by R. E. Butler
He said goodnight to Ethan and went to his room. As he stretched out under the covers, he let his mind wander. Most men probably fantasized about sex, and while his mind was drifting often to the tantalizing curves of her body he'd felt under his hands while they’d hugged and kissed throughout the day and evening, his fantasies were almost all boring on the sex front. He fantasized about cuddling on the couch with Callie, her head on his bicep, his body draped over hers for warmth and comfort. He thought about going swimming in the lake this summer and kissing droplets of water from her skin, camping in the fall and holding her in front of a bonfire and talking quietly, about doing all the mundane stuff that humans took for granted. Hell, he’d be thrilled to drink coffee and read the paper with her every day for the rest of his natural life. She was truly something spectacular.
He woke up with a start from a very nice dream about Callie, when the front storm door slammed shut. Grabbing a pair of jeans from the floor, he tugged them on and met Ethan in the hallway coming from Alek’s bedroom.
The master bedroom door was open and the bed was empty. They both ran to the front door, worried that someone had actually come into their house and kidnapped her.
Shoving their feet into boots and grabbing their coats, they ran out of the house and then paused, scenting the air for their mate. Without a word they took off behind the house and into the woods. In the light from the half moon, he could see only one set of bare footprints in the snow. She was out without shoes? Did she still have those tiny pajamas on?
Less than ten minutes later as they raced alongside her footprints, they heard her crying and they ran at full speed towards the sound and then they stopped in their tracks. Callie, wearing the same tank and shorts from the day before, with no coat or shoes, was cradling what looked like a dog at first, but when she lifted her tear-streaked face, it was clear that it was a wolf.
It was so cold that the tears were freezing on her cheeks and her whole body was wracked with tremors. He jerked off his coat and threw it over her shoulders.
She sobbed, “I heard him, I heard him being cut. Who would, who would hurt an innocent animal this way?” As she leaned into him and Ethan knelt on the other side to look, he saw that the inside of the wolf was hanging out like red ropes on the white snow. It was still alive, though, somehow.
“I’ll take care of the wolf, Callie, you need to go back into the house.” He tried to extract her from the wolf but she started crying harder and shaking her head.
“Take her Eryx. Just…get her in a hot shower and I’ll take care of him.” Ethan looked grim. Neither of them wanted to say what was on their minds. That either this was a direct warning to Callie or someone had thought the natural wolf was her. Neither scenario was good.
It was clear that Ethan wanted him to manhandle her and he didn’t want to do that, because they’d come so far today, but she was in negative temperatures in what amounted to underwear. “Hot water, Eryx, and then into bed and you go with her, got it?”
“Yeah. Don’t take too long, brother.”
“I won’t.”
Eryx jerked her free of the bloody wolf and pulled her against his chest, standing up in one smooth motion as she shrieked at the loss of the wolf in her arms.
He turned towards the house with a jog, unsure if Callie’s sudden quiet was a good or bad thing. She was shaking, her teeth were chattering together, and her body felt positively frozen. And she was covered in blood. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel if he saw a natural mountain lion slaughtered like that, but she clearly felt some camaraderie with the beast.
He took her straight to the master bathroom and turned on the shower. Rocking her back and forth in his arms, he talked to her quietly, wondering why it was taking so long for the water to heat up. Finally it was almost too hot to stand and he kicked off his boots and stepped inside with her. When he moved to put her down she struggled and he wasn’t sure if she was trying to get closer to him or away from the hot water, or both.
“Stop struggling, sweetheart, you’re frozen to the bone.” He put her feet on the floor and held her tightly against him so the water beat down on the front of her body. She went rigid for a moment and then stopped struggling and relaxed against him. After a few minutes, her bone cracking shudders eased and she sighed with relief.
He moved one arm, sliding his hand past her elbow and lifting her hand up so he could check her fingers and then he did the same with the other hand and bent over enough to reach her toes. “Well you aren’t frostbitten. You could have died out there, Callie. What were you thinking?” The growl in the back of his throat was one of frustration and a knot of fear. What if it had been a trap?
“I’m sorry, Eryx,” she rested her head against his bicep and hugged his arms around her. “I just, I couldn’t stop myself. Thank you for coming for me.”
He hoped she could hear the truth in his voice. “I will always come for you.”
Necessity called for action and not standing in the shower holding onto her all night. “Alright, if we’re going to save Ethan some hot water, we need to get you out of your pajamas and cleaned up. Can you stand by yourself so I can get out?”
“No, I don’t want you to go.”
This was potentially the worst idea in history, but if she needed him, then he could control himself. And thank goodness he was still wearing jeans. He reached for the hem of her tank and drew it over her head, partly glad she was not facing him and partly annoyed about that very fact. The first time that he saw her naked, though, he really did want it to be because she wanted it, not because the circumstances dictated the necessity. He dropped it in the corner of the tub and tugged one side of her tiny shorts down until they fell and she could step out of them. She wasn’t wearing panties.
He gave her a washcloth that was hanging on the bar and opened a bottle of what turned out to be vanilla body wash and squeezed it onto the cloth she held. And then he closed his eyes and tried not to be hyper aware of the movements against him as she washed away any remaining evidence of the wolf’s blood. A few achingly long minutes later, she dropped the cloth over the bar and said she was done, and her voice had gone flat and lifeless.
