by Tara Rose
“It feels incredible, Saffron. Please tell me you like it, too.”
“I love it. It’s so intimate.”
Nevada knelt in front of her and lifted her top leg. He also had on a condom. “Saffron, don’t be afraid, okay? I want this so badly.”
“I’m not afraid.” She wasn’t. She gazed into his beautiful eyes, so dark and full of love right now, and almost had to blink back tears again. How could anything be more perfect than being with these two men?
Saffron watched his face as he slid his dick into her swollen pussy. He was watching her carefully to make sure she was all right, and it struck her that he always would. This is how it would be with both of them. This tender, careful intimacy. She had nothing to fear from them.
“Are you all right?” His voice was full of concern.
“Yes. I was just thinking that this is the first time in my life I’ve lived without fear in my own home.”
Landon stopped thrusting and kissed her neck, sending shivers up and down her spine. “Oh, Saffron…you are so amazing.”
“Thank you, Landon. So are you.”
“Do you want us to continue?” asked Nevada.
She nodded. “Yes. Please. I want this. I want to know what this feels like.”
Nevada pushed his cock further into her pussy, and Landon began to slowly fuck her asshole again. It hurt at first, and both men continued to whisper words of encouragement and stroke her body, until both dicks were all the way in her pussy and asshole at the same time. Saffron was overcome with emotion and couldn't process everything at once, so she simply gave over to it, letting their voices wash over her and chase away the last of the fear and doubt.
They thrust in and out, alternating their rhythm, and the orgasm that had been building since they’d begun flogging her and using the vibrator on her crested, sending wave after wave of crazy passion throughout her body. She closed her eyes and let it consume her, knowing that nothing in her life would ever be this perfect.
“Dude, this is too fucking good. We have to do this all the time now.” Landon’s voice was almost reverent. That she could elicit such emotion in him still amazed her.
“I agree.” Nevada sounded out of breath. Saffron couldn’t even think. The sensation was unlike anything she’d ever imagined. The surrender was total, filling her with peace and a need to please them—to submit to them in every possible way. “Saffron, thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Thank you, Nevada. For everything.”
He stroked her face and hair, gazing at her with what could only be called love. When they switched places, changing condoms first, their thrusting grew more forceful and faster, but all that did was send her arousal to new heights. And they still didn’t come.
“We can’t get enough of you,” said Landon. “We’ll never get enough of you.”
“That is all I want,” she said. “To be with both of you like this.”
They pulled out and took off their condoms, and then lifted her onto the sofa and placed the cuffs around her wrists again. They fastened them together in her lap, and then they teased her nipples and lips with their dicks.
“I love to tease you like this, Saffron,” said Nevada. “I love the look in your eyes.”
She kept trying to taste them with her mouth open and her tongue out, like a baby bird looking for food, but they were playful and withholding their cocks from her on purpose. She giggled and begged, and the more she did, the more they resisted.
“Tell us what you want,” said Landon. “Tell us, Saffron.”
“Fuck me…fuck my mouth. Please…”
“I want to come on your face,” said Nevada. “I want to come in your hair and on your tits.”
“You can come anywhere you want to. Just fuck me. Please.”
They took turns filling her mouth with their dicks, holding her head with their hands as they did. They pushed them all the way in, and Saffron relaxed her throat muscles, concentrating hard so that she could take them all the way in. When they each came, it covered her face and breasts, and she was certain at least one of them got some in her hair as well. She didn’t mind. It was what she’d wanted. They were marking her as their own, and she loved that. She belonged to them, and she always would.
Nothing could change that. Not the League, or her uncle’s death, or whatever was going on back in her village and in the one where Nevada lived. These were her men and her mates, and she was never going to leave them. Never.
Chapter Twenty-Four
For the next two weeks, Saffron, Nevada, and Landon fell into a routine that seemed so natural, it was difficult for Saffron to believe that she’d ever run away from home, or that there was a time when neither man believed her story.
Landon was able to take a paid leave of absence from Notus since he had so much unused vacation time. He told Nevada and Saffron that if his boss didn’t quite believe he was still out of town with a sick relative, his voice on the phone didn’t betray it. Saffron was so grateful that he wasn’t going to lose his job because of all this.
Nevada had driven Landon back to his apartment when the snow melted for a day, and while they were there, Landon had given a spare key to Mason, who promised to keep an eye on the apartment for him. Landon had also taken care of some bills while he was home, and when he returned to Utah, he drove his own truck back. He told Saffron that he wouldn’t have to return for at least a month, and they all voiced the hope that this would be over well before then.
Nevada talked to his mother and grandfather every day on the phone and was kept apprised of happenings in his village and in the town of Passion Peak. The ski season was in full swing because of the heavy snowfall, and for that reason, business was booming in the town.
