by T. S. Ryder
Danita yawned as she led Maria outside. No money coming in. A huge debt and deadline hanging over her head. Maybe it would be best to sell, to get rid of McGrath and put off her dreams for a couple more years. Better than being sold herself, wasn't it?
"Well, first things first," she muttered, pushing aside those thoughts. She'd just end up paralyzed by stress and fear if she didn't get to work right away. "That barn door needs fixed."
It wasn't until she got to the barn that she heard the sounds of saws running inside. What was going on? Frowning, she peered around the open barn door. Ryan and Killian were inside, measuring and cutting two-by-fours. The buzz of her second-hand equipment filled the hollow space, disrupting birds that had built their nests in the rafters.
Danita watched the Bears for a moment, her heart rate increasing as she watched the sawdust fly and their bare chests pulse as they moved their arms.
Beautiful. If they weren't McGrath's thugs…
As she stepped into the barn, she saw that the door had been fixed. So they really were here to help her out? Maybe McGrath's whole auctioning her off threat was just to make her understand that he was serious about making her pay off her uncle's debt.
"Where did the lumber come from?" she asked when the boys turned off their power tools.
"Rye and I went and got some this morning. Would have brought you with, but you looked too darn cute, curled up in your bed." Killian grinned at her. "We saw the sketches for a lean-to and fence against the barn and thought we'd take a stab at it."
Danita's eyes narrowed and she put her hands on her hips. She always thought that when something seemed too good to be true, that was because it was.
This definitely was too good to be true.
"Is this some sort of trick? Is McGrath adding more to my debt? Because the way it's sitting right now, I'll never be able to pay it! I don't have any capital to even start making money."
The two Bears glanced at each other. Killian shook his head, looking disgusted. "Mortgage was turned down?"
"How do you know that?"
"McGrath has the bank under his thumb. But it's odd that he wouldn't want you to earn the money to pay him off."
"He might want the land," Ryan grunted. "How much do you owe him and when?"
"Fifty thousand down payment in three months. Ten times that altogether. And I don’t owe him anything, it's my uncle who owed him. But apparently, I don't have any say in the matter. And the land isn't worth that much. Trust me, I already checked for oil and whatever."
Ryan stared at her a moment and turned to Killian. They shared a look that she couldn't decipher, then Ryan walked out the door. Just like that, he was gone.
Killian came so close his arm brushed hers, sending chills down her spine. "Don't worry about the money. We'll take care of it."
Danita opened her mouth.
"I said don't worry about it. McGrath wants us to help you, and so we will." Those dimples flashed. "We'll find a way for you to pay us back, Dani."
Did he mean the same thing that McGrath had meant? Disappointment hit her hard. She liked these two muscle-bound hunks. But if they were the kind of guy who thought that she owed them her body to pay a debt she never agreed to in the first place…
She slipped out of the barn, not wanting to face him any longer. For right now she wanted to believe that they were helping her because she was a damsel in distress and they were her knights in shining armor. That daydream might be broken soon enough…
She just wanted to hold onto the dream for a little while longer.
***
For the next several days, Killian and Ryan worked nearly nonstop on the farm. Danita kept busy, too.
The more she got to know the boys, the less afraid she was that they would demand her body as payment. Even though they made no attempt to hide the lust in their eyes, their attempts at seduction had been soft caresses, foot rubs, making dinner. All the normal courting stuff. No threats, no intimidation. More than once Danita woke in the middle of the night with a deep craving to go out to the living room and wake them up.
But as much as she had fantasized about it, she didn't know how to go about seducing these two beautiful specimens. She didn't even know if it was a good idea at this point. She had the mind of an erotica writer, but she was still a virgin, and reality frightened her.
The fear that this was some sort of trick of McGrath's was quickly set to rest, though. Ryan had given her a hundred thousand dollars in cash the same day that she told them how much they owed McGrath and assured her that it was a gift. From the way they talked about the Leopard, they didn't like him any more than she did!
Danita gladly paid half of the cash to McGrath right away, along with an extra ten thousand to buy her two extra months before she had to start her monthly payments. The rest she sunk right into the farm. She seeded hay into the flat fields by the tree line, bought half a dozen alpacas, five females and one male. She even planted a vegetable garden.
In less than a week, things seemed to have turned around for the better. The barn was patched up, the house made livable, and Danita was well on her way to start earning returns on her farm. Life was good.
Until she got a package in the mail from McGrath.
Inside was a pomegranate-red corset attached to a little lacy skirt that would just barely brush her thighs. Danita felt so sick looking at it that she almost missed the note laying on top. Her hands trembled as she picked it up. She had four and a half months before she had to start paying him back, didn't she? So why was he giving this to her?
Had he changed his mind? Did he want her himself, and not just her money?
Danita's heart sunk as she stared at the note. For your shifters.
Tears blurred her eyes. The boys had bought her after all. Everything they did… it was just pretense. They didn't care at all.
Her despair quickly turned to anger. How dare they? How dare they hang around her farm when she didn't ask for it, do work that she didn't ask them to do, give her money that, again, she did not ask for, and then turn around and pull something like this?