Please don’t let her go into shock.
Turning off the water, he stepped out with her and wrapped her in a towel without daring to look down and turned her away so he could wrangle the soaked denim from his body and wrap a towel around himself. Securing it on his hips, he swept her up into his arms and she burrowed her still cold body into his and shivered. He jerked the covers back and laid her down, pulling the blankets back up and turning to the closet for more of blankets.
Something hit him and he glanced down and saw her towel. “Eryx, I’m cold.”
He swallowed the suggestion she could have kept the towel on, because frankly he was glad she hadn’t, and laid two more blankets on top of her. He dropped his towel and carefully slid into the bed, grateful for the darkness so she didn’t see his erection. But seeing it didn’t matter, because the moment he adjusted the blankets over himself she turned into him and slid one of her legs right over his so his balls were cradled into her thigh and his cock pressed into his stomach, wedged tightly by her bare hip.
And then those cold arms wrapped around him and she ducked her head against his chest and held onto him like she was adrift at sea and he was a life preserver. Erection notwithstanding, it wasn’t a very sexual thing because she needed comfort and he should provide it for his mate.
“I’m scared, Eryx.” Her fingers dug into his back slightly and a fine tremble shivered through her.
“We’ll keep you safe, Callie, I swear on my own life.”
The front door opened and closed, and the lock clicked. He turned his head when Ethan came into the room, shivering. “Please tell me you saved me some hot water, I’m about to bite my tongue off.” He dropped his jacket and made for the bathroom.
“We tried.” He told him, curling Callie closer against him. Ethan didn’t turn on the bathroo
m light and got into the shower quickly. Less than five minutes later, he walked out with a towel around his waist.
“You got things under control, brother?” Ethan’s voice was quiet and very calm. That meant that he was feeling emotional and trying to hide it. Neither of them were very good at keeping secrets from the other. Part and par of being twins.
Callie lifted her head from his chest and reached a hand out from under the covers. “Come to bed, Ethan. I’m still cold.”
She clearly wasn’t going to have to ask twice. And as much as he would like to hold her alone all night, it wasn’t something he would ask for of either of them. Not now, when things were so new. Some night, though, he would want to have her to himself, to touch and explore for hours until he knew every inch of her smooth, warm skin. His cock throbbed and he groaned inwardly.
Ethan dropped the towel and slid under the covers and he clearly meant to just lay next to her, but she had other plans, and pulled him with one arm until he was leaning against her back and she was between them. This was as close as he’d been to his brother with a woman. They’d never shared. The female lions wouldn’t go for so much kink in the bedroom. Unless they'd agreed to bear a cub, they were only interested in their own pleasure and once they got off, they were inclined to just wriggle out from under the male and get dressed. Whether he was done or not.
“What did you do with him?” Her voice was small and tired. His own hand was resting on her bare hip, and he could feel Ethan’s hand just above his on the curve of her waist.
“I…stopped his suffering and then I covered him with brush. The ground is too hard to bury him. I’m sorry, it’s not exactly decent.”
She shifted slightly, burrowing deeper against his body and said nothing else. After several minutes, she relaxed and began to breathe deeply, and he sighed in quiet relief. “Did you catch a scent?” He asked quietly.
“Tanya and Farrah, but you know that Melania was behind it. She was not happy about what dad did at the station. Or seeing us together with her.”
“We need to leave. That was a definite warning.”
“I had hoped that it wouldn’t be so bad for her, but this is out of character for the females. It’s like they’re playing with her.” Ethan growled and Eryx felt his hand spasm against her waist in an unconscious movement.
“What bothers me most is that they keep coming here, to our home. This should be a safe place for her, but how the hell can we keep her safe when we’re asleep?”
“At the least one of us should be in bed with her at night, so we can make sure that nothing like tonight happens again. Until we have our plans made. And she needs to understand she can’t go anywhere alone. If they’d been waiting for her with that wolf, I shudder to think we’d have ever found her alive.”
Eryx caressed the smooth skin of her hip and it made her leg jerk slightly between his and he had to suppress a small groan. Very smart, idiot, he thought, as if he wasn’t already about to combust.
“We could go stay at Dad’s.”
Ethan hummed in thought. “We should be able to protect our mate or we don’t deserve her.”
He wasn’t wrong. “Then come morning, we’ll call Uncle Rhett and start packing.”
As if sensing his unrest, Ethan said, “We’re doing what’s best for her. There, Rhett’s got a human wife and the whole town is human, and it’s half the size of King. We can protect her so much better there.”
“I just don’t like the idea of leaving Dad, but on the other hand I don’t want to risk her life. So we’ll go. I never doubted that we would need to, I just didn't expect it to have to happen so quickly.”
Ethan agreed that he’d not expected it either and they lay in silence with their mate tucked between them, until they could sleep. But it wasn’t a restful sleep. For one, Callie was not sleeping soundly. She jerked and moved often, waking both of them with each small gasp or clutch of her hands against him. He didn’t like her being afraid, even in her sleep.
