Three Shifters for Sarah (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Dani April

  Watching her, he noticed how flushed she was after their bathroom sex. She looked beautiful.

  “Did you mean what you said in the car?” she asked him. No longer was there any need for pretense or anger between them. For the duration of the day they would be a couple and Ryan hoped for much longer than that.

  “What did I say?” Ryan asked her.

  “You said you loved me. Did you mean it?”

  “With all my heart.”

  “But does love mean the same thing with your kind as it does with humans?”

  Ryan gave a laugh. There was so much Sarah still did not know about shape-shifters. “I’m a human, too,” he told her not unkindly.

  This seemed to confuse her. She removed some hair from her eyes that the wind had blown across her face. “Lance kept referring to humans as the bad guys. I just thought you wouldn’t want to be thought of as human.”

  Ryan sighed. He had made a mistake in letting Lance talk to her first. “Lance had a very bad event in his life that changed him. However, when I saw him at the hotel this morning he looked more like the old Lance I used to know a long time ago. One night with you did him a lot of good. Think what a lifetime would accomplish.”

  Sarah looked embarrassed. The idea of being shared by the men was still new to her. She looked out at the panorama of the city and tried to hide her blush, but Ryan saw it anyway and smiled at her shyness.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she told him.

  “Please know that TJ, Lance, and I are all humans. Everyone in my pack is a human just like you are,” Ryan reassured her. “The only difference is we have a gift that other people don’t have. Because of our gift and the challenges that come with it, we live life a little differently.”

  She looked up at him. He thought he was finally getting through to her. “That’s the reason I brought you to this party this afternoon. Everyone here is a normal person. I am the only shifter present. Nor does anyone else know what I am, and frankly they have no need to know. I suppose I wanted you to see me mingle with other people and prove to you I could be just like everyone else.”

  She took his hand and laced their fingers. “No,” she told him quietly. “You’re not just like everyone else. You three men are so much more than everyone else.”

  “I feel love the same way other men feel it, Sarah,” he gently explained to her. “Only problem with that is I never knew what love was before. Then you came into my life.”

  Her smile became bright and hopeful. “I really liked it when you called me your girlfriend,” she admitted to him.

  “I’d like it better if you’d call me your mate.” He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her and love her and let her know that he would make everything in her world right for her. However, there were just too many other people milling around that terrace, and he knew he would have to hold back his passion for later. The bathroom sex had been nice, but he wanted her again.

  “Will you do something for me?” she asked him hopefully. “But it won’t be as glamorous as this cocktail party.”

  “If it involves the two of us being together the answer is yes.”

  She put a hand on his chest to hold him back. “Wait here for a minute.”

  He watched her as she moved across the terrace behind a couple of artificial trees and pulled her phone out of her handbag. This puzzled him because he had no idea who she was calling and could not hear her conversation removed by distance and the whistling of the wind. But whoever she was talking to he was okay with it because it seemed to make her happy, the smile on her face and her animated conversation proof of her good mood.

  Ryan saw a couple fellow investors and spoke briefly with them as they passed. He got a glass of champagne off a table and waited. Sarah was gone from him for about five minutes before she ran back across the terrace, the high heels of her shoes making it hard for her to get up much speed.

  She seemed happy, but in the way of the cat who had just swallowed the canary.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  “That was my dad,” she informed him with a beam. “I just got him to invite us to dinner tonight.”

  Ryan knew the shock was displayed on his face. Though not displeased he had certainly been caught off guard by this turn of events.

  “I figured you’ve told all the millionaires at this party I was your girlfriend, so I might as well tell someone who matters in my life.” Her eyes grew wide as she looked up at him with a question. “Will you take me to dinner at my dad’s tonight?”

  Damn the other people around them, Ryan thought. He pulled her into his arms and gave her a kiss full on the lips. “I would be honored to have dinner at your father’s home,” he told her and settled the matter.

  * * * *

  An hour later they were pulling up out in front of her father’s Cape-Cod-style home. He lived in a small bedroom community outside of Stamford, Connecticut in the house Sarah had grown up in. Having lost her mother to cancer when she was still in high school, her father had lived alone in the house ever since.

  During the drive up Sarah slipped into the backseat and changed again into her blouse, shorts, and comfortable shoes. Ryan asked her to keep on the pearl necklace, and Sarah had to admit the elegant little pearls went as well with her casual attire as they had with her formal.

  Sarah gave her father a big hug when he met them at the front door and he was quick to extend his hand to Ryan in a gesture of friendship.

  “It’s nice to meet you, sir.” Ryan stood on formality when he was first introduced.

  “Call me Bill,” her father told him in an affable tone and with a pat on the shoulder. “Come on inside and let me get you all something to drink. Ryan, how about a beer?”

  “That sounds nice, Bill.”

  “I made a pitcher of lemonade for you, sweetheart.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You two take a seat. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. I made us a pot roast.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone to that trouble, Dad.”

  “No trouble at all, sweetheart. It was one of your mom’s old recipes.”

