Every Sunset Forever (17 page)

Relief washed over him.  Nyte patted her hips, and she looked down at him. “You’re sure?  Don’t hide it from us if we were too rough.”

She wiggled her hips, and Nyte made a short, groaning sound.  “You weren’t too rough. I loved it.  I fucking loved every second.  I’ve never felt so connected before and I…”  Her gaze roamed to each of them.  “I love you.  I love all of you.”  She pressed her hand to each of their cheeks and whispered the words to them individually, and his brothers said it back.

Fade had never been in love before, but he knew he loved Whisper.  He’d felt a connection to her when they’d climaxed together, which had been the single most amazing thing to ever happen to him.  He’d been slowly falling for Whisper, too, and even though it was fast, it was still real and honest.

“I love you, too, Whisper.”  He stared into her caramel eyes and felt as if he’d spoken the most honest words in his life.  “I love you so much.”

She gave him a watery smile and tears slipped over her cheeks again.  She dropped her head to his shoulder and wrapped her arms around him.  “Thank you for taking such good care of me and loving me so well.  I never knew it could be so good, and I’m glad that my mates are the first ones to make me feel like this.”

“First and last, love,” he said.

“Definitely,” she answered.

He held her for a few moments, and then she leaned back and wiggled her brows.  “Can we do that again?”

Nyte snorted good-naturedly as Az helped Whisper to stand so they could rearrange themselves.  Nyte rolled to his knees, found the cooler with bottled water and pulled out four, handing one to each of them.  “How does our baby want to be loved this time?”

She smiled and took a long drink of water.  “Hard and fast.”

It took only a few minutes for them to rearrange themselves to make love to her again.  This time, Az laid down on the mattress, and Whisper faced away from him, sinking her ass down onto his well-lubed, condom-covered cock.  She leaned back carefully and spread her legs, showing her bare pussy, which glistened with arousal.  Rubbing her clit with two fingers, she wiggled on Az, who gritted his teeth with a groan, and then she said, “Fuck my pussy, Fade.”

Nyte went to his knees next to them, and Whisper opened her mouth for his cock as Fade knelt before her spread legs and watched her rub her clit.  He loved that she was comfortable enough with her body to touch herself while they watched.  He’d thought she had a bit of a voyeuristic streak in her when she’d stripped in the bedroom and then washed herself while he watched, but now he was certain that when he asked her to play with herself just for him some day, she’d eagerly do it.  And he couldn’t wait.

For now, he slid inside the hot heaven of her pussy and, with his brothers’ help, took her to new heights of pleasure that none of them had ever known before.

Chapter 14

Whisper woke up slowly, her eyelids heavy and her body aching pleasantly.  She was snuggled between Fade and Az on the bed in the master.  After their twenty-four hour mating marathon had come to an end, they had all washed up and gone into the big bedroom to rest.  She’d never stayed up for twenty-four hours before.  She was sure that all of them had dozed here and there during the time, but for the most part, they’d done nothing but make love for a whole day.

She sat up enough to peek at the alarm clock on the nightstand and saw that it was eleven a.m.  She hadn’t slept in this late since she was a teenager, when she’d stayed up all night watching horror movies with Bliss and been too scared to sleep.

“Morning, sweet love,” Az said with a sleep-rough voice.

She looked down at him and smiled.  He was so sexy, especially now with his hair tousled from sleep and stubble on his chin.  “It
is
a good morning, when I can wake up next to my sexy mates.”

He smiled widely.

Fade’s arm banded around her waist, and he pulled her roughly against him.  “Shh,” he whispered.  “No talking.  It’s too early.”

She giggled and wiggled her butt against his lower body, grinning as his cock sprang to life.

Fade groaned, and Az shook his head with a smile.  “How about some food? What’s your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?”

“Over-easy eggs and toast.  And coffee.  Lots of coffee.”

Az sat up and stretched, cracking his neck, and then leaned over to kiss her. “As my mate wishes.”

“Want some help?” she offered, but Fade’s arm seemed to turn to steel at the suggestion, and she had a feeling he wouldn’t let her up.

Az tugged boxer briefs on and said, “I don’t think Fade wants you to leave.”

Fade grunted in acknowledgement.

Nyte said, “If you’re offering, Az, I want about a gallon of coffee.”

