her mind. “We’ll be able to figure out pretty quickly if there was money here, and if someone’s already taken it, but you shouldn’t be out of sight even for a few minutes. Other lions have been here, too.”
Nadine nodded, accepting the precaution. She knew very well that of the three of them, she was the biggest liability. If she was going to join Matthew and Dylan in the field ever again after they settled their current problems, she was going to have to become much tougher than she already was.
She followed them into the overgrown tangle, looking around and trying to detect anything that would hint at the place being a hiding spot. Dylan and Matthew ranged the space, taking their time, stopping occasionally to sniff at the air, or to examine something in the grass more thoroughly. In the environment, Nadine thought it would be an oblivious person indeed who didn’t realize that there was something inherently animal about the two men. Nadine swatted at her arms and legs as she followed the two men’s progress, trying to keep up and stay in their line of sight; there were few places in South Florida that were ever bug-free, and in the scrubby underbrush, it was even worse.
“I’ve got something!”
Nadine paused, turning towards the sound of Matthew’s voice. Dylan hurried from the spot he’d stopped in a few yards away, grabbing Nadine and almost effortlessly lifting her up into his arms to help her get to Matthew faster.
“It’s been dug,” Matthew said more quietly.
Nadine stepped back as the two men put their whole attention on the spot Matthew had found. She bit back a gasp as they both dropped to their hands and knees, clawing at the soft, marshy ground with single-minded focus. Just when she had begun to come to terms with the idea of what Dylan and Matthew were—with the fact that they were animal as much as human—to see them moving like the animals they were still managed to startle her. She pushed aside the reaction, watching the dirt and sand fly up behind the two men, and looked around to make sure that no one else had arrived.
“Got something,” Nadine heard Dylan say.
Out of the hole they’d dug, she saw Matthew and Dylan tug a damp backpack free. She shook her head, unable to believe that out of all the places she had looked at, the last one on the list was the one that had—hopefully—borne fruit. Matthew unzipped the top of the backpack and Nadine saw bundles of bills. She shook her head again.
“Well, that’s one problem solved,” she said, staring at it. “At least—if we assume this is the money that the guy wants.”
“There is that issue,” Matthew agreed, looking at Dylan.
“We have to assume it is,” Dylan said, shrugging. “If it’s not, hopefully it’s more than what Alex took. That’ll make our panther friend happy, at least.”
He closed the backpack up once more and Nadine exhaled slowly, looking away from the two men’s dirty arms and telling herself that the first part of their plan was finally done. If they could find out who they needed to get the money to, then they would be well on their way to getting free of the problem that had initially brought them together.
Nadine followed the two men back to the car, wondering if they were as safe as they appeared to be. She knew that the lions would be trying to catch up to the three of them, that the group would be enraged by the loss of their position—and they were already more than a little angry at Dylan and Matthew for killing their friend and connection.
“You drive,” Dylan told Matthew, handing the man the keys to the car. “I’ll start making some phone calls, see if I can’t get to the bottom of who we need to get this to.”
“I’ll sit in the back,” Nadine suggested. Dylan shook his head.
“Better if I’m in the back, making the calls,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You know, I hope you’re sure you want to be part of our business,” Dylan told her, grinning, “because I don’t think the two of us alone could have gotten to the money so fast. We can’t let you go back to a normal life now.”
Nadine smiled, a warm tingle working through her body at the compliment, a buzz at the knowledge that both of the two men wanted her. What did it matter that they had an animal side? As long as she never had to worry about the consequences of that—at least not directly—why should it bother her at all? Matthew gave her a quick kiss as well before walking around to the driver’s side of the car, leaving the passenger side door open for her.
*
Dylan looked up at the warehouse building, feeling the pounding of his heart in his chest, the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He glanced at Matthew for a fraction of a second before turning his attention back onto the building in front of them.
“I smell lions,” Dylan said, his stomach pitching inside of him at the thought. “And they’re inside there.”
“Yeah,” Matthew said.
“They’re in the building?” Nadine’s voice didn’t sound panicky; instead it sounded only slightly uncertain—and tight.
Dylan glanced at his mate. “They are,” Dylan said quietly.
Nadine met his gaze and shrugged, taking a quick, deep breath. He could smell the fear on her, but as she exhaled, he also sensed the way she was suppressing it. She is getting tougher and tougher every day, he thought with approval.
