by Amira Rain
Thursday morning, while Pearce slept late, Nash took the morning off from work, and Megan and Nash had a talk over breakfast at the kitchen table.
He did not need the empathy of a lycanthrope to know that a woman who had experienced the things that happened to Megan would not be ready to be intimate with anyone until she had processed the experience. To expect anything sexual of her now would be to betray the relationship that they had established in so short a time. Megan needed a chance to think, feel, and work her way to the other side of what she had been through. Nash resolved to give her that chance, and give her a space in which to do it.
And so, across the breakfast table, he gently said, “At the risk of sounding like a shrink, tell me what you’re feeling now.”
Knowing what he meant, Megan still felt the need to ask, “About…?”
“About something that happened to you that shouldn’t happen to a woman. Or anyone.”
Megan looked down at her steak and eggs, picking at them with her fork. “Oh. That.”
“It’s not just ‘that,’ Megan,” said Nash. “That thing did something to you. Something awful and evil. You talked about it yourself, before. I know the way you feel about a thing like that doesn’t just go away. And I know you need to talk about it. Who else are you going to talk to about the energy monster that wanted to feed on you and used your most personal, sexual thoughts against you? I’m here. Talk to me.”
She put down her fork and hid her face in one hand. “Oh God. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
“You have to think about it,” Nash insisted. “You’ve been trying to get on with your life, turn your page, right? That’s what you came here for. So, tell me. I want to know what you’re feeling. The least I can do is listen.”
She took a breath and took her hand from her face, meeting his concerned look. “I’ve had the hardest time getting to sleep because it came after me in my dreams. Lying in bed last night, I felt like a little girl needing a night-light to keep away the monsters in the dark. I was scared to sleep and scared to dream. I’ve never been in a place like this. I didn’t feel safe in my own head. And I don’t know when I will again.”
“You will,” said Nash, reaching over and taking her hand. “I promise.”
“Will I?” Megan said. “I wonder. Do you know there are millions of women out there who carry their keys between their fingers to use to protect themselves in case someone tries to jump them when they go walking at night? And women who check their back seats carefully before they get into their car? And keep a flashlight handy in their car in case they have to knock someone in the head with it?
They don’t go walking or jogging in parks with their headphones on because there might be someone in the bushes. They use the buddy system just to go out in public. There are women who feel vulnerable all the time, wherever they go, whatever they do. They go around second-guessing every situation they’re in, and check every place they go for escape routes. But that’s physical safety. That’s about protecting your body. This…this is something else.”
“For what it’s worth,” Nash offered, “I don’t think you’re ever going to have to worry about shape wraiths trying to prey on you again.”
“Maybe not,” said Megan. “But you’re right about one thing. This won’t just go away. Maybe eventually I won’t feel like I need to look over my own shoulder in the privacy of my thoughts and my dreams. But for a while, when I go to sleep, I’ll wonder if the dreams I’m dreaming are really my own. And when I wake up remembering bits and pieces of a dream I had, I’ll wonder if someone else put them there.”
“It’ll take time,” said Nash. “But it’ll get better. And you’ll still have Pearce and me. We’ll understand.”
“Damn right we will,” came a voice identical to Nash’s from across the kitchen.
They looked at the kitchen entrance, and there he stood in nothing but a pair of those sexy short-shorts. Pearce looked a little wobbly and groggy, but was otherwise his same sexy self, just like his fully clothed twin.
“What the hell are you doing up?” Nash asked.
“I needed to be up for a little while,” replied Pearce. “I’m not an invalid. My neck is fine. Just a little sore.”
“Considering it almost got ripped out last night…”
Megan got up admonishing, “Don’t scold him, Nash.” She walked over to Pearce and put her arms around him. “After everything you’ve both done for me,” she told him, “you don’t deserve to be scolded.”
Pearce kissed her. “Thanks, baby. This time tomorrow I’ll be all the way back to my regular self. I just wanted to come down and see how you’re doing. You took the brunt of that thing worse than we did.”
“That’s what Nash and I were just talking about.”
“Well, we only got beaten up physically,” said Pearce. “What that thing did to you…”
“We were just talking about that,” said Nash. “And I was telling Megan she’ll be fine.”
“That part I heard,” Pearce said.
“Did you hear the part about how your ass should be in bed now?” Nash frowned at him.
“Nash!” said Megan, shushing.
“No, it’s all right,” Pearce told her. “I wasn’t going to be up long. Just long enough to make sure you’ll be okay. And Nash is right. You will. And we’ll help, any way we can.”
