by Cara Adams
“I’ll help clean up as well. I don’t mind gardening, and that’s more or less what it’ll be, isn’t it?”
Declan stared at her. “You like to garden?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Declan smiled at Kenz. The more he learned about her the more fascinating this woman turned out to be. She had to mate them. He couldn’t imagine not exploring her mind and her body and learning new things about her every day for the rest of his life.
* * * *
Kenz had been prepared to almost slash her way through the jungle to get to the lake. But while it definitely wasn’t as easy a walk as the other time the men took her there, it wasn’t too bad either. Colter started off in the lead, holding branches back off the path for the rest of them and pointing out where rocks and other debris made the going rough. After a while he and Asher swapped places. Declan remained behind her and she supposed he was going to catch her if she fell. But she’d always been sure-footed. That’s why being on the roof hadn’t concerned her—well, sure-footedness plus a lack of fear of heights.
She knew she’d learned her skills from her father and guessed likely he’d have made a success of a life of crime if he hadn’t been so determined to live a moral life. Integrity was important. She respected him greatly for his choices and his determination to overcome his environment. Kenz respected her grandmother, too, for doing a good job of rearing him when it must have been damn hard for a girl still in her teens, and all alone.
By the time they reached the lake Kenz was ready to sit down and rest, except that the ground was still very wet and quite muddy in places. She followed Asher across the open area around the lake and stared out to sea. Where there’d been a thick line of trees, only maybe half of them remained standing. The rest were a tangled pile on the edge of the lake. It made the view across the sea much prettier, but she wondered if it would affect their water storage.
Sure enough, Declan and Asher spoke together. “We’re going to have to pull those fallen trees back or they’ll wash into the lake.”
“Those fallen trees will have to be cleared away and more trees planted.”
Kenz peered down at the lake. “Some of the branches are floating in the lake. Will they drop to the bottom or will we need to haul them out as well?”
“They’ll clog the filtration system. We should go and fetch an inflatable boat and some tough nets to catch them and sieve them up out of the water.”
“Oh yay,” Declan said sarcastically.
“Rock, paper, scissors to see who walks back to collect the boat and nets and tell the Alpha,” Asher said.
“Carrying a boat will take all of you, won’t it? We’d better all go.”
They stared at her, and she wondered if they thought she was too frail to walk there and back again. “Walking isn’t my favorite thing, but it’s not that far, is it?”
“The whole island isn’t all that big. But it’ll be three or four miles each way, and then we still have to go home after that. Wouldn’t you be happier back in your cottage?” Colter asked.
“Alone all day with nothing to do? No thank you.”
‘You could wait here until we get back. Likely it’ll only be an hour or ninety minutes. One of us will stay with you and that’ll leave two to collect what we need,” suggested Declan.
Kenz weighed the idea of walking all the way back and up to the lake again, plus the physical activity of pulling the tree branches out of the water. And she hadn’t exactly been resting already this morning. All that extra walking? Hell no! Walking was absolutely not her favorite thing, and she’d done plenty of it already today.
“Okay, I’ll wait here. But only because I want to have enough energy left to help you clean the lake up. Now that I can kayak, I expect I can paddle your inflatable boat as well.”
She walked to the edge of the water while the men worked out who’d do what job, and then Colter and Asher left.
“We could start piling up all this fallen timber while we wait. Will you be taking it away somewhere else, or will it stay here?” she asked.
“The last time there was a hurricane, we took a lot of it back to the big house and people collected what they needed from there. But it might be better to sort it out here for a start.”
Kenz helped him roll the logs into a neat stack and pile up all the small branches in a second area. They pulled everything away from the edge of the water and moved it up the hill. When she stood on the lakeshore, it was obvious there were several fallen trees actually in the water. At least they floated which should make it easier to snag them and pull them out. That’s what she hoped, anyway.
Her jeans and sweater were damp from touching all the wet foliage, and she really needed a rest, so she sat on a dryish-looking rock to wait for Colter and Asher to return. It was pleasant in the sunshine. The gray sky had cleared to a beautiful day with only a hint of wind.
“No one would ever know there was a storm last night,” she said.
“This is how days normally are here. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. The island is close to perfect.”
She had to agree. Back home she was at work for most of the daylight hours, but the pay was good, and she needed to keep that safety net of saved cash. Her father had worked so hard to pull himself up from poverty, and she would never negate his efforts by letting herself sink back down again. Besides, she liked having a roof over her head, food on the table, and the chance to watch a movie or eat out with her friends for a treat now and then. But yes, being outside in the sunshine a little more often would be nice. Being by the beach would be even better.
Kenz thought Declan wanted to say something, but he made some innocuous comment about the lake, and then they sat in companionable silence for a little while until they heard people coming up the trail. Kenz turned on her rock in time to see Colter pushing through the trees carrying one end of an inflatable rubber raft, then Asher holding the other end.
She watched, intrigued, as they set the boat down on the grass by the water and then laid out a long piece of fishing net so the floats sat on top of the water.
