by Dizzy Hooper
"How?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
Hardly.
Frustrated, Landen supplies, "They weren't you."
Colt growls. Grady nods. "They weren't. No one has ever been you."
"But—"
This doesn't make sense. I shake my head. "You don't know me."
"We know your scent. Your skin. We danced with you in the snow, and you give as good as you take. You're a partner. A match."
"It's been less than a day…"
"We know your heart," Landen promises. "Everything you told us this morning…"
I dart my gaze to Grady. "You were listening?"
His eyes burn with intensity. "As if I could have torn myself away."
A low ripple of heat and awareness travels through me. "But I thought…"
"I'm sorry. I had to keep my distance. One whiff of you, the moment you crossed onto our property line…" A flush travels up his chest. His gaze darkens, and he licks his sinful lips. "You smelled so ripe. I wanted you so badly. I told you, we're compatible."
"So you—"
"Didn't want to maul you and mount you in our foyer, no. And I would have. Clearly."
My thoughts flash back to the way he wrestled me to the ground the instant we came in out of the snow, demanding I shift and then covering my body with his. He'd been ready to enter me right then and right there—and worse, I'd been about to let him.
That still doesn't make everything magically okay. "So you're sexually attracted to me."
"And you to us."
I shiver, but forge on. "That doesn't mean you want me for your mate."
His tone goes sharp. "Do you doubt us?"
I want to tuck my tail between my legs. To bow my head and show my throat. But part of why they want me is because I can hold my own.
"I mean no disrespect. But…how would that even work?"
"You would live here. With us. We would love you. Tend to you and dote on you. Care for you." His voice dips low, gravel filling it with pure sex. "Breed you."
My nervousness makes me bold. "What if I don't even want pups?"
"Then you wouldn't have to have them." He hesitates. "But…are you saying you don't?"
How can I possibly lie? "Of course I do."
Especially if they're yours.
I imagine this silent house filled with our children, tiny olive-skinned boys and a blonde little girl. We'd care for them and adore them and run with them on the moon.
And oh, but how we would make them. The image of me on a giant four poster bed with my three mates assaults me. Spread eagle, being hammered by male after male in turn until I was full with their seed. All of their come pumped into me, dripping down my thighs and rubbed into my breasts. Thick on my tongue. And my womb quickening, growing full with their pups.
"So it's settled then." Grady leans in closer. A fresh wave of his scent hits me, filled with lust and tenderness. It clouds my head. I want to give in. To start right now.
But this is forever, and already, I can tell, I would never regret it. These males are meant for me. They're strong and virile, tender and devoted. They're kind.
And they're sexy as hell.
Only, this isn't just about me.
I put a hand out to stop him as he leans in. His skin is searingly hot against my palm, and I nearly get distracted again. Almost lose my resolve.
He stops, waiting. He's so patient.
He deserves this.
So I manage, shakily, to warn them. "But I don't think you understand. You can't—you couldn't—" I swallow hard. "You couldn't possibly want me."
Chapter 10
All three men flinch as one, though each in his own way. Landen steps forward, while Colt sucks in a breath that inflates his whole chest, making him look even bigger and ready for a fight.
Grady, all but on top of me already, flares his nostrils and rises, looming. Anger wars with the arousal in his gaze, and the combination is potent. Real fear flickers through me, but it's tangled with my own desire. Fight or flight is one thing, but fight or flight or fuck is another, and inside I'm trying to figure out if it's even possible to do all three.
Clenching his fist in the fabric of the couch, Grady narrows his eyes. "How dare you say that?"
"You don't know me. You think you do, but—"
"We know enough," Landen swears.
I turn to him. "Do you know why I'm here?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Because my father cast me out." Oh, and that hurts.
So much has happened in the past twenty-four hours since I was exiled from my family, my pack. I've been so caught up in my own need and these men that I've pushed the pain of betrayal away.
But there it is.
In the shifter world, pack is everything. It's your life and your roots. It's almost impossible to enter into a passionless bond, but calculating wolves seek out potential mates that can give them better position within the hierarchy. Mate bonds join packs and dissolve them. They carry status. Power.
And I can offer none of that to these men.
Colt's low growl makes every hair on the back of my neck stand up on end. My heart pounds harder.
"I—I didn't do anything," I swear. "My father has a new mate, and she's terrible. Power-hungry, I think. Probably after my father's inheritance, but she turned him against me. He refused me entrance to our lands."
Those beautiful, rolling hills I loped across as a pup.
Those safe walls I was counting on to hide behind for the duration of my season, where I knew I would be untouched.
A hurt noise comes from Landen. He looks ready to shift and run across state lines to right this injustice, but I can't ask that of them.
I can't ask them to take me on.
"So, you see. I have no one. Nothing." A broken, empty place in the pit of my abdomen twists, wringing fresh blood from this wound. "I have nothing to offer you." No power, no status. "I'm homeless. I'm…" Anguish crushes me as I admit it. "I'm nothing."
And that's the trigger to make Colt break his silence. "You're everything."
Stunned silence eats up everyone else's protests—including my own.
