by Leah Brooke
She stared out at him, making a face, obviously certain that no one could see her.
But he had better eyesight than she would expect. Although he couldn’t see her clearly, he could see her well enough to keep an eye on her.
Amused that she appeared to be muttering to herself, he watched her, unable to look away at the sight she made. Her ponytail whipped back and forth as she paced in front of the mirror, her body stiff with anger. He wished he could hear what she was saying, but he couldn’t hear her over the noise in the bar.
He’d bet the money he’d made on his last sculpture that she was cursing him.
James ignored his beer and stood, his eyes alight with challenge. “I’m going to her. She’s not pissed off at me.”
Marc sighed and reached for his beer, fighting the urge to join James. One by one, he forced his muscles to relax. He watched James go around the bar to follow the path Bailey had taken down the small hallway, forcing back jealousy that he wouldn’t be the one overcoming that temper.
Just the thought of it made his cock jump.
After James left, Leland turned back to the bar, tracing a drop of moisture down the glass of the beer sitting in front of him.
“Smart man. I think it’s a good idea to approach her one at a time. You don’t want to overwhelm her. It’s going to be a lot to take in.”
Marc swallowed heavily, turning back to watch the two-way mirror, unable to keep his attention away from her for more than a few minutes at a time. “Bailey doesn’t seem to scare easily.”
He bit back a laugh when she stuck her tongue out at him. If she was in front of him, he’d show her exactly what she could do with that tongue. And then he’d use his on her.
“Nope, she doesn’t scare easily at all.”
He didn’t even stop to wonder about the pride that came through in his tone.
Seeing James take Bailey into his arms, he bit back a groan at the answering twinge in his cock.
“We can’t tell her everything. We don’t know her well enough to trust her with that. I won’t risk the pack. Not even for her.”
Leland stared straight ahead. “You’ll have to. She’s your mate, and she’ll have to know…to understand. For now, though, it’s going to be hard enough for her to take in the fact that two men want her. But don’t make the mistakes Diablo and I made. Yeah, it’s going to be hard to swallow, but you already said she doesn’t scare easily. Our mates would have to be tough.”
The pride and regret in his friend’s tone pulled at him. Not taking his eyes from the scene unfolding in front of him, and glad that the other patrons didn’t have his vision, he kept his tone low, knowing only Leland would hear him.
“Are you sure Bailey didn’t smell any different to you?”
Leland sighed. “No. I know—at least I think I know—how she smells to you.” His voice lowered musingly. “Warm, sweet, a hint of vanilla and honey. Enticing. Addictive.” With a sigh, he reached for his glass again. “You have nothing to worry about with me. She’s definitely not my mate.
Stunned, Marc whipped around. “Wait a minute. Your mate smelled the same way to you that Bailey does to us?”
Shrugging, Leland stared into his beer. “Apparently. I had that once and was too hardheaded to grab it with both hands. Just don’t scare her off. I have no idea if we get second chances or if there’s more than one mate for us. But I’m forty and have never found another in the years before or in the months since.”
Marc turned now, unnerved. “I don’t want my decisions made for me. It pisses me off. I want to pick my own woman.”
Leland turned, his eyes bleak. “I felt exactly the same way. Now I’d give anything to have her back. I want her so much I can’t even sleep anymore. Haven’t slept a night through since she took off—hell, since I pushed her away. It feels like a part of me is missing.”
He took a sip of beer to ease the knot in his stomach and swallowed heavily. “Are you still looking for her?”
The torment in Leland’s eyes tore at him. To see a man he’d always looked up to and admired look so defeated unnerved him more than he wanted to admit.
Leland looked at him as though he’d lost his mind.
“Of course I’m still looking for her, but by the time I realized what she meant to me, she was long gone. Not a fucking trace of her. It’s like she fell off the face of the earth.”
Turning back, Marc stared at the mirror again, unable to take his eyes from the sight of James wrapping himself around Bailey. The scent of her arousal reached him even through a closed door despite several feet separating them, and the abundance of scents in the bar. Hers still came through, strong and sweet and undeniably all woman, making his cock ache and filling him with a tension that made sitting here damned uncomfortable.
He wanted her with a need that he’d never experienced with any other woman. The beast inside him clawed to be free, the beast that had remained conspicuously silent with every other women he’d ever taken.
Handling both a raging hunger that threatened to burn out of control and the primitive beast inside him at the same time tested the boundaries of his control. His strength grew and his senses sharpened more with each moment he spent with her.
He’d spent the last several days coming to grips with the changes inside him, changes that came about as the beast and man merged.
He’d become…more.
The image of how she’d looked naked and in his bed had haunted him all week. Sleeping with the scent of her on his pillow had nearly driven him out of his mind.
Still, he liked to think he was in charge of his own destiny. Turning away from the mirror, he watched Ricky expertly mix and serve drinks, keeping his voice low.
“I don’t like being tugged around by my cock any more than you did. I’d like to think I have a choice in choosing the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.”
