Rich was better at the small talk, but Deni preferred action. The lush woman standing between them was theirs, simple as that. Deni didn’t need to have that explained to him, or go through the ridiculous posturing of human dating. She was his, to fuck, to need, to crave, and claim. What did it matter that they just met? Deni licked across the seam of her lips, tasting the cherry on her lips, and slipped inside when she gasped. Her flavor, a mix of coffee and spice, exploded over his taste buds and he groaned. He needed more. To lick every inch of her supple skin, bite at her clit, and watch her cum slick over his cock.

Stop…you…her…space.

The disjointed mind connection tossed ice water over Deni’s libido. All the Snow Cap Clan had a direct link to mentally speak with Deni ever since he took over as chief. But things were changing between he and his best friend, Rich. Slowly their connection twisted and turned, broke in places they didn’t understand. Instead of catching Rich’s whole thoughts, Deni could only pick up on bits, and the phenomena grew worse every few months. Soon he wouldn’t be able to hear his friend at all, and the repercussions of that Deni didn’t want to think about.

He pulled away from the delectable mouth under his and stared into the woman fashioned just for them. Her deep chocolate gaze was filled with lust, her caramel skin flushed with desire. He wanted to see if that deep rosy color covered her everywhere.

“It doesn’t matter when we met. Five minutes ago, or five years. It doesn’t change the fact that you belong to us,” Deni said against her lips.

A bit of the fog disappeared in her gaze and anger replaced it.

“What my friend is trying to say is, we are happy to meet you, Ally.”

Rich the peacemaker. “No, what I meant to say was how many times do you think I could make that weeping pussy come on my tongue,” Deni said.

His mate moaned and leaned into him. He liked that much better. Less talking, more fucking. A hand wrapped around Ally’s throat. Damn, but wasn’t that a pretty fucking sight. Deni let Rich pull Ally away from him.

“She’s hungry,” Rich told him.

His bear roared inside of him, the urge to mate and the needs of his mate warring until the big animal decided that making her happy would be the better bet. Deni stood straight and winced at the way his cock pressed against the zipper in his jeans. He shook his head. His wants shouldn’t have mattered before his mates. He growled at his bear, using ruthless control to put the beast in check.

“You’re right, food first. What would you like to eat, Ally?”

Deni gripped Ally’s left hand, while Rich grabbed the other. He tried his best to present a measure of calm from where he touched her. Manhandling her wasn’t an option…yet.

“I love seafood. How about we get some of that?” she asked.

His bear chuffed happily. Seafood was always an excellent idea. “Excellent choice. We can eat at Ellen’s.”

They continued out of the hangar, tucked their precious cargo into their all-terrain jeep, and sped off for some grub. She sat in the back seat with the guys in the front, Deni behind the wheel.

“How was your flight?” Deni asked.

“I didn’t realize it would take so long to get here,” she answered.

“Kodiak has some direct flights, but not many. With the storm coming in, they had to make some adjustments. Gerri did everything she could to get you here the fastest,” Rich returned.

“Do you normally have bad storms like that?”

The conversation dimmed in his awareness as he drove. Her scent filled the car, taunting his bear with each whiff. The more he smelled her, the musk of her desire and need, the more his bear pushed to be free. To have her. Deni tried his best to contain it, and gripped the steering wheel hard. He’d become agitated lately, angry at Rich, and yet needing him at his side. Not many bear shifters mated in triads, though other shifters did. A bear, by nature, was solitary. Deni didn’t have to be the sort of chief to lord over his people or keep them in line. He protected their fishing spots, answered their questions when they needed help, and protected their territory. Since he’d moved them to Kodiak and became the only bear shifter group in the local area, he’d learned to enjoy the ease of his position.

Until Rich began to change.

The large bear shifter had always been one of Deni’s enforcers for the clan, and his best friend. They’d grown up from cubs together, the two of them against the world. In the last year, though, Rich’s bear gained strength. With each passing month, Deni knew the threat of a challenge brewed in his chest. It didn’t matter that their human sides didn’t want to fight, or that they’d always shared everything. Maybe it was because they’d shared everything. Women, Deni’s rule, even the protection of the clan. The first time they’d shared a woman, they’d realized they synchronized, that pleasure was sweeter, and they didn’t have to communicate with each other. It moved smoothly and easy. Deni relied on Rich when he made decisions about the clan, and talked over any issues that came up. Hell, Rich had a house next door to Deni, but spent most of his time in the clan leader house. Their bond went beyond friend, or brothers. They’d always felt like they were pieces of a whole, but something was missing.

