The Tiger's Tale Page 6

  Ean sat up, folded his arms atop his knees, then rested his forehead on them, squeezing his eyes shut. The faint light filtering through cracks in the window frame took on the blaze of neon in his brain. More intense? More intense—even as pleasure—would kill him. “She’s getting stronger. She connected to the doe.” Ean couldn’t do that.

  “Females are more perceptive and she was still open emotionally from sex. Don’t worry.”

  Ean touched his bruised shoulder. Right. No worries.

  “If we mix a bit of pain with her pleasure, it helps her stay grounded and channels her energy up toward the next dimension instead of out into everything around her.”

  Ean’s left nipple tingled with the memory of her teeth.

  “You better go.” He paused, gritting his teeth. His own voice reverberated in his head. “I’m going to shift for awhile and then walk back. Make an excuse for me.”

  “She’ll think we’re fighting about her.”

  Ean was surprised that they weren’t arguing. “I was stupid, Adam. I shouldn’t have let things go so far.”

  Adam stood, dusted the straw from his pants. “I was close by. Just in case. I’ve always got your back, Ean.” He offered Ean a hand up. “You’ll be fine and so will she.”

  Ean hated that he needed help up and that he had to lean on Adam for a minute until the world stopped spinning. The magnitude of what they were about to attempt with Marie was sinking in. “Will we be fine? All three of us?”

  When Ean could stand without swaying, Adam moved away and started stuffing the remains of lunch into the pack. “You can back out.”

  As bad as he felt, this was nothing compared to what Ean would suffer for Marie. In his mind, in his heart, they were already mated. He grabbed the thermos and popped the lid, gulping sweet tea and feeling his energy return.

  Unbearable pleasure… She was that and more already. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.”I’m in for the long haul. Wherever that leads.”

  * * * * *

  Adam never worked outside his lab. He wasn’t really working now. He was guarding the door. He flipped the binder open and picked up a mechanical pencil. Tiny green blocks on white paper, points joined by arching lines, the maps for their futures. He smoothed a wrinkle from the lace tablecloth and cocked his head to catch the soft pad of Marie’s bare feet in the hall upstairs. Hopefully the hot bath and dry clothes would mellow her enough so he could distract her from the idea of leaving. He flipped to a blank page and randomly penciled in points.

  He jotted down thoughts in Russian. Friday, he wrote. And that word weighed in his chest, pressing down until his breath was a shallow whisper. Friday night they would take her. They would call up the tigress and step naked into her cage.

  He wrote the number 333 and considered. He had spent that many years on this earth, gaining skill, gaining knowledge, stalking wisdom. And yet, in the face of love he felt like a toddler with an indecipherable book in his hands. He wished for the key that would allow him to decipher Marie.

  A good place to start looking might be her past. How had she wound up orphaned? It was rare enough to lose two parents, but all three? Not only that, but what of her siblings? Multiple births were the norm, so what had happened to her birth mates? His species was rare and careful records were kept. So most perplexing of all, he hadn’t been able to find the record of three gone missing around the time of Marie’s birth. Which would mean abandonment. Had a female gone off, delivered on her own and walked away from the babies?

  Maybe, he reasoned, she had thought to give them a better life, to allow them to be human and like everyone else. A very young mother might have fallen into the trap of that reasoning. Yet the result was that Marie had instinctively locked so much of herself away—frightened by her own power and drives perhaps—that very little of the real Marie was allowed to leak out. She lived a Spartan life with rigid routines and kept her distance from others, from him, especially from the chaos love threatened to create. That she easily accepted his nonsense explanations for this afternoon’s odd manifestations proved her need to cling to a reality much simpler than the one he needed her to live in. So, what would happen to her iron grip on reality when they turned it inside out?

  How do you gently say, Oh by the way love, you’re a tiger woman and I’m a tiger man? He tossed his pencil down and rubbed his eyes. There had to be an answer here, some way to tell her now, to go forward with everything honest and out in the open. Something more honest than all the smoke and mirrors he’d thrown up during the truck ride home. His stomach grew queasy. How could they set her free with lies?

