by Becca Van
“No.” She shook her head.
“Why not, baby?” he asked gently.
She frowned, and Bas wondered whether she was going to tell him to mind his own business or not say anything at all as they minutes ticked by. Finally, she turned to meet his gaze then she gazed down at the counter, but he could tell she wasn’t seeing anything, was no longer in the present.
“My mother and father don’t like me, not even when I was a kid. I have no idea why or what I did to turn them against me, but…” She shrugged.
“Why do you think they don’t like you?” Beck asked.
“The earliest memory I have is when I was going to nursery school. At the time, we lived next to a cemetery. I had a vivid imagination as any kid does. Anyway, there was a man who worked in the graveyard driving a tractor to cut the grass, and I was frightened of him. I was always scared that he would chase after me, run me over and cut me up, and hide my body in one of the graves. Since I had to walk to nursery school by myself every day, I was terrified. One day, the fear got too much and I refused to go. My mother got angry with me, but instead of soothing my fears, holding my hand, and walking with me through the cemetery to school, she smacked me all the way there.”
“She fucking what?” Byron shouted. “You were how fucking old?”
“I was four.”
“Shit!” Beck shook his head.
“My mom also used to call me a selfish little bitch all the time. Maybe I was at times, but what kid isn’t selfish when they’re growing up? I wasn’t a problem child who did bad things all the time. Of course, I wasn’t an angel, either. I was a child still learning right from wrong, but that didn’t seem to matter.
“One of our neighbors had a daughter a couple of years younger than I was. I was in grade school and my friend and her mom asked me if I wanted to go camping with them. I was so excited I went and asked my parents. The answer was an immediate no, and when I asked why they’d refused, they said they thought my friend’s mother was promiscuous. She didn’t have a husband but she had two kids. I have no idea if she’d been married or what, not that I really cared. She did have a boyfriend, though.”
“Your parents sound very judgmental, darlin’,” Byron said.
Krista nodded. “They’re the most judgmental people I’ve ever met. I got into trouble that day.”
“What for?” Beck asked.
“For telling the truth.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bas asked angrily.
“No.”
“Explain,” Bas ordered.
“I had to tell my friend and her mother I wasn’t allowed to go and when they asked me why I couldn’t think of anything to tell them, so I said what my mom and dad had said. I went back home and was reading in my bedroom. When I heard raised voices, I snuck down the hallway to see what was going on. My friend’s mom was giving my parents hell for what they’d said. My parents weren’t happy that I’d been honest.” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “My father was livid. I was hiding in my room when my father came storming in. He shouted at me and told me I should have lied, but as he yelled he pulled his belt from his pants, wrestled me onto my stomach, bared my ass, and whipped me over and over. I’m sure the neighbors heard me screaming and crying.”
“How many times?” Byron asked from between clenched teeth.
“How many times what?”
“How many times did he hit you with his belt?”
“At least ten.”
“Motherfucking bastard.” Byron surged to his feet and began pacing.
“That’s what I thought, too.”
Bas couldn’t stand seeing the sadness in her eyes. He scooped her up from her seat into his arms, carried her into the living room, and sat on the sofa with Krista on his lap. Beck and Byron followed.
“That’s not all is it, baby?” he asked. He didn’t want to hear anymore, was so full of rage he could barely contain it, but he swallowed it back because he didn’t want to frighten his mate. No wonder she’d been so fucking skittish when she’d first met them. She was probably wary of all men until she got to know them.
“No.”
Beck and Byron sat on either side of them.
“Tell us the rest, darlin’,” Beck demanded.
“There’s no need for me to…”
“There’s every need.” Byron clasped one of her hands. “We can see how much their treatment of you cut you up.”
“Well, of course it did,” she said. “What child wouldn’t be devastated to be treated by the two people who are supposed to love you as if they can’t stand the sight of you?”
“Hey, I’m not judging you, Krista. We’re trying to help you. Talking to other people, purging all that pain locked inside you will hopefully be cathartic.” Byron tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so defensive.”
“But it’s understandable why you are,” Beck said. “You’ve been conditioned to feel guilty about everything. No wonder you self-justify.”
“Are you going to tell us the rest?” Bas asked.
Krista licked her lips. “Around the same time as the neighbor incident, I was having trouble with pre-teen acne. Because I was so anxious all the time wondering when I would get another beating for something I didn’t do or because I stood up for myself, I used to bite my nails as well as pick at pimples and my cuticles.”
Bas wondered where this was going when she started blushing. He didn’t have to wait long.
“I had a few pimples on my buttocks and picked them until they bled. My mom must have seen the blood on my undies and told my father. It was weekend and I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth. My dad snuck up behind me, pinned me to the vanity and sink, tugged my trousers and panties down, and poured denatured alcohol all over my ass.”
“He fucking tortured you,” Bas whispered. He was so furious he was seeing red. His sabear was so angry he was clawing at his insides in a rage. His animal wanted out so he could hunt down her parents and kill them. While Bas wholeheartedly agreed with his beast, he wasn’t about to do something that would alienate his mate forever. So, instead of letting his anger control him, he drew in breath after breath until the crimson hue receded from his eyes.
