by Edith DuBois
After she had everything hooked up and her guitar in tune, she figured it was best to dive straight in.
“Howdy, everyone. I’m Marina Andrews.” A few cheers broke out, and she smiled nice and big, comforted by the familiar sound of applause. “I’ve been working on something new, and I wanted to play it for you fine folks.” The milling occupants had stopped chattering and were starting to gather in front of the small stage. Marina felt her confidence growing, and the tremors in her fingers lessened. “What do y’all say? How about I start with a couple of my classics, and then we’ll finish with the new one.” She felt her onstage persona bubbling to the surface as seconds passed. This felt right. Everything about being onstage felt right. “Does that sound good to y’all?” More applause broke out, stronger and louder than before. “Well, that’s just perfect then. This one’s called ‘Nashville Through and Through.’” With that, she launched into the song.
It didn’t take her long. After the first couple of notes, she could feel the blood thrumming powerfully through her body, and the notes fell easily out of her throat. It had been a while since she’d played the guitar in such a raw setting, but her fingers quickly limbered up and got to flying over the frets. After she finished “Nashville Through and Through,” she went into another one of her older songs, figuring after about two more, she’d sing the new one and then call it a night.
As she was singing the chorus of her second number—a catchy doo-wop melody—she noticed three frigging sexy dudes standing near the front of the crowd. She kept her looks casual, but she couldn’t resist sending them a couple flirtatious winks and smiles. As she went through her next two songs, really getting into the music and into the vibe of the crowd—a rambunctious and lively vibe—she tried to decide which hottie she would go for after she finished her set. They were all three handsome as sin, but one of them, the tallest one, had a sort of fevered, worshipful look in his eyes. Only, he wasn’t looking at her face. He was watching her fingers on the guitar. For some reason, that made her feel a million times sexier than the hundreds of hungry looks being sent her way from the rest of the men in the crowd.
Hell, she couldn’t blame the males for their hungry looks. Her breasts were smushed upward by her guitar, affording a lovely view of her cleavage if she did say so herself, and with the way she was bouncing around the stage and waggling her hips, she’d be offended if the men weren’t totally wrapped up in her onstage presence.
But damn, his steady gaze on her hands had her confidence shooting straight up.
And she wanted him bad for it.
With her decision made on which one of the sex gods she would go for, she could concentrate all of her focus on the new song. It was a little outside of her usual style. The guitar was less strumming and more picking, and she’d experimented a lot with the vocals. They were less regimented, less formulaic. The melody flitted from one octave to the next, from a stilted rhythm to a flowing one, from harsh and hard-hitting to gentle and tender. It gave her a lot more room to put in the emotion, but she was suddenly nervous about performing it, about exposing her vulnerabilities so freely.
She shrugged. Tonight was a night for being brave.
And she had a crowd that was captive and expectant. She’d never been able to let them down. Above all things, she cared about the people listening to her music. She could never leave them unsatisfied.
“All right, y’all,” she said softly into the microphone. “I’ve got one more. It’s a new one.” She locked eyes with the sexy man in the crowd who’d been watching her play the guitar with such avid interest. She craved the confidence he gave her. A light shown on his face, and she could see a faint pink line, a scar, running from the corner of his left eye down his cheek. He had a beard, which Marina usually didn’t like on men, but it gave him a terrible, ferocious beauty. He truly was a gorgeous man. “Please be kind,” she said. “It’s a little different, and I hope you like it.” She went into the plucking pattern. “It’s called ‘Mama, Don’t Fly Away from Me.’”
Marina closed her eyes and let the first note come out of her throat, clear and chilling. And then she sang.
She just let herself sing.
A few minutes later the song was over, and Marina blinked a couple times, coming out of her trance. For a long moment, nobody clapped, but then he shot her a wide grin and let out a boisterous yell. The rest of the crowd quickly followed until Catdaddy’s was roaring with the sound of applause. “Thank you so much,” she said into the mic, laughing at the sheer joy flying through her blood.
