Every Which Way

by Sasha White

  The guys helped with the dishes and she said, “You know ya’ll aren’t normal, right?”

  “Yes, we’re aware, but is there something specific you have in mind?” Ranger asked with a happy smile.

  “Cooking? Helping with dishes?”

  “We’re all grown-ups,” Mac said with a shrug. “Not a big deal.”

  “I’m thinking I need to look into putting a hot tub on my back deck,” Jonathan said, changing the subject.

  “You don’t have a back deck,” Mac reminded him.

  “Not yet, but it shouldn’t take the three of us long to build one. I have another couple of weeks of vacation before my charge gets back in town, Mac probably has a few months before he starts working with Drake, and you’re on reduced duty right now while you bring Mac up to speed.”

  “Your charge?” asked Bethany.

  “Yeah,” Jonathan answered. “I’m head of security for Aaron Drake’s wife. She comes from money, and I’ve been with her since she was thirteen. She and Aaron are on their delayed honeymoon, and he’s acting as her sole security while they’re gone. He wants time alone with her, and I deemed it a bad idea to insist I came along. Turns out,” he said with a cocky smile in her direction, “he did me a favor.”

  “You’ve been with her since she was thirteen? I guess I need to ask how old ya’ll are?”

  “Ah. We’re probably older than you think. Most shapeshifters age slower than humans. I’m thirty-seven, even though I still look twenty-five, apparently.”

  “I’m thirty-six,” Mac told her, “and Ranger’s the baby at thirty-three.”

  “I’ll be thirty in a few weeks.”

  “Yeah, we know,” Mac said as he looked at the other guys and then back to her. “I’m still officially working for Uncle Sam, and my job position requires me to do a background search before I become intimate with someone a second time.” He shrugged and added, “Technically, I’m not supposed to tell you anything, even that, but you saw a little of what happened to me, and I know Ranger explained a few things. I can’t ever tell you much, even with our binding, but I don’t want to lie about looking into you. I’ll always have to keep some secrets from you, but I don’t want any of them to involve you.”

  Bethany took a breath, got off the sofa, and walked to her window. She lived in an upper middleclass subdivision in the Hamilton Place area, but it was an older neighborhood so she wasn’t looking at cookie cutter houses, thank goodness. Her back to the men, she said, “So, Mac was a spy of some sort, I think Ranger was or is Special Forces of some kind, and now I know Jonathan is apparently an elite bodyguard.” She shook her head and turned around. “I was worried about Gen, being on the arm of a motorcycle club president, but something tells me I’ve really stepped in it.”

  “I was an Army Ranger for eighteen months, and was promoted into a top secret unit I can’t tell you about,” Ranger told her. “I gained the name when I joined, because they don’t usually pull from the Ranger unit, and it was kind of a slam, at first. Eventually, it wasn’t anymore, but I had to prove myself to them.”

  “And now you work for this Aaron Drake? Why?”

  He shook his head. “You share a little more about yourself, I’ll consider sharing more.”

  “But ya’ll already know about me! I can’t exactly do a background check on all three of you!”

  “We know you make nearly two hundred dollars an hour, and you specialize in sports injuries,” Mac said. “You’re under contract with the local university system and are approved to work on their athletes, and it sounds like we won’t see you much on the weekends during football season, as you’re also under contract for two professional teams, to work on their injured people before and after games so they’re loose enough to play.”

  “You were attacked when you were seventeen,” Ranger added. “The report says you were drunk but still managed to fight him off. You ended up in the hospital with a sprained shoulder, but the culprit was never caught. You had a black eye and a busted lip, and the officer who wrote the report thought you’d had a fight with your boyfriend and were protecting him.”

  “That’s supposed to be sealed,” Bethany said, her eyes shooting daggers.

  “It is,” Mac said, without even an ounce of apology.