“I don’t think I would call what he did torture, but it wasn’t very nice.”
That was an understatement if he ever heard one. Bas wasn’t sure he could take anymore, even if he knew he and his brothers hadn’t heard everything.
“That’s some of the reasons why I don’t visit my parents.”
“We don’t blame you in the least, darlin’,” Beck said. “If we’d been unlucky enough to have parents like yours, we’d have been out of their lives for good as soon as we could.”
“I didn’t want them out of my lives totally,” she said. “They still raised me even if I didn’t have the world’s greatest childhood. They gave me shelter, clothed and fed me, and paid for my education. They saw to the important things.”
Bas wanted to argue but kept his mouth shut. If that was the way Krista needed to justify her parents’ emotional and physical abuse for herself, then he wasn’t going to negate her. However, if he and his brothers got the chance, they were going to show her how a loving person was supposed to treat someone they cared for.
He just hoped that she let them finish the mating bond with her sooner rather than later.
If she took too much longer to make her choice, he was going to do something stupid. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to keep his hands to himself.
Chapter Seven
The longer Krista sat on Bas’s lap with his brothers on either side of her, the hotter she grew. While she felt emotionally lighter after telling them of some of her childhood experiences and their reactions had favored her own, she was having trouble concentrating.
Her lower belly felt as if it was a pool of heated liquid, and every other erogenous zone on her body was sitting up and taking notice. S
Earlier, she’d been telling the truth when she’d told Granger she was tired, because she had been weary to the bone, but now that she’d eaten, she was full of energy. In fact, she felt great. She felt as if she’d be able to run a marathon and have energy to spare. She’d never felt so energetic in her life and had a feeling that her mates’ genomes were deeply entrenched into her genetic makeup.
Even though she was nearly as close to a person as she could get sitting in Bas’s lap with his brothers close enough to be touching her, too, it wasn’t close enough. Her skin was hot and felt too tight for her body, and she felt as if all her nerves were exposed. Especially on her breasts and between her legs. Whenever she moved and the cotton rubbed over her nipples, abrading them, she almost whimpered.
Although she didn’t know them that well, she’d already decided they were good men. They’d taken her into their home and revealed a painful memory to her just as she’d done with them. Krista had never told another living soul about what she’d endured growing up. Until now. The only people who knew were her parents and her estranged siblings. She’d missed Jack fiercely when he’d first taken off without telling anyone, but she also understood it. Simone, her year older sister, had left about six months after her brother. Their childhood home had not been a happy one. He’d only been sixteen, Simone fifteen, and she’d been fourteen. She’d hoped and prayed that Jack and or Simone would come back for her, imagined herself moving in with them and living a happy life, but that had never happened. She’d tried to find her siblings, to call them on their cell phones, but the numbers had been disconnected. She hadn’t even known if her brother and sister were together. They’d broken all ties to the family. It had hurt tremendously as she’d grieved for them and had wondered if she’d done something to make them turn away from her, but deep down she knew she hadn’t. Jack and Simone had just had enough and had moved far from the terrible, destructive relationship they’d had with their mom and dad. Her siblings hadn’t been abused as much physically like Krista had, but the constant put-downs from their mother and father had done a real number on all of them.
She shoved her thoughts aside when her lower belly tightened to the point of pain and whimpered. Her womb contracted at the same time her pussy did, sending another slew of cream onto her drenched panties. When the next spasm intensified, she couldn’t help but double over and wondered if this was what women in labor felt like.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Bas asked, urgently. “Do you need us to get Granger?”
“I don’t knoooow,” she groaned out. “What’s wrong with me?” The cramping eased, giving her the opportunity to straighten up and met each of their eyes.
All three of the men’s eyes were glowing with heat and their inner beasts. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw and heard them all inhale deeply, their nostrils flaring. If it was possible, the hunger in their eyes got even more intense.
“Mating heat,” Beck said in a low, gravelly voice.
“What?” Krista frowned, uncertain she’d heard right.
“You’re in heat, sweetness,” Byron rasped out.
She shook her head. “That’s not possible.” Is it?
“Yeah, it is,” Bas said hoarsely. He combed his fingers into her hair to keep her eyes locked with his. “Because we’ve claimed you and now have some of our genetics in your system, you’re not totally human anymore, baby. You’re not like us and won’t shape-shift, but you’re going to experience some of our abilities. Plus, even if we hadn’t claimed you, you’d still experience a lesser version of the mating heat. That’s fate’s way of making sure we come together as we’re supposed to.”
“And if I refuse?”
The hungry light in Bas’s eyes dimmed and shadows filled his amazing brown eyes. Krista wished she could retract her last question, but it was already out there.
“That’s your prerogative, darlin’,” Beck said. “If you don’t want us, then nothing we do is going to change that.”
While she wasn’t looking at him, she could hear the dejection in his voice as well as see the utter total devastation on Bas’s face. She had no idea why she’d asked what would happen if she refused, because she already knew the answer. She’d be sentencing them to death.
