by T. S. Ryder
"Good evening, Miss Valdez," he greeted, giving her an easy smile. "Mr. McGrath sent me and my partner here to help you out."
The faint flush turned sickly as soon as McGrath's name was out. Killian frowned as he and Ryan walked into the house. A quick glance at his partner showed a scowl. It was clear that they weren't going to be doing any seducing today. From the look on Danita's face right now, if she’d agree at all, it was because of fear.
That was not how Killian Flanagan treated women.
Danita backed away from the two shifters, craning her neck to look at them. She barely came to Killian's shoulder, and Ryan was even taller. Between them, they were five hundred pounds of pure muscle.
"Who are you?" Danita squeaked.
"I'm Killian, this is my partner Ryan. Where's your kitchen?"
She stared at him like she wasn't sure she had heard him correctly. Killian allowed an amused smile to surface as he nodded to reassure her that he wanted the kitchen. A good, hardy supper was just the thing a woman needed after a good cry. At least that was what his mother used to say.
Besides, Killian wanted something that wasn't cooked over coals. He might never be able to get rid of the taste of ash.
Silently, Danita pointed. Killian nodded at her and headed the way she pointed, although once he was in the room, he couldn't help but think it might be better to order in. The linoleum was cracked, the ceiling burnt, walls stained, and the stove had definitely seen better days. Given the bleach smell, Danita had cleaned it thoroughly, but it was disgusting.
As Killian started to look through the drawers for what he needed to make spaghetti, a four-legged creature came into the room. He stopped and stared at it. It stared back. It was a fairly small animal, with a long neck and legs, covered in thick brown wool.
"Danita, will you come here please?"
Moments later, looking like she was about to faint, Danita appeared in the doorway.
"What’s that?"
"She's Maria, my alpaca."
Killian looked back at the alpaca. It gracefully skittered across the kitchen to rub its head against Danita. Ryan appeared in the doorway behind the human, looking curious.
"Why is there an alpaca in the house?" Killian asked, bewildered.
"I'm going to start a herd, but all I have is Maria right now. They're herd animals so I can't just keep her outside."
"So you let the livestock in the house?"
"She's house trained. Alpacas always use the same spot for their bathrooms." Danita chewed on her lip. "Please don't hurt her."
Ryan patted the alpaca's furry head. "We're not here to hurt you or your pet, Dani. Like my partner said, we’re here to help you. This place is going to need a lot of work done on it if you're going to pay McGrath back."
The human's shoulders relaxed as she looked at Ryan, and a hesitant smile appeared on her face. She believed that they wouldn't hurt her, at least. That was good. They wouldn't get anywhere with her fearing them. Still, they'd have to give it a few days before they rocked her world.
Not for the first time, Killian regretted ever joining up with McGrath and the Four Clovers. It had seemed like the only option at the time, but this life just wasn't for him.
When they first met McGrath, he and Ryan were two teenage runaways in a world that didn't understand shifters or their desire to have a woman between them in bed. When they met the Leopard, he talked as if he could show them a place where they'd belong and always have family. It was pretty lies that sucked them in. Throwing in their lot with McGrath was like making a deal with the devil.
He shook the thoughts from his head as Ryan asked Danita about alpacas and why she wanted to raise them. The human answered hesitantly, but Killian loved listening to every word that fell from her lips. She had a beautiful, sensuous voice with just a hint of an accent.
He couldn't wait until he heard her crying out his and Ryan's names while the three of them made love.
Chapter Three – Danita
Danita sighed as she dressed in an old pair of coveralls the next morning. She had gotten precious little sleep the previous night, worried about her farm, her future, and the two Bear shifters that were apparently living with her now.
If she didn't know that Ryan and Killian were sent by McGrath, she would have been more than thrilled to know that they were camped out in her living room. Her fantasies were one thing, but it was nothing like seeing them up close. They were, quite frankly, gorgeous. All strength and muscle. Ryan's freckles and tattoos gave him a sensual mix of farm boy and bad boy, whereas Killian's easy smile kept flashing his dimples. He oozed sexual confidence, something that had Danita's heart beating faster as soon as they were near.
The question was why they were there.
When they assured her that McGrath had sent them to help her, she couldn't help but believe them. But what did that mean? Were they here to ease her into accepting being auctioned off? Or were they here to help her clean up this place so she could turn a profit and pay McGrath back?
The mortgage she had been counting on to fix up the farm and pay off McGrath's down payment had been denied. Was it just coincidence that the two Bears came to her door as soon as that happened?
McGrath said that virgins sold for a higher price in his market. Had he sent Killian and Ryan to make sure that she stayed a virgin? But how could he even know that? And why would he send two men who would have any virgin dropping their panties to look after her?
Were they gay?
Given the way they looked at her, hell no.
Danita shook her head. Fretting wasn't going to do her any good, and until she could think of some way she’d get some extra money, she was going to keep working on her farm. There was the loan from Amelia that she could take, and she had already applied to several jobs in town and knew that she could sell the farm if it came to that. It was worth a few hundred thousand at least. McGrath’s veiled threat about what would happen if she went to the police meant that wasn't an option.