“You’re already helping me, both of you,” said Megan. “The two of you, you’re the best thing in the world for me right now.”
She held out her hand to Nash, who got up from the table and joined them. The brothers both put their arms around her in a shared embrace.
“And you’re the best thing for us,” said Nash.
“The best,” Pearce agreed.
The brothers held her there for a while, sharing among them the strength that they would all need to heal.
_______________
Friday night was the one-week anniversary of their first night—and their first time—together. As they did then, Pearce and Nash built a fire in the living room fireplace and lit candles on the mantle. The broken coffee table was gone; they had taken it away. They had been tempted to use it as firewood, but they wanted nothing in the room to remind them of the nightmare that they and Megan had lived. As it turned out, the empty space where the table had been was reminder enough, but they decided to ignore it.
For this, the anniversary of the night when Megan first lay with the two brothers, they put the end tables where the coffee table had been, and they opened another bottle of wine, and Megan, Nash, and Pearce settled down on the sofa—fully dressed, Megan in the middle as usual. They had considered resuming sex. They would have loved to resume sex. But they’d decided in the end to give it a rest for just one more night.
After a toast, Megan said, “I’ve been with you for such a short time, but I feel close to you in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever felt with anyone else. Not as much as I loved Tate—the real Tate. Not as much as I used to look forward to a whole life with Andrew. This is a different kind of closeness than I’ve ever had before. And it’s good.”
“Really good,” Nash seconded.
“Damn good,” Pearce agreed.
“I think it goes back to the way it felt when we were up there on the mountain, after we killed it, when you and I,” she held up Nash’s hand and kissed it, “sat there holding hands and willing Pearce to change and not leave us. That feeling that I felt running between all three of us—that’s something I’ve never had. I’d almost like to go back to that moment just to feel that again.”
“Trust me,” said Pearce, kissing her hand as she kissed his brother’s, “we’re probably going to be feeling something at least a little like that from now on. At least three times a night, if you know that I mean.”
Megan couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “You are better,” she said. Then, more thoughtfully, “I started out just wanting to sleep with the two of you and wanting you to help me get in touch wit
h a part of me that I felt was missing or lost. And look at us now.”
“Yeah,” said Pearce. “Dressed.”
Megan laughed out loud and Nash just shook his head, though Pearce knew full well that Nash agreed with the sentiment behind what he’d just said.
“God, you are incorrigible!” Megan cackled.
“Incorrigible isn’t the half of it,” said Pearce. “And after being in touch with you every way that anyone can be in touch with each other, I’m here to tell you, you’ve got nothing missing. Not a thing.”
Megan sighed and smiled at Pearce. He was such pure, sweet lust. They both were. “I’ve never had a week like this,” she said. “It’s really changed my life. When I first met you guys online, I was trying to sort things out, deciding where to go next in my life. And now, with you two, I think I’ve actually found something I don’t want to walk away from. When I go home, I don’t think my life there will really feel like my life anymore. I feel like something will be missing. Something that’s right here.”
The brothers went completely quiet, a quiet that fell over the entire room. They looked not at Megan but at each other, with that conversation—THAT conversation, echoing in both their minds.
Megan could sense something was happening, something important, very important. It was passing with no words between Pearce and Nash. Without being a lycanthrope herself, without possessing their gift of empathy, she could feel it just the same. It was real and it was there. She looked back and forth between them. “What?” she asked. “What? What is it?”
Nash put a hand on her thigh, getting her attention. “Megan, there’s something I really want to say. Something I think we really should both tell you.”
“What?” she repeated.
“Our lives are different now too,” he said. “Pearce and I—we’re different now. We’ve talked about what we’d do if we ever came to this place with someone. And now here we are. We can’t let you go, Megan.”
“You need to understand what this means to us,” said Pearce. We’re wolves, Megan. A werewolf is a wolf with two bodies. The wolf part of us is as real and important as the man part. And a wolf expects certain things in his life. If he has a mate, he expects there will be just that one mate for keeps, and there’ll be no one else for either of them.
But Nash and I…we’ve always been different. We’ve always wanted the same females, the same women. And we’ve always wondered what would happen if the two of us both ever wanted the same mate for life. What would we do? Would one of us be able to let go? Could one of us split off and let the other two go their own way?”
Megan’s skin tingled with the sense that the three of them were all truly entering a moment from which there would be no turning back, a moment to change all moments that would follow, forever. “And…what did you decide?” she asked.