She blew a kiss to them and then left the stage. Unable to resist, she shot one hot glance at the sexy man with the scar. As she knew they would be, his eyes were glued to her as she walked down the steps and then headed toward the bar. A moment after Letty supplied her with a fresh shot of Jack, she felt him sidle up next to her at the bar.
Resisting the urge to turn toward him and devour the sight of him at such a close range, she said, “You know, I’ve been in Savage Valley a little over a month and a half. And I’ve been to Catdaddy’s a good number of those nights, too. How come I’ve never seen you before?” She threw back the shot. “I usually have an eye for men like you, and you have definitely not been on my radar.”
“Men like me? What kind of man am I?” He leaned his elbow on the bar and forced her gaze to his face.
“Oh, I dunno. You have this…like, this oozing quality.”
He grimaced.
“What?” she asked, pouting her lips a little.
“I was hoping for something a little more flattering than ‘oozing quality.’”
She frowned and puckered her lips more as if confused. “You’re not flattered?” His lips tilted up at the corners. She could tell he was enjoying her coy act. “Well then, Mister…um, what’s your name?”
“Jeremiah.”
“Marina.” She batted her lashes for added effect.
“I heard you mention that onstage a few times.”
She forgot her act for a moment, quirking up her mouth in genuine amusement. “You don’t have to pretend like you’ve never heard of me.”
“Sorry, sweetie, but I’m telling the truth. I only listen to the classics. And Reba McEntire.”
Something clicked in her mind, a small warning, but she ignored it. He was smiling at her, and it was beautiful.
“But anything that came out after her Rumor Has It album,” he continued, “and I’m clueless.”
“Well then, Jeremiah, let’s pretend I believe you for a second. You wanna give me some examples? I thought ‘oozing quality’ was quite descriptive, and I’m not sure I understand what you were looking for.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of devilishly seductive.” He put a hand on her knee. “Or maybe sinfully attractive.” He slid his hand slowly up her leg, his thumb pressing into the flesh of her inner thigh. “You know, something like that.”
“Ohhhh…” She drew the word out, making it breathy and guttural, and leaned in a fraction of an inch closer to him. She put her hand over his and then pressed his hand farther up her leg until his fingertips brushed at the lips of her pussy. “Maybe something like…animal magnetism,” she suggested.
She’d been watching his lips as they neared hers. They didn’t seem like too much of anything at first, but when he smiled, they became wide and giving. His bottom lip was suddenly very generous, and there was something jaunty in their general tilt.
But at her words, suddenly his smile was gone, and her eyes flew up to his. They were so black, and they looked right into hers. “Animal magnetism?” he asked, those black orbs blazing with a strange light she couldn’t understand.
“Something like that,” she whispered. His eyes drew her in, and their lips were only a breath apart when something snagged her attention over his shoulder. “What the hell?” She straightened away from him and jumped off her stool. She’d spotted Michelle across the bar with her three fiancés, and after
all the crap her sister had given her about frequenting bars, Marina had a thing or two she needed to say. She began stomping toward Michelle but at the last second turned back to Jeremiah and grabbed his chin. “I’ll be right back. Don’t you dare go anywhere.”
His brows drew together as he snatched her wrist, yanking her hand off his face. “I’ll do what I damn well please, Marina Andrews.” And with that, he yanked her body toward his and crashed his lips onto hers. Her breath was knocked out of her lungs, and a wild, clawing need erupted within her body. His lips pushed hard against hers, and she pushed right back. Nobody had ever dared to speak to her that way, but damn was it sexy as hell.
One of his hands skimmed down her back and executed a nice, healthy squeeze on a buttock while his other hand held tightly on to her braid. He had her body arched and her head yanked back at a severe angle, and his tongue dove into her mouth, stroking and plowing into her until breathing became secondary. God, he was so physical. He towered over her and commanded her body, and he possessed her, and she couldn’t get enough.
Her pussy throbbed with an angry need for more. She wanted his cock. She wanted her cunt pulverized. She wanted to fuck him hard.
