by Tara Rose
Neither the hot nor the cold was painful, per se, and the sensations didn’t deliver the same punch as impact play, but she loved it because it was so unique and she didn’t know what was coming next. When they scraped off the cooled wax they did so with what felt like the edge of a blade, and that sent shivers up and down her spine. She loved the texture of it against her skin, and the fact that it was just a bit dangerous.
When they finished, she was out her mind with need, but also had to pee. They untied her and helped her stand, and when she returned from the bathroom they blindfolded her again and tied her to one of the incline benches. Now she heard them remove their clothing, and wished she could look at their bodies, but she loved this, too.
When they did this with her, they kept silent so she was never quite sure whose cock was where. The excitement of being completely at their mercy fueled her orgasms and they were always intense and prolonged.
One dick was in her mouth and one in her pussy. Valerie’s climax was the continuous kind that never seemed to peak. She moaned and writhed against their touches, enjoying the hard, rough fucking that she’d come to love from them.
They switched places so many times tonight that she lost count, but this was what she wanted. She craved this total surrender to her two alpha Doms. Her skin felt like it was covered in cum by the time they finally stopped. Her blindfold was removed, and they took turns holding her, stroking her hair, and whispering how proud they were of her and how much she’d pleased them.
Valerie cried softly, as she usually did during this aftercare. But tonight it was especially poignant because of all that had gone on in the past few days. She would die if she lost them. They were her entire world and all she wanted to do was be with them, and give herself to them, totally and completely.
* * * *
Valerie tried not to think about Friday’s plan as the day approached. Things appeared to be back to normal with Stephen and Micah. They were as loving and exciting with her as they’d been before the incident in the school, and Valerie believed now that she’d simply been under too much stress Saturday night. She still longed to tell them that she loved them, but didn’t. She didn’t want anything to spoil what they had right now.
On Wednesday, Gary showed up for dinner with two leopards that none of them had met before. He introduced them as Galatyn and Austin Meliadus from Arizona. “Meliadus?” Valerie glanced from one man to the other. “Are you related to Simon?” Simon Meliadus had been Celestine’s mate.
“He was my brother,” said Galatyn. “Austin is my cousin.”
“I knew his mate, Celestine.”
“We know. Gary found us and asked us to come here and meet all of you. We’re going to help you capture the other man who murdered Simon.”
Other man? Did that mean they’d known her uncle? Valerie swallowed hard. These two leopards had green eyes, like Stephen and Micah, but unlike those two, their hair and their auras were dark and mysterious. “I’m sorry about Simon. It must be difficult for you to want to help me, seeing as how Reynard is my father.” She might as well get it out there.
Austin shook his head. “Not at all. You’re not the murderer. He is. We’ve already taken care of his brother. We’re the two men who had your uncle killed.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. “His death sounded brutal.”
“It was,” said Galatyn. “But Simon was my brother.”
She averted her gaze, unsure how to respond, so she simply ate while listening to Galatyn and Austin talk about their village in Arizona. It was in the mountains near the Tonto National Bridge State Park, about sixty miles northeast of Phoenix. Gary’s troops had found them by asking around Valerie’s village and finding out where Celestine’s mate had been from.
“So I take your village doesn’t oppose the species cross-mating?” asked Drake.
“We don’t, but neither do we encourage it,” said Austin. “There can be no cubs, after all. If we aren’t careful to control it, our entire population could be wiped out one day.”
Drake nodded. “That is true, but unlikely, given how many of each of us there are. However, our beliefs aside, we are quite grateful that you’ve come to our village and are willing to help.”
“We’re here to avenge Simon’s death. It’s the right thing to do.”
“You will always have our gratitude, and you will always be welcome here.”
The men were staying in the home that Valerie and Abby had shared. The Jargonians now owned it, and had refurnished it as well as repainted the inside. Valerie went with Stephen and Micah to help Austin and Galatyn get settled, and as she walked through the house, she found it difficult to remember her short three months there with Abby. It now seemed like a lifetime ago.
The room that had been hers was going to be Austin’s, and as the men showed it to him, Valerie crossed to the windows and peered out, half-expecting to see her father standing across the street. No one was there. But was he watching them now from somewhere close by? Did he know Galatyn and Austin were here? And if he did, how would this plan of Gary’s and Drake’s ever work?
“Is that where you saw him?”
Valerie glanced over her shoulder into Austin’s dark eyes. “Yes.”
“Gary told us about your dreams. They were visions.”
“I know that now. I’m very sorry he did this to your cousin. I hope this plan works, and I hope he’s dead on that day.”
Austin leaned forward a bit, and Valerie was struck by the raw, alpha scent of him. The woman who made love to this leopard would have to be a very strong one, for she imagined he would be rough and intense. “I promise you that he will be.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Valerie woke on Friday morning and she almost threw up twice before she got out of bed. Her stomach was in knots. She knelt in front of Stephen and Micah but both stopped her as she began to recite what was now rote, and instead Stephen helped her stand, and then each man pulled her into a tight embrace and just held her. They promised her that this would work, that she would be safe, and that her father would be out of their lives forever by the end of this day. She wanted to believe them, so she clung to their words like the lifeline they were.