It was that thinking that made them believe that perhaps they needed to share a mate. A woman who would keep their bears in check, because her needs to have them both would keep their bears from trying to challenge over territory. Whatever it took to save their friendship. Seeing Ally though, with all her curves and sexy smile, made a believer out of Deni. The woman was sex on a fucking stick, and the faster they took her, the better.

“You’re growling like a bear who lost his honey,” Rich said to him.

“What?” Deni asked.

“You’re bears?” Ally asked at the same time.

Deni looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Yes. Brown bears, to be exact.”

“Be careful on clan lands. Alaska is home of one of the largest populations of brown bears, and we look the same. Don’t approach a bear unless you know it’s us,” Rich explained.

“And how am I supposed to know it’s you?”

“The eyes. We keep our eyes in shifted form. You won’t see any natural bear with green or blue eyes. Also, we respond to our names. If you can’t see the eyes, call us.”

They pulled up to Ellen’s, home to some of the best seafood cooking outside of clan lands, and got out. Deni and Rich surrounded Ally, their hands finding her hair and neck like they did at the airport.

“Why do you do that?” she asked.

“What?” Deni asked her.

“The way you hold me.”

Deni clenched his fingers in her hair and his nostrils flared at her heightened scent of arousal. “That’s why.”

She looked confused and he pulled her hair again until she gasped.

“That,” Rich added.

Two bright red spots colored her cheeks. “You do it because it turns me on?”

Deni chuckled at her unnaturally loud tone. “Yes.”

She tried to shrug them off, but they held on and directed her into the restaurant. Ellen, an older, dark haired member of the Clan met them at the front.

“Chief. What brings you here?”

“She’s hungry. I want to make sure she’s properly fed.”

Ally pulled away from them and stomped her foot. The move was too cute for words. “I’m not a child. Jesus, is that what you think this is? That I’m some mail order bride that belongs to you? Point me in the direction of the nearest table, and a menu please. Seats for the men are optional.”

Ellen looked at him before looking back to Ally, a smile playing on her lips. “I think I’ll like you for my boys. Right this way.”

Once they sat down at the table, each one on a side, Ally cleared her throat. “Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. While I think you both are sexier than Matt Smith and David Tenant combined, I’m not a pushover. You don’t have to answer for me or direct my every action. I’m a big girl, literally, and can handle myself.”

Deni didn’t know who the hell she was talking about in the beginning of her spiel, but the end of it took his attention. “Repeat that last part.”

“What?”

“The last sentence. Repeat it.”

“Again with the he-man act,” she started.

“No, I want to make sure I heard you right.”

“I’m a big girl, literally, and can handle myself,” she repeated.

He nodded. “That’s what I thought you said. Let me make myself very clear, you will never again talk down about your weight again. I’m so hard I can barely walk straight and would rather have you across this table for my meal. I talked myself out of pulling that jeep over a hundred times so I could feel your pussy wrapped around my cock. You are everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman. Do you hear me?”

She swallowed and looked to Rich. Deni growled at her. “Did. You. Hear. Me?”

“I won’t save you here, baby,” Rich told her.

“Okay, here’s the deal. You don’t have to play nice like that. I know I’m larger, and I’m fine with that. Gerri set us on this date, and I’m looking forward to having a good time, but I’m not getting my hopes about what this is.”

“And what is this, Ally?” Deni asked.

She looked back and forth between them, confusion marring her face. “Why the hell are you angry?”

“I want to know what this is, as you put it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, you want me to say it? It’s a publicity stunt. Gerri told me she’d set me up with some shifters to see if I could find true love. I think she’s golden, and would probably try, but I’m also a head of a rather large blog that people follow. Most of them will read all about my experience here, and she knows it. She wants it to be good, and we both know that even if it doesn’t work out, which it won’t, I’ll appreciate the experience.”

Deni counted to ten, and when that didn’t work, he counted again. Alejandra Perez, whether she realized it or not, belonged to the two men sitting at the table with her. It didn’t matter how much she argued against it, that fact wouldn’t change. What he did care about was the way she saw herself. It had nothing to do with whether she believed Gerri could find her someone. He could smell a lie a mile away, and she was lying through her teeth. The big girl comment? That’s what bothered her. She actually believed, in that sexy skull of hers, that they wouldn’t want her.

