Tigers in Her Bed [The Tigers of Texas 7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Em Ashcroft

  Rachel mumbled a yes.

  “She said yes,” Sam said.

  “I heard her.”

  A slap descended on her right cheek then one on her left. Oh, shit, surely this shouldn’t feel so good? But it did. Rachel was discovering a whole new side of herself.

  “The sting helps with the heat,” Sam said. “Are you okay, honey?”

  “Yes!” she cried out. “Oh, fuck, that feels good!”

  CJ delivered a flurry of sharp slaps to her ass, the sounds echoing off the walls. “Pretty,” he said and smoothed his rough palms over her cheeks before he separated them. He touched her back passage gently with his finger, tickling it, the tender skin reacting with a series of tingles. “Lube now. It might hit cold.” Breaking the seal of the tube with a sound she wouldn’t have heard if the atmosphere weren’t so fraught with tension, he smeared a generous dollop over her skin. Then his fingers returned, and he murmured to her. “That feels better. That spanking loosened you up nicely.”

  “That’s not all it did,” said Sam. He turned his head, meeting her gaze. “Talk, honey. I love to hear you talk dirty.”

  And Rachel talked. “Oh yes. He’s sticking a finger in me now. It just slides in, and it feels good.”

  Sam groaned. “I feel it, too.”

  He must be pressing against Sam’s cock.

  “He’s rotating it, I think, moving inside, working me. Oh God!” she cried as a second finger joined the first. “Oh, fuck, that feels amazing. I have both of you inside me.”

  “It’ll get better,” Sam promised.

  “It is already. It’s amazing. Tingles and shocks, that’s what I can feel. And it only grows. It’s getting better, harder, fuck, is that another finger?”

  “I’m widening you,” CJ said. “Once I have that muscle relaxed, I’m coming in. But the minute you feel uncomfortable, tell me.” His voice shook.

  “Of course it’s uncomfortable. That’s why it feels so good. It’s different. It’s wonderful. I want you both. I don’t think I can—”She groaned as CJ twisted his fingers inside her and scissored them, widening her. Cool air and more lube made her gasp. “I want to bear down. I want to screw your brains out.”

  “In a minute CJ’s going to fuck you in the ass,” Sam said. “Wait and see.” He glanced down at her breasts squashed against his chest. “You’re so beautiful, Rachel. Mine.”

  “Ours,” CJ growled.

  He pulled his fingers out, and a condom packet crackled and rustled. A moment later he was back, but the pressure against her back hole wasn’t his fingers any more. That big, smooth head belonged to his cock. He pushed slowly but steadily, gripping her hips to hold her steady.

  Just as Rachel was beginning to think this was impossible, that she’d never take him, he slid inside.

  “Talk,” Sam demanded harshly. “Oh fuck, this is amazing!”

  As CJ worked her, pushing his cock farther in with every gentle thrust, Rachel babbled. “I knew it would be like this. I mean I didn’t know we’d do this, but I knew you would blow my mind, both of you. I could never choose between you, even when I was fantasizing, but I never imagined anything like this. I did, you know, wonder, but this is beyond anything. Oh, fuck, CJ, that’s so good!” She drew a deep breath and continued, her mouth running on, stream-of-consciousness style. “You’re so deep. Nobody’s been there before, ever. I tried a couple of times, but it never worked, never felt like this. So fucking good.”

  Under her, Sam groaned her name. CJ panted. A drop of sweat fell on her backbone.

  “I’m in.”

  His pubic hair grazed her skin at the back, and Sam touched her clit, grinding against it when CJ thrust deep. He stayed there, panting.

  “I’ve never been so full. I’m pushed, half squashed, and it’s wonderful.” She made a meal of the word, pronouncing every syllable with relish. Never had she meant it so much. “You feel amazing. Move, CJ.”

  When he did, he rocked her world, and she realized what Sam meant. When CJ fucked her, he pressed against Sam’s cock through the thin wall of flesh dividing her ass and her pussy, constricting the space Sam had to move in. Sam jerked, thrusting deeply into her.