Nash replied, “We decided we’d have to change. We’ve been used to having the same partners in bed. Now…we’ve decided we have to learn to have the same partner in life. A partner we both love.”
And there it was. The word. The word. That word. He’d actually said it. Megan felt the import, the weight, of that one game-changing, life-changing word. And she welcomed it.
“We love you, Megan,” said Pearce, bringing the word all the way home.
“We do,” said Nash.
Basking in the warmth of the feeling that they now all admitted they shared, Megan said back, “And I love you. I came for the sex. I’m staying for the love.” And she smiled from one twin to the other.
“Speaking of coming,” said Pearce, “what would you think about me showing you how well I’ve recovered?”
“With me along too, of course,” Nash added. “That is, if you’re ready. It’s your call. You have to be ready too. It’s up to you.”
A tingle ran from Megan’s head to her toes. “I…am ready.”
Like a wolf pouncing, Pearce was upon her with a crackling electric kiss, a kiss that Nash repeated a minute later. The brothers stood up from the sofa, took Megan by her hands, and helped her up onto her feet. Together they all went hurriedly upstairs, the twins goosing her bottom on the way up, making Megan laugh sexily.
Once in the bedroom they did not bother with the ritual of lighting the fires in the hearth and on the mantle. They simply kept the lights dimmed to the level of candlelight, flung off their clothes, and dove onto the bed. What followed was three hours of Megan sharing the flesh, hearts, and spirits of the two men who thrilled and completed her as no other man ever had, and no other man ever would, in all her life.
From that night on, everything was truly different for Megan Brosnan and the Maguire brothers. The brothers’ sex with her was just as hot and combustible, but it felt sweeter, more tender—and somehow more intimate than ever. It became a joining of two spirits to one spirit, and it remained that way.
Nash and Pearce agreed to change their business. They rented a commercial building in Megan’s city and opened a new shop and store there. They operated their business from there and from Rendall Glen, and business grew.
Megan opened a cafe in the city near the brothers’ shop. Her experience running her and Andrew’s bistro served her well. Sometimes among her customers she saw a face that she recognized from those days. One of them, a woman of about her age who frequented the bistro, told her that Andrew and Sarah were still together and that they had moved away. Megan felt indifferent to the news. She really had “turned the page” in her life, and Andrew felt more and more like a chapter many, many pages ago.
Megan and the brothers commuted together back and forth between Rendall Glen and the city, the brothers staying with Megan in her apartment until the three of them bought a larger place together. Megan introduced Amy—who was making things work with Chris—to her twin werewolf lovers.
Amy was even more impressed with them in person than she had been online. She told Megan that Pearce and Nash were much better “in the flesh,” a turn of the expression that made them both laugh at its layers of meaning. “In the flesh,” Megan chortled to her friend. “Oh, you have no idea. I’m glad things worked out the way they did, obviously—but you have no idea what you missed.”
Amy looked at the incredible-looking pair with whom Megan was now regularly sharing a bed and taking a long time to get to sleep, and she believed it. She could just imagine.
Megan, Pearce, and Nash never spoke of their harrowing and almost deadly experience with the shape wraith, except among themselves. In time Megan grew to feel safe and secure in her dreams again, untroubled by sleeping memories of the creature that had brought such danger and terror into her life. The love of Pearce and Nash helped her with that. In the presence of such love there could be no fear.
The greatest contentment of Megan’s life came in those quiet and warm moments when she lay in bed between the brothers who loved her, and between bouts with them taking their turns on top of her. As they lay dozing on either side of her, she would look from one to the other, and her body would sing with the things she had done to them and they to her.
In most true loves, joy was doubled in the embrace of two. For Megan it was tripled, multiplied by three. They were after all the most extraordinary of wolves, who could overcome their instinct to want only one mate to keep for himself and transmute their passion as they transformed their bodies. Most of their kind, she knew, could not do as they had done.
It was as they told her at the very beginning: something about the Maguire brothers was different from others of their kind. They were special, more special than most other wolves or most other men. And for all her life, Megan Brosnan would know a love unlike any other with two strong, proud wolves.
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SPAWNED
BY THE WOLF
A PARANORMAL PREGNANCY ROMANCE
AMIRA RAIN
Copyright ©2016 by Author
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About This Book
In a dystopian future where the human race was dwindling, Julia Watson was assigned as a “population growth partner” alongside handsome Commander Ryan Wallace.