by Helena Ray
“Yes, darlin’,” Clay said as he opened his arms to Anya, and she tentatively shifted her weight so that she lay against his chest. His arms locked around her stomach, generating a mixture of security and excitement she had never before known.
“Remember when I told you about our family history?” Jack turned to face Anya and Clay, and she nodded in response. “Well, our story goes all the way back to the pioneer days when our family left their home in Illinois in 1845 to travel on what became known as the Oregon Trail. Along with four other families who are still in Savage Valley today, they packed everything they’d ever owned into a covered wagon and headed west to find their promised land. In fact,” Jack said, cocking his head at Anya, “if you’ve been lurkin’ round Savage Hunger as much as Clay’s told me, then you probably know all of them.”
Although Anya was eager to bypass the history lesson and get to this closely guarded secret of the Abbott family, the love for gossip fostered in her by a life spent in the skating world got the better of her. “Who are they?”
“Well, it was us,” Clay said from behind her, “along with the Cashes, the Popes, the Yeatses, and the Sullivans.”
All the names rang bells in her mind, and she quickly connected the dots. “So Mayor Cash, the guys that own the diner, the creepy dudes who work at the newspaper, and the weird kid on the radio who loves nineties rock?”
“You got it,” Clay said with a laugh.
“Now do you want to know why I was down to my skimpies in the snow or not?” Jack asked, drawing her attention back to him.
“Honestly”—Anya waggled her eyebrows—“I’d like you in your skimpies right now, but yes. I want to know.” She needed to calm down or she’d soak through the crotch of her gym shorts before Jack got to the point of this story.
“So the five families were on the trail, and it was a rough life, with rivers to be forded and bandits taking their supplies in the night. When they reached what’s now Wyoming, dysentery claimed another victim in Mrs. Sullivan, the last surviving woman. Morale was low, and they decided they had expanded about as westward as they cared to. After a few more days of travelling, they came to an abandoned fur-trading outpost. You know the bank?”
“I do,” Anya said dutifully, using her knowledge of pioneer time gleaned from the Oregon Trail computer game to fill in the gaps in Jack’s tale.
“That was the center of it all. When they found five abandoned cabins all within a mile or two of the outpost, they figured that God Himself had called them to that spot. They moved in, and soon enough, they were clearing the land and dreaming up a city on the scale of Cincinnati or Philadelphia. But they weren’t the only occupants here in the Valley, and the native Shoshone tribe—the Bannock, I think—were none too happy about their home being destroyed by a bunch of careless settlers.
“Cameahwait, the local shaman, came to speak to Gideon Cash, the leader of the town in those days. He warned them to stop their cutting trees and killing animals or there would be some serious consequences. Gideon and the rest of the settlers laughed at him, calling it just scare tactics. After all, the settlers had rifles, something the Shoshone lacked at that time. So they went on clearing and killing, and once more, Cameahwait showed up at the Cashes’ cabin—behind where the town hall is now—and told him this was his last warning. Being the self-assured type he was, he laughed in the shaman’s face and instructed the rest of the men to continue their work.
“When another week or so passed and no one heard a thing from Cameahwait or his tribe, everyone assumed their superior weapons had scared the natives away. Then one night, when the moon was just a shimmering sliver, all the men were drawn to a clearing at the base of the Mukuas. Up by where Treaty Lane and Kwitakusix Cove meet now. You know it?”
Anya nodded, now completely engrossed in Jack’s tale.
“Well, right at midnight, each one of them inexplicably dropped whatever it was they were doing or woke from their slumber and met in the clearing. They all thought it was the hand of Saint Peter, calling them to his gates of heaven before the rapture would come and a demon would rise from a lake of fire and consume the world. But none such thing happened. Each man shed his clothes, closed his eyes, and…I don’t know to say this so you’ll believe me.”
They were almost there! Why had he stopped just then? “What is it? Come on, Jack, I wanna be in on the secret.”