She would have let him possess her right there on the floor of Catdaddy’s if he’d asked it, but instead, he suddenly released her and stumbled back a few steps. She shook her head, suddenly realizing how crazy she’d just been thinking.
Her body was trembling uncontrollably, and her only consolation was that he looked just as shaken as she felt. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. She saw the animal desire blazoned in the black depths of his eyes.
Those eyes widened, and he turned away from her. Then he darted through the crowd.
He left her.
Chapter Three
James rolled the bottom of his beer bottle on the top of the scratched wooden table. After watching Marina Andrews perform onstage, he’d needed air. His dick was still as hard and as dense as a tree trunk. She’d been making eyes at him and his brothers throughout her whole performance, but Jeremiah was the most charming one out of the three of them, the most natural with women. He and Johnny had sent him along to bring her outside to them.
She wouldn’t resist. He knew she wouldn’t. Not with the way she’d been shooting hot looks at them, but if Johnny didn’t stop pacing the deck like one of their nervous animals at the center, James was going to knock his lights out.
“How can you just sit there, man? And what’s taking that asshole so long? He’s been in there almost five minutes. Usually it takes him two. What the hell is happening?” Johnny looked into the bar, but there were too many bodies blocking the way. Earlier, it seemed like as soon as Marina started playing, the crowd tripled in size and then just kept growing.
“Calm down, man. He’ll get here when he—”
Jeremiah exploded out of the bar onto the patio, cutting off James’s statement. “It’s her!” Jeremiah shouted as he worked his way toward them. He was panting, and James thought he looked a little bit crazy. “It’s got to be. It’s her! She…” Jeremiah touched his lips. “And then…” His eyes lit up, and he made an exploding noise. “And it was—”
“Jeremiah,” James cut in. “What the hell are you talking about? Where is she?”
Jeremiah shook his head, seeming to register James and Johnny’s presence for the first time, and then he noticed several other people on the patio giving him odd looks. He quickly lowered himself into a chair at their table and spoke in a low voice. “Okay, so I talked to her. It was the usual sort of thing, but then, I don’t know…something happened.”
“And where is she now?” Johnny asked.
“I left her in there. I wanted to come talk to you two first.”
Johnny shoved Jeremiah. “You asshole. The talkin’ comes after the lovin’.”
Jeremiah shoved Johnny back, making his chair tip back on two legs. “Shut up.” He turned and looked at James with an earnestness James had never seen from him. “I think she could be the one. I think she could be our mate.”
“You can’t tell that from a kiss.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t…it was electrifying…I don’t know. That’s a dumb way of describing it, but it wasn’t normal. I’m telling you. She’s our mate.”
“And I’m telling you, that’s not how this works. You know that. We choose our mates. We choose, Jeremiah. The Kinmans? They chose Elena. The Ashleys? They chose Michelle. Our parents. You know they chose each other.”
Jeremiah breathed heavily. “Please don’t bring them into this.”
James shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
Shaking his head, Jeremiah said, “You are not listening to me.” James noticed his brother’s fingers gripping the table’s edge, the knuckles white. “This isn’t some random, abnormal physical reaction. There is something else going on. We need to get her out to the center. We need to tell her who we are, and we need to mate her. Simple as that.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Johnny said, waving his hands in front of Jeremiah’s face. “Did you say mate her? That’s kind of an overreaction, wouldn’t you say? I mean, you were barely with her for five minutes, bro. You’re acting like the virgin who got his first kiss from the senior Homecoming Queen. I think you need to take a moment and just like…breathe. Mate!” He shook his head and sputtered a few unintelligible words. “That shit’s for life!” Johnny took a long drink of his beer. He took the bottle away from his lips, but then put it right back and took another long, soothing gulp. “I mean”—he wiped his lips—“shit, man!”
Jeremiah leaned far back in his chair, crossing his arms. “You two don’t understand. I’m telling you.” He looked at James, a strange challenge in his eyes. “She’s it.”