Leland smiled humorlessly. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come out here. I want to make sure you don’t fuck this up the way I did. There isn’t a day that goes by that I haven’t regretted letting her go. I was a little alarmed at the changes that took place inside me, but it seems that meeting our mate affects us in more ways than one. I know it heightens the senses and makes us stronger, but since our mate is no longer around, I’m not quite sure how else it affects us. I do know, however, that my choice is to have her with me.”
He took a sip of beer and chuckled softly.
“I’m sure that’s your choice right about now, too.”
Marc clenched his fist, not in anger, but in frustration. As he watched James strip Bailey, his own hands itched to touch her. Knowing Leland would be able to hear him, even over the music, he kept his voice at a whisper.
“Since you’ve been so honest with me, I think it’s only fair to tell you what I’ve discovered about that. Hopefully, you’ll be prepared when you find your mate again.” He glanced toward the mirror again, his cock jumping to see Bailey responding to James’s kiss.
“When she defies me, argues with me, gets mad at me—it enrages me.”
Leland paused with his glass of beer halfway to his mouth.
“Please tell me that doesn’t mean you want to hit her.”
Turning his head, Marc scowled at him, keeping his voice so low he knew only Leland would hear him.
“Hell, no. I don’t want to hit her. I’d cut off my own hands before I hit her.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, ignoring the probing look from Ricky.
“You saw how she was a few minutes ago. When she stormed away from me—fuck. I want—no I need to show her who her mate is. I need to take her in a way she’ll never forget. I want to work my cock into her tight ass and bury myself balls deep inside her. I need to take her in the most dominant way a man can take a woman. I want her bent over, ass in the air and taking every inch of me. I don’t want her thinking about anything else but submitting to me and admitting who the fuck she belongs to.”
Jus
t the thought of her lifting that chin defiantly and his cock ached with the need to work it into that round ass of hers. He would work on her clit while he did it, making her so hot that she would accept anything he wanted to do to her.
Fuck.
He had to calm down before he did something that would scare the hell out of Bailey and ruin any chance of ever getting close to her.
Leland’s brows went up. “Fuck me. Are you sure?”
Marc grimaced, even now fighting not to run into Bailey’s office and bend her over her desk.
“I’m sure. She makes me feel primitive—like the fucking animal I am.” He glanced around to make sure no one could overhear.
“It’s like we merge. You know—what’s inside us. I know it doesn’t make sense.”
Leland sighed. “It makes sense.” He took another sip of his beer. “It’s damned uncomfortable at times, but it sure as hell makes sense to me.”
Marc’s gaze went to the two-way mirror again, his gaze constantly drawn to her.
“I can watch James touch her and I don’t want to rip his head off. It gets to me, but just makes me want to join them. It bothered me, though, that you would feel the same way about her.”
“Is that why you didn’t want me to come here?”
Unsurprised that his friend had noticed, Marc shrugged, not bothering to answer and only slightly irritated at Leland’s low chuckle.
“Was it the same with you and Joe?”
Leland downed the last of his beer and slammed the glass on the bar with a force that should have shattered it.
“Yeah. Fuck.”
He sighed, staring down at the bar.
“From the pieces Diablo and I put together from the stories we’d heard from Ed, I’m wondering if the same thing happened to our parents. But, instead of sharing their mates, they fought over them. It caused so much commotion that people found out about us and hunted them down. I’m not about to let that happen. If you and James can’t work this out, you’re either going to have to both walk away from her, or you’re going to have to make a decision about which one gets her. Remember, though”—he eyed him meaningfully—“we have no idea if there’s another mate out there for you or not. But, decide soon. I’m not letting what happened to our parents happen again.”
Marc grimaced. “You take being in charge too seriously. We’ll work it out.”
Leland clenched his jaw, his eyes hardening into two chips of ice.
“Damned right I take it seriously. Most of you were not much more than babies when we left. Joe Diablo and I had a hand in helping to raise each and every one of you. I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to any of you. That means protecting all of you—even from yourselves. Shit, there’s trouble brewing.”
Marc swallowed the instinctive growl that rose in his throat and wrinkled his nose at the sour scent of evil coming from the three men who just walked in the door. He looked toward Bailey to make sure she was all right, checking her instinctively as though he’d done it all his life. Seeing her draped over the desk with James’s face buried between her thighs, Marc gripped the edge of the bar and willed his cock to behave.
“Yeah—and I’m just in the mood for it.”
Leland apparently saw no need to suppress his growl. “Yeah, but I’m meaner.” He leaned forward, signaling a frightened Ricky to come closer.
“What do you know about those men who just walked in?”
Ricky glanced over at the trio, but kept his attention on Leland, who he obviously considered a bigger threat.
“They’re trouble. I’d better ring for Bailey.” He pushed a button before Marc could stop him.
Grabbing Ricky’s arm, Marc yanked him closer, careful not to pull too hard and slam the kid into the edge of the bar and break a rib or two.