“The men…they…Clay?” Jack looked at his brother with a pleading expression. Clay flattened one of his hands on her stomach and used the other to turn her so she faced him.
“They turned into mountain lions.”
For a long moment, Anya said nothing. The words trickled into her brain, and she struggled to make a connection to the mysterious reason behind the Abbotts’ odd behavior.
“That’s all good and well,” she started, “but I don’t see how some tall tale from the Wild West has anything to do with this big secret you’ve been hiding.”
Both brothers hesitated and looked between each other before Jack spoke slowly and carefully.
“Anya, we’re not telling you a tall tale. We’re telling you our family’s history.”
“Right.” She shrugged and said, “Lots of families have weird shit in the legends that get passed down. I’m sure there’s probably tales of my ancestors slaying some magical bird in Russia.”
“Darlin’”—Clay’s chest rumbled behind her—“I don’t think you’re understanding. We have documented evidence of this, and we live it out twice a month. At the waning and waxing gibbous moons each lunar cycle, the two of us, along with all the other families in Savage Valley then, turn into mountain lions.”
Once more, Anya was silent. They were joking, right? They couldn’t be some sort of sexy feline werewolves that haunted northwestern Colorado, but then she remembered the two mountain lions from her dream. It hadn’t felt like a dream. No, it had felt more like when she would wake frightened in the night as a child and run downstairs to open the refrigerator and bask in the glow of its light. The darkness cast an eerie shadow over the entire house, transforming it to a different dimension of nighttime existence. Her mother would come down and find her and assure her that all was fine. She would tuck her back into bed, and when Anya awoke, the memory mingled with the bizarre imagery from her dream, halfway between reality and superstition.
“Anya?” Jack asked, and she realized it had been minutes since she spoke to them. What did they expect? News like this took a moment to process.
“Yeah,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m still listening. You’ve just thrown a lot at me, and I’m trying to sort through it all.” Sadness creased his handsome features, and she reached out and touched his arm. “I’m processing it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe you.”
“You believe us?” The animating spark returned to Jack’s body, giving him movie-star good looks once again.
“I didn’t say that,” she said carefully. “I just said that I don’t not believe you. Give me a moment to get it all through my mind.”
It was Jack’s turn to nod solemnly. “It’s not just a twice-a-month thing, either. The mountain lion is a sacred animal to the Shoshone, and when he bestowed the gift of double nature on the settlers, Cameahwait also tasked the pride—what we call the group of lion-shifters—and all their offspring to protect Savage Valley, not to let anyone harm the environment any more than is completely necessary. The area around each of the cabins became the sector for each family, and they work not to let anyone invade their territory. And that includes us.”
“The lion is part of who we are,” Clay continued, and Anya looked up at him. “Not only does the curse compel us to shift, but we need to shift. It keeps us grounded and reminds us of our purpose.”
She was compelled to believe the two of them. As far she knew, they hadn’t misled her yet, and her aunt and her grandmother both trusted their family. Even if they were spouting bullshit to get into her pants, this wa
s some impressively elaborate bullshit. They deserved some sort of credit for their effort. But everything she knew about the two of them told her they weren’t lying, and as unbelievable as their tale may seem, it appeared they were giving her the gospel truth.
“So when you showed up naked,” Anya said, connecting the disparate pieces of their story, “you had just…” She couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “You had just shifted back from being a mountain lion? That’s why you weren’t wearing anything?”
“I knew you were smart.” Hesitantly, Jack leaned forward and placed a small kiss at the corner of Anya’s lips. “In addition to giving us the ability and forcing us to change into mountain lion, the curse influences a lot of different parts of our lives.”
“Wait.” Anya held up a hand and remembered her Aunt Cora’s family. Hadn’t her maiden name been Yeats? And wasn’t that one of the names they dropped? “The fact that you…you know…share. Is that because of the curse?”