  Sarah was proud of Ryan. He was handsome and polite and most importantly he was all hers. Though a bit nervous about the hastily arranged dinner, Sarah knew Ryan would be cool about it and the perfect gentleman. Sarah was more worried about how she would act around her father and Ryan. Unfortunately there were certain aspects of her relationship with the men Sarah could not share with her father, and this caused her to worry she might say something by accident that would embarrass them all.

  Her father handed her a glass of lemonade and gave Ryan his beer. Sarah got comfortable on the couch in the living room, and Ryan sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulder. It felt good to have his arm around her, and Sarah beamed with pride that this was her man.

  Taking his seat across from them in his easy chair, her father threw her a suspicious look, and Sarah didn’t know what it was until the words were out of his mouth. “Is that a tattoo, Sarah?” he asked her with a mix of alarm and surprise. “I didn’t think you liked them.”

  Sarah gave a sigh and pushed up the shoulder on her blouse in a self-conscious gesture to hide Ryan’s mating mark. Coming to her rescue, Ryan gave her arm a squeeze and took over. As the pack Alpha, he was pretty good with taking the lead.

  “I gave it to her,” he explained in a level voice. He was not defensive but merely breaking the situation down for her father’s benefit. “It was when we first met on my ranch out in Montana. I put that on her shoulder as a symbol of my love for your daughter.”

  “It’s unusual,” her father said. “As long as you’re okay with it, honey…”

  Was she really okay with it? Sarah had vacillated back and forth on this. If only her father knew all the trouble this one little mark had caused her. On second thought it was a good thing he didn’t know all the trouble it had caused because it would have brought into question the future of her relationship with Ry
an.

  She had neither the time nor the courage to tell her father the full history of the mating mark, so she dissembled. “I’m fine with it, Daddy.”

  He father seemed to accept that and moved on. “So you two met when Sarah took her vacation out west?” He directed his question at Ryan.

  “That’s right,” Ryan started in his always-sure-and-strong Alpha voice. “I own a ranch that I open up to the public. I have a couple dozen cabins on my ranch, and we rent those out to tourists. It’s a way of generating some extra cash for our business, but mostly just a way to stay in touch with ordinary folks. Sarah rented one of my cabins for a week, and that’s when we met.”

  “I must say I was surprised at Sarah’s announcement that she had a new boyfriend. It seemed so sudden. The two of you must have gotten to know each other awfully fast out there on that ranch.”

  “We only had a week, Dad,” Sarah reminded him.

  “I’m glad to see you doing well, honey.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Sarah was happy to see her father was pleased and excited for her, and this was exactly why she had wanted to bring Ryan to dinner tonight.

  “It was love at first sight between us,” Ryan told her father.

  Sarah looked up at Ryan and realized she had a really romantic guy on her hands here. She gave him a playful elbow in his ribs and laughed. “I don’t know about that,” she corrected his assessment. “But there was a strong attraction between us right from the first.”

  Images of TJ and Lance filled her mind, and she almost mentioned them to her father. But it was best if she didn’t just yet because her father was already operating on information overload with Ryan sitting in his living room, and if they just gave it a little time and were patient everything would work out.

  * * * *

  “So Ryan, you’re in the ranching business, are you?” her father asked Ryan conversationally.

  Ryan and her father were getting along famously. It had been the right decision to bring him to dinner. In both men she recognized the same character, the same strength and dedication to purpose. Both were hard-working men who, once they set their minds to a task, pursued it with unflinching resolve. Now during dinner they found a lot of shared interests, and the exchange emanated freely.

  The three of them were seated at the dining room table, a flowing white tablecloth thrown over the center, Sarah and Ryan on one side and her father on the other. The table was small, but so was the room and Sarah was scrunched next to Ryan up against the room’s single window, their knees touching in the narrow space.

  Never before did she remember this room being so small. Of course never before had there been a bigger-than-life Alpha shifter seated at her side, and practically forced to sit on his lap through dinner she was feeling hot and uncomfortable once again. That naughty feeling Ryan conjured in her loins was back, and she was content to sit silently and let her father quiz Ryan.

  “I own the Circle T ranch along with a couple other cowboys,” Ryan informed him. “I’m also the leader of a community out there. My position is sort of like the mayor and the sheriff all rolled into one.”

  “Sounds like you keep busy.”

  “I do, but my real passion is horses.” Ryan reached under the concealment of the tablecloth and placed a hand on her bare knee.

  Sarah knew this is all she didn’t need with her father sitting right across from her not five feet away. At this one modest touch her heart started to pump in her chest and blood raced through her veins. She only hoped her father didn’t see her face start to redden and question her because she would have been unable to respond.

  As if to silently ask him what he was doing Sarah gave Ryan a look. But pretending he hadn’t noticed her, he went right on with his conversation.

  “I consider myself a cowboy before all else,” Ryan told her father.

  “When I was younger I used to live out west. My mother’s family comes from a long line out there,” her father confided. “And I always did love horses.”

  “It takes a lot of patience and skill to tame a bronco,” Ryan explained.

