by Helena Ray
“So,” he started, suddenly bashful in the presence of the brunette beauty, “how do you feel about smoothies?”
Marta looked startled, shaking her head and causing the thick brown waves of her hair to dance tantalizingly over her shoulders. “I guess I feel…positively.” She smirked and nodded her head. “Yes, my feelings toward smoothies would all fall under the category of positive.” She used a stiff voice, but her growing smile belied her amusement.
“Indeed, I share these feelings.” Phil followed her lead, joining in her sarcastic play. “Thusly, I prepare them each morning for my guests.”
Marta’s eyes brightened with realization. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Her sudden enthusiasm endeared her even more to Phil.
“If you think I’m saying that I’d like your help hauling bags of frozen fruit out of the freezer, then you’re absolutely correct.”
“Are there any smoothies in it for me?”
Phil smiled and turned back to the kitchen, praying that he had interpreted her flirtation correctly and she would soon follow. After an excruciatingly long moment, he heard her footsteps behind him.
“Freezer’s that way,” he said and pointed to the corner.
Marta crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not helping unless there’s a smoothie in it for me.”
“We’ll see.” Phil shrugged then boldly winked. When she gave an exaggerated sigh and headed for the freezer, a wide grin pulled at the corners of his mouth.
They worked in companionable silence for a while, Marta removing bags of fruit while Phil prepared the ingredients for the breakfast menu.
“And why, exactly, do so many Savage Hunger customers order smoothies in the middle of fall?” Marta slammed the last bag of frozen peaches on the island and leaned her elbows on the countertop.
Phil walked around the island and mimicked Marta’s action, leaning on his elbows across from her. “Starbucks. I blame all bizarre beverage preferences developed in recent years on Starbucks.”
Marta threw her head back and laughed, revealing the creamy skin of her neck to Phil. Every inch of her seemed to beg for his touch, for his fingers to run over what had to be velvety softness. The small freckles on her neck called to him like a map of where his mouth should land, where he should kiss her ever so gently.
“What?”
Phil started at Marta’s words and realized she must have noticed his open admiration. The countertop suddenly became quite interesting to him, and he mumbled as he stared at the surface.
“Nothing, uh, just thinking about how much cornmeal I need to…” He trailed off as he saw her stand up and move away from him.
“Well, if that’s all”—he looked up as she spoke, and she caught his gaze with hers—“I guess I’ll just go grab my uniform and—”
Now or never, Phil. Time to man up.
“Wait.” With purpose that shocked even him, he strode around the island and stood across from Marta. A wave of brown hair fell across her cheek as she turned her face up to him. “Come here.”
He took a step toward her, holding her gaze the whole time. Her look was quizzical, and he prayed what he was about to do would dispel any doubt she may have had about his intentions. When the mounds of her breasts brushed against his chest, he stopped and cupped her chin lightly with his thumb and forefinger. Tilting her chin up to his face, his eyes closed, and he began his slow descent toward her lips.
Their lips met in a soft brushing, but Marta’s body stilled when Phil wrapped his hand around her upper arm. His heart stopped beating for a moment. Had he pushed too far, asked for too much? Without Sam or Mel’s talent with the opposite sex, maybe he had misinterpreted Marta’s signal. Damn it. He’d been certain she was flirting with him. Defeated, he started to pull away from the soft whisper of a kiss that had so enchanted him.
But Marta halted Phil’s retreat. Her hand shot to his waist and curled into a fist around the fabric of his chef’s jacket. Her lips sought his, and Phil couldn’t keep a hold on his lust for another instant. His fingers tangled in her hair to hold her face steady. He opened his mouth, so eager to taste the morsel of his mate’s lips, and swiped his tongue along her bottom lip, savoring both the softness of her mouth and the light, sweet taste of her flesh.
