by Dani April
Arielle looked out at the slope of the mountain they passed. A family of wild horses ran down one of its foothills. It was all beautiful, but she couldn’t enjoy any of it at the moment. She remembered what Jason had told her when he left for the hospital. He wanted her to watch things. She had loyalty to him that was built out of love. But she felt torn. Kyle was right next to her. He was so proud and sure of himself. She had started to care about him. She didn’t want to see him get hurt.
“Jason wouldn’t want you to do that,” she told Kyle.
“You’re right,” he acknowledged. “He wouldn’t.”
“How much money do you want to invest?” she asked him.
He told her. It was a lot. Arielle felt a knot in her stomach when she thought about that much money.
“My dad used to be a stock broker,” she told Kyle. “So I know a little about the markets. They can be very risky. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Kyle turned back to her. There was no doubt in his voice. “I’m positive.”
“How long would you need the money for?”
“The ranch already has a small brokerage account. So all we have to do is fund it. I could deposit the money this afternoon. It would clear by tomorrow morning, and I could start trading it. The market is about to make a big move, and I want to be there for it. I could have it all back in the ranch’s bank account by next week when Jason gets home from the hospital.”
Arielle’s mind worked fast as she thought of a plan. The wheels of her brain turned faster than the truck that sped through the canyon. Her plan was risky, but then so were her relationships with the men. These shape-shifter cowboys seemed to bring out the edge of danger side of her nature.
Kyle looked back ahead at the road, but she knew he was still thinking about the investment. “I want to do this thing, Arielle. In fact I need to do it. I’ve got to prove myself to Jason,” he explained to her. “I won’t do it if you don’t support me on it. But I’m asking for your support.”
“I trust you, Kyle,” she told him. “I believe in you. If you tell me this investment will work, then that’s good enough for me. I think it will work.”
He seemed relieved by her reaction. This is the first test the two of them had to face in their new relationship. “Then you won’t tell Jason about this?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. I can’t do that. Keeping secrets is bad. I’m not ever going to lie to Jason, and I won’t ever lie to you.”
Kyle became confused. “But then how?” he asked. “Jason will never let me invest that money. He’s made up his mind. You know how he is after he’s made a decision.”
“I know,” she admitted. “But I have another way for us.”
“There isn’t any other way. I have to get the money into the brokerage account now. The market is about to move. If I miss the move it will be too late. We could always take out a loan from the bank to buy the land like you suggested, but at this point I doubt Jason will even let us do that.”
Arielle took a deep breath. She was about to take a terrible risk. “Is this really that important to you, Kyle?”
“Yes, it is. It’s not about the money. We’re not rich, but most folks would consider us well off. This is about principle. I love my brother, but I need to prove myself to him so that I can stand up to him sometimes when he needs someone to stand up to him.”
“All right.” Arielle made her decision. Like the decision she made to come up to the ranch and start a relationship with the men, she didn’t look back after she had made it. “I don’t want you to take your family money. That would hurt Jason, and it would hurt you to lie to him. I have a little savings in the Wolf Creek bank. I want you to take my savings and invest it in the cattle market. I believe in you, Kyle. I know you can do it.”
* * * *
Arielle and Kyle went back to the ranch, and they argued over her proposition, and then they argued some more. Kyle did not want to take her money. At first he outright refused. Arielle tried to draft Luke to come to her aid and help her, but he refused to get involved between the two of them. Kyle told her he was not as sure as he thought he was. He told her there was a chance she might lose a sizable portion of her savings account. He said he didn’t want that responsibility. Arielle told him that if she was to be a future member of their family, then she had a right to do this. The money was hers, and it was her decision. In the end Arielle prevailed, and Kyle reluctantly accepted her offer.
“You can log in from here,” he told her. They were in his office in front of his computer.
“I can log into my bank account and transfer the money to your brokerage account from here?” she asked.
He nodded that she could. He still hesitated over the decision. “If I lose that money, I’ll let you down. I’d rather let my brother down than you, Arielle. You’re the most important to me. I don’t want this responsibility. We’re talking about your entire life savings.”
“But you want the responsibility of caring for me for the rest of our lives?” she asked him.
He sighed. She knew she had made her point with him. “Yes. I want that responsibility,” he admitted.
“You won’t be letting me down. I know the risks involved, Kyle. I’m willing to take that risk on you. Family members trust each other, and they believe in each other. If you won’t let me trust and believe in you, then…” She trailed off.
He motioned to the keyboard. “All right. You’ve convinced me. I want us to do this.”
She took her seat in front of the monitor and opened a web browser. The PC was new. It had a lot of memory and a fast processor, but the web page took forever to load. “Do you have Internet access out here?” Arielle asked him.
“We have wireless, but it’s extremely slow, as you can see.”
She waited for her bank’s website to load. Then a thought occurred to her, and she frowned. “You’re planning to trade over the Internet, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Like I said, my dad was a stock broker, so I know a little about it. When you’re trading live like that, isn’t time a factor?”