  Now his fingers began a slow tantalizing massage of her knee. Sarah squirmed in her chair under his touch but felt irritated that he had not acknowledged her silent query and chose to keep talking with her father instead. Wanting to carry on as if nothing was happening she readjusted her position in the chair, picked up her fork, and tried to continue with her meal and maintain a neutral face.

  “A man has to know how to work with a bronco.” Ryan was becoming passionate as he explained his work to her dad. “It takes a lot of skill and practice to work with wild horses. But it all comes down to the way you handle them. Sometimes I’ll see a beautiful animal come through that only needs a light touch.”

  His wicked fingers became as light as a feather as they advanced up her leg to rest at the cuff of her shorts. This was the house she had grown up in, and her father was across the table from them. A more compromising position could not have been imagined in her most erotic of dreams. Yet as his devilish fingers caressed up the inside of her leg, a shiver ran through her, and she knew she would never summon the strength to make him stop.

  “Then again.” Ryan continued his conversation with her dad. “Some situations in the corral call for a firm hand.”

  The leg of her shorts was bunched on her thigh and his hand ran across the outside of the fabric. That material felt all too thin as he parted her legs and traced the line of her pussy with a finger.

  Sarah bit down on her lips to stifle a moan, and in her panic reached for the glass of water set before her plate. The cool liquid going down her throat did nothing to quench the fire Ryan had lit inside her. As his fingers started a slow caress of her pussy from the outside of her pants, she thought she was going to come unglued. The hinges of her mind were coming unlatched. She wanted to scream.

  “You see, Bill.” Ryan went on with his talk. “It’s all in knowing how to play it to make that horse yield to you, to break down their resistance to you, until they finally belong to you.”

  Sarah had set aside her fork. Her breathing came heavy. She stared down at the white linen tablecloth that hid the naughty happening beneath and tried to focus and wait out what was about to overcome her for the second time that day.

  Just in time she reached under the table, using the adjustment of her napkin as a pretense. She gripped Ryan’s thigh as tight as her fingers could clamp down and tensed from the bottom of her feet to the straining muscles in her shoulders as a powerful orgasm blew her away, made the little dining room spin and stars shoot before her eyes.

  Her dad and Ryan were still talking, their voices now reduced to unintelligible murmurs that sounded a hundred miles away. Their words had no meaning and might as well have been in a foreign language.

  Proper and correctly, as if everything was just as it should be for a Sunday evening dinner, Sarah brought her napkin to her mouth and coughed a couple times to clear her throat. Then she reached for the glass of ice water again and the soothing coolness it offered.

  “Is everything all right, honey?” her dad asked her with concern in his voice.

  Sarah looked up to Ryan, and he just gave her a smile as if nothing had happened. Later she would deal with him for this naughty misbehavior, but now a super peaceful afterglow had started to settle in and she didn’t want to spoil it with any worries.

  “May I be excused, please?” She gave her dad a reassuring nod and quickly got up from the table, quick to shove down the ravaged leg of her shorts to its rightful position. Walking across the floor, her legs barely had the strength to carry her.

  When she got to her father’s bathroom she closed the door and fell back against it wondering what she was going to do with Ryan. She thought she loved him. She thought she loved all three of them.

  * * * *

  Ryan didn’t know what had happened. They were lying above the covers in Sarah’s old room at her father’s house. They were naked. He had just taken
her harder than he ever had before. Now he adored her body with kisses and caresses as he cradled her in his arms.

  As soon as dinner was over Bill Winter had gotten a call from the local fire department. He was a retired firefighter with twenty-five years of experience and still a member of the volunteer unit. There was a pop drill at the station, and they requested him to come down. It would be no more than an hour, and he asked them to stay and wait for him. Sarah wanted to leave, but Ryan couldn’t let this opportunity pass them by and told him they would stay and wait.

  As soon as he was gone Ryan had taken her into her old bedroom upstairs and shut the door. Now his head was spinning as he realized he wanted to spend the rest of his life exploring every crevice of this beautiful woman’s body. Sarah had been the goal he had been working to attain and now he held her in his arms and refused to let go.

  “You’ve really got me convinced you are a very bad man.” Sarah moaned as he kissed his way down her neck while at the same time his hand fondled one of her breasts with loving and playful strokes.

  “No, I’m not,” he assured her.

  She pulled his head away just as he was about to devour one of her breasts. “What you did at the table,” she reminded him in a scolding tone. “And with my father sitting right across from us.”

  “You bring out a beast in me that’s never been unleashed before.” He pulled her back to his side and kissed her lips softly. “But I’ve never been in love before either.”

  “It was still very bad,” she chided him.

  “Your father never suspected a thing. Anyway I think all he wants is for you to be happy, and I’m pretty sure what I did under the table made you happy.”

  “I thought I was going to die when you started touching me down there.” Her voice was husky from the hard, rough ride he had just given her, but Ryan didn’t think she was really angry at him anymore.

  “I didn’t want you to die. I just wanted you to climax for me.”