It had taken them three days to track down the man they wanted; they had changed hotels, hoping to throw the lions off of the scent—it was more important than before, once they had the money that the lions were looking for. Dylan wondered how it was possible that lions could have missed their own friend’s hiding spot.
They’re pretty piss-poor lions at the end of the day, he decided. They weren’t particularly good at tracking—Dylan had expected their hotel to be invaded, had prepared himself and Matthew both for that possibility, but it hadn’t arisen. Dylan sniffed at the scent marks painted in the air and decided that about half of the lions remaining in the group were on something. The other half simply didn’t seem to be very good at some of the subtler aspects of their dual nature.
“Well,” Nadine said, glancing from Dylan to Matthew. “In that case, I guess it’s two birds with one stone, right?”
“Let’s hope,” Matthew agreed. “Otherwise we’re going into a horrific ambush and we might all die.”
“I love how cheerful you always are,” Dylan told the other man sarcastically. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to sort through how many scent marks there were, trying to guess at what they would be going up against in a matter of moments. “We pretty much don’t have a choice in this,” Dylan said, opening his eyes once more. “Everyone ready for this? It’s going to get pretty intense.”
“By ‘everyone’ you pretty much mean me, right?” Nadine gave him a wry smile. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be for this. We might as well get it over with, right? Either we’ll win and get them off our backs or we’ll lose and die and won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Dylan snickered. “Pretty much,” he agreed. He took a quick breath and nodded to himself. “Okay, let’s go.”
Dylan knew for a certainty that he and Matthew would end up having to transform at some point during the confrontation in front of them; with so many lions, as well as whatever else Johnny Rosen had to counter them with, it wouldn’t make sense to keep to their human forms if they wanted to survive. That isn’t even the only problem—we have to keep Nadine safe. Dylan could only hope that after seeing the worst, the most brutal aspects of life for shifters, Nadine would still be as willing as before to stay by his and Matthew’s sides.
They stopped at the door and Dylan gave Matthew a nod; his best friend knocked. Dylan glanced around and saw that there were a few different security cameras aimed at the door they stood in front of. At least, Dylan thought, there could be no confusion about who they were.
They had finally tracked down Johnny Rosen the night before, after trying a few different potential contacts. Not all of the members of the shifter community living in South Florida were “out”—they didn’t all participate in the forums and sites that shifters tended to use to communicate and organize. Dylan and Matthew had had to check through their few connections as well as the different sites they got work from. By the time Nadine had come up with the locations for them to check, they had a list of about a dozen potential people—some of whom were known shifters, some of whom they only suspected due to their connections in the underground. After this, we should probably think about becoming as legitimate as possible, Dylan thought as he waited for someone to answer the door at the warehouse.
Rosen hadn’t seemed surprised to hear from them, and Dylan realized that the kingpin had somehow found out who they were—he was expecting their call. The lions that had been pursuing him and Matthew for more than a week, trying to avenge their fallen comrade and get to the money he’d left behind, were almost certainly acting on Johnny’s instructions. How much Johnny might have known about them, Dylan wasn’t sure. Rosen had answered the phone, and when Dylan had mentioned that he and his partner were the ones who had killed the man’s errand boy, Rosen had simply let out an interested “hmm.”
From there, Dylan had negotiated the meeting; in spite of the fact that he no longer had the element of surprise, he did still have the money that Rosen wanted. That gave him—at least for a short window of time—the power in the situation. Rosen had given Dylan the address to what he called his “headquarters,” a warehouse out in Plantation, and Dylan and Matthew had begun planning as soon as Dylan had gotten off of the phone.
The specific complication of the lions wasn’t something they’d thought much of—Dylan had known it was possible, but he had thought that it was more likely that a man like Rosen would want to cut the lions out, rather than give them a chance to kill the messengers that brought him the money he was missing. He’d been more prepared for the possibility that Rosen would be heavily guarded with other shifters—wolves, potentially other bears.
The door to the warehouse opened, and the woman on the other side of it looked to Dylan like one of the lions that had attacked them less than a week earlier. He looked closely at her face and decided it was one of their attackers. She was healing up from the mauling that he had given her, but he could tell she was a little warier than she’d been before, a little more careful around him and Matthew.
“What are you doing with a plain Jane like that?” The woman nodded in Nadine’s direction, almost sneering at her.
