The Tiger's Tale Page 7

  “Prove it.” She paused, wondering if she could possibly say what she was thinking. Ean’s cock bumped her clit and she forgot modesty, the words wrenched out of her. It sounded like begging. “Stir my coals.”

  “Soon.” He moved back against her pussy, the friction sending a fresh drizzle over his cock. “Mmm. Very soon. We’re going on a journey first.”

  Ean pressed his lips to the center of her forehead. Damp heat with a stirring breath. A faint vibration hummed under them.

  She squirmed. “Couldn’t we make love first?”

  She could feel a smile shape Ean’s lips, a warm line drawn across her forehead then returning to a pucker. Their cocks moved against the fire in her clit. She wanted to drag back and forth over the length of both until she boiled over. Then she wanted to fuck them. She smiled, wishing she should take their cocks together and push them deep inside against that agonizing ache.

  “We’ll get to that too,” Adam said.

  “Hmmm?” She must have missed something.

  “Listen now,” Adam said. “No thoughts.”

  She thought of a question but it scattered under Ean’s tongue. That spot on her forehead was starting to buzz like a mad bee. She squirmed but it only rubbed her throbbing body parts against their throbbing body parts.

  Throbbing. When she noticed it, she realized it had been there awhile, faint and growing stronger. They throbbed in time together, like cats purring. She shivered, taking it in.

  “Let go,” Ean murmured. “No thoughts.”

  Their hands were running up and down her body, over her skin. Hot, throbbing hands. They smoothed, soothed, stretched and unleashed more heat where she already burned. Under their touch her skin seemed to tighten and thin. Then they started licking, licking her ears, her neck, her shoulders, her face, her nipples. Teeth scraped and nipped. Hot breath whispered over her, ran through her. She was going transparent, her skin turning to gauze.

  She would lose her mind.

  A hard hot cock slid inside her.

  At last!

  It felt like sparks, sharp stinging pleasure where it scraped the sensitive walls. She was shivering hard now, her teeth chattering. How could she shiver when her blood had turned to liquid fire?

  Adam withdrew and Ean slid in.

  Yes!

  A slow, deep drive.

  Oh, please…

  Adam took his place. They had her between them, clamped between two furnaces, taking turns dipping in. At this rate they could last an hour. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t last another minute. She was already lit up like a Fourth of July sparkler.

  She would come apart, scatter in a thousand brilliant sparks.

  They pushed into her over and over, unraveling her with a precise, measured pattern. Dig deep. Caress every quivering nerve ending. Pause. Feel her quiver and squeeze. Whip out. Pause. Let her crave. Repeat.

  Her brain was going to mush. Soon it would leak out of her ears.

  “Be here,” Adam said. “Be who you are.”

  And she was there, in the empty spaces between thrusts, trying not to drown in pleasure, catching her breath before the next wave rolled in to fill her. But she learned in the endless year that passed between one breath and the next. She discovered emptiness filled her too, set something blossoming high in her chest. Something she could keep.

  God, she needed. Them. This.

  Don’t take it, she thought.

  Ean slid out. Pause. Adam slid in.

  Don’t take it away.

  “Don’t take which?” Adam asked.

  “Both. I need both.”

  Ean drove in harder. And then Adam. The pace quickened.

  She really was losing her mind. She couldn’t tell the difference between what she thought and what she said.

  They stopped. She was shivering hard enough to rattle her teeth loose. Why did they stop? Her bones buzzed. The room swayed like they were out at sea.

  She could see what she couldn’t see, like her skin had eyes. Fat cocks glistening with fluids, poised, ready to arrow into her. Ean and Adam looking at each other like they had a plan…

  They wouldn’t! Couldn’t! It wasn’t possible.

  But they did.

  They thrust up together while their hands dragged her down and she was impaled on both together. Powerful thrusts rocked her. One stroke. Two.

  “No, no, no…”

  A cry peeled out of her throat, deepened to a scream and then to a roar.

  Teeth sank into her shoulders.

  Two cocks exploded inside her.

  She lost her mind.

