The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and Mac tugged her arm. “This is our floor.”
Even having known they were going to different rooms, she hadn’t expected to split with Kelly so cleanly. What would happen to her friend? Did they make the right decision or were they both like some of the heroines she’d read in romance novels that were just too stupid to live?
“Kelly…”
“It’s okay,” Zach said as he stepped forward to hold the door open. “We’re only two floors up. Room Seven-nineteen. She’ll be fine. I give you my word.”
Those words shouldn’t have relaxed her. They’d come from a complete stranger, yet for some reason, she relaxed and somehow knew that everything would be okay. They-- she and Kelly—would be okay. Jess didn’t know how she knew it, she just did. She’d learned to trust herself years ago when she left Langston. Though Kelly wasn’t aware of it yet, Jessi’s intuition had made both of them rich women. She wasn’t about to start second-guessing it now.
“I—I guess I hadn’t thought about us being on separate floors. I guess I thought you’d all would have gotten rooms together.” She was starting to babble. It wasn’t a good sign. She hated it when she got nervous. She did stupid things like agree to follow strange men to their hotel rooms, and that was just the light side of stupid things in her repertoire.
“We didn’t arrive together. In fact, we didn’t even know Zach and Derek had followed us out here until we saw them at the restaurant a while ago.” Gareth’s stomach growled.
“You didn’t eat.” She closed her eyes at the inane remark. Of course he didn’t. If he had, his stomach wouldn’t be grumbling.
“No. But there’s something in the room.”
“That’s good.” She licked her lips and Mac groaned. “Don’t do that. It turns me on and I’m not certain, but I thought we came up here to explain to you why you need to come back to the cascade with us.”
“The cascade?” She tilted her head with a frown. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.”
“It would have surprised me if you had.” He slid the keycard into his back pocket after opening the door. “It’s not a place that’s widely publicized. The residents there like their privacy and tend to keep to themselves.”
“Oh.” She glanced around the room. There weren’t any strange contraptions or anything that resembled weapons.
“Just to ease your mind.” Gareth opened the closet door, revealing two opened suitcases. They were empty. Presumably they had stored the contents in the dresser. Would they have put weapons or torture devices in the drawers? There hadn’t been a do not disturb sign on the door, and the room was clean, the beds made, and the toilet paper folded into that strange triangle that hotels loved so much.
“Thank you.” She made her way over to the desk and sat down on the chair. She didn’t want to be too comfortable. They did say they had something to tell her, after all. “Why do you want me to follow you guys back to the cascade?”
“Not just you, but Kelly, as well.” Mac sat on the edge of the bed, his hands folded in his lap.
“Okay. Why do you want us to go back with you, and where exactly is it?” She’d been around in the last several years. She’d heard of a lot of places, and not once had she ever heard of anything called the cascade. She’d heard of Cascade, Michigan, but she didn’t think they were talking about that. They kept referring to it as the cascade. It was as though it was more a thing than a place.
Her gaze kept shifting to the bed where Mac sat. She glanced around the room. It was a large room, with two queen-sized beds. Presumably, the men didn’t sleep together, since there was a half-full twenty-ounce bottle of cola on the right side of each of them.
“You know, you shouldn’t drink cola before you go to sleep. It’s not good for your teeth.” She closed her eyes at that. When would the dental hygienist in her leave people alone about their teeth? She’d retired and lived off her investments now.
“It won’t ruin our teeth.”
Yeah right. How many times had she heard that before? It usually came from men too stubborn to change their eating or drinking habits—the ones who came in with at least one new cavity every six months.
Oh well, that was their issue, not hers. She only needed a sperm donor. Jessi couldn’t help it. Ever since the thought had popped into her head, she could think of little else. Well…that and sex.
What would it be like to have sex with one of these hotties? The more she thought about it, the hotter it made her. Her stomach took flight and her womb clenched, squeezing more cream through her already wet vagina onto her panties that must have been soaked through long ago.
“Believe whatever you want about your teeth. It’s time you told me about whatever it is.” Jessi waved her hand. She tried not to look at them. Every time she met their gaze or looked at their bodies, she wanted them more. Thoughts like that weren’t good for her. Before she knew it, she’d start second guessing herself. She would ask herself if she was good enough for them and after that, it wouldn’t take long for the rest of the negative thinking it had taken her years to overcome to come rushing back.
Of course she was good enough for them. Hell, she might be too good for them, depending on their personalities. After all, what if one or both of them turned out to be what Kelly’s foster mom had always called a turd?
Sharon always told them that some boys thought they were hot shit, but were nothing more than cold turds. She had also added, you can polish a turd until the cows come home, but in the end, all you have is a shiny turd. Jessi smiled at the memory. Sharon had been right. Jessi had met her share of shiny pieces of crap in her life and most of them had lived in Langston.
Chapter Ten
Gareth wanted to tell her right away. He wanted to shift into his tiger, let her scream and faint, and get it over with. The problem was, he couldn’t. He knew that there was a small chance that it could do damage. Even the slightest chance that he could give her a stroke, heart attack or even a nervous breakdown was enough to keep him from shifting into his tiger and scaring the devil out of her.