  Rachel screamed. Her ecstasy filled the room as her men filled her. Slowly at first, their thrusts increased, pistoning like some great engine, first one, then the other, then back again, driving her up and beyond herself, reaching for the stars.

  She reached them first when Sam drove her up and over, but the sensation of CJ punching into her, his thrusts increasingly urgent put her in a new place, where she lost sense of everything but the cascades of sensation forcing her body to arch and twist. Only barely aware of the men’s shouts of encouragement, she joined them, calling out as she fell back down.

  CJ withdrew carefully first, followed by Sam, who lifted her off him and handed her to CJ like a rag doll. She curled into CJ as he took her into the bathroom. The shower was barely big enough for both of them, but he managed it, even making room for Sam to reach in and kiss her, helping to wash her with hands as gentle as a dove’s wings.

  By then Rachel had regained some of her senses, enough to cup Sam’s jaw and kiss him then repeat the action with CJ.

  They took her back to the bed and tucked her beneath the covers. CJ climbed in with her, and Sam went back to the bathroom to finish his shower, but he was back in five minutes, roughly scrubbing his hair and tossing the towel aside before he joined them.

  “That was incredible,” Sam murmured against her neck. “I can’t fight this anymore.” He lifted on one elbow and gazed down into her eyes.

  Rachel met his gaze, and then looked at CJ, seeing the same expression in both their eyes.

  When they said, “I love you,” it was in unison.

  Chapter Eleven

  CJ had let her into his heart. That was what all the trouble this last year was about, why he’d felt so restless. He’d thought it was time to move on, but he had the complication of Sam, so he had waited it out. Now, for the first time in his life, he felt settled. He was home at last.

  The blinders fell away. He knew what he wanted and what he was prepared to do to get it. “I don’t want to live without you,” he said. “I’ll do anything to be with you, to make you our breedmate.”

  He didn’t even stop to consider Sam, but that was because, deep down, he knew Sam felt the same way. Sam caught her hand in his.

  “We need to do this, honey. Rachel, you’re my everything. Our everything. That’s the most important factor in all this business. We need to be together. What do you need?”

  “You,” she said with such a soft expression that, had CJ been bound and determined not to, he’d have fucked her all over again.

  “Yes. I want it, too. I want you both. And I want to do it now before we can change our minds.”

  CJ’s mind went over what he’d been through to get to this place and what it had done to his life. He exchanged a glance with Sam.

  “Tell her,” Sam said.

  He was right. There shouldn’t be any secrets between them. “Baby, I’m a special case, even for a shape-shifter.”

  She kissed his hand, her lips so gentle on his palm. “You don’t have to tell me that. I know that already.”

  He laughed shakily. “Thanks. But I mean something else. I grew up away from all other shifters, in the city. Kansas City, to be exact.”

  “You’re a Missouri boy.”

  “I am. Or I was. Now I’m Texan through and through, thanks to the Goldclaws. I was born after my mother left my fathers.” At her gasp, he explained. “They weren’t particularly good to her. Breedmates don’t have to be in love. In those days, when it happened, the trio were urged to be together for the sake of continuing the race, although I didn’t know that when I was a boy. My mother always said her husbands were unkind to her. They should have been arrested for cruelty, she said. So she ran. I don’t know where I was born. She would never tell me, just that she ran to the farthest place she could get and got a job. Whe
n I was a baby, and still shifting to cub, she hid me in her apartment. Then she told me it was wrong to shift, that I was a trick of nature and it was a sin. She married again when I was four, to a mortal. She was mortal, one of the few that could mate with shape-shifters.”

  He paused, the memories of his childhood shafting through him like spears of glass, slicing effortlessly into the recollections he hid away. “They called me a freak, and so did my brothers and sisters. I learned not to shift, ever, but it hurts not to do it every now and again. I used to hide away and furtively shape-shift. I went to college, and somebody found out. They weren’t kind either, so I left. Just walked out. I carried on, working at casual jobs that I could get paid in cash for until I got to Goldclaw. I’d never known what it was like being with my own kind, and then Sam found me.”

  “Working as a laborer at the lumberyard,” Sam said, exchanging a grin with him. “It just felt right for us to hang together, and we realized why soon enough.”