Her mouth instantly opened to his, and he was able to delve further into her hot, wet depths. Marta explored his mouth with matching enthusiasm, raking her teeth over his lips and smoothing over the bites with tiny licks. They moved in synchronicity, turning their heads from side to side, and Marta matched each of Phil’s advances. He smoothed his hands down her back, pressing her closer to him and relieving some of the pressure on his now painfully hard dick. She thrust her hips forward each time he pressed his hard cock against her soft body.
Lust overrode any sense Phil may have had. He opened his eyes and broke the kiss with Marta for a brief moment. Just before she bit into his neck and chased away rational thought for another lustful moment, he located the island behind her. He took the flesh of her earlobe between his teeth and pulled, eliciting a moan from Marta. Her open mouth presented Phil the perfect opportunity to claim her mouth again. She kissed him back with eager passion as his hands ventured further south. He roamed his palms over the small of her back, then over the swell of her round ass, and finally to her ass cheeks. He squeezed her against him then used his grip to lift her up. He heard a clanging of pans as he set Marta down on the island countertop.
Her legs curled around his waist, and he could feel the heat from her pussy flowing out through her jeans and spreading over his stomach. God, he needed to be inside of her, needed to push his cock all the way into the steaming hot—
“Good morning, you two.”
The sound of Sam’s voice halted Marta’s writhing against Phil, and he felt his erection deflate as she pulled away. A lump formed in his throat when he saw the look of horror on her face. She turned her head from side to side, mouth agape as she looked between them.
“I gotta go to work.” Her voice was only a squeak as she hopped off the island and headed toward the door of the kitchen. Sam stood there, smug, as he rested one shoulder against the doorjamb. When Marta approached the door, she didn’t raise her eyes to look at him, just stood stubbornly in front of him.
“Hey, don’t be upset,” Sam said with an apologetic tone in his voice. “Look, we can talk about it.”
He made the mistake of standing upright as he spoke, and Marta instantly darted through the opening he created.
The silence in the kitchen weighed on Phil’s shoulders as he turned slowly to glare at Sam. Anger unlike any he had ever felt boiled under Phil’s skin, and despite his tightly held control over his lion form, at the moment, he wanted to shift and rip Sam’s throat out.
“What the fuck, Sam?”
“What?” Sam shrugged his shoulders as he walked into the kitchen and audaciously hopped onto the island, right where Marta had been seated.
Phil squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples.
“Whether or not we mate her, she wasn’t ready for that.”
“She’ll have to accept it sooner or later.”
Phil glared at his brother.
“It should have been later, Sam, and you know that. We can’t expect her to accept that she’s mated to a family of ménageamous shape-shifters instantly. We have to expose her to it gradually. Have you even listened to any of the stories previous generations have told about taking their mates?”
“Chelsea accepted it right away.” Sam shrugged his shoulders and opened the bag of frozen peaches beside him. He started to take one out, but Phil swatted his hand away.
“First of all, no, she didn’t.” Sam opened his mouth to rebut, but a glare from Phil silenced him. “Roarke’s told me about it, and they gave her plenty of time to get used to the idea.”
“Yeah, but they’re friends. You know how girls talk. Maybe they—”
Phil felt his claws burning beneath h
is fingernails, and it took all his concentration to keep from shifting.
“Sam, listen to yourself. Are you really saying that Marta will accept all of this? That she’ll welcome a situation that must sound to her like the plot of a bad romance and horror movie crossover merely because her best friend did under very different circumstances?” Sam had taken advantage of Phil’s tirade to sneak a peach and was chewing on the frozen fruit. His brother’s flippant attitude toward Marta’s reaction boiled Phil’s blood, raising it closer to the hot-blooded furor of his lion form. “Well?”
Finally, something resembling the appropriate gravity required in the situation settled over Sam’s features.
“It doesn’t really matter, though, does it?”
“Don’t say that.” Phil needed to believe they had a chance, that Mel would come around and that Sam hadn’t just blown it for them. “Mel didn’t say no definitely. We could still make this work.” He nodded at the stainless range. “That is, if you haven’t already said yes to Norman.”