When she asked the question, Jack visibly relaxed, and she could feel the tension leaving Clay’s muscles. “Yes,” Jack said, “under the curse, all brothers in a generation of lion-shifters must mate the same woman. It was a rough time back then, and the Shoshone knew how easily the added stress could split a family. Compelling the brothers to mate the same woman ensured that the family would stay together and that their family line would continue.”
Disappointment swelled in her chest, an emotion that shocked her. Over the past week, she had begun to see exactly why so many in the town of Savage Valley insisted ménage relationships could work so well, possibly even better than traditional one-man-one-woman pairings. She saw it in each encounter she’d had with Clay and Jack, and the excitement about their impending relationship had become the reason she got out of bed every morning. She had thought the Abbotts felt the same way, and that was why they both wanted to be with her. Apparently, she was wrong.
“But that’s not a bad thing,” Clay said from behind her. “The curse opened the settlers’ eyes to the advantages of ménage relationships. They saw how two men could give a woman so much more satisfaction than one, and how much stronger their ties to both their ancestral family and the new family they created were when they took the same woman as their brothers.” He used one hand underneath her chin to turn her head and tilt it up to meet his eyes. “Anya, even if we could escape this curse, we would still both want you, and we would want to be with you at the same time. Yes, the curse brought us together, but why should that make our relationship any lesser?”
Clay leaned down and kissed her gently, sealing his words. He released her chin and pulled her closer to him.
“But what happens if both brothers don’t…mate the same woman?”
Jack sighed and leaned his forehead against the headboard. “It’s not a pretty sight. Any offspring that results from a relationship that does not involve all the brothers in a given generation of a given family will die before they reach their third birthday.”
“And it’s happened, too,” Clay added. “Every other generation or so, one of the pride will stray, and it causes a tragedy throughout the town.”
“That’s not the only thing the curse changes about our lives, though,” Jack said solemnly. “The Shoshone also understood that over the generations, there may be shifters that don’t agree with the curse and will run from Savage Valley and leave their families behind.” Jack leaned forward and took Anya’s hand in his. “I know how much you’ve traveled in your life and that half your family lives abroad, but there’s something you need to know about us.”
“We can’t leave Savage Valley,” Clay finished. “None of the shifters in our generation can, at least not yet.”
“When the pride alpha—in our generation, Oliver Cash—”
“So that’s why he’s mayor,” Anya chimed in.
“—turns thirty, that generation becomes the dominant pride. We’re born with the ability to shift, although we can’t usually control it until we’re three or four, meaning every thirty years or so, there are a bunch of toddlers running naked in the Mukuas who shift into mountain lion kittens like popcorn in a hot skillet.
“Anyway, the dominant pride shifts every two weeks to go on a ritual hunt, and they’re the ones who have to worry about protecting Savage Valley. Because of this, and because those damn Shoshone were so worried about keeping families together, we’re physically unable to leave Savage Valley.”
The news spun through her head, and with each detail Anya committed to memory, she found herself believing them a little more. If she were to make up magical powers for herself, it certainly wouldn’t involve dying children and being stuck in rural Colorado. Although the idea of staying in Savage Valley sounded totally foreign to her after a living out of a suitcase for so many years, she loved the possibility of having a home. Somewhere she could return each and every night with someone—or two someones—to hold her and to accompany her in building a life.
“Okay.” Her words came out slowly. “Let’s say I believe you. What does that mean for me? For…us?”
Clay’s grip tightened around her stomach, and he pulled her upward, landing kisses along her neck. “It means that we would live together and we would start a family.”
“Here?”
“Where else?” Jack moved closer to them, running his hand up and down Anya’s leg, coming dangerously close to her inner thighs where desire had already coiled. “You’re our mate, Anya. We’ve both known it from the instant we saw you, and from what you’ve said, you know, too.” His hand dragged upward, pulling up the hem of her shorts, but stopped only an inch from her pussy. “We won’t force you, though. We know you need time to make this decision.”
