by Cara Adams
The Cat Burglars 3
The Triplets Mate Zoe
The Reed panther triplets, Vallen, Montague, and Diego, are determined to mate Zoe Crawford. However, she refuses to be just like her sisters, Leah and Maia, with triplet shape-shifter husbands. No matter how handsome and enticing they are, she’s not going to fall in love with them.
For a month now the men have spent three days a week helping at her father’s work, feeding the homeless people alongside Zoe. But nothing will make her pay attention to them. Now Leah and her mates are back from their honeymoon, the Reeds decide it's time to take Zoe out on a real date where she can’t ignore them. Somewhere they can show her how much they want her and teach her the joys of BDSM and ménages.
There’s just one problem. Getting Zoe to agree is a lot harder than they expected.
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter
Length: 36,369 words
THE TRIPLETS MATE ZOE
The Cat Burglars 3
Cara Adams
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
THE TRIPLETS MATE ZOE
Copyright © 2015 by Cara Adams
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-211-8
First E-book Publication: April 2015
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
About the Author
THE TRIPLETS MATE ZOE
The Cat Burglars 3
CARA ADAMS
Copyright © 2015
Chapter One
Vallen Reed paced up and down the parking lot outside the bakery where Zoe would arrive at any minute to collect the day-old bread for the homeless people.
It’d been more than a month since he and his brothers, Montague, and Diego, had first seen Zoe Crawford, and they’d gotten nowhere with her. None of them had received as much as a kiss from her luscious pink lips, much less anything more intimate.
In those four or five weeks, her older sister, Leah, had married the Stewart brothers, and her younger sister, Maia, had become pregnant to the Reilly triplets. He and his brothers were still there at Zoe’s side several days every week, and she scarcely even spoke to them.
Vallen paced faster, aware that if he’d been in his panther form likely his tail would be swishing from side to side with his angry movements. What the fuck was stopping her from dating them? If she’d hated them, it would have been very easy for her to tell them to go away. And they’d have gone, too. Well, gone a little way apart to regroup and figure out how to change her mind. But still. She hadn’t told them to disappear. Or even not to visit so frequently. But she didn’t touch their hands or give any indication at all that she wanted anything more from them than help in running the work among the homeless people.
And personally, if Vallen never scrubbed another cooking pot, it’d suit him fine. He wasn’t washing dishes because he enjoyed it. He was doing it to be near her. And, to be honest, because the people her father, the church pastor, helped were mostly good people fallen on hard times, and Vallen wanted to help them get their lives back on track.
But he wanted to fuck Zoe even more. To kiss her, hold her, fuck her, and tell her how much she meant to him, to his brothers. How much they craved her in their bed. He longed to take her into the dungeon at the panther warehouse and chain her to the ceiling and then paddle her ass until it was fiery red and she was begging him to fuck her.
And so far, in four-five weeks it hadn’t happened, and there was no sign it would ever happen. That had to change, preferably before his blue balls exploded with unfulfilled desire.
Vallen paced around the parking lot some more, breathing deeply and trying to calm his need for her. What he ought to be doing was planning how to get her into the dungeon and then into his arms. Clearly, simply spending time with her wasn’t going to be the catalyst he needed. Yes. It was time for him to hold a council of war with his brothers, and they needed to plan how to convince Zoe to become a hell of a lot more intimate with them. Spending hours and hours every week at her side was never going to work. They needed to get her alone somewhere they could demonstrate how much love they were ready, willing, and able to shower over her if she’d just give them a sign she wanted that. Wanted them.
Just then she drove into the parking lot and stopped beside his car. He knew she’d do that. He’d deliberately parked immediately outside the bakery. The damn trash bags of bread she collected were bulky, not heavy exactly, but unwieldy, and a challenge to fit into the trunk of her compact car.
Zoe climbed out of her car and rested one hand on her hip, shaking her head at him. �
�Vallen, how often have I told you, Montague, and Diego that I can do this myself? I really don’t need you to supervise me here.”