  “We know your mom’s been through four husbands and was never married to your father,” Ranger said in a soft voice as he walked to her and rested his hands on her hips. “My intuition tells me the one she married when you were nine took a special interest in you. You were sent away to camp for the entire summer, and your grades took a dive the next year.”

  “How fucking deep did ya’ll look into me?” she asked, her voice low, too.

  “They’re telling you what they found out,” Jonathan said. “Trying to be honest and upfront. No secrets we don’t have to keep.”

  She shook her head and told them, “I think I’d like you all to leave now, please.”

  “Gen’s big brother and his best friend were considered persons of interest in an incident that sent an eighteen year old to the hospital with major brain trauma and several broken bones a couple of days after you were hurt. They took care of your boyfriend, didn’t they?” Mac asked.

  They could tell if she lied, so she told them, “Yeah. I didn’t ask them to, but I wasn’t terribly upset when I found out.” She stepped away from Ranger, and thankfully, he let her go. “You aren’t wrong about my stepdad, either. It doesn’t mean any of it’s any of your business, though. I take care of myself. I may not carry a gun everywhere like Gen, but I have one, and I have my carry license. Sometimes I go to Frisco’s house and shoot with Gen — he has a range out back. I carry pepper spray, and I’ve taken some self-defense classes. I also have a really good grasp of human anatomy, and how to hurt someone with just a touch. I know I can’t force the three of you to leave, though, so I’ll ask nice, again. Please, leave.”

  “What kind of gun do you have?” Mac asked.

  Bethany looked at the three men, touched her pocket to make sure her phone was in it, and walked to her front door, grabbing her purse on the way out, saying, “Lock the door when you leave,” as she slammed her own front door behind her. The men had ridden together and pulled in beside her, so she wasn’t blocked in, thank goodness. She half expected them to stop her from leaving, but Mac stood on the front porch and watched her drive away.

  No idea where she was going, she drove three blocks to a manicure shop and went in to see if someone was available to give her a pedicure. They were, and an hour later she was out the door, her toes a beautiful shade of metallic purple.

  The guys’ car was still in her driveway when she got home, but she went inside anyway. It was her damned house.

  “How did ya’ll know I was coming back?” she asked as she stepped into her den. They’d been watching TV, but Ranger turned it off and they all focused on her as he said, “You’re too damned stubborn to let us run you out of your house for long. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

  Bethany sat in a chair and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her face in her palms, not looking at any of them.

  “I’m pissed, and hurt, and I feel as if I’ve been violated.”

  “When I was eleven,” Jonathan told her, “a few months before my first change, my uncle took me hiking and raped me. I didn’t tell anyone, and when I was sixteen, I found out he was planning a hiking trip with my seven year old cousin, and I killed my uncle. It’s why my family sent me away to be a soldier at sixteen. I have a high school diploma, but it isn’t a standard one.”

  “You can’t join the military at sixteen.” There was so much more she wanted to say, but she started with the easiest.

  “It was a supernatural force, and not a nice one. I joined the United States military at eighteen, to get away from them.”

  She was figuring out what to say next when Ranger said, “You already know my most traumatic story, being turned into a werewolf and having to live apart from my family fo
r years until I gained control of my wolf.”

  “My mom was killed in a car crash during my last year of college,” Mac said. “My sister is married to my best friend. He knows I’m a werewolf, but she doesn’t. My dad won’t be able to know, either. I don’t have any major childhood traumas, but you know what happened to me just before I was turned, and you know what I am.”

  They were trying. She was still pissed at Ranger and Mac, as they seemed to be the ones who’d snooped. Jonathan, though, she discovered she was no longer angry with.

  He was sitting on the sofa, and she ignored the other two as she walked to him and sat in his lap facing him, with a leg on either side and her hands on his shoulders.

  “I’m good, Raggedy. No leftover trauma, and somehow I escaped the life without becoming a psychopath. I only told you because I thought it fair you knew my deep dark secret.”

  “You were turned at eleven?”