“If you think she’s a plain Jane, you’ve got no taste,” Dylan said. He resisted the urge to take up a protective posture in front of Nadine, knowing that it would serve his mate better to come across as an equal—not a subordinate to anyone. “Are you going to let us in, or do I give this money to someone else who wants to put Rosen out of business?”
The woman snarled at him, and Dylan smelled the spike in Nadine’s fear pheromones. He let out a low, warning growl to the lioness in front of him, holding her gaze until she finally broke off, stepping back from the door.
Another were-lion waited for them, and Dylan wondered just what Rosen had in mind. If he had the lions there as his security force, was it as a punishment for failing to get the money that he’d sent them after? Or was it just a setup, so that Rosen could get rid of the three thorns in his side all at once? Dylan looked around him as the two lions flanked him, Matthew, and Nadine, taking in as many details as possible. Somewhere along the way, Rosen had converted the warehouse into a kind of office—with a labyrinthine hallway leading to the center of it, where Dylan assumed the man himself waited. He followed the guard detail, making sure that no one tried to grab for the backpack in Matthew’s hands. There had to be a way to find out what the purpose of the lions in the warehouse was. Soon enough. You’ll meet the big man and give him the money, ask him what the story is.
A few more turns, and they emerged from the hall and into a clearing in the warehouse, just as Dylan had expected. His heart beat faster in his chest as he saw all of the lions ranged around the room, in different positions, guarding the man seated at a big, sprawling desk in the center of the building. Their contact—their target—Johnny Rosen was a tall, muscular man, with broad shoulders and a faintly feline face framed by long hair. He looked more like a lion than like a panther, but the scent that came from the man told Dylan unequivocally what it was they faced.
“Good to finally meet you,” Dylan called out as they approached the man. He didn’t look at either Nadine or Matthew, holding the gaze of the man they had come to meet.
“You as well,” Rosen said, holding Dylan’s gaze. He blinked and took in first Nadine and then Matthew; Dylan thought, by the lack of expression on the kingpin’s face, that neither of his companions had betrayed even the slightest flinch, or any reaction at all to his scrutiny. “You must be desperate if you’re mating a one-natured girl,” Rosen said, his lips twitching slightly at the corners.
“She helped us take Alex out,” Dylan said, his voice utterly level. “We figured she was worth cultivating.”
“You told me you have my money,” Rosen said. “I want proof.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Dylan saw Matthew hold up the backpack.
“This look familiar to you?” Dylan resisted the urge to smile at the brief flicker of emotion on Rosen’s face—something like disgust or dismay, perhaps anger.
“It looks like something of Alex’s,” the man said with a dismissive shrug. “But if it’s not the money I’m not interested in it.”
Matthew glanced at Dylan. Dylan held his friend’s gaze for a moment and then nodded. It was all for show; anyone watching the three of them would know that he and Matthew viewed each other as equals—that they were in charge both in the same measure. But there was a certain need for some kind of status. And Dylan was more than willing to take on the assumed role of ‘leader’—he’d done it so many times when they’d been in Portland that it came naturally.
Matthew opened the backpack and tilted the top of it towards Rosen, showing the bundles of cash that Alex had stuffed into it.
“Now I can’t be sure if this is your money,” Dylan said with a shrug. “But it looks like it’s likely to be. If it isn’t, maybe we can find out who it belongs to and let them have it.”
“Did you count it?” Rosen looked at Dylan sharply.
“It’s about ten thousand, give or take a hundred or two,” Matthew said matter-of-factly. “That sound like your money?”
“It does,” Rosen admitted.
Dylan glanced around the room; the lions were becoming restless already.
“Tell me something, Rosen,” Dylan said, turning his attention back onto the man in charge. “I explained to you on the phone last night that this was in the hopes that you would no longer feel the need to send these cats after us.” Dylan gestured to the lions ranged around the room, occupying balconies and doorways, watching them balefully. “So why are they here?”
“I thought I’d show them how to do their job, if you were right,” Rosen said, shrugging. “And if you were wrong, I figured it would be worth it to both me and them to take you out here and now.”
“And now that you’re getting your money back?”
Rosen glanced around the big, broad room. “What are you asking in payment for my money?”
Dylan smiled slowly. “We want your lion friends here to leave us alone,” he said. “We want you to leave us alone, too. We came here after being exiled from our sleuth. We want to start a new life. That’s all we want.”
Rosen nodded slowly. “Seems reasonable,” he said. “Problem is that I promised these nice folks a chance at revenge on you.”
