NINE
Nadine’s ankle throbbed as they walked towards the car, but the alcohol she’d consumed kept the pain to a dull twinge.
“So I’m guessing, based on what your contact said, we’re in deep shit,” Nadine said quietly, looking around to make sure that they weren’t being followed. Of course, if we were, I’d be the last to know, she thought wryly. Both of them would either smell or hear before I would.
“Yes and no,” Dylan said, reaching down and taking her hand in his. He gave it a little squeeze. Matthew quickly took her other hand and Nadine felt almost foolish—as if she were a child, nestled between two adults, preparing to cross the street. Part of her wanted to drop both men’s hands, but their presence was oddly comforting. She let the implication of their instinctive moves pass out of her mind. “If they’re working to try and be top man—or woman, I guess—for a guy running underground trade, and there’s some money on the line…”
“It’s bad,” Matthew continued. “But it’s not the worst thing that could happen.”
Nadine snorted. “Well the worst thing that could happen would be for them to, like…I don’t know. Think that you guys had the actual money. Or be more organized.”
She felt out of her depth in the sudden criminal turn her life had taken. They’re mercenaries—and you’ve asked them to get you involved in their life too. Of course they’re involved in illegal shit. Nadine resisted the urge to reclaim one of her hands to check her forehead for signs of fever. What is wrong with me that this is just…okay?
“We’re going to have to find out where they stay,” Dylan explained. “And then we’re going to have to take them out. Not the easiest thing in the world, but not the hardest either.”
Nadine pressed her lips together, thinking about what she had learned that evening. Even a month prior—even two weeks before—she would never have thought she would be involved with not one but two men who were part of a semi-criminal underground, who had enough life experience to consider taking out an entire den of were-lions to be ‘not the easiest thing in the world, but not the hardest either.’ And now, in my life, I know there are people who turn into bears, and people who turn into panthers, and people who turn into lions, and wolves… She shook her head at the realization of just how drastically her life had changed in such a short time. Really, I might as well go ahead and quit my job and see if I’m as much of a potential bad ass as Matthew thinks. How in the world can I possibly go back to a normal life after all this?
“You okay?” The sound of Matthew’s voice pulled Nadine out of her thoughts and she looked at him with a weak smile.
“My ankle is less than happy,” she admitted. “Also I’m kind of…” She glanced at Dylan. “Basically my entire life is turned around by all this. It’s a little weird.”
“Once we get rid of these guys,” Dylan said, giving her hand another squeeze, “things will settle a bit.”
“Yeah,” Nadine said.
The two men stopped as they arrived at the car, and Nadine thought, once again, that the fact they owned a used Honda for the purposes of getting around in verged on the bizarre. She stopped with them and Dylan relinquished her hand to take the keys out of his pocket.
“I just feel like…” she sighed. “I’ve already agreed to kind of see both of you at the same time. I’m aware of what you are. I’m aware of this huge underground world that I didn’t even have the slightest clue existed before. I don’t even know if I can go back to being just a data analyst sitting at a desk for eight hours a day.”
Matthew gave her hand a careful tug, and Nadine found herself pulled into his arms. He hugged her tightly, nuzzling against her neck.
“It’s going to be okay,” Matthew murmured, his lips only inches away from her ear.
“I know,” Nadine said quietly. “It’s just kind of a lot to wrap my head around at the moment.”
Matthew shifted against her, and his lips connected with hers. Nadine melted against him, forgetting the pain in her ankle, the stiff ache at her neck where the stitches were, and almost everything else except for the fascinating way that Matthew’s lips and tongue tasted—the sharp whiskey and Coke flavor mingling with a kind of sweetness she remembered from their first tryst—and the heat of his body pressed against hers.
A moment later, a pair of hands closed on her waist, pulling her gently back and away from Matthew.
“My turn,” Nadine heard Dylan say, and then her lips were claimed once more.
Dylan’s hands wandered over her slowly, and Nadine felt her body heating up more and more as she realized that both men were touching her, that even as Dylan deepened the kiss, she could feel Matthew nuzzling against her breasts. She swayed on her feet, for a moment lost in the sensations coursing through her body, the arousal building up heat in her veins. The sound of someone dropping a pint glass down the street from where they were cut through Nadine’s reverie and she pulled back from Dylan’s lips, slithering free of both men’s hands.
“Okay,” she said, still more than a little breathless, tingling all over with awakened desire. “That was—really pretty cool, but I think we need to make a rule about maybe not having three-way make out sessions in public.”
Matthew and Dylan both grinned, their eyes glimmering with amusement.
“You don’t like the idea of everyone knowing that you’re managing two men at the same time?”
Nadine crossed her arms over her chest, pinning each man with a scowl in turn.
“You realize that it’s just going to make people catcall and shout things at me if they see it, right? Do you think it’s a good idea to have a mercenary-in-training with you who’s attracting a bunch of attention?” Frustration warred with the lust the two men had ignited inside of her, and Nadine struggled to keep some measure of her composure in the maelstrom of conflicting emotions.
“Fair enough,” Dylan said, meeting her gaze with a more serious expression. “But now we need to get back to the hotel as fast as possible.”
“Why?” Nadine frowned, looking around with the sudden apprehension that there were people coming for them.
“Because if we can only jump you at the same time in private, we need to get private,” Matthew explained, giving her hip a brief, but lingering caress.