If they had bought her from McGrath, then they should have damn well have the decency of telling her, rather than pretending that they were actually helping her. That they cared about her as a person.
Her fantasies about them had felt like they came true, she was on the verge of giving herself to them, and all the while, all they could see her as was a pair of big boobs and a tight squeeze.
So they think that they can just buy my virginity?
She had had plenty of opportunities to have sex. She always chose not to. It wasn't like she was looking for her first time to be her forever and only, she wasn't that naive, but she also decided long ago that she wasn't going to have sex for sex's sake. She wanted a meaningful connection, and she had thought she found it with Ryan and Killian.
Danita gathered up the set and marched outside, where the boys had started a fire for a wiener roast. Well, something was going to roast, all right.
The boys smiled when they saw her. It only made her angrier.
"My virginity is not for sale!"
Ryan stiffened as Danita threw the lingerie, box and all, into the fire. She put her hands on her hips, glaring at the two of them. Killian looked shocked, his blue-green eyes flickering towards the burning lingerie and back to Danita.
"What are you talking about?" he demanded.
She opened her mouth to continue her accusations but stopped. The situation was seriously messed up, but the smart thing would be listening to their side of the story. After all, if McGrath would go so far as to make the bank deny her mortgage to force her into his power, could she put it past him to try to drive away the two Bears that had been helping her out?
"Danita?" Killian came closer, his eyes growing stormy. "What are you talking about?"
Was he angry at her, or had he guessed what was going on? Trying to remain emotionless, Danita told the boys all about McGrath's proposal of 'alte
rnative' payments. The words tasted bitter in her mouth. Before she was even done, Ryan let out a feral roar and leaped from the fire, shifting smoothly into a Bear. His clothes shredded, flying everywhere as he charged for the forest. Danita stared after him with wide eyes.
"What is he doing?"
"He just needs to blow off some steam," Killian said.
Danita could hear it was taking him quite a bit of effort to stay calm. Her eyes filled with tears. Seeing them, Killian's face fell. He brushed his fingers against her cheek, then withdrew them sharply.
"We're not angry with you, Dani. I'm sorry that McGrath was like that, and as for that," he pointed to the burning remains of the corset, "we had nothing to do with it. We didn't buy you. We didn't even think that McGrath knew that Ryan dug up our savings for you."
Relief washed over Danita. Of course. This was just McGrath again, his tricks. Her boys weren't like that. They really did care.
"I'm sorry I thought—"
"Don't be. You had every right to think that."
When Killian held his arms out to her, she gratefully stepped into them. Her shoulders shook with repressed sobs. She didn't even know why she was crying. Maybe it was because she was just so happy that her boys were here for her, not because they thought that they owned her, but because they genuinely cared.
She clung to Killian, letting herself melt into his strong embrace. As long as they were here, she was safe.
Chapter Four – Ryan
His blood reached boiling point quickly. Ryan patrolled the edges of Danita's farm, sniffing for any trace of McGrath. The Leopard was a sly, slippery devil. It wouldn't surprise the Bear if McGrath had been spying on them this whole time.
It was clear that he wanted Danita.
And it was just as clear that he didn't want the hard working, determined woman that Ryan and Killian had gotten to know.
He didn't want her pounding fence posts into the earth, or hauling hay bales around while she prepared to feed her alpaca herd, or climbing into the top of the barn to rip off the old shingles and lay down new ones. He didn't want how silly she got when she was tired, the string of curse words when she nailed her thumb or the way she ran for the first aid kit if someone else injured themselves.
All Dean McGrath wanted was her body. He didn't care if he broke Danita's heart or left her a shell of her former self. He wanted to manipulate her into getting into his bed for as long as he could. It had happened before, and it was only fear of Killian being punished that kept Ryan from taking matters into his own hands before now.
But Danita? No. There was no way he was going to let that stinking Leopard get his paws on her.
It was all he could do to stop himself from chasing McGrath down right now to tear him to pieces. The only thing that held him back was the knowledge that if he did that, Danita and Killian would suffer for it.
The fury still heating Ryan's blood cooled a little. When he had decided to run away from home all those years ago, he expected to go alone. But Killian had sacrificed everything and went with him. Kelly was from a very rich family in the community of shifters they grew up in. His family would have protected him when it came out that he liked to share women with his best friend.
The same couldn't be said of Ryan. His mother was incredibly homophobic, and any sort of indication that her son didn't fit in her narrow view of morality meant he was beaten. He'd learned over the years to hide his pain as his flesh and bones knit back together. At least shifters healed faster than humans. If he had had to spend weeks hiding a broken arm rather than a few hours he never would have made it outside the house.
It continued for years. And when he told Killian, his best friend had bought two plane tickets out west and told him to pack only what they could carry. Killian always knew what to do.
There was no scent of Leopard around the farm, and Ryan's head had cooled enough for him to think straight. He headed back to the house, careful to avoid the alpaca pasture. Danita got upset if they frightened the animals.