Mason listened to the residents every day when he sat in the tent on Juniper Street, and if anyone had seen anything odd, Mason hadn’t heard about it. He also hadn’t heard anything that led him to believe the League of Exitium members were lurking in Passion Peak or in the hills above it. He had checked on the cabin in the woods where Nevada and Landon had first taken Saffron several times, and it was undisturbed.
The jaguars outside Saffron’s village kept in touch several times a day with either Drake, Micah, or Stephen, who in turn let Saffron, Nevada, and Landon know what was happening. One by one, the jaguars were trapping League members who had their headquarters just outside of Saffron’s village, and killing them. When Nevada and Landon had asked her if she’d known how close they all lived, she said she’d had no idea.
She would sit up at night sometimes when she woke out of a dream, and try to remember anything that might help the jaguars. There was so much she hadn’t known or paid attention to. Perhaps she had blocked it out on purpose?
When she’d asked Micah and Stephen whether the Rosens were actually part of the League, they said the jaguars felt certain they were, but they had been unable to find any concrete proof yet. Their ancestors were all known to be, so the jaguars were determined to expose this branch of the family as well. If they’d been able to keep their association with the League so clandestine, it was no wonder Saffron had never known about it.
The Hunter Moon came and went without any of Saffron’s fears that first day coming to pass. When she thought about her uncle at all, it was with a sense of detachment and disbelief that she’d grown up in the same house with him and had known so little of his day-to-day activities. But as she learned more from the Jargonians each day about the lengths the League members were going to in order to remain undetected, she began to realize how much danger she’d been in for years and had never known it.
Landon and Nevada made love to her every day, and now that they didn’t need to use condoms, having them inside her pussy was even more heavenly. They still used them for anal sex, unless they fucked her like that in the shower, which they did often. The snow melted for a few days, but then more covered the ground, which made Saffron happy. As the days passed, it became easy to pretend she simply lived here wi
th them and they would always be together.
From time to time the two men would go to a bar in the village called The Lair to spend time with Drake, Micah, Stephen, and some of the other males. Saffron would go next door when they did and sit with Emme. The woman never seemed to tire of listening to stories about Topaz, and Saffron was able to ask her all kinds of questions about the BDSM lifestyle and what it meant to be truly submissive.
Landon and Nevada talked about being her Doms, and asked her several times if she would be their submissive and live the lifestyle with them twenty-four-seven, and each time she told them that someday she wanted to do that, but she still felt she had much to learn before making a decision like that. She didn’t want to tell them that what she was actually waiting for was all this to be over, and then she could relax enough to give being their submissive the time and attention it deserved.
She learned that Drake and Emme had three additional sons who were older than Micah and Stephen. They all lived in the village with their mates and children. Emme told Saffron she had always wanted a daughter, and that she had come to think of Saffron as hers, and would be sad when the three would have to leave.
“I wish we could stay,” said Saffron, pulling thread through a shirt she was mending. Emme always seemed to have a pile of sewing to do, and Saffron was glad to have something to help her with. “But I know Landon has to return to his job one day, and Nevada can’t leave his village behind.”
Emme gave her a pointed look. “And what about you, Saffron? What do have you to return to? Certainly not your childhood village.”
“No, that’s true. I can’t.” Would the friends she once had understand? What were they thinking right now? Did everyone assume she was dead as well?
“Will you live in the village above Passion Peak with Nevada and Landon, then?”
Saffron averted her gaze. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, we haven’t really talked about that.”
Emme put down the pants she’d been mending and took Saffron’s hand. “You’re in love with both of them, are you not? I see it in your eyes every time you glance their way. Do they know?”
Saffron shook her head.
“Why not?” asked Emme, her voice gentle.
“I can’t tell them that.”
“Why can’t you?”
As Saffron tried to formulate an answer, she realized if she told them, they’d have to know she had thought they were her mates from day one. And what if they didn’t feel the same way? What if they didn’t love her as she loved them? How did a person know they were in love? She’d been their prisoner at first, until she’d finally convinced them to let her shift. And they’d brought her here because they all needed a place to hide. But this wasn’t permanent, and she knew that.
It was easy to pretend it was when the three of them were alone in bed, or making love in the den by the fire, or taking a shower together. But neither of them had yet discussed permanency in this relationship, or what would happen when this was over and they could return to Colorado.
She tried to explain all that to Emme, but the woman merely picked up her sewing again and smiled, almost as if she knew a secret that Saffron did not. “You need to tell them. They have a right to know.”
“I’ll think about it.” She had already thought about it. Morning, noon, and night. For two weeks she’d thought of nothing else. But it wasn’t something you simply blurted out, was it? And since she had no idea what their reaction would be, she was afraid to say it. She was afraid of rejection or worse, apathy. No. She’d have to bide her time and see how all this shook out when the jaguars had hunted down every League member they could find, and they deemed the area safe for Nevada and Landon to return to.
But where would she go then? What if they didn’t want her with them? What if the other villagers didn’t want a leopard living among them? Could she even return home? If the League were gone, perhaps she could, but what about the Rosens? Surely they hadn’t simply forgotten about her. What if the jaguars were unable to prove they were part of the League? They’d still be there, waiting for her.