  “That’s why you hate the city,” Rachel said.

  Her gaze went to CJ. He readied himself for the sympathy he expected to find in her eyes, but he found only understanding.

  “I ran away, too. Not as dramatically as you, but I was born in the country. and I hated it. My parents are pretty well off, and I ran from becoming a princess and then a wife to somebody I hardly knew. We still write, and they still send me my allowance. They’ll be horrified when they hear about what I’m doing with you guys.”

  “Will it cause trouble?” Sam said.

  “Nothing I can’t handle. They’re used to me by now.” She shook her head slightly. “I wish you’d told me before, CJ. I used to be a little bit scared of you, but you’re as soft as butter, aren’t you?”

  Lightheaded, he growled at her. “Say that again when I’ve gone tiger.”

  “So,” she said, “how about his breedmate thing?”

  How could she be so careless of his background? CJ was bewildered. Then he understood. He’d let her inside, into his heart, where he’d allowed nobody else to trespass. She was seeing the man he was now, not the angry kid or the wanderer. He didn’t deserve these people. But he had them, and he was going to keep them.

  “We both have to fuck you bareback,” he told her. “Then it happens, the magic that binds us. It means we can never be apart without hurting. I think my mother’s pain came from that, at least in the early years. From what I saw, it wears off eventually, if you let it. But it means we can have a child only with you.”

  “And it means you’ll most likely get pregnant,” Sam put in.

  “But I’m on the pill.”

  “That’ll help,” Sam said, “But it might not be as effective as you think.”

  Rachel grabbed their hands, holding them tightly. “I want to do it. Now, before life catches up with us. I can’t bear the thought of being without either of you. And we should do it here, where we started.”

  Sam and CJ exchanged a guilty look. “You kissed her here too?” Sam said.

  “Yep.”

  Last year Rachel had enticed CJ into her cabin on some pretext or other and stolen a kiss. Before he’d realized it, he was laying it on her and good, but then he’d had enough presence of mind to pull away and leave. Yes, it had started here for him.

  Sam had a quick, private conversation with CJ then took Rachel’s hand and pressed it to his heart. “I don’t want to do this fast. I want to do it justice. Bonding only happens once in a shape-shifter’s life. Honey, I love you so much, but I want us to do this right. Marry then bond on our wedding night. Call me an old romantic, but that’s what I want.”

  Rachel caught her breath. Her gaze went to CJ, who nodded. “Me, too.”

  “Marry?” she said.

  Sam leaned back, lying against the pillows, his woman nestled next to him. “Oh yeah. The whole damned thing. That’s what we can do tonight. Let’s promise each other that we’ll stay together, come what may.”

  “I’m in,” said CJ.

  Rachel cleared her throat, tears sparkling in her gorgeous eyes. “Me too. I can’t bear the idea of losing you, either of you. I never had any idea I could fall in love with two men at the same time, but I have.”

  CJ collapsed against the pillows with a happy sigh. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s it. Everything else, we’ll work out.”

  “I’ve never been more happy.”

  Murmuring quiet endearments to each other, they fell asleep, entwined around the woman they loved.

  * * * *

  Rachel sneezed. Awake and aware, she realized what had caused the sneeze. The sting of burning wood attacked her nostrils. Above them, smoke wreathed, and sparks fell from the ceiling.

  “Fuck!” CJ woke as a spark touched his bare flesh, and the smell of singeing skin was added to the mix. He sat bolt upright, as, on her other side, Sam flung the bedclothes aside and leaped out of bed.

  They were lying in a ring of fire. Bewilderment muddled her senses. When she sat up, she choked. The fire was closing in on them, like a living thing, the flames licking greedily to the bed.

  “We’ve gotta get outta here,” CJ called.

  The crack of timbers told them the cabin wouldn’t stand much longer. They’d be in the middle of a bonfire if they didn’t move soon.

  “Which way?” Sam yelled.

  If they went the wrong way, they’d find themselves in a forest of burning wood and electrics, dead before they got out the other side. The right way would burn them.

  “Toward me!” someone cried from outside, the voice masculine and shocked. “Behind the bed!”