“I know you’re an extremely competent woman. But I like to be here just in case something goes wrong and you do need help. Besides, it’s much easier getting the trash bags in your car with someone to assist you.”
She simply shook her head and marched inside the store. Vallen was right behind her, his gaze on the delicious sway of her delectable ass. Oh, how he longed to see it naked. To dig his fingers into her soft flesh as he ground his dick into her belly and held her body pressed against his from lips to hips.
Not going to happen anytime soon unfortunately.
The bakery owner fixed his worried gaze on Zoe and spoke the moment she entered his store. “Zoe, I’m glad you’re here. Poor old George in the café got robbed last night. The police came straight away, but the thieves smashed the motor of his big freezer. His freezer won’t be fixed until this afternoon, and the food in it can’t be sold, so it all has to be given away. I told him about you and your father’s work, and he’d like to give you the food, but you’ll have to cook it immediately. I expect some things will have to be thrown away. The freezer was smashed around two this morning.”
Vallen pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and tapped the speed dial for his youngest brother, Diego. He texted, Bakery now.
“My brother will be here in five minutes. He’ll help as well. What do you need to do first, Zoe?”
“Maybe if you collect the bread while I go to speak with George? I’m so sorry this has happened to him, but thank you so much for mentioning the church ministry. I’m sure we’ll be able to use the food.”
“No problem at all. I only wish we could help you even more than we do.” The baker’s tall, white chef’s hat bobbed as he nodded to her.
Zoe ducked behind the counter and gave him a hug and then hurried out the door of the bakery.
Vallen wished he was the one getting the hug, but then he hadn’t done anything for her yet. He walked behind the counter and collected the enormous black trash bags filled with day-old bread.
“Thank you very much, both for your generous donations of bread and also for telling the other store owner about John-Paul’s work.”
He lifted the bags over his shoulder and walked back to his car. He had to put them down to get his key out and beep his trunk unlocked and then load them inside. Diego arrived just as he was finishing.
“Where’s Zoe? What’s wrong?”
“One of the stores was robbed. We’re picking up more things.”
“Huh?”
Vallen shook his head. “We’ll find out everything else from the source. Come on.”
The café was only a few stores farther along. This was only a tiny row of stores, so nothing was very far from anything else.
The front window of the café had been smashed, and it was covered by metal panels labeled in huge black writing with the name of the company who’d boarded the window up. Vallen stood at the doorway.
A woman was sitting on a chair, crying, and Zoe was kneeling on the floor, hugging her.
Vallen looked at the floor. There were fragments of glass and bits of smashed things everywhere. Zoe was going to end up injured, kneeling on the floor like that, but he couldn’t say anything. The other woman was clearly traumatized and needed Zoe right now.
He looked around, and an older man with a pale, woebegone face was leaning on a broom just staring at the mess.
Diego whispered, “He looks like a candidate for a heart attack.” Diego raced forward and gently took the broom from the man. “Come and sit down, and I’ll make you a hot drink.”
The man let himself be led over to a small table surrounded by chairs.
“You can’t. They broke the espresso machine. It’ll cost hundreds of dollars to replace, and who knows if the insurance will pay for it? Who knows if the police will find the thieves?”
Vallen felt the Dom in him come to the fore. “We’ll make sure the insurers pay you what they owe you. You have our promise on that.”
Diego patted the man’s shoulder and walked out the back. Vallen hoped he could find some wine or something. The old man didn’t look good. He needed a shot of something to help him get over the shock. Hot, sweet chocolate or warm, soothing herbal tea would be best, but with no means to heat water right now, just about anything would be better than nothing.
Vallen grabbed the broom and started sweeping from the front of the store, making the mess into one giant pile against the side wall. As he swept, he stacked the chairs onto the tables, noting that one of them seemed to have been used as a weapon because the legs were bent. He took that chair out back and found a trash bag to sweep all the detritus into. He swept carefully, not wanting to throw out anything that might be important, but it was mostly chunks of glass from the smashed window, along with small pieces of wood and plastic from who-knew-what.