“Are you sure you want to help, Kenz?” Colter asked.
“Absolutely. What do you want me to do?”
“Climb in the front of the boat. You can lie out the net while I paddle. Declan and Asher will need to get in the water to retrieve the trees when we bring them over to the shore.”
That all sounded really simple and practical, but over the next hour Kenz found there was a huge difference between the idea and putting it into practice. First, she had to kneel up in a wobbly rubber raft, stretching the netting right out away from the boat. After the sleeves of her sweater became totally waterlogged, she ended up wearing only her bra, so she could plunge her arms deep enough to balance the nets properly.
Then, when they finally hooked a branch or leaves, she had to keep the net around it until Colter had paddled them close enough to the shore for Asher and Declan to grab it. They were wearing only their briefs as they wrestled with uncooperative tree limbs.
The huge, heavy trees were actually the easiest to maneuver because she only had to grab hold of a branch and keep it beside the boat while Colter used the raft to nudge it toward the shoreline. But at last they were done. There were no more big chunks of tree or branches in the lake.
“How big a piece will block your filtration system? What about leaves and twigs? Likely there are millions of them in the water.”
“We don’t need to worry about small stuff. The system is designed to catch them. The mesh is regularly cleaned of that sort of thing. There’s a suction zone that traps small bits of debris. Whole branches would have blocked it and stopped the pumps, but we’ve gotten all of them now,” Colter said as he rowed the boat to the shore line and gestured for her to climb out.
Her legs felt wobbly on land, and she realized how tired and wet she was. The men still had to return the boat and the nets and report to their Alpha. All she wanted to do was take a hot shower
and a long nap.
She put her disgustingly wet clothes back on with a groan. Silently, she followed Declan and Colter back down the trail until they stopped at her cottage. Asher kissed the top of her head.
“Take a nap, Kenz. We’ll be back at seven with some dinner for you. Would you rather we brought you cold food and just leave it if you’re asleep?”
“Thank you for being so sweet, but I’ll be fine by then.” Well, hopefully she would be. Besides they’d promised her a proper BDSM scene tonight, and she was definitely looking forward to it. Her week here at the Caves of Correction was fast running out, and there were so many things she hadn’t experienced, yet she couldn’t afford to miss any more opportunities to spend time with these men. They were just the kind of man she’d like to have in her life. It was a damn shame this was just a job for them, even though they’d been so wonderfully kind and considerate of her.
* * * *
Asher had spent most of the walk back from the lake trying to think of how to explain to his brothers how much he wanted Kenz. How very certain he was that she was the perfect woman for them to mate. The problem was he couldn’t really express his thoughts in words. It was much too soon to say, “I love her and want her.” But there wasn’t anything more to say than that. She’d recognized him as a panther. Instead of screaming and going hysterical, she’d looked at him and recognized him. That said it all. If she didn’t know him and care for him, she would never have seen his essence inside his panther’s form. Maybe she didn’t love him, but she had to at least care for him a little, and understand something about him.
Whatever, if he was simply man-candy in her eyes, or a staff member she’d dealt with, all she’d have seen was the animal, not the man inside it. She wouldn’t have felt the connection to the spirit under the fur and linked it to the man she’d seen.
Besides, he knew he loved her and wanted to mate her. No woman had ever affected him as powerfully and completely as she did. He had to speak with his brothers. All of them had to agree about a mate. It was very much an all-or-nothing deal. As far as he could see both his brothers liked her and wanted to be with her.
Colter was always so determined and very much the bossy older brother. Yet with Kenz he’d been almost gentle. Declan was such a fun guy, yet his jokes around Kenz were almost tender. That had to mean both of them saw the promise of a connection with her, if not the whole deal.
Once they’d left Kenz at her guest cottage, changed places in line, and picked up the damn inflatable boat again, Asher said, “We need to talk.”
“Agreed,” Declan grunted, shifting the nets more centrally into the boat, which was half tipped on its side to fit through the narrow gap between the bushes.
At least the sun had burned off the water on their leaves, and they were standing more upright than when he and Colter had taken the boat up to the lake. Even though the extra space was only a hand’s breadth of inches, it was a genuine help.
“Not until we get home. She can pick locks remember,” Colter said.
Asher laughed and then looked over his shoulder, but no one was following them. “So from now on if we want to talk privately we’ll have to sit with our backs together, watching out for her to appear,” he joked.
Although he was certain asking her nicely would likely work better than trying to cut her out of the loop. However, this conversation did need to be private. His brothers had to answer freely. No panther mating was legal unless all the parties involved agreed to it of their own free will. There was no divorce under shape-shifter law. Once the mating vows had been taken there were no second chances. That meant the vows had to be seriously considered and everyone had to consent.
He and Declan returned the boat, the paddles, and the nets, putting them all away in their correct paces. Most of the property on the island was communally owned, and the panthers took pride in sharing fairly and equally, looking after everything so it might serve others as it had served them.