  Chapter Five

  The morning blazed bright on the other side of her eyelids. Male bodies pressed against hers on both sides, their limbs a heavy tangle around her. Marie’s mind scanned through the various complaints her body registered—achy back, achy muscles, assorted bruises. A headache nagged, a low-level throb that came from hunger ignored too long. Under it all was a deep, satisfied feeling, a joy that filled her up and spilled over into a smile she was sure looked lopsided and silly. How was it that a few hours of sex could wind up feeling like a week of sex?

  Coffee, food, a hot shower and she’d be a new woman. She opened her eyes, blinked, then squinted against the sun. Her nose felt like an ice cube. The curtains fluttered in the breeze. One end of the rod had come loose and they drooped over the doorway, swirling like a drunken scarf dancer. Who left the balcony doors open?

  Adam and Ean were snoring their way through a version of dueling chainsaws. She scooted from under Adam’s arm and Ean’s leg. She didn’t want to wake them so she inched away and crawled to the bottom of the bed.

  Marie realized two things as she stood up. She’d been pummeled with a wrecking ball during the night and hunger had gnawed a hole clear through her belly to her spine. This hunger wasn’t just an irritable feed-me emptiness, it was a great, yawning cavern that screamed to be filled with anything and everything at hand.

  She headed for the kitchen, or more accurately, coffee. A sheet hooked around her ankle, hampering progress. Marie bent to untangle herself and straightened, holding the sheet, trying to make sense of what she saw. Shredded? She couldn’t pull a memory from her foggy mind to explain it. How did they manage to shred the sheet? Her stomach growled. A headache nagged. She couldn’t decipher that puzzle without coffee. Her stomach growled loud enough to compete with the snoring contest going on behind her. Food first. Answers later.

  She made a pit stop at the bathroom. What on earth? A mountain of towels, what had to be every towel in the house, oozed gray water in the tub. The room had a wet-dog smell. While she was focused on the towels, her foot sank into cold mush with a squish. The floor mats were soaked. She shuddered and shook her foot. What had they tried to dry off?

  Swimming. Something about swimming lurked in her foggy brain. In November? Her screaming bladder and growling stomach insisted she take care of business and save that puzzle for later as well.

  The crisp air in the hallway made her shiver. Obviously the heat was off. She didn’t know what had happened to her clothes. Ean and Adam were always tucking things away, hiding them from her to keep her naked, most likely. She swiped a pair of Adam’s sweatpants and Ean’s shirt from the dryer before heading downstairs. The clothes hung like rags on a scarecrow. She probably looked gruesome enough this morning to cause crows to fall dead mid-flight. The way Ean had been stuffing her with food the past week, she’d fit into his clothes before long. Her raging hunger suggested that her body was getting attached to the truckloads of food he served up at every meal.

  She could worry about beauty when she had some carbs and coffee to knock the cobwebs out of her brain. She snagged her purse from the hall closet on the way to the kitchen.

  One stale bagel lurked in the breadbox. It was hard enough to crack teeth but she didn’t care. Hadn’t Adam just bought them yesterday morning? It must be one of those all-natural, preservative-free brands. She softened it with a quick nuke in the microwa
ve and then plunked in a mug of water. While the water heated for instant coffee, she dug out her cell phone. The screen was black. She frowned. She’d charged it yesterday and hadn’t used it. She held down the power button and it lit up. Why would her cell be off? She never turned it off.

  The startup song chimed at the same time as the microwave. She chiseled instant coffee from an out-of-date jar and lightened it with several spoons of powdered creamer. In the back of her mind she could see Ean rolling his eyes and gnashing his teeth. Nothing less than freshly ground designer beans, French-pressed, and cream straight from the cow would meet his standard for what should cross her lips. She inhaled and took a sip. She should be glad he didn’t insist on kettling his own bagels and baking them fresh. She gnawed at the stale bread, washed a bite down with coffee and scrounged in the cabinet. She found a box of Oaty Rings, a bowl’s worth left in the bottom.