“Yes.”
“Then how do you expect to trade with this slow of a connection speed?”
He laughed. Now that the decision had been made, the tension between them had been broken. “I’m not going to trade from here. The connection is too slow to support the charting software that I run. There’s a mom-and-pop coffee house next to the Mountain View Inn south of Wolf Creek. Along with the best cup of coffee in the county, they happen to have high-speed Internet access. I’m going to take my laptop down there tomorrow morning and start trading.”
It took her an hour to get the funds transferred across the slow connection. Arielle just clicked submit in time to get the money into his trading account by the start of the next day.
Later that night she talked to Jason on the phone. She didn’t mention anything to him. She made dinner for Kyle and Luke. They were all silent as they ate except for the compliments the two men gave her on the meal. Luke knew what the two of them had done. Arielle could tell he didn’t think it was the right thing. But she knew he would never tell Jason what they had done.
She spent a sleepless night and tossed and turned in her bed.
She heard a wolf howl out in the night from the other side of the range. She wondered if it was a real wolf. In the past week she had become used to Jason’s hard body next to her as she slept. She missed his presence in her bed. Questions bombarded her all night long. Had she done the right thing? Was this what it meant to be a part of a family?
The next morning Arielle was up early and met Kyle in front of the circle drive outside the house. The two of them had agreed that she should come with him and spend the day at the coffee shop. She could not help him, but could be at his side for support.
Kyle’s truck had a tire that was low on air. They didn’t have enough time to fix it so they took Arielle’s Suburban. She drove them down the windi
ng mountain roads and to the coffee shop. It was a foggy morning, and low cloud banks up in the mountains made it hard to see. She took it slow and got them down the mountain in one piece.
“You’re right about the coffee in this place,” Arielle told Kyle as he returned to their table in the corner and set her second cup down on the table. “It is delicious.”
He sat down across the table from her and opened his laptop. “Are you worried?” he asked her.
“No. You know what you’re doing. I just want to be here to see the look on your face when you finally do it.”
“The market may not move yet today. The cattle market moves slow in comparison to the stock market. We might have to come back here tomorrow and do it all over again.”
She sipped her coffee and looked out the window at the little motor lodge across the street. The fog outside cast a chill on the air and made the hot coffee taste even better. “I don’t care,” she told Kyle, and brought her feet up underneath her on the chair to settle in and get comfortable. “This is a pleasant spot. We can keep coming back here all week for all I care.”
He gave her a crooked smile from over the top of his laptop. “You mean you’re not nervous at all?”
She returned his smile. She felt confident and good. Regardless of what happened, she had done the right thing. “Not nervous at all,” she told him.
“I can tell your dad was a stock broker. You’ve got nerves of steel, lady.”
“Not really.” She shook her head and laughed. “This isn’t anything. Agreeing to come up to a house in the mountains and stay with three men as their mate, two of whom I barely knew, took nerves of steel.”
“When this is over you and I are going to have to talk more about the mating part of that proposition.”
She looked back out the window. Everything felt warm and right about this moment. She had to agree with Kyle. “You’re right. I think it might be time we had a talk about that.”
“The market’s opened,” Kyle announced, and he became quiet. He concentrated on the motion of the chart on his computer.
Many questions came to Arielle. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him a few of them, but she decided against it. She kept her silence and trusted in his judgment. He was under enough pressure without her over his shoulder and a dozen questions to answer. It would be the same as when she operated on an animal if she had the owner stand behind her and ask what she was doing in the operation. She had too much respect for Kyle to go down that road. She felt calm and looked back out the window and was content to wait. She fetched her e-reader out of her bag and downloaded an e-book to pass the time.
An hour passed. She looked up across the table at him and saw a fine band of sweat on his brow. The market made him work for the money. “How are you doing?” she asked him quietly.
“We’re in the market now,” he told her. “But the market turned down this morning. This is a rough patch.”
She got up from her chair and went over to him. From behind she put her arms on his shoulders and looked down at the screen. The chart moved in a zigzag fashion. She placed her chin on top of his head and watched for a minute. “I’m not worried,” she told him.
He glanced back at her and took up her hand. He had never held her hand before. It felt warm and strong. He gave her a squeeze, and she squeezed back.
“It’s almost lunchtime. Do you want anything?” she asked.
“Just some more coffee.”
“Coming right up.”
She went back to the counter of the coffee shop. A midday crowd had started to gather, but in a small place like this it never got too big. She ordered Kyle’s coffee and got them each a club sandwich. She explained to the girl behind the counter that her boyfriend needed to use the shop’s wireless and that they would be there for several more hours. The girl gave her a friendly small-town smile and told her that would be fine.
Arielle paid for her purchase and returned to their corner table and set his coffee and sandwich down to the side of the laptop. “Try and eat something,” she told him and curled back up in her chair to eat lunch and watch the traffic pass the motor lodge outside.