  Yes, the bedhead was set against the wall. Seizing the only weapon she could find, which happened to be the champagne bottle, still half full, Rachel took a breath, perhaps her last, and held it while she knelt up and swung it against the wall. Unexpectedly, it gave way, but that was because the guys were on the other side.

  A huge tiger paw punched past her and into the wall, breaking a space. Sparks glittered at the edges of the burning wood.

  “I’ll catch her!” that voice yelled.

  Mason, it was Mason. She still hadn’t told the guys about her suspicions. Were they about to plunge her into more danger, by throwing her into his hands?

  Too late to speculate. But if they didn’t all get out alive, she’d see Mason fried for this, even if she had to do it herself.

  As soon as the hole was wide enough, CJ picked Rachel up, dropped a kiss on her forehead, and tossed her outside.

  She landed, naked and gasping, in Mason’s arms. He pitched her to someone else, and like a football, she found herself tossed down the line until she stood, still stark naked, on the gravel surrounding the cabins. Someone wrapped a thin silver blanket around her, and she clutched it to her breast, but when they tried to lead her away, she shook them off, although a fit of coughing made her bend over.

  “No!”

  Desperately, she straightened in time to see a great tiger leap through the blazing gap, followed by another. Even now she knew that Sam was the first one through and then CJ. Their fur was singed, and when CJ leaped through, his tail was on fire. Mason leaped forward to extinguish it.

  They came straight to Rachel. The hand holding her dropped away, and her men—tigers—circled her, curling around her. A ripple, like a heat wave, flowed over CJ, and he was a man again, moving close to hold Rachel in an unabashed display of affection.

  “Are you okay, baby?”

  “I’m fine.” Tears sprang to her eyes as the shock of what was happening finally hit her. “What happened? Did we leave the stove on or something?” In this heat, a stove was hardly necessary, but she was desperately searching for a reason, any reason but the one lurking at the back of her mind.

  “You know, honey.” Sam held her from behind, sheltering her from the showers of sparks that were still flying from the cabin. “Come on, let’s get you inside.” He shot a glance at the hand who stood by. “Jeb, make sure Mason McCall doesn’t leave. I want to talk to him. U
se force if you have to.”

  Her bewildered mind took in that fact.

  “Exactly,” CJ said firmly. He bent and swung her into his arms, jogging toward the house.

  Inside, they went straight upstairs and into a room Rachel had never seen before, a room with a bed even huger than the one she had shared with Sam. They didn’t stop but took her to the attached bathroom and into a walk-in shower. Rachel glanced around while CJ set the temperature and put all three showerheads into action. Three glass basins stood on a counter with three mirrors above them. CJ and Sam washed her, their hands moving over her body, for once not erotically but to ensure she wasn’t seriously hurt. Once the soot and shards of burned wood were rinsed away, only a few bruises remained. Sam kissed them while CJ took her in a deep kiss that expressed his relief more than words ever could.

  They patted her dry and found her a robe to wear, soft gold silk and obviously new.

  “I bought that for you at Renata’s,” CJ said. “I wish I could have given it to you under better circumstances.”

  Rachel knew quality when she felt it. “It’s lovely,” she said softly. Shock was starting to hit her, and her hand shook when she reached for him.

  “Come on,” Sam said, pulling on fresh jeans. “We need to go downstairs. I lost my best hat in that fire, and somebody has to pay.” He turned at the door. “You should go to bed, sweetheart. Rest.”

  She shook her head. “Not until we know more. I can’t. Don’t ask me. I will later, I promise. Make me some hot tea.”

  “Yeah.” After shrugging into a navy terry cloth robe, CJ headed downstairs.

  “He needed something to do,” Sam said. “You sure you won’t go to bed and rest?”

  “Like a good little wifey?” Rachel grimaced. “You have a few things to learn about me, Sam Goldclaw.”

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  * * * *

  CJ took a few deep breaths before he got on with making the tea. If anything had proved how much he loved Rachel, finding himself in peril was it. His first, his only thought, was of her and getting her to safety. Slow anger simmered deep in his core, and silently he vowed revenge. That had been no accident.