  With the cereal tucked under one arm, purse over her other shoulder, bagel balanced on top the coffee cup and the cell in her free hand she headed for the kitchen table to enjoy a little solitude before the men got up. It had barely been a week and the two of them were consuming every waking second of her life. She sat, wincing at the tenderness. Not all of that consumption was bad but she needed a little alone time to recharge and catch up with herself.

  She flipped open the cell phone to check the message queue. They had a programming release coming up on a project she’d done a few modules for, and while no one had resisted the idea of her taking a few days off, she’d promised to be available if the testing hit a snag and they needed her.

  No messages. Great. Then she noticed the date.

  She nearly inhaled the bite of bagel she been chewing.

  Four days?

  It wasn’t Saturday morning—it was Wednesday morning!

  She had lost four days?

  Her voice mail was empty. Wouldn’t they have called from the office to see where she was?

  Think. She tried to think. She couldn’t. How do you lose four days?

  * * * * *

  Adam swatted at the goose honking in his…ear?

  The honking stopped. “Ow. What?” His hand had connected with Ean’s nose.

  Adam opened his eyes, pushed Ean away and rolled from the bed. He stood up too fast and the world abruptly turned black. He steadied himself against the wall. Low blood sugar, he thought automatically. When his head cleared he glanced about for Marie and knew she’d probably headed for food.

  Ean sat up, scratching his chest, squinting in the bright light. He glanced around the room. “We got a little wild.”

  Adam bent, picked up a lampshade, decided it was beyond repair and set it beside the lamp. “A little.”

  He couldn’t help the grin that came with the memory of the three of them in the river, fully shifted. They’d mounted Marie with the moon overhead, the trees like a fortress holding off the world, the river surging around and over their bodies. Then the grin disappeared. He couldn’t feel her presence.

  “She’s not here, Ean.”

  Adam grabbed some sweatpants from the dryer on the way down the hall. He stopped at the top of the stairs, hopping on one foot and then the other. He had to hold onto them to keep them from falling down when he raced down the stairs.

  “Her breakfast is here on the table, barely eaten,” he shouted and went back to the front door.

  Ean met him at the bottom of the stairs wearing sweats that showed his ankles and barely reached his hips. “Maybe she got a call from work.”

  “I turned off her phone and hid her keys. Her purse and jacket are gone.”

  Ean opened the front door. “So is your car.”

  Adam sat on the bottom stair and stared out the door at the empty space where his red Mustang should be.

  “So we can assume she was in a hurry. Either she didn’t want to wake us or she was too furious to speak to us.” He’d be stuck driving Marie’s spicy orange Aveo if he went to look for her. Great.

  “Do you think she remembers shifting?”

  “She can’t carry the memories from that reality back to this one yet. She’s not accustomed to processing information like a tiger. It slips away like a dream when she shifts back.” She had always joked after an intense night of loving that Adam was so hot he melted her synapses. Sex took her closest to her true nature, pushed her to the edge. It had taken only the completion of the triad to make her whole and carry her over.

  “Then what do you think she’s angry about?” Ean closed the door, scratched at a four-day growth of beard and shuffled down the hall toward the kitchen. His hair stuck out in weird clumps that made Adam run hands over his own to smooth it. A good look at them in the morning light had probably sent her running. He followed Ean into the kitchen.

  “She’s probably got about a hundred good reasons to be mad. I called her job and said she was out of town dealing with a family emergency. I turned off her phone. I hid her keys. Those are just the things she knows about.”

  Ean was spooning coffee into the machine. He frowned, dumped the grounds back into the canister and started counting again.”She needs the time off. This pregnancy is going to knock her flat.”

  “She managed to slip away before I could break that to her.” Not that he was looking forward to The Talk. He was hoping she’d be so sex-sated, so head over heels in love that being a tiger wouldn’t seem like such a big deal. Ridiculous in hindsight. But certainly four days of nonstop sex should have mellowed her, cushioned the blow.

  “Well, if she took your car and left hers it means she’s coming back.”

  “Let’s hope.” And, he thought, let’s hope she doesn’t discover anything else I haven’t gotten around to telling her about.

  * * * * *

  Marie contacted the office on the drive to her apartment.