  “No, I was born a wereleopard and my first change happened at eleven. I was stronger than a normal child, but wasn’t superhuman-strong in human form until I was probably twelve or thirteen.”

  He pulled her close and she relaxed into him. She wasn’t ready to end up in bed with all of them, though, and wanted to talk more.

  She opened her eyes, looked at them, and asked, “Have ya’ll ever played Cards Against Humanity?”

  After four hours of playing games, they went to bed, but there was only snuggling and talking before everyone went to sleep. Her guys seemed to understand she wasn’t up for more, tonight.

  Last night, they’d just fucked. The next time might be more than mere sex, and the thought terrified Bethany.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ranger awoke before everyone else and went to the kitchen to start breakfast. They’d already learned Mac couldn’t cook for shit, and Jonathan could only cook meat and fish. He did a damned good job with it, but Ranger had turned into their main cook.

  Bethany didn’t have to work today, and Ranger planned to woo her with adventures and keep her mind off the fact the four of them were growing close.

  Her mom had chosen men badly, and so had Bethany while she was young. She hadn’t let anyone get close to her in years, the best Ranger could tell. She’d decided she was better on her own than with a man, and they were going to have to convince her she could trust them.

  Ranger chopped and cut onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and spinach. He grated a few kinds of cheese together, and then started frying up three pounds of bacon. She had a French press and an electric kettle, along with a dozen kinds of coffee. He put water in the kettle, but would wait until people started waking before heating it.

  Mac stumbled in first, picked vanilla coffee as it seemed the least flavored, and made himself a cup as Ranger made his omelet.

  Bethany came in next, chose a gourmet coffee with caramel and chocolate, made it really strong without about half as much water as she should, but then poured as much milk into her cup as she did coffee. Ranger made a note of her preferences, and of which coffee flavors were in the front. The next time she spent the night with them there’d be a coffee press and whole milk, along with coffee she liked.

  He had her choose what she wanted in her omelet, and talked to her as he cooked. She seemed more laidback today, but Ranger knew they still had a ways to go before she let them in.

  Jonathan joined them a few minutes later and helped with the bacon while Ranger made Mac another omelet, and then several for himself and Jonathan.

  “I’m going to conserve water and take Raggedy to the shower with me,” Jonathan said as they finished eating.

  Ranger chuckled at her surprised face as Jonathan picked her up and walked through the house with her.

  Bethany’s house was nearly as big as Jonathan’s, and was closer to her work. He’d need to talk to the guys about how to see her as much as possible during the week without making her feel as if they were invading her space.

  * * * *

  Bethany barely kept from squealing when Jonathan picked her up, but didn’t protest as he started the water and helped her out of her shirt.

  She grinned as he bent to lovingly kiss each breast, and did as he said when he suggested she finish getting undressed and into the shower.

  His hands moved hers away from her head as she lathered the shampoo, and she leaned against him as his fingers worked her scalp. “How often do you treat yourself to a massage?” he asked, his voice soft.

  “I traded off with a friend where I used to work, but over the past two years,” she paused, sighed, and answered truthfully, “not enough.”

  Jonathan had magic fingers, and as they made their way from her scalp to the tight muscles at her shoulders and neck, and eventually to her breasts, she melted into him.

  He used the handheld unit to rinse the shampoo from her hair, and then went to his knees, put one of her feet on his shoulder, and proceeded to bring her so close to an orgasm she was afraid her remaining knee would collapse.

  Before it did, though, he donned a condom, sat on the bench, pulled her into his lap, helped her sit on his cock, and pulled her left nipple into his mouth. Bethany didn’t have to be told what to do, and she rode him like a wild woman as he played with her breasts and nipples.

  “Ah, god, I’m so sore. You tortured my nipples the other night, and now they’re so fucking sensitive.”

  He took his mouth off, wrapped his hand around one of her breasts and compressed it, and moaned when he felt her spasm around his cock. “They like to be treated rough,” he said with a sadistic smile. “I’m going to have fun binding them with rope, torturing them for real.”