“Why the hell are you getting Bailey? She’s a woman, for God’s sake. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Shooting an anxious glance at the three men, who even now started trouble with customers, Ricky shrugged, looking more than a little nervous. “I agree with you, but she’s my boss. They’ve been coming in and causing trouble ever since we opened. Bailey’s already thrown them out twice this week. The last time she broke that guy’s arm.”
Gesturing toward the man with the cast, he smiled. “When he shoved her, she hit him with the baseball bat. She always wants to know about trouble in her bar.”
Marc jumped up, intent on getting to the office before Bailey came racing out here. A quick glance showed her still in the grips of pleasure, but he couldn’t count on her not hearing anything.
“I’ll go, just because I know if she sees what’s going on, she’ll come rushing out here. Leland, Bailey would probably get upset if Ricky got hurt. Can you see that he stays out of trouble for a minute?”
Leland grinned, turning to face the troublemakers, who’d stopped to eye Leland warily.
“Absolutely. I haven’t been in a bar fight in…days.”
* * * *
Slamming the door to her office didn’t give Bailey even a small percentage of the satisfaction she’d hoped it would.
So she kicked the desk.
Too agitated to sit, she paced back and forth, but the postage stamp size of her office made it impossible to take more than a few steps before she had to turn back again.
Shooting a dirty look at Marc through the two-way mirror, she kicked her desk again.
“Asshole. Who does he think he is, coming into my bar and trying to tell me what to do?”
I can’t wait to hear that hitch in your breathing when I take you.
Christ, she’d come so close to just grabbing him and taking him upstairs to her apartment so they could finish what they’d started that night at his house.
Just by walking through the door, he and James had aroused her. She’d never been taken in by smooth talk before, but the hunger in Marc’s voice had her pussy clenching at emptiness and a flood of juices dampening her panties.
Even now, her clit tingled.
Asshole.
She glanced through the mirror again, disconcerted to find him staring straight at her. Her breasts swelled, her nipples poking insistently against her sweater.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she purposely looked away from him to the empty stool beside him.
Wondering where James had gone, she resumed her pacing.
They’d been so wonderful to her that night, taking care of her when she’d been so defenseless. She couldn’t believe how brave they’d been. Hearing her scream, they’d gone into the woods despite the fact that a panther reportedly lived there.
Not every man would do that—but then they’d already proven themselves to be much more than ordinary men.
She’d had several days of backbreaking work getting the bar ready to reopen, work that didn’t require much thought, which gave her way too much time to think about Marc and James.
She wasn’t really alarmed by her attraction to both of them. Strong, attractive, and superbly masculine, they put other men to shame.
Over the last week, she’d convinced herself that she’d been an idiot to be so nervous around them and vowed that if she had the opportunity to get to know them a little better, she would sure as hell take it.
She knew either one of them would make a magnificent lover, but each day that went by with no word from them, her anger at herself grew. Never in her life had she allowed a man to consume her thoughts the way both Marc and James did. Apparently, they didn’t feel the same way, but she understood herself enough not to blame them for that.
She’d pretty much talked herself out of them, and then like a schoolgirl, had been so excited to see them walk in, only to have Marc ruin it by acting like an ass.
She looked at him again through the glass, surprised to see that he still seemed to stare straight at her, apparently not paying any attention at all to whatever Leland was saying to him.
Knowing he couldn’t see her, she stuck her tongue out at him.
&
nbsp; She knew it was a childish gesture, but it made her feel a little better. At least it didn’t hurt like kicking the desk had.
God, she ached.
Bracing her hands on her desk, she took several deeps breaths, hoping to calm herself down. The need that clawed at her felt even stronger than it had the day after they’d rescued her, the intensity of it so alarming, it hurt her stomach.
A knock startled her and had her spinning on her heel, her hand going to her chest. Staring at the door, she took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. She didn’t want either Ricky or Gun to see her this way. She didn’t want anyone to see her this way.
Weakness of any kind had to be hidden at all costs.
Forcing a smile, she opened the door, shocked to find James standing on the other side.
Her smile fell, lust slamming into her with a force that stole her breath. Her fingers just itched to explore his wide chest and to run her hands through his incredibly dark hair. Remembering his teasing when he threatened to stick his hand under the covers, she pressed a hand to her quivering stomach.
The epitome of tall, dark, and handsome, he looked good enough to eat. The idea of starting at his full, sexy lips and then working her way down his magnificent body appealed to her. Lowering her gaze, she admired his flat stomach before allowing her gaze to move lower.
He made no attempt to hide the fact that he was hard, the impressive bulge pressing against his jeans making her stomach tighten even more.
To her shock, her pussy and bottom both sizzled with awareness, the sensation so unfamiliar and overpowering that she took a step back before meeting his gaze again.
His hard, brown eyes sharpened and darkened until they appeared nearly black, but remained hooded as they raked over her. The trail of heat left behind had her gripping the edge of the door, fighting to get her raging hormones under control.
The knowing light in his eyes told her he knew exactly what he did to her, and that he had every intention of using it to her advantage.
Not about to let him get the upper hand, she started to slam the door in his face.
“Get out.”