  Her scent came to him and the sound of her bare feet shuffling through the kitchen on her way to the coffee pot. He leaned back in his chair watching her reach into the cabinet for a mug, raising up on her toes, the late afternoon sun coming through the window to illuminate the arch of her back and the thrust of her breasts under one of his white shirts. Copper curls glowed in the warm light.

  He watched her pour coffee and pause to inhale the fragrant steam curling above the mug, bringing it close and closing her eyes. Then her eyes popped open, she turned and stared straight into his. A smile lit her face and his heart lifted in response.

  He held out an arm and she came to him, settling in his lap and frowning down at his notebook. She looked back to him.

  “Something’s troubling you.” She set down her mug and cupped her hands around his face, her palms still warm from the hot cup. “We don’t have to do this, Adam. I made my peace with being childless a long time ago.”

  But she hadn’t, not really, and it tugged at his heart that she would make such a sacrifice for him. He wished he dared to explain that all of this was about so much more than just having a child.

  “We will be fine. You and Ean are wonderful together.”

  She frowned and picked her mug up, taking another sip and swallowing noisily. “I don’t understand this. I can’t see how you can both be so willing to share a lover.”

  “It’s a matter of expectations. We were raised in an environment where your love wasn’t something owned by your partner, where it was okay to love more than one person. Ean and I aren’t afraid one of us could steal you away. Why would we want to when it gives double the care and protection to what is most precious to us?”

  “I wouldn’t feel that way if you two were to start bringing in other women.”

  Adam laughed. He started to explain and then the humor got the better of him again.

  “I don’t see why that’s so funny.”

  “It’s just that Ean and I have been worried about surviving you.” A second tigress in their bed, he couldn’t wrap his imagination around it. “Two?”

  Marie was not amused and he had to hug her to him to keep her from leaving while he buried his face in her hair and tried to get a grip.

  “You talk like I’m some kind of sex fiend,” she grumbled.

  “You’re an animal,” he growled into her hair, biting her earlobe.

  He felt her soften and her scent carried the promise of moistening to his nose. He was tempted to toss her over his shoulder and carry her to bed now, get an early start, but he held off. He wanted to give her something beautiful. He wanted to give Marie moonlight and two adoring men to worship her.

  * * * * *

  Don’t believe.

  Don’t hope.

  Don’t lose yourself.

  Marie stood rooted at the bottom of the stairs, wondering where she could find the courage to take this first step, a step that could raise her life to a new level, a step that could destroy the best thing life had given her to that point.

  Adam found it for her, stepping up first and holding out his hand. She took a deep breath and put her hand in his, watching his fingers close over her own, her hand swallowed in the warmth of his grasp.

  She turned back and held a hand to Ean. He took it and lifted her cold fingers to his lips, then turned her hand palm up and gave the inside of her wrist a so
ft, seductive lick. She shivered and smiled. And they went up. Their footfalls echoing in her mind, like the boom of surf on rocks. She hoped what they had built between them wouldn’t wind up on the rocks because of this night.

  At the top of the stairs, Marie stepped ahead, moving down the hall and into the unearthly light of the moonlit bedroom. On the other side of the threshold, she was no longer a creature of time. What she would become instead had yet to be unwrapped.

  She wore only Adam’s shirt. Her hands moved to undo the buttons, parting the fabric with stiff epileptic movements. She held it away from her and let it fall with her identity. The Marie she used to be landed in a limp puddle on the floor. She waited for the mystery to unfold, to show her who this night would make her. She had her eyes closed, shades drawn tight against the intellectual Marie, against any hint that this wasn’t the most perfect and beautiful decision she had ever made.

  Air stirred in front of her, behind her, Ean and Adam moving, their bodies creating currents, stirring her senses and her mood. They pressed her between them. Hard male bodies flesh-to-flesh with hers, Adam in front and Ean behind. Heat flowed through her, softening tense muscles.

