They soothed her as she came back to Earth, both on each side of her, Quinn more than ready to take Travis’s place. Trudi reached for him with a smile, her own devotion to Quinn and Travis obvious. Quinn’s love was not as tender however but it was just as consuming. He took her mouth before he slid into her, needing to taste her, to feel her breath against his lips. Quinn’s love was a demand, a demand for love in return and Trudi pushed him over to give him what he demanded.
She straddled him, making him take her breasts in his hands as she ground down onto him, setting her own pace, her demands answering his own. Trudi rode Quinn, pushed him, not letting up on him, not slowing down when he moved his hands to take her waist, an attempt to slow her down, but now she wanted to see him come, she wanted him to give her all, and she would not slow her pace. She let her passion go, one of the things these people, these men demanded, and took what she wanted while giving him exactly what he needed.
The vulnerability that appeared on Quinn’s face, the total loss of his own control astonished her as he finally let go and let her have her way. Trudi didn’t follow him immediately, though she wanted to, she wanted to watch him more and just as his look of amazement started to change into a relaxed look of contentment she allowed herself to go again, one last flight to heaven before she rested for a while. She fell against his chest when the sensations calmed, promising herself she was going to explore these two a little more after she’d had a couple of more drinks and something to eat. Maybe one of them would make her a sandwich, she thought just before she fell into a light sleep.
Twenty minutes later she was awake and amazingly there was a sandwich on the side table of the bed, an olive on a toothpick stuck into the rather large concoction of meat and cheese. She didn’t think she’d be able to eat it all but she did as she sat up to hear what her men had to say.
“Trudi, we have to tell you something. We should have told you the first time around but we didn’t know if you were coming back or not.” Quinn started.
“This may be a little shocking,” Travis revealed, “but if you let us show you then explain I think it will be alright.”
They were really worried about this, Trudi thought, but she had an idea of what was coming. Smiling she watched as both men went from being humans to huge bears within the blink of an eye. Travis changed into a black bear and Quinn a brown bear. She looked at them, scratched each ones chin, looked into their eyes and saw that each one was cognizant of who she was, of who they were, then laughed as she sat down. It was a good thing they were all naked she thought as they shifted back to their human forms, clothes were expensive to replace.
She knew both men were perplexed at her laughter and she kissed each one then stood away from them. Closing her eyes and concentrating Trudi revealed her own secret to these men she was falling in love with. As they watched Trudi went from a human being with silvery blonde hair to a small polar bear with white fur and then back to her human shape again.
“Oh.” Travis said quietly.
“How did we not know, why a polar bear?” From Quinn.
“My father was from Alaska, from a shifter tribe there. They thought they were the only ones. I’ve been hiding it for so long I can barely shift anymore. I have to concentrate to do it now. I’ve kept it secret my whole life because I knew what would happen if it was revealed. A freak, studied and prodded, I didn’t want that. So I’ve tried to hide it. Maybe that’s why you didn’t know? My father died when I was young so I don’t know a lot about it and my mother refused to admit it even happened. She’d lock herself in her room for hours praying for the evil to leave me alone. That was her solution, I was evil.”
“But you aren’t, you’re just part of an ancient line of humans. That’s all.” Travis said. I would later learn he was the group’s historian and knowledge keeper. “You’re no different from us, just another type of bear. You’re always welcome here, no matter what, dearest. Always a part of the Ursa Majors, always a part of us. You are ours and we are yours.”
“For life?” I asked, hope and love finally free from the walls I’d built around myself.
“For life,” they replied in unison.
Freedom at last, Trudi thought. Freedom, love, and joy, all she’d ever wanted but wouldn’t allow herself to dream of, and in the most unlikely of places. She was home now, at last.
The End
Part II
Kidnapped by 2 Men
Menage Romance
About the Book
Lily doesn’t get into these sorts of situations. She’s always been a good girl, the kind who kept her clothes clean and got straight As in school, and she’s spent the years ever since working dutifully as a secretary. Kind and gentle, Lily is the sort of person everyone wants for a friend.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of her boss. Intelligent and successful, James Dominick has always craved success—and when possible, he makes sure other people bear the cost of his actions. So it’s hardly a surprise that when hit-men show up to take him out, James has disappeared…and the only person in his house is Lily.
Kidnapped and terrified, Lily has become determined to talk her way out of this. The gang that’s captured her can’t possibly be so ruthless as to kill an innocent woman, can they? In fact, she’d bet that Liam and Cameron, the ringleaders, are a lot nicer than they want to admit. She’s pretty sure they don’t want to kill her.
And Lily is exactly right. Liam and Cameron don’t want to kill her. Not at all. What she doesn’t know? They’ve both fallen for her…and Liam and Cameron have always shared everything. If she’s not careful, Lily is about to discover just how good it can feel to be bad.