And even if she could go home and take up residence in her uncle’s house, how would she earn a living? She’d have to go into one of the towns and work. Was that even possible? There were so many unanswered questions.
On a Thursday morning in late October, one week before the first day of November, Nevada, Landon, and Saffron had just finished eating breakfast when a knock on the door stopped their conversation. Landon answered it, and Saffron heard Micah and Stephen’s voices, accompanied by two male voices she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t unusual for the two to bring their friends over to meet Landon and Nevada, so Saffron didn’t think anything of it until the men walked into the dining room.
The expression on Landon’s face nearly stopped her heart. He looked like someone had just told him that his best friend was dead. She almost knocked her chair over rising to her feet. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
He took a piece of parchment from one of the jaguar’s hands. She didn’t recognize the man, and no one volunteered to introduce her so she didn’t ask. “You need to read this, Saffron.”
Nevada was at her side, reading over her shoulder, but it hardly mattered. The room started to spin, and she dropped back into her chair. Someone placed a cold rag over the back of her neck before she knew what had happened.
“It can’t be true…”
Nevada knelt by her side. “Saffron, if you have something to tell us, now is the time.”
“What?” She gazed into his eyes but couldn’t make any sense of what she saw there. He couldn’t possibly believe what the parchment said.
“What happened?” That was Drake’s voice. When had he come into the house? He glanced around the room, his gaze falling on each man, and the expression on his face demanding answers. Nevada took the parchment from Saffron and handed it to Drake. He read it silently, his frown deepening as he did so, and then he read it out loud.
Be it hereby decreed that Gregory Rosen, and his sons Marc and Jake Rosen, of the village where leopards reside in the foothills above Steamboat Springs, Colorado, do place a bounty on the head of one Saffron Estampado, son of Daniel and daughter of Celadon, both deceased, for the murder of her father’s brother, Dennis, which occurred in her home in the early hours before dawn, this past fifth day of October. Said bounty will be paid whether the leopard is captured alive or dead.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Landon stared at Saffron, willing it not to be true. It couldn’t be.
“I didn’t kill my uncle,” she whispered, glancing at each of the men in turn. “I didn’t kill him.”
But she had been running that morning, and this decree also corroborated her story that she had been running from the Rosens, just as she’d said. But was this the real reason she’d fled her village and didn’t want the Rosens to find her?
“I didn’t kill him.”
She hadn’t reacted to the news of his death two weeks ago, which he and Nevada had both found odd. But when they’d talked about it later, after she was asleep, they’d both chalked it up to the things he’d put her through. But that day she’d also said that she was concerned someone in the village might try to tie her running away with his death. Had she merely been voicing a prophetic concern, or had she been trying to deflect attention from the obvious cause of the man’s death?
Landon’s heart gave a strange lurch at the pain and confusion in her eyes. He’d never seen her this pale. Nevada still knelt next to her, but he hadn’t yet touched her or even looked at her. Did he believe this? It couldn’t be true, could it?
“How did he die?” asked Drake, turning to the two jaguars who had come over with Micah and Stephen.
“He was stabbed with a small knife in the chest.”
Nevada had taken a pocketknife from her backpack that first morning. Where was that knife now?
“That means whoever did it had to have been very close at the time.
Did they investigate this in the village?”
“We weren’t able to ascertain that. We found this pinned to a tree this morning in the woods near the town of Passion Peak.
That meant that Nevada’s family might have already seen it. It also meant the Rosens themselves might have come too close to Mancie and Mason’s homes. Had they pinned these to trees themselves, or sent others to do it for them? Was the League of Exitium behind this, or had Nevada been mistaken that the Rosens were part of them? Landon locked gazes with Nevada, and saw the same concerns in his eyes.
“See if you can find out anything further, including whether the Rosens have a direct connection to the League. It’s now way past the time we needed to know that.” Drake’s gaze swept the group, finally settling on Saffron. “Saffron, if you tell me the truth, I will accept it from you, and we will consider this matter closed in this village. Do you understand?”
She nodded. The fear hadn’t left her eyes, but at least now Nevada was stroking her arm. Landon moved to her other side and pulled a chair over to sit closer to her. He brushed a lock of hair out of her face. “It’s all right, Saffron. Just tell us what happened.”
“I told you already.”
“I know, love. But tell us again. All of it, beginning with the Rosens. No. Begin farther back than that. Go back to when all this first started.”
She sighed out loud, and on the exhale her breath came out shaky. “After my parents were killed, Uncle Dennis took me into his home to live. Topaz—my mother’s mother—came with me. My uncle didn’t want her there, and I don’t know why. She never told me. But she gave him no choice. She lived with us until she died three—no, four—months ago. His associates would come over to the house several nights a week and she always told me never to go downstairs when they did.”