He’d just finished bagging the trash when Diego retuned with two mugs, one in each hand. “From the baker,” he said as he handed one to the man and the other to the woman.
Vallen noticed Zoe had managed to get her to stop crying, and she was wiping very red eyes with a wad of tissues. Progress was being made.
He waited until they’d both drunk their beverages, and Diego had returned the mugs, and then he spoke as gently as he could. “Diego and I will help you. What’s the most important thing to do first?”
The man had a little color in his cheeks now, although he still didn’t look well. His voice was less frail and wobbly, though. “Zoe must take the food and give it to her father for the homeless people. Likely much is already ruined, but some things might be salvageable if they’re cooked straight away.”
“Okay. Show me what to take, and Diego can get that to them now,” said Vallen.
Diego raise his eyebrows at him but didn’t say anything. He’d have had to walk here because Vallen already had their shared car. But if it was too much to carry, he could take their car, and the bread, and get that to the Crawfords and Monty, who were likely wondering what the fuck was going on.
The woman seemed to be recovering from the shock and showed them where there was a huge pile of cardboard boxes. They unloaded the contents of the large freezer into the boxes and carried them all out to Zoe’s car.
Vallen looked around the shop. Really, there wasn’t much that could be done until the repairman came to fix the freezer, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave these two older people alone right now. Zoe would have been the obvious person to stay with them, but today was the female shower day at the church, and her mom would need her help. Plus, he had no idea what to do with the food to preserve it or cook it, and the women would be much better at that.
Fuck! It seems I’m elected to stay.
“Diego, you and Zoe go back to the church and start work on the food. I’ll stay here and do whatever needs doing.”
“I should stay.” Zoe’s chin was firm, and her hand was on her hip.
“You’d be better at this than me, I know, but it’s the women’s shower day, and already your mom will be missing you.”
He watched her lips thin, and then she frowned. Damn, her face was so expressive. He knew exactly what she was thinking.
“All right.”
Zoe hugged the woman again, gave her a cell phone number, and then followed Diego out to the cars.
Vallen turned to the couple. “I’m here to help. What can I do to help you now?”
* * * *
Zoe muffled her sigh as she backed out of the parking space and turned her car toward the church. Well, it wasn’t her car exactly. It was the family’s sole vehicle, but lately she seemed to be the one driving it mostly. Leah, her older sister, had met and married panther shape-shifter triplets. She’d just gotten back from her honeymoon and was in the middle of moving into their apartment at the panther warehouse.
Meanwhile her younger sister, Maia, had fallen in love with anot
her set of panther triplets and gotten herself pregnant. She was getting married in a family-only ceremony on Saturday evening. However, she’d already moved in with the men. They’d turned up with a truck and told her parents what had happened and moved her in with them all on the same day. Fortunately, her parents had taken the news better than Zoe had expected. She supposed she ought to have guessed what was going on when Maia was coming home late, night after night.
Zoe sighed again. She’d love to spend some time alone with Vallen, Montague, and Diego Reed, but it just seemed too much like following the crowd. She wasn’t a lemming to walk off a cliff because her sisters had. Although honesty forced her to admit that her sisters both looked more like cats who’d gotten the cream than lemmings falling off a cliff.
But still. She wasn’t going to be rushed into anything, not even by intensely handsome, tall, muscular men, with military-short black hair and rich dark-chocolate eyes.
And now, on a women’s shower day, with forty women to be showered and a hot midday meal to prepare for one hundred twenty people, they had an eclectic collection of other foods that needed to be cooked and preserved to be used either today or soon. Fortunately, her mom was a genius at throwing random ingredients together and turning them into delicious meals.
Plus, someone had to help the café owners. Likely Vallen would be with them to fill in any paperwork needed to claim the insurance. He’d sounded very definite about that. But Zoe felt sure there’d be dozens of other tasks to be done that she knew nothing about, and the owners were completely shattered. George was so pale, his face almost gray, that she’d been really worried about him, and Dorrie had cried herself into such a state she was almost hysterical.