Chapter One
“Just a few more things, I promise.” Lily flashed a smile up at James as she filed the last handwritten correspondence. She would type them up and send them tomorrow, early, before anyone was in the office.
“Don’t apologize.” James Dominick’s voice was deep, tolerant, amused. “You’re the one who had to go out of your way to finish things up. You should be home.”
But he sounded pleased as well. As far as she knew, he never stopped working. The lunches she brought him were often uneaten when she came to check on him a few hours later. He often beat even Lily to the office, and he stayed late. She knew from the emails he received that even when he went home, he was still thinking of his business ventures. He might tell her to take time off, but she knew he was glad to have someone as devoted as he was himself. She sensed that he got lonely sometimes.
Not that he would ever admit it. James was one of the premier businessmen in the world. His reach stretched into energy, food, and cloud computing, commodities…anything and everything she could imagine, he did. He thrived on his success, and he was far too stubborn to admit anything else might be lacking. Too stubborn, and too ruthless. James never hesitated to sacrifice anything that would ensure his success—and until he could, Lily knew he would never be able to have a relationship.
She had never told him, but she liked to think that she was slowly changing him. When she first came to his office, she’d been a secretary for one of the most junior staff, and everyone had been terrified of him. So terrifying was Lily’s boss that she was often sent to be the bearer of bad news; seeing how scared they all were, she couldn’t bring herself to insist that they do it. And when James yelled at her and told her just what to say to them when she went back, she’d done the inadvisable: told him that they were scared of him, that it wasn’t good management policy, and that he should be nicer to them all.
She’d been his secretary ever since, and if a few cynical people complained that it was just to make his image better without having to change at all, she liked to think that he saw the value in it. He’d even wished her a Merry Christmas this year, which was something she couldn’t even imagine when she began working for him. He was making progress.
And she…well, Lily didn’t like to think about her own life. Everything had been going so well l
ately: business contracts falling into place with eerie precision, her apartment clean and cozy, a new satin nightgown…
…That no one ever got to see. Lily tried to shove the thoughts away, but for weeks now she had been looking around at her neat little life—well-packed lunchboxes, pretty work clothes, perfectly-worded emails—and wondering if something was missing. She’d always done everything perfectly. Wasn’t it supposed to feel…better than this? She found herself dreaming, over a glass of white wine, about doing something reckless, something poorly-behaved.
Something like daydreaming while at a one-on-one meeting with her boss, perhaps? She shook her head to clear it, realizing he’d been staring at her while she’d been staring off into nowhere.
“Lily?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” She opened up the next folder. “All right. I got a very strange email earlier today from a…Kenneth Watts.” She looked up and saw him go still.
“What did it say?” He asked, and his voice was tight.
“That he knows what you did. Frankly, it seems very much like some of the other emails you get. People are always angry about successful business deals, you know.” She tried to tempt him into a laugh or a smile, but he was having none of it.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” He demanded.
“Because you were in meetings all day,” Lily protested. “You told me to interrupt you only if the transnational trade bill went through.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to look this man up?”
“No,” Lily said firmly, recognizing the downswing of his temper. “It did not. There was no reason for me to do so. Whatever you think I should know about this man—”
“When did the email come in?”
“10 AM.”
He swore.
“James, what on earth is going on?”
“That man,” he said savagely, “has taken it upon himself to police the business world. He doesn’t like my deals. He wants to punish me for them.”
“It’s hardly wrong to make business deals everyone agrees to,” Lily said gently. It was the refrain he used in such situations, and she felt confident that it would calm him. When he only looked at her bleakly, she felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. She knew. She knew he’d done something terrible, she just didn’t know what. “James, what did you do?”
“Nothing,” he hissed.
She met his eyes, and he grimaced at her.
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
“I’m your secretary! I send all of your emails. I know your secrets.”
“Not all of them.” His voice was clipped.
“What on earth wouldn’t you be willing to tell me?”
“I—” But his phone buzzed, and his face went white when he looked at the screen. “I have to make a call.”
“But—”
He was already gone, taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time. Lily slumped back in her chair, thinking furiously. Something about this email had seemed off to her. People normally railed at James in their emails, telling him that karma or God or luck would come to get him for what he’d done. She was used to ignoring those. This one, so short and chilling, had gotten her attention.
The door behind her opened so quietly that she almost didn’t hear it at all. The key had been turned near-silently, and the door itself swung inwards with only the faintest creak. But a creak there was, and a faint swirl of cold air, and Lily felt the back of her neck prickle. Heart suddenly pounding, she turned, telling herself that it was the settling of the building and nothing more.
Three men in black stood there, heavily armed, staring her down.