“In the meanwhile”—one of Clay’s hands slipped beneath her hoodie and traced upward—“you can’t blame us for trying a few things to help you make your decision.”
In one swift motion, Jack pushed aside the sopping-wet crotch of her gym shorts and inserted one long finger inside of her. Her breath hitched at the sudden, very welcome invasion, but she couldn’t focus on that for too long. Clay cupped the bottom of one of her breasts and rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, eliciting a soft moan from Anya.
“Jack got to be inside of you,” he whispered as he switched hands and lavished attention on her other nipple. “I want to fuck that sweet little cunt, too. I want to feel your pussy tighten around my cock, and I want to hear you scream my name again as you come all over me.” He pulled her backward against him, and she could feel from the rock-hard erection against her ass that he meant every word.
“God, Clay, I want to—Oh my god!” Jack pulled her gym shorts down over her hips, and before even easing them off her legs, buried his face in her pussy. His tongue licked along the seam of her outer lips then pushed into her, grazing her clit before it dove downward to tease at her entrance.
Her hips moved of their own accord as she tried to maneuver his face so that his tongue fucked into her. She used her free hand to tangle in his soft, blond locks and angle his head just right, but without a hitch in his ministrations, he reached up and grabbed her wrist, stopping her.
“Just sit back and let us make you come,” he breathed against her pussy, the little rivulets of air driving her need higher. He licked again at her clit, and she knew her release was close. She moaned her assent as Jack pushed his finger back into her and Clay pinched her nipples, twisting them into hard nubs.
Jack sucked her clit into his mouth at the same instant he added a second digit to his finger-fucking. When Clay twisted her nipple and bit at the back of her neck at the same moment, everything inside of Anya snapped. She cried out as her universe exploded into tiny points of light, and she could feel the liquid rushing from within her cunt and into Jack’s ready mouth.
“Goddamn, that was sexy,” Clay whispered in her ear. “I will never get tired of seeing you do that, of making you do that.”
Even in the after
glow of her orgasm, Clay’s words ignited her desire. She shifted in his arms, turning so that she faced him, and craned her neck upward for a kiss. He readily obliged, and his tongue plunged into her mouth as his hands ran down her back to cup her ass. He rolled onto his back, forcing her to straddle him. Anya busied her hands with undoing the buttons of his shirt, and just when she had snapped the last enclosure to free his skin, Jack’s hands curled around the hem of her hoodie and drew it over her head.
His hands wrapped around her chest and squeezed her tits, and his cock bumping against her ass told her that he had shucked his clothes as well. He moved away suddenly, and Anya thought to protest, but she finally freed Clay’s chest from the confines of his shirt. She smoothed her hands over his pectorals as she pushed his shirt to the side. Her breath hitched at the sight. While Jack was all long and lean, Clay was pure muscle. He had hard six-pack abs, clearly defined by a hard line running down the center. Anya leaned over to run her tongue along that ridge, but her efforts were halted when Clay rolled again, this time placing her body under his. He pressed one hot kiss against her lips then sat up to shuck his jeans and boxers.
What he revealed was truly an impressive specimen. His cock wasn’t as long as Jack’s, but it was thicker, wider than any she had ever seen. She worried suddenly about whether or not she’d be able to take such an impressive dick inside of her, but Clay leaned forward so she was flat on her back, and the feel of that cock bumping against her wet entrance made it impossible for her to think about anything else.
“Are you ready?” he asked, rubbing his cock up and down along the seam of her pussy. “I know you just came, and I don’t want you to be sore.”
“I don’t care about being sore.” Anya wrapped her arm around his back and pulled herself upward so her tits bumped against his hard chest. He must have taken this as a signal to move, and he adjusted the angle of his cock then thrust hard into her. The girth of his cock stretched her, but the sensation drove her crazier than anything before. He pulled out and thrust back in again, and the fullness of his cock buried inside her had her racing to the brink once again.