“I figured as much,” Dylan said. “But you win out on this; no need to give them revenge in exchange for your money, or to give someone a position they haven’t earned.”
Rosen’s eyes widened slightly, and Dylan resisted the urge to smile.
“I think,” Rosen said slowly, recovering his composure, “that it would be best to let you and these fine folks settle the issue between yourselves.”
“You’re in charge,” Dylan pointed out. “If you make it a blood oath that they won’t come after us, as their patron they would have to agree to it—and we would be in our rights to kill any of them that violated that oath.”
“Why should I?” Rosen shrugged. “If you die in the fight, I get the money. If I go to the trouble, I have a bunch of disgruntled employees who I might lose any time one of them takes it into their head to come after you.”
“Give him the money,” Dylan told Matthew. He barely glanced at Nadine; her ankle wasn’t fully recovered, but the stitches in her neck had started to dissolve. She was as ready as she could possibly be for the situation at hand.
“Cowards!”
Dylan smirked at the cry from one of the lions above them. We’ll see who’s a coward, he thought. Matthew stepped forward, confident and upright, and laid the backpack down a few feet away from Rosen’s desk.
“How do you think people other than your current employees are going to treat you, Rosen, if you let folks who help you get killed?” Dylan held the man’s gaze, preparing himself for the fight that he knew was now inevitable. “Think people are going to rush to help you when that happens to them?” We may have to go ahead and kill the bastard anyway, he thought wryly.
“I can’t have angry employees,” Rosen said, dismissing the idea of anything other than his corporate interests. “They rise up against me, there’s more of them…it gets too messy. I’m sure you understand.”
A moment later, Dylan heard one thud, and then another. The lions were leaping down from their perches, landing as quietly as they could—but not quite quietly enough. He glanced at Nadine; she was already moving into position, her hands shifting to the weapons he’d given her before they had left for the meeting. Matthew stepped to the side, putting more space between them, and Dylan loosened his clothes, twisting and moving in place. He knew without a doubt that he would have to change at a moment’s notice; he would have to risk alienating Nadine in order to keep her safe—and so would Matthew.
The tension mounted every second. The lions began to circle, and Dylan heard the sounds of some of the shifters beginning to transform: groans, the moving of bones inside of bodies, the growls and hissing. He closed his eyes for just a second, summoning up the magic of his own animal essence.
One of the lions jumped, and Dylan threw himself into the battle, dropping down into a crouch and letting the change ripple through his body. He heard Nadine’s gasp, and his vision transformed, taking on different colors, even as the shifters in front of him went into their other shapes. Dylan listened for any signs of real distress from his mate or from his best friend, but otherwise, he completely focused on the lions. As he completed the change, he moved forward, barreling into one. His human consciousness faded and Dylan bit and clawed, growled and roared, moving from one opponent to another. A feline shriek a few feet away from him alerted him at one point and he saw Nadine, absolutely transformed—in her own way—driving a knife up into the soft underbelly of a pouncing lion. Dylan roared his approval and moved closer to his mate, intent on protecting her.
One by one, the lions fell, and even as he began to tire, Dylan threw himself forward again and again to intercept any that came near Nadine, or that tried a sneaking attack on him. He was dimly aware of his mate’s own fighting, of Matthew’s bawling, brawling movements. Pain raked his shoulder and Dylan danced away, twisting around to grab the lion that had caused it. Bones crunched in his arms, under his teeth. Blood flowed into his mouth, and the small, dim human consciousness left in Dylan’s mind absently counted the foes he took down. More than once, he felt pain light up the nerves in his body, but in the face of the onslaught he didn’t care; as long as his mate was safe, it wasn’t important for him to remain perfectly intact.
Finally, when all of the lions were down, Dylan turned his attention onto the spot where Rosen had been sitting only moments before. The man had disappeared, the backpack with him. Dylan groaned and shook his head, fighting back the pain that scored his back, his arms, his legs and his jaw. He would worry about Rosen another time; for now, all he wanted was to get back into his human form, get home and rest. All he wanted was to be with his mate and recover. Looking around him, he saw that every last one of the lions that had been in the building were laid out, most of them dead—the rest mortally wounded. Dylan glanced in Nadine’s direction. She was soaked in blood, but her face looked less shocked, less unsteady, than he would have guessed. Dylan sank down onto the ground and willed the transformation to rush through his bones and veins once more, bringing him back to the human man Nadine had fallen for.