By the time they returned home, Asher could hear the shower on the first floor running, and knew Colter had reported their news to the Alpha and beaten them home. He was cold and wet and hastily removed his saturated clothing, dumping it in the laundry hamper before grabbing some old newspapers, scrunching them up, and then shoving them inside his boots to help them dry in shape.
Declan had beaten him into the bedroom-level shower, but Colter was fair-minded and showered fast, not making Asher wait very long for the shower. By the time Asher was dressed in dry clothing, Colter already had coffee percolating and bacon and eggs frying in separate pans on the cook top, and Declan was placing cutlery on the table. It wasn’t exactly a lunch menu or an afternoon tea snack, but he was hungry, and it worked for him.
There was complete silence as they inhaled the rich aroma of the coffee and the tantalizing scents of the hot food, and then sat and ate. Finally they sat back in their chairs and Declan laughed.
“Dammit we almost did that in unison like on some kind of TV show.”
But Asher didn’t think it was surprising. They were brothers, all very different in many ways, yet they had an underlying sense of belonging to each other and of commitment to the same goal, the well-being of their family and their community.
Feeling warm and fed, he suddenly remembered Kenz. “Dammit we need to feed Kenz. We were hungry again, and she will be as well.”
“I organized a hot snack to be sent to her when I was at the big house,” Colter said.
“Ah, good.” Asher smiled at Colter. Sometimes it was very useful to have him so bossy and dominant.
“The Alpha said all four women visiting us would be invited to spend an extra week on the island at no extra charge. We’re to tell them tonight, and tomorrow they’re to go to the office and contact their travel agent and their workplace and get permission to stay on. He said most people would consider Hurricane Nathan a good enough reason to rearrange travel bookings and so on. He also suggested that in our case we might like to use tonight to convince Mackenzie that staying longer with us was a good idea.”
“Awesome. That’s what I wanted to talk about. I want us to mate her and make her ours forever,” Asher said, almost bouncing up and down in his chair like a six-year-old with excitement.
“Another week here will certainly be a huge help to convincing her to stay. I want us to mate her as well,” Declan added.
“I think we all already knew inside ourselves that she is the one for us all,” Colter said. “She’s more than I ever dreamed of or hoped for. But having the extra week will make convincing her so much easier. I suggest we plan a BDSM scene right now to stretch and fulfill her. We haven’t really done all that much with her so far and need to remedy that right away.”
“Chains and handcuffs. I wonder if she can undo handcuffs?” Asher said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if she could. Our job is to convince her that she wants to leave them on because of the scene we’ll be playing with her.”
Colter grinned at them both, and Asher couldn’t help but grin right back at him.
“What kind of scene did you have in mind?” Declan asked.
Asher sat up straighter in his chair. Hell yes. How were they going to entice her tonight?
* * * *
Colter hoped Kenz hadn’t gone to bed. She’d said originally that she wasn’t all that enthusiastic about physical exercise, and they’d not only walked quite a few miles today, but also she’d expended a lot of energy helping clean up the fallen timber. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if anyone was very tired, let alone a city woman.
However, he’d decided they would wake her. He wanted to tell her about the offer to stay an extra week. No, more than that he wanted to urge her to stay on with them. He was a little bit worried that perhaps her employer might not be willing to release her for another week, or that maybe she couldn’t afford not earning a salary for that long, but he still hoped to convince her to stay.
Besides, once she mated them, or even agreed to
stay with them, she wouldn’t have to pay for her apartment or her car anymore. All her possessions could be brought to the island, and she could take her time rearranging their house, replacing their things with hers if that’s what she wanted. Fuck, whatever made her feel at home. And if she genuinely wanted to work, the Caves of Correction business was expanding, and there were always other jobs that needed to be done on the island. She could wait and find some work that suited her or just busy herself however she pleased. His only desire was for her to adjust to the place and to grow to love them and their home.
When they arrived at her cottage he knocked lightly on the door. It opened immediately, and he smiled. “I’m so glad you didn’t lose your hairpins in the lake,” he said, teasing her.
“When I get home and have Internet access, I’ll send you a link to a decent locksmith so you can change all the locks on the houses. Not everyone is as innocent as me.”
“You might have Internet access tomorrow,” Declan said.
Colter felt a frown forming on his face, but they had to tell her the truth sometime so it might as well be now.
“Does the Internet work better in certain weather conditions?” she asked.
He patted the bed. “Sit down so we can talk a little.”
She sat and looked from one of them to the others. “You said not every family had checked in. Are Aria, Piper, and Maddy okay?”
Asher stroked her shoulder. “There’s no problem like that. No people have been hurt by the hurricane, although there’s going to be a few weeks of solid cleanup to be done and a couple of the houses require attention.”
“The Alpha is offering the four of you an extra week’s vacation on the island at no extra charge because Hurricane Nathan has spoiled some of your fun. He suggested you all contact your tour agent and employers or whomever you need to, so you can all stay longer with us,” Declan said.