“Okay, let’s say you’re right, just for a second,” James said, leaning forward. “I just Googled her on my phone. She’s a touring musician, Jeremiah, and it looks like she has a lot of stuff going on in her life. It’s not good.” He flicked through the page again. “Looks like alcoholism, disorderly conduct, problems with her label…there’s all sorts of things here. We can’t get ourselves tangled up in that.”
“Maybe that’s why she’s here. Maybe she’s here to get better? Could be that she needs us.”
“Even if that’s the case and even if she is the one we are supposed to mate, what makes you think she’d leave all that behind? She doesn’t belong here for the rest of her life. Anyone who saw her onstage tonight could tell you that.”
Jeremiah frowned and looked away, staring off at the forest. After a long moment, he looked back and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t.” He shrugged again, but that odd challenge still shone in his eyes. “But I feel like we can’t…” He turned away for another moment. “We should try, James. We have to at least try.”
Johnny looked at James, beer poised in front of his lips, waiting for his answer. And Jeremiah turned back toward him, looking resolute and extremely sure of himself.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll take her to the center tonight. We’ll see what happens. And if Johnny and I feel the same way as you in the morning, we’ll tell her everything. And then she can either agree or not.” He looked hard at Jeremiah. “It ultimately comes down to her. Got it?”
“What the fuck?” Johnny said, slamming his beer bottle onto the table. “We shouldn’t even be taking her out there. You’ve just told us she’s practically a nutcase. We can’t be fooling around with a woman like that.”
James glared at him but then returned his attention to Jeremiah. “Okay?” he asked again.
“What the hell? Why don’t you two ever listen to me? I’m telling you, this is a stupid idea. This is going to end up bad, bad, bad. I can feel it.”
Jeremiah’s mouth tilted up in a smile as he clinked his bottleneck against James’s, ignoring Johnny’s protests. “Okay.”
* * * *
“Michelle, what the hell are you doing h
ere?” Marina shoved past a group of clustered bodies to stand right in front of her sister. Marina crossed her arms across her chest and blocked Michelle’s path. “You hate bars, and I distinctly remember you yelling at me for coming to this one in particular.”
Marina rolled her eyes when her sister’s fiancés—that sounded so weird—moved to stand in front of Michelle as if to protect her. “As if,” Marina said, grabbing her sister by the elbow and tugging her away from them. Michelle needed to be protected from them, not her. Obviously they had some sort of strange, sexual mind control over her. That was the only logical explanation Marina could come up with, and really, it wasn’t even that logical.
Elias held on to Michelle’s other arm. “Michelle, are you okay?”
“What? Are we going to play goddamn tug-of-war over her? I’m her sister, and I need to talk to her, so let go.”
“It’s fine, Elias. Give me five minutes.” Michelle leaned up for a kiss and then smiled at the other two.
Marina pulled Michelle to the bar, pushing away thoughts of bear-men to focus on her sister’s temporary insanity. “Michelle, tell me truthfully, what do you see in them. I mean, how can you…with three…oh fuck it, why are you engaged to three men? And really, what sane man would want to share his wife with two other dudes? And how the hell do you plan on explaining what I saw at Savage Convenience? That wasn’t natural. It just wasn’t.” Marina took a deep breath. “Letty, I’m going to need another shot over here.”
Michelle frowned. “How many is that for you tonight?”
“That’s none of your business, Michelle. Just answer my questions.”
Michelle closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re right, Marina.” Marina almost fell off her barstool at her sister’s statement. “It’s none of my business, and I’m sorry. Old habits.” She shot Marina a grin. Michelle had never been able to joke about the imperfections in their relationship, much less talk about them. Marina suddenly felt uneasy around her, realizing that she had no idea who the woman in front of her was. “To answer your questions,” Michelle said, “I love them. All three of them. It’s that simple. I didn’t expect this or plan for this to happen. No one would or even could, I think, plan on having not one husband but three husbands. And not only that, but for those husbands to also be bear-shifters? Well, it wasn’t exactly what I dreamed about when we played dress up together in Aunt Agnes’s attic.”