*
“Nadine? Honey-lamb. I know you want to do a good job, but it’s way too late to still be pegging away on your damn computer.”
Nadine tore her attention off of her laptop at the sound of Dylan’s voice, shaking off her absorption in the data she’d been rummaging through. It had been a month since they had put an end to the group of lions that had caused them all so much grief. Three weeks before, Nadine had moved into a new rental house with Dylan and Matthew; she had insisted on having her own room—somewhere she could go to be by herself and alone when she needed it. She had finished her last day of work in the office a week after moving in with her two mates.
A pair of hands wandered over her body, teasing and caressing her, and Nadine smiled, glancing over her shoulder to see Matthew behind her. She wasn’t sure if she would ever fully understand the two men, but in the month and a half since she had met them, Nadine couldn’t deny that she had developed intense feelings towards them both.
“Come on,” Matthew murmured, his breath hot against her ear. “Don’t you want to go to bed?”
Nadine chuckled, closing her laptop and pushing it aside on the couch before she rose from her seat.
“When you two say ‘go to bed’, you never seem to mean ‘go to sleep,’ she said, turning to face both men. “If you’re that worried about my well-being you should consider letting me get a full night’s sleep from time to time.”
Dylan grinned at her, stepping around the couch to wrap his arms around her waist and draw her close to him. He kissed her, nipping playfully at her bottom lip, his hands wandering over her body in quick, devastating caresses, turning her on almost immediately.
Somehow, Dylan was gone and Nadine felt Matthew’s hands on her, tasted his lips against hers. She had started to gradually become accustomed to the way the men switched off when they both attacked her at once; it had taken her a while to learn how to act when it happened, but she had to admit it was the most intense—and intensely satisfying—sex she could have. Both men on their own were phenomenal in bed; together, they were so good that it was difficult for Nadine to even cope.
Her clothes fell away bit by bit, and Nadine realized the two men were steering her out of the living room and down the hall. She wondered which of the two men’s bedrooms they would end up in for the remainder of the night and then decided she didn’t care as Dylan teased her nipples into firm little nubs and Matthew let his fingertips brush against her already wet labia, both of them teasing her in the most appealing way.
Nadine fell into an ocean of sensations, kissing one pair of lips and then another, touching whatever body was nearest to her hands as the two men who loved her lavished attention on every inch of skin they could reach. The combined pleasures of their double assault was something that had yet to get old—something that still sent a naughty thrill through Nadine’s body more potent than any other sexual encounter she’d ever had.
Someone tumbled her onto the bed, and Nadine let prying, careful hands spread her legs wide; she let another hand guide her touch, and wrapped her fingers around the length of a thick, hard, hot erection. She began stroking even as she moved in reaction to touches and caresses from fingers and lips and tongue, not even caring which of her two lovers had found his way down between her legs. Nadine twisted and writhed, locked between the two men, as the pleasure built up inside of her. She tangled her fingers in Matthew’s hair, and then in Dylan’s, as the two men switched off in their attentions—one and then the other burying his face between her legs and then working his way up to her hands and mouth.
Nadine cried out as she reached her first orgasm, grabbing at sweat-slick bodies to hold onto something in the intensity of the pleasure that racked her. As she arched and writhed, Matthew devoured her, and Dylan guided her mouth to his cock, the sharp-salty taste of his precum coating her tongue, somehow making her orgasm even more intense.
Then she was being moved, hands supporting her, shifting her into place. Nadine came back to herself hazily as Matthew settled in front of her face, his legs spread wide, his erection only inches away from her mouth; she felt Dylan behind her, felt the brush of his hard cock against her soaking wet labia. As he rubbed himself up and down along her labia, Nadine pushed her hips back, hungry for more and more pleasure. Nadine moaned out again and again, taking Matthew farther and farther into her mouth, worshiping him with her lips and tongue as Dylan filled her up, inch by inch from behind. They moved together and Nadine tingled all over, the aftermath of one orgasm dissolving into the buildup of the next one as she felt two cocks sliding in and out of her body at opposite ends.
Nadine shuddered, barely able to hold herself up, as Dylan began to thrust harder and faster inside of her, the tip of his cock rubbing up against her pleasure center with every movement of his hips. She moaned against Matthew’s flesh, sucking eagerly, lapping up his fluids as she struggled to hold back a second orgasm; she wanted to savor the moment between the three of them as long as possible, wanted to make it last. Matthew reached his orgasm and Nadine swallowed the gush of his pleasure, almost choking as it flooded her mouth even as she lost all ability to hold back any longer. She reached her second orgasm with Matthew’s cock between her lips, Dylan slamming against her, almost pounding her in his urgent need.