Sam winced briefly, pain flashing across his features, then shook his head as he hopped off the island and started toward the door. He placed his hand against the swinging door and turned back to Phil.
“You have more faith in Mel than I do.”
“And you have more faith in Ulysses Norman.”
* * * *
Now Marta was the one doing the avoiding. All day long, both Sam and Phil had tried to get her attention. Marta had come to dread retrieving orders from the kitchen. Each time she did, Phil was there. If not handing off the food himself, he would smile with her from across the kitchen. He came out to greet some of the guests, even hugging Chelsea. He had gazed at her from across the diner, and she swore he was using her best friend to bait her. No, that would not happen. Instead, she stayed with the interminably grumpy Clayton Abbott, preferring his pointed comments about the quality of the coffee to facing what had happened that morning.
She replayed the morning in her head as she started on her walk back to her apartment. Phil was so enchanting. Their easy banter comforted her, providing some solace in her situation. The way his hair curled around his face and offset his high cheekbones and aquiline nose never failed to fascinate her. This morning had been so easy, so fun until that one moment. She relived the moment over and over and over again, the brush of his fingers beneath her chin as real then as it had been that morning.
When their eyes had locked, Marta had taken leave of her senses. Something in the back of her mind screamed at her and reminded her what had just come to pass with his brother. But his lips had choked that voice and sent her into a frenzy. When his mouth and his hands and his hips worked in concert, Marta climbed toward a dangerous cliff of ecstasy.
Suddenly, the bite in the chilly night air was welcome. She was certain her skin would burn through her clothing without it. She felt the muscles in her pussy clench as she remembered how he had taken what he wanted when he palmed her ass and threw her onto the countertop. All senses vanished, and she only lived in that moment with Phil. Then Sam walked in, and reality shattered the glass box of lust and fantasy that had held both of them.
No, the Pope brothers were too dangerous. She wished that Phil and then Sam hadn’t monopolized Chelsea that day. Girl talk would certainly help dampen the rising anxiety inside of her. She couldn’t come between brothers. She would be gone soon, anyway. Marta stuck her chin out as she turned off Treaty Lane and onto Kwitakusix Cove. Much as she loved her best friend, she wasn’t the kind to stick around and play wife to one man, let alone two.
Marta had achieved everything in her life on her own, and she didn’t see that stopping anytime soon. When she was sixteen, she had started working as a delivery driver at a Chinese food restaurant in order to help her single mother pay their rent. Her work on her high school debate team and her straight-A average earned her a full scholarship to Rhodes College in her hometown of Memphis. While there, she had worked tirelessly as a waitress for all her spending money and still managed to graduate summa cum laude with degrees in English and Communications
She would make it through this road bump, like all the rest. Even as she tried to convince herself that she didn’t need a man’s support, the knot in her stomach tightened. This town had done something to her libido. She had never really craved sex, but since arriving in Savage Valley, her nights had been filled with torrid dreams involving her two ridiculously attractive employers.
As she approached her fourplex, a figure outlined by the low light above the porch stood outside her apartment. Ah, yes. The third man who haunted her dreams stepped into the light, and even in the dim glow, his perfectly formed features and tall, muscular frame sent waves of pleasure coursing through Marta’s body. The moonshine she imbibed with Mel must have affected her sensory memory somehow because even from her position several feet away, his spicy, woody scent seemed to envelop her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, an alarm sounded, reminding her of the wariness she felt only a few moments ago, but her hesitance dropped away at the intoxicating aroma. It grew stronger with each step toward him, reminding her how it felt to lean against his hard chest, the prickling of his black stubble against the sensitive skin of her neck.
“It’s getting colder,” he said as she stepped onto the porch across from him. Heat rolled off him in waves, and Marta could no longer feel the chill he mentioned.