Danita yawned as she led Maria outside. No money coming in. A huge debt and deadline hanging over her head. Maybe it would be best to sell, to get rid of McGrath and put off her dreams for a couple more years. Better than being sold herself, wasn't it?
"Well, first things first," she muttered, pushing aside those thoughts. She'd just end up paralyzed by stress and fear if she didn't get to work right away. "That barn door needs fixed."
It wasn't until she got to the barn that she heard the sounds of saws running inside. What was going on? Frowning, she peered around the open barn door. Ryan and Killian were inside, measuring and cutting two-by-fours. The buzz of her second-hand equipment filled the hollow space, disrupting birds that had built their nests in the rafters.
Danita watched the Bears for a moment, her heart rate increasing as she watched the sawdust fly and their bare chests pulse as they moved their arms.
Beautiful. If they weren't McGrath's thugs…
As she stepped into the barn, she saw that the door had been fixed. So they really were here to help her out? Maybe McGrath's whole auctioning her off threat was just to make her understand that he was serious about making her pay off her uncle's debt.
"Where did the lumber come from?" she asked when the boys turned off their power tools.
"Rye and I went and got some this morning. Would have brought you with, but you looked too darn cute, curled up in your bed." Killian grinned at her. "We saw the sketches for a lean-to and fence against the barn and thought we'd take a stab at it."
Danita's eyes narrowed and she put her hands on her hips. She always thought that when something seemed too good to be true, that was because it was.
This definitely was too good to be true.
"Is this some sort of trick? Is McGrath adding more to my debt? Because the way it's sitting right now, I'll never be able to pay it! I don't have any capital to even start making money."
The two Bears glanced at each other. Killian shook his head, looking disgusted.
"Mortgage was turned down?"
"How do you know that?"
"McGrath has the bank under his thumb. But it's odd that he wouldn't want you to earn the money to pay him off."
"He might want the land," Ryan grunted. "How much do you owe him and when?"
"Fifty thousand down payment in three months. Ten times that altogether. And I don’t owe him anything, it's my uncle who owed him. But apparently, I don't have any say in the matter. And the land isn't worth that much. Trust me, I already checked for oil and whatever."
Ryan stared at her a moment and turned to Killian. They shared a look that she couldn't decipher, then Ryan walked out the door. Just like that, he was gone.
Killian came so close his arm brushed hers, sending chills down her spine. "Don't worry about the money. We'll take care of it."
Danita opened her mouth.
"I said don't worry about it. McGrath wants us to help you, and so we will." Those dimples flashed. "We'll find a way for you to pay us back, Dani."
Did he mean the same thing that McGrath had meant? Disappointment hit her hard. She liked these two muscle-bound hunks. But if they were the kind of guy who thought that she owed them her body to pay a debt she never agreed to in the first place…
She slipped out of the barn, not wanting to face him any longer. For right now she wanted to believe that they were helping her because she was a damsel in distress and they were her knights in shining armor. That daydream might be broken soon enough…
She just wanted to hold onto the dream for a little while longer.
***
For the next several days, Killian and Ryan worked nearly nonstop on the farm. Danita kept busy, too.
The more she got to know the boys, the less afraid she was that they would demand her body as payment. Even though they made no attempt to hide the lust in their eyes, their attempts at seduction had been soft caresses, foot rubs, making dinner. All the normal courting stuff. No threats, no intimidation. More than once Danita woke in the middle of the night with a deep craving to go out to the living room and wake them up.
But as much as she had fantasized about it, she didn't know how to go about seducing these two beautiful specimens. She didn't even know if it was a good idea at this point. She had the mind of an erotica writer, but she was still a virgin, and reality frightened her.
The fear that this was some sort of trick of McGrath's was quickly set to rest, though. Ryan had given her a hundred thousand dollars in cash the same day that she told them how much they owed McGrath and assured her that it was a gift. From the way they talked about the Leopard, they didn't like him any more than she did!
Danita gladly paid half of the cash to McGrath right away, along with an extra ten thousand to buy her two extra months before she had to start her monthly payments. The rest she sunk right into the farm. She seeded hay into the flat fields by the tree line, bought half a dozen alpacas, five females and one male. She even planted a vegetable garden.
In less than a week, things seemed to have turned around for the better. The barn was patched up, the house made livable, and Danita was well on her way to start earning returns on her farm. Life was good.
Until she got a package in the mail from McGrath.
Inside was a pomegranate-red corset attached to a little lacy skirt that would just barely brush her thighs. Danita felt so sick looking at it that she almost missed the note laying on top. Her hands trembled as she picked it up. She had four and a half months before she had to start paying him back, didn't she? So why was he giving this to her?
Had he changed his mind? Did he want her himself, and not just her money?
Danita's heart sunk as she stared at the note. For your shifters.
Tears blurred her eyes. The boys had bought her after all. Everything they did… it was just pretense. They didn't care at all.