Nadine gave in to the pleasure, collapsing onto her elbows, burying her face against the blankets as Dylan reached his own orgasm. She barely felt the sticky-slick heat of his climax flooding her, she was so lost in the sensations coursing through her. Nadine slipped into a contented doze as the three of them all struggled to catch their breath in the aftermath of their climaxes, knowing the night wasn’t yet over—as soon as they were all recovered, one of the two men she loved would move her around, position her how he wanted, and the other would guide her in another direction.
The first time they had had what Dylan and Matthew referred to as “mating sex,” Nadine hadn’t been entirely sure how she felt about it; something inside of her insisted that it was dirty, that it was somehow slutty and wrong. But something deeper had driven her to seek it out again and again ever since then, no matter how many times she had sex with either of the men individually.
What shocked Nadine most of all was the fact that the more sex she had with her two mates, the more she wanted it; she had never had such a high sex drive in her entire life. When she’d mentioned it to Dylan, he had laughed, telling her that he was sorry she hadn’t had sex that good before in her life—it was a shame she had missed out for so long.
“Don’t go to sleep on us!”
Nadine groaned, ripped out of her contented, satisfied doze by the feeling of two pairs of hands, tickling and caressing her all over.
Once more, she found herself lifted up, moved around, shifted into position. She opened her eyes to find herself straddling Matthew’s lap, his cock already hard, hot, gleaming at the tip with precum. She sank down onto the erection, shuddering as it filled her up, and then she was moving, rocking her hips, rising and falling on top of Matthew. She felt Dylan’s presence behind her, and when she felt a slick fingertip brushing against her tight pucker, only an inch away from where Matthew’s cock slid in and out of her body, Nadine barely flinched, barely even fought the stroking, swirling touch.
Neither man ever took her anally when they were one-on-one, but it was another unfolding aspect of their sex as a threesome that Nadine was shocked to realize that she loved. The first time it had happened, a week before, it had been Matthew; he had teased her with his fingers, working her last virgin hole until she had nearly been crazy with the desire to give herself to him. The slickness of Dylan’s fingers playing with her was somehow both perfect and naughty—almost dirty, in a way that excited Nadine more than she could ever explain. She pushed her hips back, twisting and pivoting as Matthew continued to thrust deeper and deeper inside of her.
Dylan continued to work her, and Nadine heard herself groaning and moaning, crying out with pleasure as the tension built up inside of her body more strongly than before. Words left her lips—praise, pleas, incoherent ramblings inspired by the pleasure washing through her—until she felt the heat and hardness of Dylan’s cock rubbing against her pucker, as slick as she was after all of his teasing. Matthew slowed, and Nadine shuddered and shivered as Dylan took her from behind, filling her up almost uncomfortably. Nadine forced her muscles to relax, breathing, clinging to Matthew for support as Dylan pushed past the resistance of her body.
For one magical instant, Nadine felt both men fully inside of her, felt her hips completely sandwiched between Dylan’s body and Matthew’s. Then, after a few heartbeats, both men began to move inside of her, and Nadine abandoned herself completely to them both, falling into their rhythm, lost in the sensation of being so completely full she wasn’t sure she could even take it for very long.
Her third orgasm of the evening eclipsed the first two, lighting up Nadine’s nervous system, filling her closed eyes with stars as she cried out over and over again. She trembled as pleasure so intense it might as well have been pain crashed through her veins, driving out any thought of anything other than the two men who had claimed her and the sensations caressing every nerve. Nadine’s orgasm intensified until she was almost afraid what would happen to her if it never ended, and then it began to abate, spasms dancing along her muscles as the two men finished their own climaxes buried deep inside of her and then sagged onto the bed.
Nadine came back to herself bit by bit, aware of a lingering soreness in her hips, a deep fatigue that was somehow satisfying. Her body tingled all over; her mind was completely at ease.
“I should not be enjoying this so much,” she said, opening her eyes. Her body was tangled between Dylan’s and Matthew’s, her limbs pinned down, and Nadine marveled that she could be so very comfortable with two men’s weight on her frame.
“Why not?” Dylan brushed his lips against hers and Nadine smiled. “You’re having really hot sex with both of your mates at the same time. That seems like something you should be enjoying the hell out of.”