  Just the thought was enough to send Bethany over the edge, and she sped up as she felt her climax approaching. Jonathan talked her through her orgasm, pinching her nipples and manipulating her clit when she started coming down, so she skyrocketed into another orgasm. And then another.

  When she collapsed forward onto him, he stood with her, put her on her feet, and turned her around, “Hands on the bench, Bethany. I wanna take you from behind.”

  “Not without lube!” she protested.

  “Not your ass, Raggedy. I want to take you from behind.”

  “Oh,” she said as she turned and put her hands on the bench, “that’s different.”

  He moaned as he pressed into her, and she went up on her toes as she heard herself say, “God, yes.”

  “So fucking responsive, I could stay buried in you all day,” Jonathan said as he sped up.

  Bethany wanted to make him lose control, and she arched her back and pulled her legs closer together so she could milk him as he fucked her.

  He let loose with a half-dozen expletives and then said, “Safeword for me if it’s too much, okay?”

  “Not a problem, but we aren’t even close to too much,” Bethany gasped.

  Seconds after the words left her mouth, it was almost too much. Jonathan’s hips moved faster and harder than she thought humanly possible, and thank goodness he held her in place, or she’d have slammed into the wall as he jackhammered into her.

  He seemed to know he needed to back off, and he did just a teensy bit as she was opening her mouth to say yellow, and suddenly she was screaming through another orgasm, her shouts reverberating off the tiled walls.

  Jonathan came with her, and sat on the bench to pull her into his lap as they finished.

  “You okay?” he asked, as he held her and kissed her cheek, her neck, and just under her ear.

  “Fantastic,” she said, so out of breath it was embarrassing.

  He conditioned her hair while their heads were out from under the spray, and she was surprised he knew to get as much water out as possible before applying the conditioner.

  “I had long hair as a teen, and not even my shapeshifter status made this red mop behave without conditioner.”

  “It was just the one time, with your uncle?”

  “Yeah,” he said, busy working the conditioner through her hair. “He tried to take me hiki
ng a few other times but I always found a way to keep from going.”

  She had so many questions to ask, but only said, “Thanks for telling me.”

  When they came out of the shower, Snowy was sitting in Bethany’s bedroom, just over the line between tile and hardwood floor, as if he were making a statement.

  “What’s up, Snowy?” she asked her cat, forgetting for the moment she’d just showered with someone who probably smelled like a much larger cat.

  Snowy glared at her, then Jonathan, and back to her.

  “He isn’t sure about me,” said Jonathan. “Ranger won him over with food, but I haven’t had a chance to feed him when he’s hungry, yet.”

  “He slept with me,” Mac said from the den, raising his voice enough Bethany could hear him. Under normal circumstances, someone in the den couldn’t hear talk from her bedroom and bathroom, and she kept forgetting her guys weren’t normal.

  She didn’t raise her voice to say, “I’m glad you didn’t sleep alone. It doesn’t feel right, all of us together and you off to the side.”

  “It won’t be forever, Raggedy,” Jonathan said, as he watched her bend over and twist her hair into a towel. “Keep bending over, though, and I may feel the need to take you again.”

  “You can’t be serious!” She laughed as she stood, secured the towel, and reached for her robe. “We just…” She eyed his cock and made a point of tying her robe’s sash. “Okay, so you’re serious. Ya’ll sort of gave me the night off, except for the quickie with Mac, but I’m still sore from the night before!”

  Ranger stepped into her bedroom and leaned against her dresser, his hip against it and one ankle crossed over the other. “You didn’t tell him he couldn’t bind your breasts.”

  Her gaze met Ranger’s and desire pulsed through her veins. She’d played around with a few Doms, but nothing super serious, and Ranger both scared and excited her. The promise of what he could do, and the knowledge she’d probably like it…