Jessi was their mate. He knew that as surely as he knew his name, how to breathe or how to shift into his other half. She belonged with them. He knew it, and it bothered him that he couldn’t just take what was his.
It was the animal side of him that found itself upset at the rules the human part of their people set. Even as a tiger shifter, she would have to agree to mate before he could take her as his. He could have sex with her. In fact, his body and his tiger raged at him to do just that.
The animal in him wanted to rip her clothes from her body and lick every inch of her exposed skin until she surrendered to them. Again, it was against their laws. No coercion. They must tell her and let her decide what to do. If they did otherwise, it would break their laws and they would be outcasts. They could never return to the cascade, and Mac would be up shit creek without a paddle, or a canoe, for that matter.
He sighed and closed his eyes. How did they break it to her? Did they have sex first? Could they convince this wonderful, beautiful woman to be theirs in less than a day?
The answer was most likely no. In his experience, women didn’t just jump into bed with men they’d just met. It happened, yes. It just wasn’t as common as it had been in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. The fear of disease made everyone cautious.
None of their people feared disease. They could neither contract nor carry human diseases, and they had no diseases of their own. Generally, as a rule, shifters were healthy from the day they were born until the day they died—the only exception being mental illness and injuries.
No one knew why mental illness struck, but it did on occasion, driving the shifter to do things that put him or her on the enforcer’s radar. The enforcers were like police, of sorts. They hunted down those who could draw attention to their kind and either incarcerated or killed them, depending on their crimes. Generally, calling in an enforcer meant a death sentence, but
not always.
“Well?” Jessi asked, her foot tapping on the floor.
She was impatient, and he wasn’t sure he blamed her. They’d made it seem urgent, and it was, but here they sat, stalling in an effort to figure out a way to break their news to her. Jessi was a human, and he had no idea how to handle this. At least when their prince and his partner found their mate, she knew about shifters. The only thing Jessi knew about shifters was most likely what she’d seen in the movies. It wouldn’t be much and it wouldn’t be accurate.
“It’s not something that’s easy to explain.” Mac rubbed the back of his neck and looked to Gareth. “How do we tell her?”
“I don’t know.” Gareth shrugged. “The prince and his partner never touched base on that. Besides, they found her in Paradise. She knew.”
“She knew what?” Jessi shifted her gaze between them. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” Gareth stood and began pacing the room. “Have you ever heard the term suspending your disbelief?” he asked, hopeful.
“I’ve heard it when watching movies. Like how a battleship can’t be brought online in a couple of hours because the boilers take overnight to warm up. There aren’t really shape shifters, but…” She smiled with a shrug. “We suspend our belief because we want them to exist, because we think they’re cool, or we just think it would be cool to be one.”
“Do you think shape shifters are cool?” Mac asked her, one side of his mouth kicking up in a lopsided grin.
“Doesn’t everyone?” She waved her hand toward their tails and faces—what she perceived to be their costumes. “I mean, look at you guys. You obviously think they are, or you wouldn’t dress that way. Me, on the other hand…I’ve been attracted to cat boys for what seems like forever. Even before people thought it was cool.”
“You have?” Gareth’s heart skipped a beat. Could he be worrying for nothing? “What would you say if someone told you that shifters were real?”
“I’d say that they needed their head examined.” She laughed. “No matter how much I might want to meet a real shape shifter, I’ll have to be satisfied with knowing there are people like you out there who pretend to be shifters.”
“What would you do if I was a real shifter and I changed into an animal right here and right now?” Mac asked, suddenly serious.
“Oh, I don’t know. What kind of shifter would you be?” She smiled. She obviously thought this was turning into some kind of role play and was slowly working her way into a part.
He’d heard that the people who liked to dress in costumes liked to do something called LARPing—Live Action Role Playing. Perhaps this was a start to one of those LARPing sessions. Gareth had no idea. “We’re good shifters. We have a strict code of conduct.”
“That’s good.” She smiled. “I love a man with discipline.”
“We have that in spades,” Mac added dryly.
“What else?” She sat up straight, her hands in her lap, her eyes wide.
“We can’t force a female to do anything she doesn’t want to do. In other words, if you want to leave, we cannot force you to stay. We can detain you for a moment,” Gareth added when she lifted a brow, no doubt thinking about how he’d stopped her from leaving town not long before. “However, if you truly wanted to go, we would have let you leave, had you forced the issue.”
“We live in a secret place called the Caspian Cascade. We can’t tell you were it is, more than show you, but we can’t show you unless you agree to live with us there.”
“Live with you there?” She frowned. “Why would you want me?”
“Because you’re our mate.” Mac blurted the words out. He obviously wanted this over with as soon as possible.
Jessi blinked at them for a moment, and then stared at them, her eyes wide. “Mate?”
“Yes. As in, you are the one woman with whom we can mate and procreate. We would like to take you home with us to be ours.”