  “You need this,” Adam whispered in her right ear.

  “You want this,” Ean whispered in the left.

  “You are loved,” they promised together.

  Oh, she wanted to believe this could be magic. She needed to believe it could be real. Adam’s heart beating under her palms was real. Ean’s hot breath against her neck was real. She had to stay with what was real, move beyond her need for miracles, and make her own future out of something real.

  Ean’s fingers spread over her shoulders and her own hands warmed, moving over Adam’s broad chest. Adam’s lips mated to hers, his teeth nipped her bottom lip and gently his tongue slipped in to taste her. She leaned into him. Ean’s hands came around to cup her breasts.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said and rubbed her breasts against Ean’s palms. Nipples tightened, pulled in like they might find a way to hide. Ean pinched them and she moaned.

  Adam’s finger slipped between her thighs to stroke her wet slit. That part of her was certain about the rightness of this idea. She felt his lips form a smile against hers. Ean’s teeth scraped her shoulder and pleasure sparked through her. His right hand skimmed down her side and reaching from the back, he joined Adam in testing the waters. The waters were hot, and getting hotter while they took turns dipping their fingers, like wands in a honey pot.

  She moaned again and tried to wriggle away but they pressed her tight between them. That melted her. They had her now and she wouldn’t be going anywhere until they had their fill. It came to her as a soft awareness that whispered in the back of her mind. Their attitude was shifting from seductive to something more primitive, primal. Desire buckled her knees.

  Ean caught her, lifting her high and swinging toward the bed.

  He settled her gently, easing her to the mattress like she was something precious. They stood above her, one on either side of the bed. They looked at each other for a moment, a silent communication and they moved together to take a position on either side of her, them lying on their sides.

  When she looked into their eyes, it was like something ancient had taken hold and dictated each step in a choreographed ritual. Adam laid his hand over her heart and Ean placed his over Adam’s hand. They kissed her, first Adam and then Ean. She tasted spiced wine and breathed their scent. She could press her nose to their faces and breathe the maleness of them forever. They nuzzled her when she did and whiskers scraped her. She craved that stubbly feeling, savored it.

  They moved their hands to her collarbone, fingers curved claw-like and dragged them slowly down, over her breasts, over her ribs, down to her hip bones. Nails skimmed her skin, the faintest sensation of claws. Not pain. Awakening. Desire uncoiling and opening something inside her.

  How was it a barely perceptible scratch could mark her bone deep, unzip her? Two pairs of eyes peered into her secret places. She longed to pull her skin back over her secrets, draw a curtain over her desire, but she looked into the silver depths of Adam’s eyes and laid unresisting, hands at her sides.

  They moved like two bodies sharing one mind.

  They touched her like they could read hers.

  Those fingers parting her sex were too rough, but the touch lightened even as she thought it. Adam. She knew that wicked touch of his, a rapid soft flicking of his finger over her clit, like the quick beat of wings. It made her wriggle and moan. It made her ache to be filled. She wept, right there between her legs, desire’s tears, spilling out onto Ean’s fingers. And she might have known he couldn’t resist dipping his finger in and tasting, like he was sampling something he’d left simmering and wanted to see if it was ready. His eyelids drifted down and a look of pleasure crept over his face. She thought she would never forget how he looked just now with moonlight and shadow painting his face in shades of blue.

  He opened his eyes and caught her watching. He gave her his imp’s smile, his gaze not leaving hers when he dipped back in a second time and found that spot, that secret high spot inside her, the one only Adam had discovered, that one that made her lose her mind and mew like a hungry kitten.

  Adam’s mouth moved over hers, his lips sliding, teasing back and forth, a sweet friction, like the one he created in those other lips. His tongue dipped in and she sucked at it, wanting him deeper.

  Her control slipped and their wills slipped in to replace it, as stealthily as the rising moon had pushed back shadows and slowly filled the room with pearly blue light. She raised her arms, burying her hands in their hair. She was going down? Or maybe she was rising up? Drowning? Dissolving? Yes dissolving. She tried to hold on.