Lily screamed. She was running for the kitchen, for the exit at the other end of the house, knowing that she could not possibly outrun them and knowing she had to try anyway.
“James!” Her voice echoed up the stairs. She looked back and felt another prickle. They weren’t following her, the men with guns. They were just watching her go. Why?
The next second, she knew. She collided with a fourth as he stepped out of the shadows of the kitchen, a scream hastily covered by one black-gloved hand, her arm twisted behind her and her body locked against her captor’s. She struggled, wishing like hell she’d worn heels with points on the front of them, and wishing as well that she had started doing all of that strength training she’d planned on this year. She was no match for this man; his muscles might well have been iron, for all he was moved by her struggles.
And it occurred to her, with a kind of hysterical clarity, that she had not been pressed up against a man like this in years. She could feel the rock-hard muscles of his thighs, the flatness of his stomach, and the bulge of his bicep where he held her in place. Ice-blue eyes met hers with piercing clarity, and something stirred in their depths. A deep breath moved that hard chest…
“Search the house.” He spoke over her head, and then he turned her forcibly, picked her up, and carried her back to the couch, his hand still pressed over her mouth. Lily made a strangled noise that was supposed to be, why? And his muscles tightened. “Don’t. Make. A Sound.” His breath stirred the hair by her ear.
She shivered with awareness, telling herself not to be stupid, that he was a hired thug, a man who would likely kill her sooner than bargain with her. It didn’t matter: her body was on fire, and she could not stop shaking. She was very aware of where the buttons on her blouse had opened, and cold air caressed the heated skin of her breasts. She was very aware of his touch on her stomach where his arm kept her locked in place, her back pressed against his body.
The rest of them came down the stairs a moment later, and Lily blinked. There were four now. More than one of them must have come in windows, getting into James’s highly protected house so easily that she could barely breathe for terror. They had been talking and these men had been coming for them, implacable and deadly…
“Well?” Her captor asked, and one of them shrugged his shoulders angrily.
“Safe room,” he said, muted anger running through his voice. “It’d take hours to get in there, and our call block will run out soon. We need to be out of here quick.” His gaze traveled over Lily.
“Who’s that?”
“Good question.” Her captor took his hand away. “Don’t scream.” The threat in his voice made her tremble. “Who are you?”
“Lily McDermott. I’m Mr. Dominick’s secretary.”
“Think she could talk him out?” One of the thugs asked, and the ringleader gave him a look.
“No. But I think she could give him a good reason to change his mind on certain issues. Come on.” He started moving, dragging her toward the door.
“What?”
“You’re coming with us,” the man said, as if it was simple. He released her, making her stagger—making her traitorous body yearn for the touch of him again—and thrust her toward his second-in-command.
“But why?” Lily whispered. She twisted to look up, and the second-in-command looked down at her with melting brown eyes. His voice, a pleasant alto, was almost regretful.
“Mr. Dominick will need to change his mind on a few things before he gets you back.”
Chapter Two
She hadn’t wanted to cry, but once the first tear spilled down her cheek, she couldn’t seem to stop. And it was no use trying to keep the sobs quiet, either. She could muffle it to a few helpless whimpers of distress, but there were five of them in the back of this van and no one was going to miss her little gasps for air.
What looks they shared amongst themselves, Lily did not know—her face was turned down at her lap as she tried to control herself—but to her surprise, none of them told her to shut up. No one hit her. No one made snide comments. She’d been bundled into the back of the van quickly, the second-in-command’s hand clamped around her upper arm, but he let her go as soon as she was safely away from the doors. She thought she felt him looking at her, and grimaced at the thought of those eyes.
Bad men shouldn’t be so attractive.
And then, minutes later in the darkness, her head jerked up.
“He knew you were coming and he went to the panic room and just left me!”
These were hardly people she could expect to sympathize, and she knew that, but she had no one else to say it to. To her surprise, a few of them nodded grimly, as if acknowledging that this was an entirely unacceptable thing to do. Given that they’d just kidnapped her, she didn’t know what to think of that.
The van came to an abrupt halt and she was thrown sideways into the second-in-command’s lap. He set her upright gently, hands lingering on her back, and then took her arm again when one of them opened the door. It was odd the way he moved, she thought—half as if he couldn’t bear to touch her, half as if he wanted nothing more than to do so. He did not meet her eyes while he climbed out of the van with her, and she had only a glimpse of a house on an empty street before he laid his other hand, almost gently, over her eyes and guided her inside.
They walked across hardwood floors and a few carpets, turning every once in a while, until they came to a room that smelled of old books and leather.
“You can all go.” Their leader’s voice issued, still making shivers run down her spine. Footsteps receded and the door closed, but the man holding her did not go with the rest. He guided her a little ways further, and then took his hand away, gesturing to a brown leather chair.
Married to the Dragon Page 39