Nadine sighed, shaking her head; she couldn’t quite help chuckling at the comment—even if she felt a little trepidation at the idea of the two men taking her at the same time.
“Let’s take this kind of slow,” she said, her mouth going dry as images danced through her mind of how just such an encounter would play out. “But whatever we’re doing, I think probably we should get back to the hotel before someone decides that I’m drunk and being taken advantage of.”
Matthew gave her hand a squeeze and then, when the doors to the car unlocked, he opened the back seat door and climbed in. Dylan opened the front passenger side door, gesturing for Nadine to take her seat, and she gave him a quick, flirting look through her eyelashes before carefully sliding into the seat, reaching for the seat belt as Dylan closed the door behind her. The entire drive home, her body was buzzing with desire, and Nadine tried to understand how it was possible for her to have changed so much in such a short period of time. Before meeting Dylan and Matthew, even the thought of a threesome would have sent her running from any man who suggested it; and she certainly never would have had sex with the best friend of someone she’d slept with only a day or two before.
Dylan and Matthew took turns teasing her, each of them finding a way to caress her, to kiss her neck or her cheek or her lips as they drove north from Clematis and headed back to the hotel. Nadine felt her arousal becoming more and more intense with each passing moment, until she couldn’t even force her mind to focus; she was trapped in the sensations crackling through her nerves, reacting to the two men’s hands and mouths, moaning softly and writhing in her seat.
“Guys…” She pulled her face away from Matthew’s opportunistic kiss and nearly collided with the window, pushing three hands away from her body. At least Dylan has one hand on the steering wheel, she thought wryly. She took a quick, deep breath, waiting until the arousal rushing through her veins subsided to a dull roar. “Let’s get to the hotel first, okay? I’m trying to think through something in my head, and I don’t really want the distraction.” She glanced nervously at Dylan and then at Matthew, remembering suddenly that the two men could both become bears.
“Okay,” Matthew said.
“Anytime you ever want us to stop,” Dylan added, “just say it and we’ll stop right then.”
Nadine pressed her lips together, for a moment doubtful of the truth in what Dylan had said.
“We don’t believe in forcing a mate,” Matthew explained from behind her. “The minute you feel uncomfortable, or pushed, or hesitant about something, tell us.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Nadine said, thinking of her first boyfriend, who had gone on for hours about how he would never force a woman—and who had nonetheless convinced her to go further than she had been completely comfortable with more than once.
“It’s the truth with us, though,” Dylan said, glancing at her. “I promise you, Nadine, the minute you say ‘no’ or ‘stop’ or even if you start to feel afraid—we’ll sense it—we will stop whatever we’re doing.”
Nadine considered that; it was true that both men had told her in their trysts that if she didn’t want to continue, they would stop. She also noticed that not only had they both stopped teasing and caressing her; their hands were at their sides, without the suggestion that a moment’s inattention on her part would be the signal to start again.
“I appreciate it,” Nadine said, relaxing slightly in her seat.
She could still feel the arousal buzzing through her veins, the tingling along her nerve endings, but her head felt clearer, her mind better able to function. As Dylan drove them towards the hotel, Nadine thought about the implications of the life she had taken on. If someone had told me that going home early would land me in this situation, I would have stayed late at work just to avoid it, she thought wryly. And yet—now that she knew what she would have missed out on, even with the danger—would she make the same choice? Would she have been better off never having met Dylan or Matthew?
Nadine bit her bottom lip, looking out at the shapes of the scrubby, swampy landscape that flowed past the window in the darkness. At this point, why should I even try and hold onto my job? It’s not like I’m going to be living the normal life I had before. Not if I agree to be Dylan and Matthew’s mate. But did she really have what it took to fall into the two men’s life? She could learn the martial arts—that wasn’t necessarily the concern weighing on her. What did give her pause was the fact that even if she became an expert, the way that Dylan and Matthew seemed to be, her life would always be uncertain with the two men. If she became a mercenary like them—sometimes a bounty hunter, sometimes a facilitator for semi-legal activities, sometimes a private investigator—then she would be in almost constant danger.
“What did you guys do before you got exiled?” Nadine glanced at each of the two men in turn.
“Sort of a similar thing to what we’re doing now,” Matthew said. “But we were affiliated with a sleuth—a clan. We were enforcers. If someone in the clan stepped out of line, or there was an issue with another group of shifters, we looked out for the interests of our sleuth as a whole.”
“So why did you have the murder pinned on you?” Nadine sensed rather than saw the two men shifting in their seats, almost nervous.
“We were pranksters,” Dylan said. “We were brawlers. That’s what you want in an enforcer, really—someone who’s not afraid to bring the violence if it comes down to it. Our clan leader…” he exhaled sharply.
“He was worried that Dylan might become too popular,” Matthew said from behind her. “And since I would have been Dylan’s second in any kind of succession…”
“So he wanted to get rid of you to keep his power intact?” Nadine glanced at the two men in turn and they both nodded. Nadine shook her head. “I don’t think I’m ever going to understand politics in the shape-shifting community,” she said.
“Fortunately for you,” Matthew told her, leaning over the back of her seat. He gave her hair a quick, playful tousle—more friendly and affectionate than erotic, “you’re probably not ever going to have to.”
“You don’t think you’re ever going to go back? Or—like—join another group?” Nadine frowned.
“It’s not on the list right now,” Dylan said. “Besides, we’ve got you—what do we need a sleuth for?”