Killian was waiting for him on the half-fixed front porch. Night had deepened to the point where the only light was the splash of Milky Way and connect-the-dots puzzle above them. Ryan shifted back to human form, sitting on the porch next to his partner.
"Danita?"
Killian shrugged. "She's sleeping. A little mortified that she would think the worst of us, but I think she'll be okay. The real question is what we do now."
"I think you mean the real question is how we kill McGrath." Ryan didn't bother to stop the growl in his voice. His hands clenched.
Killian might still be trying to convince himself that the reason they were drawn to Danita was just because she was a beautiful, sensuous woman that would no doubt give them great pleasure, but Ryan knew the truth. She was their mate. The one that they had been looking for all this time, even if they hadn't realized they had been looking.
To Ryan's surprise, Killian let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. He felt his hackles rising. His best friend didn't think that McGrath deserved to die over this?
"We are going to kill him. We're not going to let him abuse and destroy Dani that way. Kelly, don't tell me you're even considering leaving her here."
"Calm down. Look, I understand how you feel. I do. There is nothing more I want than to see McGrath dead right now, except—"
Ryan growled warningly.
"Except for Dani to stay safe." Killian glared at his partner. "Killing McGrath is useless if it gets Dani hurt, or worse. So keep your head on straight, so I don't have to beat you."
"Like you could." Ryan flexed his muscles, recognizing Killian's attempts to lighten the heaviness between them. It worked, and both shifters relaxed a little. Ryan rolled his shoulders. "So. What do we do, then?"
"We play this smart. If we decide to kill McGrath, then even if the Leopard doesn't see us coming and kills us, then the Lion will consider us in-house traitors. He'd kill Dani as well as both of us to send a message to the syndicate. We're just a couple of low-level thugs, Rye. McGrath brought us in. We're just lucky he wants to keep us."
"Excuse me?"
"If he didn't, he would have killed us already, rather than trying to just isolate Dani."
"If his game is to force Dani into a situation where she had no choice but to accept his 'offer', then we should be on the lookout for sabotage on the farm." Ryan knew that if he continued to interfere in McGrath's plans it would paint giant bullseyes on his forehead, but he didn't care. All he wanted was to protect Danita. He chewed on his lip as he glanced at his partner. "I'll understand if you decide to go. It's risky—"
"And leave you to get all of Dani's gratitude? No." Killian knocked his shoulder. "But that does bring me to another point…"
Ryan nodded, waiting for Killian to continue. After several minutes passed in silence, his brow furrowed. It wasn't like his friend to leave thoughts unfinished.
Killian shook his head and laughed. "Look at me, acting like that wuss I was when we first decided that we wanted to share women. The point is, Dani's a virgin. We're going to have to adjust our normal game plan for her."
"Why?"
Killian rolled his eyes. "Rye, you know that taking us both in can be a strange, sometimes painful sensation for even the most experienced woman. Dani has no experience. If we're not careful, we could really hurt her. That's if she agrees."
"She'll agree." It was Ryan's turn to roll his eyes. "Haven't you seen the way she looks at us? Smelled her arousal? She wants us as much as we want her. It's only because of McGrath that she’s been hesitant towards our advances."
"That could be true."
"Of course it is."
"Arrogant SOB." Killian gave him a half-smile. "I talked to McGrath while you were gone."
Ryan snarled.
Killian clouted him on the back of the head. "Shut up! He would be expecting something from us. And I knew that I couldn't do it when you were back because of that damn temper of yours. This was for Dani, and it
had to be done."
It wasn't enough of an explanation to appease Ryan, but he kept his growls to himself.
"And what exactly did you tell him?"
"I thanked him for his 'gift'," Killian said.
If McGrath was after Danita, then thinking that the Bears had slept with her would only make him angry. Ryan tensed, but Killian continued before he could speak.
"I told him you looked beautiful in it."
"Screw you!"
Killian laughed and shrugged. "I told him that Dani burned it and won't let us near her. I also told him that we're doing what he wanted us to do, keeping her from running away."
"Did he buy it?"
"No."
"Damn. So should we head for the hills, or kill him?"
Killian sprang to his feet. "No. Stop right there. I already told you killing him isn't an option. We'd need to pay double Dani's ransom to the Lion in order to keep our heads. So just stop. I've made an agreement to buy her from him."
"Buy her?" Ryan got to his feet. His hands clenched, and he wondered if a good blow would knock sense into his partner's head or just kill him.
"He's given me a month to pay her debt and an extra two hundred and fifty thousand. If we can get it to him in that time, he'll leave her alone. Forever."
"We don't have that sort of money!"
"You don't. I have seven hundred thousand in a trust fund set up by my family. It's enough to free Dani from McGrath, and a little extra to help the farm get a better foothold. I've already talked to my family's lawyers, and I'm having the money transferred right now."
Ryan's jaw dropped. All this time, and he hadn't known his best friend was loaded. Maybe there was more to it than what Kelly had just told him, but still. They could have prevented this whole mess from ever starting!
"Don't ask me about it, Rye. Please." Killian turned away, though the pain was raw in his eyes. "There's a reason I couldn't get it before."
"You don't get off that easily."