  Irene answered the phone. “Marie, sweetie, I hope things are better with your sister.”

  Sister? She was nearly into the intersection before she realized the light was red and had to slam on the brakes. She didn’t have a sister.

  “About the same,” she said, hoping the ever-expansive Irene would expand. She did.

  “Well that’s a shame. Adam mentioned she’s expecting. I’ll just keep her on my prayer list. Don’t you worry, it’ll all be fine as soon as those babies come. High blood pressure is a normal thing with multiples.”

  What on earth? What had Adam been saying?

  The driver behind her laid into the horn. Marie hadn’t noticed the green light. She waved an apology and drove on.

  “Well… Yes. Thank you, Irene. I just wanted to check in on the project.”

  Marie could hear the soft whimper of an infant. Irene’s new baby she thought. She should ask how the baby was. She couldn’t. The new policy allowing infants to come to work had been implemented last week. She hadn’t mentioned it to Adam but the reason she’d agreed to taking a few days off was to avoid the agony of days spent with the smell of babies, the sound of babies, and the sight of other women with babies in their arms while Marie’s arms remained empty.

  Marie decided to take advantage of the opening Adam had given her. “Listen Irene, things here are a lot of hurry up and wait.” Marie did the best she could with the vague details she’d gleaned. “You know how it is with doctors. So I’ll just do a bit of telecommuting while I’m waiting.”

  “Sure sweetie. I’ll pass word along. Al mentioned he’d put some things in your web workspace, but that none of it was urgent.”

  “Okay, you can get me on my cell or by email until I get back.”

  “You just take your time.”

  “I’ll check back as soon as I can.” Marie hung up. What had gotten into Adam? Had it occurred to him that people would want progress reports on the babies? Multiples? She was going to have to carry pictures of fictional triplets in her wallet.

  She pulled into her parking space, slammed the car door and stomped up two flights of stairs. Adam was way over the line. Okay, she was given to worki
ng fourteen-hour days and vacations held no appeal but that didn’t give him the right.

  She didn’t slow down to shower or change. She wanted to be away before he figured out she was gone and came after her. He’d be annoyed about his car but her keys hadn’t jumped out of her purse by themselves. He’d just have to cope.

  She pulled out her travel bag, dumped in enough clothes to last her a week and left. Later, when she cooled off, she might text him. Might.

  * * * * *

  The old house leaned toward the eastern hollow and the porch sloped sharply toward the southern dip of the front yard. A big white elephant her father had called it. A big drunk elephant her mother said. A lumpy wart growing off the mountain’s shoulder, Marie thought. When Marie stood in the front yard she could still hear their voices—her mother singing and up to her elbows in sudsy dishwater, her father charming the cats with interesting bits from the classifieds. She could smell the bread set to rise in the kitchen, hear the creak of dad’s rocker where he read the paper by the front room window.

  They had died while she was in college. Marie was the last of a long procession of foster children they’d taken in over the years. They’d been too old to take on a special needs baby. “Failure to thrive,” her father had scoffed when he told the story.”Morrises don’t fail.” They adopted her and she had thrived in their skillful care. This was still the place she came to when she needed to sort herself out. This is what she needed.

  Marie had parked in grass-choked gravel that marked the end of the drive, slipped off her shoes and waded across the creek with her one small bag, while cold water swirled just below her knees. She’d forgotten boots.

  With a pang she thought of Adam, always ready with her sweater or umbrella before she knew she needed them. Or to call her office with fantastical stories to get her out of work, she thought grimly. She was going to have a serious chat with both men when she got back. Set some boundaries. First, she needed perspective and a chance to catch up with herself.

  She slipped socks back over wet feet and stuffed her feet back into her shoes. The yard was knee-deep in leaves, the scent of sun-warmed oak leaves bringing back memories of romping in them as a child. Her father would rake them into huge piles that she demolished. She decided to make them her project. A few days worth of raking in the autumn sun. Just her, the leaves, and the few birds that remained. She glanced uneasily around at the quiet forest. Hopefully that was all the company she would have. Bears ought to be hibernating by now.