  Moonbeams went to fragments, turning to columns of dancing sparks, flickering like millions of fireflies. Beautiful.

  Tears spilled over her lashes and ran down her cheeks. Together, Adam and Ean licked her tears. Too beautiful. It made her cry harder.

  Those fingers kept going, driving her forward. The need to come turned into a delicious fever.

  “Adam?”

  “We’ve got you, love.”

  “Let go,” Ean coaxed.

  Around her the moonbeams reformed, pulsing against the black night and then expanded, bursting apart in a brilliant shower. She wanted to let go like that. She was terrified to let go.

  She tried pressing her legs together, shaking her head. Her body vibrated, buzzed as if bees swarmed through her blood. Together they each caught a nipple in their teeth, sucked it gently, tongues flicking the hardening nubs. They bit down. She disintegrated.

  One minute she was Marie and the next she was light, the sweetest happiest light she could ever imagine. She was pure bliss, no thoughts, no worries. She could stay just like this forever.

  “Come to me, love.”

  Adam’s voice whispered through the light.

  “Come to me.”

  She didn’t want to wake up from this dream. If she still had a tongue she would tell him so.

  He laughed and it was like bells, little waves of music that set the light dancing.

  “You have to breathe,” he said gently.

  Marie was inside and outside herself at the same time. Her eyelids weighed a hundred pounds. They fluttered briefly when she tried to lift them and went still. She looked through them instead. From high above she saw their bodies, three shadowy lines, parallel paths, like the dark swipe of a beast’s claw marking the moonlit bed. The sheets were a tangle draped over the foot of the bed, pooling on the floor. We should be tangled, she thought. The lines obeyed.

  How was it she could see the backs of their heads and be looking up into their eyes at the same time?

  Adam’s eyes went to pure silver in the moonlight. The gold in Ean’s flickered like little yellow stars. She watched worry lines smooth and lips part to pant when her fingers found their cocks. What she did made the muscles of Ean’s stomach clench tight und
er her forearm. Adam’s breath turned to a hot pant against her cheek.

  They were so hot. Hot, rigid, sliding over her palms. A rippling glide of skin and muscle wrapped in her small hands. Ean moaned. Adam sighed. The thick musk of male desire made her mouth water. Her thumbs stroked over the tips of their cocks and found telltale dew. She stirred with the pads of her thumbs. Adam’s face turned into her neck. Ean’s head dropped back on the pillow next to her head. She held the power. These beautiful men were hers to keep. If she wished. If she dared.

  She wished.

  She dropped her wish into the deep well of Adam’s love.

  She pinned that wish to every star in Ean’s eyes.

  This was too beautiful. Tears quivered on her lashes. How could anything this beautiful be real?

  Adam’s fingers stroked over her wrist, then up and down the length of her arm. He meant to slow her. She must be wrecking their control. Ean gritted his teeth. Sweat glistened on his neck. She licked salty drops and followed it with a sharp nip. His cock jerked.

  “Careful,” he growled. The deep tones went right down her spine to pool between her thighs. Adam’s teeth nipped the back of her neck, sending a drugging heat through her that made her want to spread her legs and beg. An ache rippled. Pulsed. Glowed. Surely, they could see it.

  They pressed her between them, facing Ean with Adam at her back. The thick tips of their cocks nestled right there where need simmered. She dripped, drizzling them with her honey. She moaned and wriggled, caught between the muscled vise of two hard bodies.

  They moved back and forth, a perfectly timed seesawing across her dew-drenched petals. Synchronized. How? How could they even think?

  She would lose her mind!

  It was so incredibly hot in here.

  Down there.

  “Careful,” she panted. “You’ll get scalded.”

  A chuckle rumbled in Ean’s chest, a delicious vibration against her breasts.

  Adam rubbed his wet cock against her hot ass and teased, “I bet my poker is hotter than your fire pit.”