“Thanks, Arielle,” he said but was distracted by his chart.
Arielle got involved in her e-book again and was able to finish it. She took a few moments to watch Kyle. He was so intent on the computer screen he didn’t even know she was watching him. He was so handsome and so strong. But more than that, he was a good honest man. She had complete faith in his ability. He just had to succeed.
The afternoon passed. Arielle refilled Kyle’s coffee twice more. She switched away from the coffee because too much would make her jumpy and ordered a fruit juice from the overhead menu. She had just found another e-book on her e-reader and got it downloaded. She was only about ten pages into it.
Suddenly Kyle let out a loud whoop. Arielle looked up at him, startled. So did the other six patrons of the coffee shop. The sound Kyle made was a call of triumph. He looked over the rim of the laptop and caught her eye.
She set aside her e-reader and gave him an expectant smile. The anticipation of the moment nearly killed her. Kyle jumped up from his chair, and Arielle got up with him. He came to her and picked her up in his arms, her feet left the floor, and he pulled her to him for an embrace. His lips sought hers out and she let him give her a long kiss that lingered. When he finally broke the kiss, she couldn’t breathe, but he didn’t put her down. He touched his cheek to hers and continued to kiss along her neck and shoulder. She held onto him with all of her strength and accepted each touch he had to give her.
“We did it!” he exclaimed.
This time she was the one to kiss him, and they kissed each other long and hard in the middle of the coffee shop. For the moment none of the other six patrons or the girl behind the counter existed for them. They were the only two people in the whole world. This was the wettest kiss Arielle had ever experienced, but probably the warmest and the best.
“You did it, Kyle,” she said, and felt the tears come to her eyes as she looked down at him. Her feet still hovered a foot off the floor as he held her against him. She wrapped her legs around him for support and held on.
He set her down but did not release her from his grip. He bent to her and whispered in her ear. “Wait here for me. I’m going to get a room for us at the lodge across the street.”
She wasn’t even sure she had heard him right. His voice was so low and husky, his manner so direct. He was gone before she knew it, and she was left alone. She stared out the window and watched him run across the street. With nothing else to do, she sat back down at their table. She bit her lower lip and frowned.
Had she heard him right? His sudden triumph over the market had placed him so out of character from the Kyle she had known. But then did she really know Kyle at all? She didn’t know anything about him other than he was Jason’s handsome younger brother. She had only known him for two days.
He was pushing his luck with her. She had already lent him her life savings. Now he asked to take her to bed in the motel across the street. This reminded her of Jason, and she smiled. He was a man who always got what he wanted. At least he always got what he wanted from her. She wondered if it was because they were so strong or because she was so weak.
There were butterflies in her stomach. She didn’t know if she should go with him. She really didn’t think it was such a good idea. She already was involved in a sexual relationship with a man. Never in her life had she been involved with two men at the same time. She had always looked down rather judgmentally on woman who did this. But she had agreed to submit to these men, all three of them. That is why she had taken time off her job, and that is why she had gone to live at their ranch for two weeks. They said they wanted her as their mate. That was something more serious than what she had in mind. She had come here to continue her kinky game of submission to Jason and his every desire.
She had come to these men to have sex with them because she felt it wa
s what they wanted from her and that it would make them happy. Yet they had upped the stakes on her. Now they wanted more than just her body. They wanted the rest of her life.
She sighed at the silly way her mind worked. She would go to bed with Kyle. The two of them had become far too close over the last two days. He had become her friend. She readjusted her position in the chair. She was still nervous, but now she recognized the start of anticipation.
When she looked back up, Kyle stood next to her and he held a room key. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.
She looked up at his handsome face and his kind eyes. “Yes,” she told him simply, but she knew there was conviction behind her voice.
He took her by the arm, and they left the coffee shop. He escorted her across the street. There was no traffic, and they quickly jogged across. She felt so small next to him as he escorted her. He was so big. Her nerves increased at the same time as her anticipation.
“I got us a room at the end,” he told her. He seemed proud of his acquisition.
“Okay,” she said and nodded. She couldn’t have cared less where there room was. This was it. She was actually about to go through with it. She was a lot braver than she ever thought, and a lot more foolish.
The room was dark. The blinds over the front window were pulled against the day, and when Kyle shut the door behind them, there was no light. The small bed in the center of the room was prominent. Arielle placed her shoulder bag down on the side table.
Kyle wasted no time now that he had her alone. They needed no more words between them. She had agreed, and she wanted this. She was his for the duration of their stay in this motel room. The wild animal side of him, the shifter side that reminded her so much of Jason, had emerged. He took her in his arms. This time when he kissed her it was on the lips and hard. She opened her mouth to him and let his tongue inside. Her hands were on his chest, and she felt lost against his huge size. He pressed her body against his and took control as the Wildback brothers were so good at. Beneath his jeans she could feel his erect cock pressed against her stomach.