After breakfast, which Valerie only ate because Stephen and Micah wouldn’t stop bothering her about it, it was time to put their plan in motion. The day before, two of Gary’s troops who had never been involved in trying to find her father had gone outside the village limits and pretended to be on patrol. They had purposefully talked about Gary and the Jargonians, saying things about them designed to make her father believe they were secretly working to plot against them.
Two other jaguars had hidden in an outpost building, watching for signs of her father. Gary had come over late last night to tell them that the first part of their plan had worked. Her father had appeared in the hills above the two jaguars, fully materialized because he was outside the village limits and not under the protection of the spell. The two operatives had alerted Gary’s plants by way of a pre-determined signal, and they’d begun their rehearsed speech again.
Gary said her father had stayed for half an hour, heard everything they’d wanted him to hear, and then vanished. All four jaguars had waited two additional hours in case he came back, and then they’d returned to the village, each by different routes in case her father was watching, and gone straight to Gary.
“Are you sure there is no way he could have known it was a set-up?” Drake had asked Gary the question at least five times during the course of the evening.
“My troops assure me he has no idea it was. He will be at the house tomorrow afternoon. I guarantee it.”
Late Friday morning, Valerie paced the living room until it was time to leave. Her palms were damp and her heart was racing. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Emme gave her a warm hug, and then she fixed her with an intense stare. “But I know you can. I told you that you’re brave, and I meant it. I couldn’t be more proud of yo
u right now than if you were my own daughter. This will work. Trust our men, okay? They’ve never let us down. And trust in the Meliadus cousins. Their motivation might be different than ours, but they want this over with as much as we do.”
Valerie sucked in a huge gulp of air and then let it out slowly. She hugged Emme again, and then she squared her shoulders and walked outside ahead of her. She could do this. Whirling around, she put on her game face and spoke the words they’d rehearsed over and over. “I don’t care what you think. I’m not a damn child. I’m only going two streets over. It’s mine, and it’s in that house, and I want it.”
“But what if they’re home?”
“They’re in town with Drake. The house is empty. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
Emme called after her, but as they’d rehearsed, Valerie simply kept walking. Her entire body was shaking. What if he didn’t wait until she was inside the house, but instead tried to grab her on the street? That wouldn’t matter and she knew it. The jaguars were everywhere right now, they were well-hidden, and they were watching. But they needed her father to be inside the house in order to capture him.
Austin and Galatyn were in the house, also hidden, but her father had been led to believe they’d be downtown this morning with Gary and Drake. It was a risk, as he might have been watching the house, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once, and Gary was banking on that fact.
Austin and Galatyn had left the house once this morning, but had then sneaked back into it while the diversion they hoped her father had been watching downtown had taken place. This diversion was part of the plan, and was designed to make him believe that Austin and Galatyn were in town to cause harm to the Jargonians, not to help them. If all had gone according to plan, her father now believed that Austin and Galatyn thought he was dead, and had come to town to avenge Celestine’s death through his daughter instead.
As she turned the corner onto Pine Bluff Road, her heart nearly stopped when she spotted a figure duck between two buildings across the street from the house. He was here. The plan had worked. She forced her feet to keep moving even though they felt like lead and her legs were now trembling so badly, she was sure anyone would be able to see them shaking through her clothes.
She sprinted up the front steps, silently begging him not to rush her from behind. She had to get into the house before he made a move. No one in Jargonian village locked their doors routinely. A locked door wouldn’t stop a shifter from getting inside a home, but homes could have protective spells placed on them. Drake and Emme had one on their house. Although her father probably knew that, he’d have no reason to believe this one had one on it, especially now that he knew Austin and Galatyn were staying here.
Valerie knocked on the door, wishing she didn’t have to go through this part of the plan but knowing it was necessary. He was watching. She could feel his eyes on her. If she simply walked inside he’d know something wasn’t right. Her mouth was bone dry. She tried to swallow and couldn’t. She tilted her head as if listening, which wasn’t an act. She was trying to hear if his footsteps were approaching from behind. She waited ten counts, as predetermined, but it seemed to her as if she’d counted all the way to one hundred.
She opened the door and stepped inside. Before she headed upstairs, she closed her eyes for a second and sent up a silent prayer of thanksgiving that she’d made it this far without passing out. Once he came inside, they’d have him trapped. There would be no escape. This plan had been so simple yet brilliant, but Valerie didn’t think that without Austin and Galatyn arriving to help, they’d have been able to pull it off. In order for it to work, her father needed to believe certain things, and one of them was that the focus of Celestine’s avenging family had shifted from him to her.