Colt's dark eyes lock on mine as he steps away from the position he had taken up by the door. The tendons in his neck bulge, and his hands are fists by his sides.
"Don't you get it, Jessica? We know you. We could read you by your scent the moment you walked through our door." He glances at Grady. "Earlier, even. We know. We know it was unjust, and we don't care. You are our everything now."
My head spins. "But—"
Grady commands my attention again. "Don't you know where you are?"
"No."
Dizzy hysteria threatens to possess me. I have no idea. I fled from my father's home and become nothing, no one, and now I'm lost, locked in here with my season barreling down on me on with three gorgeous males who want to take me as their forever mate. I don't know who they are or where I am, only that I trust them.
Completely.
Then Grady puts his hand on my shoulder. His eyes, dark with anger and desire, soften. "You're in Broken Ladder Falls."
"No."
But he's not joking. Landen and Colt nod sagely in confirmation.
Suddenly, it all makes sense.
Broken Ladder Falls is a modern myth, but apparently it's also real. Every shifter knows the legend.
A couple of decades ago, it was home to one of the most powerful packs in North America, until it was torn apart by deceit. Another rival pack with its paws in the worst kinds of dealing lured all the males to a meeting.
And then doubled back around to slaughter all of their mates.
An empire fell in a day as a hundred shifters cried out in loss. The plan backfired spectacularly, of course. The mourning wolves unleashed a fury never seen before on this earth, wiping the rival pack from the map, but the damage was done. Those who survived the loss of their mates carried on as ghosts, raising their remaining pups. A staggering imbalance
of males persisted among the scattered remnants of the pack.
Resulting in this, apparently.
Homes full of smaller clusters of males, living alone, still shadowed by loss.
"Did you—" I snap my jaw shut. None of them are old enough to have been impacted directly by the massacre. But… "Did you lose…?"
"My mother and sisters. And my father soon after," Grady supplies.
"My whole clan," Landen says.
"Everyone," Colt echoes, and I suddenly feel so selfish. Here I mourned my exile while these men are grieving something so much worse.
Grady corrects him. "Everyone except each other." He turns to me and takes my hand. "So you see?"
I nod. "I'm starting to."
"Our pack is in tatters. The males who survive—we're bonded by blood and loyalty. We'd die for each other. But we would kill for our mate."
"If you doubt how seriously we take this…" Colt says.
"Don't," Landen supplies. "Every female is sacred. But you are the most sacred."
Grady trails his hand from mine up the bare skin of my arm, pushing the blanket up, then running his fingers over it to the tender flesh of my throat. Right where a bonding mark would go.
Where three bonding bites might be placed.
"You are the most precious thing in our world." He cups my cheek, and I melt into it. "And if all you want is someone to see you through your season, we'll do just that." His adam's apple bobs. "We'll fuck you until you're satisfied, until you're raw and dripping with us, and we'll—we'll let you go."
A whine comes from one of the other men, but my focus is on Grady entirely. Heat moves through me.
I've been able to ignore the urgency of my biology, the hungry groaning of my womb and the growing slickness between my thighs. But with this man here, offering to take me, my need reasserts itself.
Only that's not all he's offering. Not by a long shot.
"But we don't want to let you go," he says. "We want to keep you. Forever."
The word reverberates through my soul. I just lost my heart the day before. I lost my home, and it left a gaping hole in my chest.
But these men are filling it. Their love radiates from their eyes, and we barely know each other, but in that instant, it doesn't matter.
I push my own fear and my own grief from my chest, and in their place, I allow these males and their scents to fill me. And they're right.
Their scent screams of safety. Their gazes speak of love and care-taking. Already, they've sheltered me and fed me, run with me and played with me and touched me, and I suddenly can't wait.
My pussy throbs, and my breasts feel heavy with the ripeness of my season. My heart pounds.
Their pain, still etched in their eyes, reaches into between my ribs and squeezes.
They love me. They want me. They want to keep me.
Forever.
And so the word spills from my lips.
"Yes."
"Yes?" Grady asks, and he's salivating, his gaze glowing, his hand burning against my skin.
I glance from him to impulsive Landen to solid, stoic Colt and back, and my decision could not be clearer.
"Yes," I repeat. "All of it. Fuck me. Take me. Claim me." I swallow hard. "Bond me."
With that, I shove the blanket from my skin, making myself naked before them.
And then they're on me.
Chapter 11
It's like an explosion. Like a house going up in flames.
I had no idea how much energy I was putting into maintaining my composure until the second I stop. All at once, my skin is on fire, my blood pumping hot. My empty, aching womb cries out, twisting with a need so sharp it translates into physical pain. My breasts are twin points of desperation, while my pussy screams. Slickness spreads all the way down to my thighs as my season finally hits.
And it's both so much better and so much worse, because, for the first time in my life, I'm not alone.
I suck in a deep breath as I stare into Grady's glowing, golden eyes. The scents of the three males in the room make my throat burst into flames. Sweet and spicy, woodsy and warm, and peaking with raw, sexual, male desire.
All of their restraint crumbles at the same time as mine. Their scents intensify, layering and doubling, and I breathe them all in.