“I guess it is.” She stood right in front of him, not bothering to open the door to her apartment.
“You have my jacket, remember?”
How could she forget? It sat over her desk chair in her apartment and reminded her each night of how she would see its owner again. With the way their last interaction ended, Marta’s hopes were high for this inevitable encounter.
“Oh, that old thing? I’m not sure if I threw it away or not.”
Mel smirked, quirking one eyebrow at her.
“Well, I hope you didn’t.”
He took a step closer to her, and it took all Marta’s control not to run her hands over the muscular chest outlined against his T-shirt.
“Why’s that?”
“Because…” He trailed off as he closed the distance between himself and Marta. Her breathing hitched, and for the second time that day, overwhelming need had her cunt pulsing. He lowered his face to hers, and his hot breath danced over her face. “It’s cold.”
He suddenly stood up straight and walked to Marta’s door, leaning on the wall beside it. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”
Marta took a deep breath to steady herself, then turned to him and folded her arms over her chest.
“Oh, you think that’s how it goes? You just demand entry to a young lady’s apartment and expect she’ll let you come waltzing in?”
“I don’t know.” The smirk on his face belied his words. “Will it work?”
Marta straightened her back and stuck her chin in the air. “A young woman must be courted,” she teased in an over-the-top British accent. “I don’t even know your last name.”
Mel raised his eyebrows at her, and for a long moment, they were both silent. Something flashed through his expression, and he stood up straight, taking the few steps needed to stand in front of Marta again.
“It doesn’t matter what my last name is. My family and I don’t really get along.”
One of his hands landed on her waist and slowly glided backward around Marta, settling on the small of her back. “What matters”—his other hand tangled in Marta’s hair—“is how much I want to do this.”
Mel used his grip on Marta’s hair to pull her head back then crushed his lips against hers. Every last drop of sexual tension Marta had fought since that morning poured out of her as she responded to his kiss. She ran her hands over the smooth muscles of his chest then wrapped her fists around the thin material of his T-shirt over his pecs. She pulled him closer to her, and her hips pressed against his legs. Her clit throbbed as she felt his matching attraction, the hard bulge of his cock pushing into her
stomach. She couldn’t grab her keys from her pocket fast enough.
Not breaking the kiss, she moved backward toward her door. Mel was with her every step of the way, pushing her back against the door once they reached it and grinding his hips against her. Marta snaked her hands behind his back to steady herself as she wrapped one leg around his thigh, in desperate need of some sort of friction on her clit, some sort of relief.
Keys. Get the keys. At least some part of her consciousness was wise enough to remind her not to give herself over to Mel right there on her porch for all of Savage Valley to see. Reluctantly, she broke the kiss and whispered against Mel’s lips, “Let’s get your jacket.”
He clearly understood her meaning because he loosed his grip on her enough for her to turn and work the lock. But apparently he wasn’t able to restrain himself from touching her. As she fumbled with her keys, his hands shot to her breasts, palming them as she tried desperately to unlock the door. She yelped at the feel of his stubble brushing across her neck as he moved her ponytail out of the way with his face and laved at the back of her neck. Her errand was delayed as she moaned and pressed her chest forward, allowing Mel more access to her rapidly sensitizing breasts. One of his hands journeyed lower, following her curves down to the waistband of her jeans. She heard the deadbolt click open but couldn’t find the coordination to turn the handle when Mel’s hand ghosted over the front of her jeans then closed over her mound. Her hips bucked against his hand, and he pushed back, pressing his middle finger right over her clit.
Luckily, he could manage some sort of coordination, and the door flew open in front of Marta. She quickly turned around and snaked her arms around Mel’s neck to balance herself, her lips finding his immediately. She stumbled backward as he navigated the two of them into her apartment. Marta heard the door slam shut, and an instant later she found her back pressed against the hard wood. She stood on tiptoes, trying to get closer to Mel, trying to will the intimacy she needed into existence.