“Mate?” She blinked again, her expression owlish. “Both of you?” Her cheeks reddened as the implication no doubt dawned on her. “So you’re saying that if I go back to this cascade place with you that I would be your woman? That we would…” She swallowed. “We would live together and you would both expect to have sex with me?” Her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed as she sat awaiting their answer.
Gareth hesitated. He wasn’t sure what the problem was, but he could see that she was more angry now than intrigued. Mac, on the other hand didn’t see it and jumped in with both feet.
“That’s it exactly. I’m glad you understand,” Mac said with a huge grin.
“That’s not the entirety of it, though,” Gareth felt compelled to add.
“I’ll bet.” She pressed her lips together. “I suppose that it just means that we live together, you two get sex whenever you want it and I’m just the happy little woman?”
Finally, Mac saw that something was wrong. “I don’t understand. This should make you happy. How many human women have two shape shifting mates to call their own?”
He wasn’t sure how he knew, but Gareth knew that was the wrong answer. Not to mention the fact that he knew that most women wanted commitment and, so far, neither he or Mac had alluded to the fact that it would be a permanent relationship.
“I see what you two are doing.” She stood up, her expression twisted into a frown. “Who put you up to this? Billy, Bobby, the Anderson twins? Who?” She started to pace as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Will they never let me live it down?” She turned to them her hands on her hips.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gareth replied in an attempt to calm her down.
“Bull chips you don’t know what I’m talking about. I was nineteen, for crying out loud. I thought sex meant love. I didn’t know the difference. I wanted someone to love me so badly that my mind wasn’t in the right place. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a small town, one of only two fostered children there. We had no real mother or father. We had no one to love us for anything other than the food stamp and welfare money they got.” She sobbed. “I was young and stupid and had no good opinion of myself.”
She glared at them, her eyes filled with such pain that Gareth wanted to go to her, to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but he knew she wouldn’t allow it. Not now.
“Do I have to admit it? If I say it out loud will you leave me alone? I was young, I was naïve. I thought boys were like girls in that if they had sex with you, they loved you. I had sex. A lot. I searched and searched for someone who could love me for me, not for what I could give them. Finally, when two boys suggested that I love them both at the same time, I thought why not? Why not have two boys love me at once? It was all I ever wanted. All I ever dreamed of having…someone’s, anyone’s, love.”
She turned away and hugged herself, her head bowed. “Now, let me go. You’ve had your fun. Tell whoever sent you that you’ve broken me. Tell them I can’t take it anymore. I’ll never go back to Langston. I’ll never embarrass them with the reminder that they once fucked a fat girl ever again. Just leave me alone.”
Chapter Eleven
Jessi headed for the door. Tears blinded her and she stumbled. Strong arms caught her up and carried her to the bed. “You said you couldn’t force me.” She gave a hysterical laugh. “Oh, that’s right. That was when you were pretending to be a shape shifter with a strict code of conduct. I almost forgot.”
“Shh…” Mac said as he held her tight against him. He sat down on the edge of the bed, still holding her in his arms. “No one sent us, Jessi. I swear.” Reaching up, he brushed the tears away with his thumbs.
Gentle lips pressed soft kisses against her eyelids and she sobbed harder. Even now, when she was so broken, he was trying to initiate sex. What was wrong with the man?
“I won’t have sex with you. If you force me, I’ll have you arrested. We aren’t in Langston with Billy and Bobby’s dad still the sheriff.” She didn’t want to start on the Anderson twin’s dad who
was the DA for the county. There was no real justice in Langston, not for foster kids, anyway.
“Sh…baby. No one is going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do other than stay in this room until we have a chance to explain things better. We don’t know a Billy and Bobby or a set of twins from Langston, wherever that is. We really are shape shifters and you really are our mate. We only need a few more minutes to prove it. We only need to know that you won’t run screaming from us once we do.”
“Okay.” She swiped her arm across her eyes and met his gaze. “If I play along, you’ll let me leave afterward?”
“Yes.” Mac nodded. “Now, answer my questions. What will you do once you finally realize that Gareth is a white Caspian tiger and I am a red Caspian tiger?”
“I don’t believe this.” She shook her head and smiled through her tears. “This is crazy, but if it will get you guys to leave me alone and let me and Kelly be on our way, I’ll play along and tell you that it’s been one of my fantasies since I read my first paranormal romance.”
“What has been your fantasy?”
“I read that these shape shifters love and protect their women above all else. Their women are everything to them—their life. What sane woman wouldn’t want that?”
“What about with two of us?”
She snorted. “Are you hard of hearing? I’ve already told you that I have done that before. It would be awesome to have one man who would love me forever. Two would be more than I could ever hope for.” She sighed. “Tell that to those assholes when you report back to them.”
“You were going to suspend your disbelief,” Gareth reminded her.
“I never agreed to that. I only told you that I knew what the term meant.” She sniffed.
“I’d appreciate it if you would try.” Gareth glowered. “I don’t want to scare the hell out of you when I shift.”
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