Grady pounces first. It's his alpha right to do so, and I welcome it. He tackles me to the ground. Around me, there's the sound of furniture shifting, but I can't focus on it, because finally, finally, finally, this man's lips are on mine.
His mouth is plush and hot, and his beard scrapes harshly against my skin. I moan into the kiss, opening for him, letting him in, and he takes full advantage. His tongue plunges forward, his teeth scraping my lip. He might draw blood or maybe I do—it doesn't matter.
"More," I pant against his lips. "More, please, I need—"
"We've got you," he promises, and then he shudders. "Mate. Our mate, ours."
Whatever else he might say is swallowed up as he crashes our mouths together once more. I writhe, naked and needy, flailing out with my arms and legs. I need him closer, need him in me and on me. My hands connect with the hot flesh of his back, and I groan. He drops to press his chest to mine. The pressure against my aching nipples shoots a line of fire straight to my clit. I clutch him closer and wrap my legs around his waist. For an instant, there's perfect, blissful pressure against my cunt, and I need more, need him inside, need to be pumped full of cock until I'm dripping with his seed.
"Please," I whine again.
"Shh, my love."
And then he's sliding down my body. I whine in protest, but the heat of his mouth on my throat silences me. Oh. I'd never known it could feel like this, that a tongue could be so silky and soft, teeth so sharp. He lingers over the spot where he'll bite me while he's deep inside, where our bonding mark will be, and I want it now, now, now.
But he keeps going, dropping until he takes the tip of my aching breast between his lips. Fireworks shoot off inside of me. I thread my fingers through his thick hair, raking my nails over his scalp and pressing up into that heat. But it's not enough.
I thrash my head to the side, and it's like light spilling in through a crack in my chest, I'm so relieved.
Because there's Landen at my side, Colt at the other, and they're both staring at me as if I'm something to eat.
Something to treasure.
And like I'm a warm hole to fuck, too.
"Please," I grate out again. I reach for them both, and they come willingly.
Landen's closer, so when I get my hand on the back of his neck, I pull him to my lips.
Kissing him is the sun coming up at dawn. He tastes unbearably sweet, with an edge of musk and hunger. His smooth jaw is a stark contrast to the beard burn Grady is currently rubbing into the naked flesh of my chest. His golden hair slips through my fingers like water. The muscles of his back ripple beneath my touch.
As Grady devours my breasts, Landen eats my tongue, slipping his own between my lips, and I moan for both, but I'm still unsatisfied.
A hand lands on the breast not currently occupied by Grady's mouth, and I arch. I break from Landen's lips to find Colt looming over the proceedings, his eyes black with lust. I reach for him, and he comes.
His kiss is darker, more demanding, and I give him everything. He plunders my mouth the way I want him to plunder my body, fucking me with his tongue. His stubble is a rougher scrape than Grady's full beard. By the end of this I'm going to be raw—everywhere—and I could scream, it all feels so good.
Landen and Colt take their turns kissing me while Grady descends lower on my body. I shiver as his mouth leaves my wet nipples exposed to the air, but they're covered soon enough with hot palms, fingers that pinch and twist and squeeze.
I'm rippling with sensation now, lost in the pleasure these men are wringing from my body, but there's a deeper need coiling inside me. A shifter female going into season is thrown into a sexual frenzy, but it's not just about touch. My pussy spasms
, desperate to be filled and bred. A fresh rush of slickness floods me, and a trio of moans fills the air as the scent of my desire hits my new mates.
It's finally enough to make Grady lose a bit of his careful patience. He nips at my belly and my hips, and then he's kneeling on the floor, wrenching my legs apart. His groan is even hotter this time as he stares at my wet cunt.
"Gorgeous. So wet." He slips a finger between my lips, and lets out another wrenching noise of need. "So hot."
"Please," I manage to beg between kisses.
"Please what?"
"Fill me, fuck me, need your cock."
"You're not ready for my cock, baby."
And he's probably right. All three of these men are huge, but I don't care. I want it.
Grady licks his lips. "But you will be."
He shoves my legs farther apart, putting me fully on display, and then he dips down.
The first hot stripe he licks up my pussy tears a scream from me. It feels so good, wet and soft, like nothing I've ever felt before. But all I've ever felt before have been my own hands and a couple of toys in the worst of my need. This is flesh and suction and teeth—
And it's Grady, tearing himself away with a sound in his throat that has me nearly coming on the spot.
"Virgin," he grits out, and the other two men at my sides freeze. His golden eyes bear down on me. "I can taste it on you. You're—"
Self-consciousness threatens to steal over me. "I—Is that okay?"
Grady shoves his packmates out of the way in his haste to get to my mouth. I moan into his kiss. Taste myself on his tongue. His cock drags against my aching center through his jeans, and I melt.
"Okay?" he asks between kisses. "You want to know if it's okay?"
I have no answer, only a renewed desperation to get closer.
He slides his mouth to my ear. "You have no idea what it does to me to know I'll be the first. The first to push inside, the first to fill you up with my cock, the first to fuck that perfect pussy." He grinds against me, driving another noise of need from me. "Knowing I'll be the first to fill you with my seed? It's the sexiest fucking thing I've ever heard."