The thought of these three wondrous men dying made her heart hurt and her eyes sting with tears. Deep down when she’d heard that they’d have no future if she rejected them, she’d made a decision, but she hadn’t been courageous enough to acknowledge it to herself, let alone them.
Also, she wanted, needed them just as much as she needed her next breath. She was going to be living here in this small town, and she could think of nothing more exciting than having them as her mates. The physical connection between them was a blazing inferno, one that was getting harder and harder to discount. Nor did she really want to continue trying to ignore the sparks shooting between them all. However, that wasn’t all. She never felt so safe or comfortable with the opposite sex, ever. Nonetheless, it was different with the Tenant brothers. She’d been drawn to them from the start, even if she’d been guarded toward them. Yet, she was like a negative magnetic being drawn to their positive energy time and time again.
Krista already had feelings for them, and the more time she spent with them, the stronger those feelings got.
She could see herself falling irrevocably in love with them quickly, but she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to put her heart on the line. She’d lived with and dealt with emotional tumult since she was a child and didn’t want to leave her heart out only to get stepped on and quashed.
Still, the thought of refusing them and walking away from them was too distressing to contemplate.
It was time to take another stand like she had with her parents, but this time for a whole different reason.
She needed to step up to the plate and go for what she wanted.
Krista wanted to be theirs.
“I accept,” she said quickly before she could change her mind.
The muscles in Bas’s thighs flexed and tensed under her ass. He was staring at her as if she was an apparition and couldn’t work out if she was real or not.
The sexual tension in the room rose to phenomenal proportions, which made it harder for her to breathe. She felt as if all the air in the room had been sucked out. As the pregnant silence continued, she began to think that maybe she’d left her run too late. That they’d changed their minds about wanting to mate with her. She shook her head. Maybe they were shocked at her swift turn around, since she’d eluded moments ago to refusing them even though that had been the last thing on her mind.
“What are you accepting?” Bas asked.
“You need to spell it out for us, darlin’,” Beck said.
Krista clasped Bas’s wrist and tugged his fingers from her hair. “I agree to be your mate.”
“Are you sure, sweetness?” Byron asked. “We don’t want you doing this if you have any reservations.”
“I’m sure,” she said honestly.
The second she released Bas’s wrist, he raked his fingers back into her hair, grasped the tresses at the back of her neck, and tilted her head up to his. In the next instant, his mouth was on hers.
Krista moaned as his tongue swiped over her lips, and when she sighed, her lips parting, he was delving into her mouth. He tangled his tongue with hers, and she shifted closer to him. A groan formed in her chest and rumbled up out of her mouth as she tasted him. Bas tasted so good, like spiced wine and masculinity. The more he kissed her, the more intoxicated and addicted she got.
All too soon, he lifted his mouth from hers, and she tried to recapture his lips with her own, but he tightened his grip on her hair to hold her still.
“Wrap your arms around my neck, baby,” Bas ordered.
Krista did as he commanded, and when he caressed one hand down her side toward her ass and squeezed both of her butt cheeks, she cried out. She’d never known her ass could be so sensitive. Each time he squeezed her flesh, her pussy clenched, sending more of her honey to leak onto her folds and panties.
Bas surged to his feet, his hand still on her ass supporting her weight, but when she slipped down his body slightly, she hooked her legs around his hips after he hefted her higher.
Neither of them said a word as he carried her to the bedroom. When she heard the rustle of clothing, she gazed over his shoulder to see that Beck and Byron were following. Their faces were tight masks of need, and she wondered if she looked just as eager as they appeared.
Bas didn’t lower her to her feet as she expected. Instead, he placed her on the middle of the mattress and followed her down. She groaned when his body pressed against hers from chest to knees, and while she relished his toned warmth against her smaller, softer frame, she wished that neither of them had clothes on. Krista wanted to feel his naked skin against hers.
He cupped her cheeks between his hands and slanted his mouth over hers. The kiss was carnally erotic and wild, stealing her breath from her very lungs. When he nudged her legs apart, she didn’t hinder him and spread them further. His hard jeans-covered cock pressed against her clit, eliciting a whimper from her. She dug her nails into the flesh at the back of his neck and kissed him harder.
All too soon, he broke the kiss, but before she could pursue his lips again, he was kissing and licking his way down the side of her neck. And then he lifted his weight from her body as he got up onto his knees between her splayed thighs. She stared at him through narrowed eyes, and when he reached behind him then tugged his shirt up over his head and flung it aside, leaving his tanned muscular chest on display, her heart lurched.
Her womb clenched as the muscles compressed in her lower belly, but this time the needy pain wasn’t as intense. Bas untangled the belt on the robe she was wearing and shoved it open. When she glanced down, she couldn’t miss the way her nipples were standing up at attention beneath the white cotton shirt she had on. There was also no way Bas and his brothers could miss seeing how stiff those peaks were. Even she could see the tinge of color of her dusky-rose nipples through the white material.
-->