He looked to Rich and saw the way his eyes snapped with anger. Then they were agreed, on this at least. He swung his gaze to Ally and figured they’d be eating in a hurry. He had a much more important meal he needed to consume, the sooner the better.

“What can I get you?” Ellen asked, oblivious to the undercurrents.

“Give us the special, that would be great,” Deni told her with a soft smile.

Ellen shot him a mock frown and leaned to whisper loudly to Ally. “Don’t let the big one fool you, he’s a teddy bear.”

The heat of embarrassment singed the tip of his ears. “I’m not a teddy bear, I’m the chief of the clan.”

“And still my son,” Ellen returned.

Ally gasped. “Um, hi. My name is Alejandra Perez, but you can call me Ally. Oh, wow.”

His mate lost for words was adorable, but her nervousness agitated his bear. Deni wanted her comfortable among his people. He reached for her hand and rubbed it soothingly. “Ally, meet Ellen Wright, my cub-mother.”

“Cub-mother?” Ally asked.

“I raised him as my own when he was just a cub after a hunting accident took his parents. My husband was clan chief, and we had no children.”

“Until I’d been there a few years, anyway,” Deni said, smiling at Rich.

“Yeah, and then I came along and messed everything up,” Rich added.

They’d saved him, Rich and his family. The loss of his parents tore Deni to pieces, and without Ellen, her husband James, and Rich, Deni would have been a very different bear. It was why the battle brewing between he and Rich killed him. Bears tended to follow patrilineal patterns for chiefs, and Rich was James’ biological son, and should have been the leader. But Deni grew stronger, and Rich never seemed interested in the leadership role. In fact, he’d pushed Deni to take command. Maybe they’d been wrong.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

Warmth spread through him at her touch and she broke him from his thoughts. Her delicate fingers traced the top of his hand. He lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed them softly. “I had a family, and I was blessed.”

“I lost my parents, too,” she told him, tears in her eyes. Her pain washed over him, and he sighed, for a moment knowing he shared with her what few understood.

“They are never forgotten,” he told her.

“Yeah,” Ally returned.

Ellen reached down and hugged Ally to her chest. “Welcome to Kodiak, Ally. You belong here. I’ll bring your food right out.”

Ellen disappeared and Ally sat quiet, looking around the restaurant, but not really seeing a thing. Deni tightened his hold on her fingers until she looked at him. “Let’s get you fed, and then you can start yelling at me again for being a H-man,” he told her.

She chuckled, and the pleasant sound washed over him, erasing the sad atmosphere. A little while later, plates of fish, shrimp, and crab with corn and potatoes were dished to the table.

“Eat well. I take it as an offense if there is anything left on these plates,” Ellen warned.

“Yes ma’am,” Ally answered.

“She’s serious,” Deni said under his breath. “She once made me ride home naked since I didn’t have the good sense to appreciate what I’d been given in life.”

“How old were you?” Ally asked.

Deni scratched his chin. “Twenty-two. Right, Rich?”

“Twenty-four, actually. You were twenty-two when she made you jump in the lake to cool your temper after you broke her table in a huff.”

“I said sorry,” Deni grumbled.

But it was worth it, his moment of discomfort, to hear Ally laugh. It was a boisterous, infectious laugh that no one could ignore.

“Oh, that’s priceless,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Not as priceless as you,” Deni returned.

She bit a hunk of crab, a blush spreading over her cheeks, and Deni wondered if it spread over her whole body. His bear roared, agreeing they should continue down that path of investigation. But he waited, until she’d eaten her fill and leaned back from the table.

“Oh, my God, I’m stuffed. That was so good.”

“Funny,” Deni said, “I’m still hungry.”

Ally blinked at him. “All the food is gone.”

“Not quite. Besides, I have a matter to discuss with you. Something about how you see yourself.” He stood from the table and signaled to Ellen not to come to their table after dropping a few bills to pay for their meal. “Rich, how hungry are you?” Deni asked.

“I’m starved.”

“Good. Our meal needs to understand just how famished we are.”

“Agreed.”

Rich stood as well and both men leaned forward to pull Ally to her feet. Before she could say a word, Rich took her mouth with his.

“I’ll bring the car around,” Deni told him, and left the restaurant.