“It feels too good to be right,” Nadine said, twisting so she could see Matthew as well. Two pairs of hands trailed over her slowly, caressing in a way that was more affectionate than arousing. Nadine knew they would remain like that for maybe an hour more at most; they had all come enough times for the evening—none of them would have the energy for another attempt.
“That’s not a thing,” Matthew said, reaching over to brush a strand of hair away from her forehead. “There is no such thing as ‘too good to be right’. It’s good and it’s right.”
“If you insist,” Nadine said, unwilling to make herself worry about the philosophical implications of her complex relationship with the two men.
Neither Dylan nor Matthew seemed even slightly inclined to have anything to do with each other sexually and yet Nadine was sure that they enjoyed taking her at the same time as much as she enjoyed being taken by both men at the same time.
“You have gotten a lot more easygoing since we moved in together,” Dylan observed.
Nadine shrugged. “I'm having multiple orgasms every day, I don’t have to work in an office anymore, and I have two men in my life who consider it their absolute duty to make me happy,” Nadine pointed out. “Hard not to become less uptight when that’s going on in your life.”
Dylan and Matthew both chuckled.
“As long as you are happy, you won’t hear me complaining,” Matthew said, shifting on the bed next to her. Looking around, Nadine realized that they were in Matthew’s room.
They had chosen a furnished home with three bedrooms, since neither Matthew nor Dylan had brought very much with them in their cross-country move, and most of Nadine’s possessions had been destroyed by the lions. Nadine was learning more and more about shifter culture, slowly beginning to understand the strange culture her two lovers had grown up in. She knew something about the clan that Dylan and Matthew had belonged to, about the fact that before they had been exiled, Dylan had been one of the leaders of his group. She thought—though she hadn’t yet broached the topic—that eventually, they would have to confront that particular issue. At some point, Dylan and Matthew would need to make contact with their former family and friends.
For the time being, however, Nadine was happier than she had ever been in her life. Even above and beyond the sex and attention, there was something about living with two men who could become beasts by force of will that appealed to her. She had begun training in self-defense, as well—though she had to go slowly, since her ankle was taking a long time to heal. It was as far from her previous life as Nadine could imagine anything being, and sometimes when she had her “alone time” she wondered if she would wake up some morning and think she had made a terrible mistake.
“Who’s cooking breakfast in the morning? We should settle that before we all pass out,” Dylan said, next to her.
Nadine shrugged. “Whoever wakes up first should be responsible,” she suggested. Nadine almost always woke up second, whenever she ended the night nestled between both of her lovers; something about the change in presence when either Matthew or Dylan left the bed alerted her, and shortly after one of her lovers awakened and got up, she was sure to find it impossible to stay asleep any longer.
“That sounds fair,” Matthew said, yawning.
Nadine twisted her body around, keeping contact with both men, even as she found a pillow strewn from its normal position on the bed and buried her face against it.
“I’m too tired to think about anything,” she told them, knowing that even though her voice was muffled, both Matthew and Dylan would be able to make out her words almost perfectly.
She had started to adjust to their enhanced senses, though it would never cease making her envious that she didn’t share them. Nadine shivered as the hands trailing over her body tickled in odd places, moving on to caress her where she liked it the best.
She had largely forgotten—or at least started to disregard—the possibility that the two men would become sick of her with time. Although it had only been a month since they had seriously started seeing each other, Nadine could feel their affection, she could feel the warmth of the bond that had come with their mating. She knew it was only a matter of time before she became pregnant, too. None of them were particularly cautious when it came to sex, and Nadine was wise enough to realize that with the sheer volume of chances they took, it was a question of when she would become pregnant, rather than if. She had never thought about the possibility of having children—not seriously—before the ill-fated events that had led her to become a shared mate, but Nadine thought that when it happened, the child—or children—that came from her and the two men she had come to love would be more than usually blessed to have three parents instead of only two. As she dropped off into sleep, Nadine smiled, thinking that although she had resented Alex—the man who had held her at knifepoint—for deranging her life completely, she almost had to feel a kind of gratitude for the dead were-lion. If it weren’t for his desperate ploy to use her as a human shield, she might not have ever fallen into her strange, wonderful life, and learned how much she enjoyed being shared by two men who cared about her almost more than they cared about themselves. Whatever dangers they all had to face, Nadine decided she was more than happy to face them.