Dozing once again, he was woken by a hand moving in smooth waves up from the small of his back to his shoulder and back down. Deliberately slow, it was like she touched each vertebra in his back until his body unconsciously moved in that same rhythm and he sleepily put his arm around her to draw her close, and hit Ethan’s stomach. Oh yeah. His brother was right there on her other side.
When he started to pull away she said, “No, touch me, Eryx, please.” He felt her mouth caressing his collarbone, that dangerous tongue flicking along the arch of bone, and if it weren’t for the fact that when he opened his eyes Ethan was staring at him, he might have rolled over on top of her and just taken her. Early morning light filtered in through the blinds and bathed the room in a faint glow and he met Ethan’s curious and confused look with his own.
Her arousal was heavy in the air, like sun warmed honey, hot and sweet. He knew the right thing was to make sure she was awake and then to remind her that they had more serious things to think of at the moment besides scratching an itch.
As if sensing his hesitancy, she rolled onto her back and shoved the covers down. Her skin was flushed a pretty pink color and his eyes immediately drew down to her beautiful breasts and their tight, dark pink nipples.
She hooked an arm around each of their necks and pulled Ethan down to her mouth first and then turned to him. “I’m hot.” She whispered into his mouth, licking at his tongue. She arched suddenly with a moan and dropped her head back to the pillow and he saw that Ethan had captured one nipple in his mouth, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked it deep into his mouth.
Was it possible that he’d never seen anything as erotic as watching his brother tend to their mate? With renewed vigor, his cock hardened another degree and he descended on her mouth with a moan that matched hers, as she dug her nails into his scalp and moved between them. He slid his hand slowly across the curve of her hip, up her flat belly, to the gentle swell of her untended breast, and ran his thumb across the puckered bud while he fed at her mouth. In the back of his mind, he thought they should stop and talk, make plans, and…do…something?
Both he and Ethan jerked at the same time on the bed as her hands wrapped around their cocks. He put his hand on her hand and stilled her. “Callie,” he warned, looking into her dark eyes, “we should talk.”
“He’s right, sweetheart. We have plenty of time for other things.” Ethan didn’t sound very convinced, and he wasn’t feeling it much either, but they had several things looming over them, the least of which was consummating their new relationship.
She thrashed her head on the pillows and made a whimpered sound, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
He met Ethan’s eyes over her body and knew that Ethan’s furrowed brow and worried frown were mirrored by his own. Ethan leaned his head against the side of hers, “Are you in pain, Callie?”
She moaned and arched her back off the bed like she was trying to get away from the lower half of her body. Maybe this was what happened when wolves mated? Were they hurting her by trying to put this off in favor of discussing the danger, not to mention the facets of the physical side of their relationship?
Her eyes were bright but unfocused, the pupils bare dots in the depths of brown and gold and green. “I just need, uh, I” her words ceased in the midst of her panting breaths. His first thought was that she was going to have a panic attack or hyperventilate, but the air was suddenly pulsating with the heat of her arousal, and once again he met Ethan’s eyes.
Ethan’s voice was deeper than normal when he spoke softly, “We’ll take care of you, love.”
Their hands moved to the same place between her legs, and he slid a finger inside her slowly while Ethan circled her clit with his finger.
Fuck but she was hot and wet.
Her body clenched his finger and she moaned so deeply that the sound went straight to his cock and lodged at the base there. She kicked at the blankets and he pulled his hand away to free her and the sight of her legs spread wide on the bed between them and E
than’s finger running tight and fast circles around her perfect bud nearly undid him. He pushed two fingers inside her this time, the silky wet depths of her body seemingly endless.
Her hand flexed on his shoulder and she closed her eyes, as if she wanted to absorb only the feeling of their hands on her. He pulsed his fingers inside her to the same fast tempo that Ethan worked her clit and her whole body joined in her climax that was so raw and incredible that it was just sheer willpower that he didn’t come from the sight, not to mention the motion of her body against his.
Her body bucked against their hands and she cried out with a throaty growl and moan combined and her pussy pulled at his fingers as her orgasm rushed through her. Struck dumb by the sight of her bliss, he watched as her skin flushed a deep rose color and her mouth fell open with light pants. She wriggled slightly and shivered, and when her eyes opened they were focused and normal, but exceptionally beautiful, almost entirely gold laced with green.
“I, uh, thanks?” She said with a rough voice. And then they all laughed. He pulled his hand from between her legs and Ethan did, too. It didn’t escape his notice that both of their hands were glistening and the desire to taste her was so strong but he fought it. He didn’t know if she’d like that. He’d never had a woman respond to him like that before, so to say he was out of his element was an understatement.
As if reading his mind, she said, “Do you want to know what I taste like?”
“Yes.” His voice was a bare hiss of sound.
Her top teeth snagged her lower lip and her eyes lowered as her hands pulled both of theirs up from where they lay on her thighs and she licked the tip of his finger and then the tip of Ethan’s, and directed their hands towards their mouths. Exquisitely sweet and silky, her juices were as sweet as anything he’d ever tasted, and the knowledge that he’d helped her come like that was heady.