She caught the scent of several males in the home, and hoped her father would be too distracted to do the same once he materialized or simply walked into the house. As per the plan, she headed for the stairs, and tried to keep from glancing around, but it was difficult to keep climbing without doing so. She was shaking like a leaf in the autumn winds. Even her bottom lip was trembling. Her hands slid over the banister because her palms were so damp.
Her former room had two layers of protection on it plus the spell that Gary and Drake had placed on the house. Valerie felt the change as soon as she crossed the threshold. Would her father be too distracted to notice it, or would he know something was amiss? She headed for the closet, wishing like mad that they hadn’t insisted she rummage around inside it with her back to the door. It was the most vulnerable position possible to place her in, and she understood how necessary it was for her to be in that place in order for this to work, but she was terrified of it.
As she opened the door and knelt, she felt the air in the house shift. She whimpered and immediately bit back the sound. She wasn’t alone. She had to keep repeating that in her mind and hold on to it. This would all be over very soon, as long as she didn’t tip her hand.
She began to take things out of the closet, but she didn’t even see them. They were things the others had collected from around the house and piled in there on purpose, to give her something to do while her father made his way into the house. She heard the stair treads creaking the way they always used to whenever she or Abby had walked on them, but she kept going.
She was supposed to be muttering to herself, and that wasn’t difficult to do although the words coming out her mouth weren’t the rehearsed ones. They were incoherent syllables she uttered out of sheer terror.
She’d never been this afraid in her life and the urge to stand up and say she couldn’t do this was very strong right now. So was the urge to shift, but she knew she couldn’t. None of them could inside here. That was part of the spell they’d cast on the house. The idea had come to Drake because of the spell that Nevada’s ancestor had placed on the cabin where Nevada and Landon had held Saffron after they’d first found her in the woods above Passion Peak.
As additional protection against her father shifting, the jaguars each carried a lepidolite stone, but Valerie doubted they’d need them. The spells on the house should work and her father wouldn’t be able to shift or vanish once inside here.
She caught his scent before she heard his voice, full of hate and triumph. “You fucked up this time, Valerie. The Jargonians aren’t here to save the day.”
She took a deep breath and whirled around. He was almost fully materialized, and as she watched, he took his full form. He glanced down at his hands as if surprised, and the tiniest glimmer of suspicion passed across his face, but then it was gone. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, it appears whatever charm they placed on the rest of this village is not working inside this house.”
She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t supposed to, unless he said something that she could use to extract a confession that he was part of the League. Not that the jaguars were going to wait for one, but Drake had pointed out that it would be nice if they could say they’d heard one before they took him to the center of town and executed him, just in case anyone from Valerie’s village ever came poking around on his behalf.
It wasn’t difficult to stay silent as she faced him. Her tongue was frozen in fear, and she struggled to keep breathing as she watched his face. All her life she’d lived in fear of this man. He was mean and angry. She couldn’t recall a time when he’d offered even a hint of a kind word. Had he ever loved her? Had he ever loved her mother? “Why did you kill her?” She hadn’t known she was going to ask. It simply slipped out.
He looked confused for a second, and then the familiar sneer graced his face. “Celestine? You know why, you silly twit.”
“No. Your mate. Why did you kill my mother?” Valerie counted ten seconds of total silence. The only noise she heard was the ticking of the wall clock in the kitchen, downstairs.
“Because she found out who I was. And now, it’s obvious you know as well, so I have no choice but to do what I’ve tried to do twice now.”
“Then why
did you kill Abby? She was no threat to you.”
“Yes she was!”
His unexpected shouting almost made her back up a step, but there was no place to go. She was actually sweating now. Beads of perspiration trickled down her face. “Why?”
“Because her parents knew the truth. All those years and she managed to keep it from each of you, but when you came here, I had no choice. Surely even you, with your limited intelligence, can see that. If she had confessed it to you, then everyone here would know. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to protect the League at all costs.”
He took a step forward and she held up a hand, not really expecting him to stop, but he did. Apparently her confidence had thrown him for a loop. “You’ve become quite brave. I guess that’s what fucking two men will do for a girl. You’re quite their little whore now, aren’t you? Well done. It’s almost a shame I have to kill you. You could be a great asset to us with the skills of seduction you’ve no doubt acquired by now.”
She swallowed hard, determined not to let his words break her concentration. “So you are in the League, then. I was right.”
Again, he frowned for a second, and she didn’t miss the surprise pass across his face. It was quick, but she’d definitely seen it. “Ah. Perhaps I was wrong? You aren’t quite as stupid as I believed.”
“Is that why you killed Celestine?”
“No. We killed her because she mated with a leopard. Do you honestly think anyone supports such a perversion of our kind? These jaguars have lied to you. They don’t believe in it any more than we do.”
“You’re wrong.” She reined in her emotions with great difficulty. They were not lying to her. They couldn’t be. He could sense her thoughts and he knew he’d struck a nerve, that’s all.