Her despair quickly turned to anger. How dare they? How dare they hang around her farm when she didn't ask for it, do work that she didn't ask them to do, give her money that, again, she did not ask for, and then turn around and pull something like this?
If they had bought her from McGrath, then they should have damn well have the decency of telling her, rather than pretending that they were actually helping her. That they cared about her as a person.
Her fantasies about them had felt like they came true, she was on the verge of giving herself to them, and all the while, all they could see her as was a pair of big boobs and a tight squeeze.
So they think that they can just buy my virginity?
She had had plenty of opportunities to have sex. She always chose not to. It wasn't like she was looking for her first time to be her forever and only, she wasn't that naive, but she also decided long ago that she wasn't going to have sex for sex's sake. She wanted a meaningful connection, and she had thought she found it with Ryan and Killian.
Danita gathered up the set and marched outside, where the boys had started a fire for a wiener roast. Well, something was going to roast, all right.
The boys smiled when they saw her. It only made her angrier.
"My virginity is not for sale!"
Ryan stiffened as Danita threw the lingerie, box and all, into the fire. She put her hands on her hips, glaring at the two of them. Killian looked shocked, his blue-green eyes flickering towards the burning lingerie and back to Danita.
"What are you talking about?" he demanded.
She opened her mouth to continue her accusations but stopped. The situation was seriously messed up, but the smart thing would be listening to their side of the story. After all, if McGrath would go so far as to make the bank deny her mortgage to force her into his power, could she put it past him to try to drive away the two Bears that had been helping her out?
"Danita?" Killian came closer, his eyes growing stormy. "What are you talking about?"
Was he angry at her, or had he guessed what was going on? Trying to remain emotionless, Danita told the boys all about McGrath's proposal of 'alternative' payments. The words tasted bitter in her mouth. Before she was even done, Ryan let out a feral roar and leaped from the fire, shifting smoothly into a Bear. His clothes shredded, flying everywhere as he charged for the forest. Danita stared after him with wide eyes.
"What is he doing?"
"He just needs to blow off some steam," Killian said.
Danita could hear it was taking him quite a bit of effort to stay calm. Her eyes filled with tears. Seeing them, Killian's face fell. He brushed his fingers against her cheek, then withdrew them sharply.
"We're not angry with you, Dani. I'm sorry that McGrath was like that, and as for that," he pointed to the burning remains of the corset, "we had nothing to do with it. We didn't buy you. We didn't even think that McGrath knew that Ryan dug up our savings for you."
Relief washed over Danita. Of course. This was just McGrath again, his tricks. Her boys weren't like that. They really did care.
"I'm sorry I thought—"
"Don't be. You had every right to think that."
When Killian held his arms out to her, she gratefully stepped into them. Her shoulders shook with repressed sobs. She didn't even know why she was crying. Maybe it was because she was just so happy that her boys were here for her, not because they thought that they owned her, but because they genuinely cared.
She clung to Killian, letting herself melt into his strong embrace. As long as they were here, she was safe.
Chapter Four – Ryan
His blood reached boiling point quickly. Ryan patrolled the edges of Danita's farm, sniffing for any trace of McGrath. The Leopard was a sly, slippery devil. It wouldn't surprise the Bear if McGrath had been spying on them this whole time.
It was clear that he wanted Danita.
And it was just as clear that he didn't want the hard working, determined woman that Ryan and Killian had gotten to know.
He didn't want her pounding fence posts into the earth, or hauling hay bales around while she prepared to feed her alpaca herd,
or climbing into the top of the barn to rip off the old shingles and lay down new ones. He didn't want how silly she got when she was tired, the string of curse words when she nailed her thumb or the way she ran for the first aid kit if someone else injured themselves.
All Dean McGrath wanted was her body. He didn't care if he broke Danita's heart or left her a shell of her former self. He wanted to manipulate her into getting into his bed for as long as he could. It had happened before, and it was only fear of Killian being punished that kept Ryan from taking matters into his own hands before now.
But Danita? No. There was no way he was going to let that stinking Leopard get his paws on her.
It was all he could do to stop himself from chasing McGrath down right now to tear him to pieces. The only thing that held him back was the knowledge that if he did that, Danita and Killian would suffer for it.
The fury still heating Ryan's blood cooled a little. When he had decided to run away from home all those years ago, he expected to go alone. But Killian had sacrificed everything and went with him. Kelly was from a very rich family in the community of shifters they grew up in. His family would have protected him when it came out that he liked to share women with his best friend.
The same couldn't be said of Ryan. His mother was incredibly homophobic, and any sort of indication that her son didn't fit in her narrow view of morality meant he was beaten. He'd learned over the years to hide his pain as his flesh and bones knit back together. At least shifters healed faster than humans. If he had had to spend weeks hiding a broken arm rather than a few hours he never would have made it outside the house.
It continued for years. And when he told Killian, his best friend had bought two plane tickets out west and told him to pack only what they could carry. Killian always knew what to do.
There was no scent of Leopard around the farm, and Ryan's head had cooled enough for him to think straight. He headed back to the house, careful to avoid the alpaca pasture. Danita got upset if they frightened the animals.