Az made a face, but Whisper could see the affection between the brothers.  They gave each other a hard time sometimes, but they loved each other.

“Fine, fine.”

He leaned over once more to kiss her and left the bedroom.  Fade rolled over to his other side suddenly and took her with him.  She squeaked in surprise and then laughed when she found herself tucked between him and Nyte.

“Hi there,” Nyte grinned, wiggling his brows.

“Hi yourself.”

Fade grunted.  “Too.  Early.”

“He’s not a morning person, clearly,” Nyte said.

“It’s almost noon,” she pointed out, “and we slept for over twelve hours.”

Fade loosened his hold on her just a little, but she had no plans to go anywhere.  Except maybe the bathroom.  After climbing over Nyte and nearly taking a header off the bed, she used the bathroom and then climbed between them again.

“So what’s your day usually like?” she asked.

“We have the second shift at the gym.  We aren’t going in today, obviously, but we will need to start back to work tomorrow.  Our lives aren’t all that exciting.  We go to work, hang out on Sunday with the rest of the
baro
at Dante’s house, and on the full moon we go hunting with them.”

“Really?  Why the full moon?”

“Because Alyssa and Sydney are wolves, and it’s in their nature to hunt then — well, it was before they were pregnant.  Now they can’t shift until their babies are born.  Hyenas don’t have a particular time of the month to shift, but most
baros
have a certain time that they gather together to hunt as a group.  If there are pups and mates that can’t shift, the protectors of the group will stay and watch over them.  Right now, Cairo and Sterling stay with the girls while the rest of us go out.”

“I’m so used to going out on the full moon that I don’t think I could go out any other time.”

“What was it like when you first shifted?” Nyte asked.

“Scary.  Confusing.  Dad knew I wasn’t a wolf, but he didn’t know what I was.  It was about a week before the full moon, and I’d been feeling antsy and aching.  Dad thought I might be getting ready to shift, and he and my brothers told me to not fight whatever was going to happen.  I went to bed that night and woke up with my body trying to change shape.  I was so scared.  All three of them talked me through it and stayed with me for the two hours it took for my body to shift completely.  I was so scared, my muscles were too tense to accept the change easily.”

When she had completely shifted, she was so exhausted that she’d collapsed on the floor of her bedroom, certain that she would never be able to become human again.  Dad had carefully picked her up and carried her into the bathroom so she could see herself in the large mirror over the sink.  “Look at you, baby girl,” he had said, eyes shining brightly with unshed tears.  “You’re the most beautiful hyena I’ve ever seen.”  She had looked at herself in surprise, her ears twitching as she tilted her head back and forth to examine her new body.  Then he had carried her out of the house, and he and her brothers shifted into their wolves and they took her hunting for the first time.  For the first few weeks, she shifted whenever she had the urge, and they always went out with her.  Eventually she got into the habit of going out on the full moon, but no matter what, she always went with her dad and brothers.

Nyte touched her cheek, and she realized she’d been crying during her story.  “Why are you sad?”

She scrubbed at her cheeks.  “I didn’t mean to cry.  I guess it just made me sad to think that I’ll not be with them on the full moon anymore.  But it’s okay,” she added hastily.  “You’re my family now.”

Her mates exchanged looks but didn’t say anything, and she dropped her head to Nyte’s bicep and closed her eyes, willing the morose thoughts away and concentrating on her future.

* * * * *

“I’m sorry, baby,” Nyte kissed her temple and hugged her.  “I didn’t realize that the music shop had closed down.”

Her mates had taken her to the music store in Dalton to see if they were hiring teachers, only to discover the shop had closed its doors several weeks earlier.  She was definitely disappointed, but she was doing her best not to let them know that it bothered her.  She was a creature of habit, and nothing about her life was as it had been before.  She wasn’t teaching kids piano at the music store in Beyton, she wasn’t practicing with the band in the afternoons, or making dinner for her dad and brothers.

“It’s alright.”  She pushed out of Nyte’s embrace.  They were coddling her, and it made it too easy for her to want to just tumble into a ball of tears and let them comfort her.

Her mates’ shift was due to start at the gym, but they stopped for lunch at a diner first and then she went with them to work since she didn’t have anything else to do.  The gym wasn’t anyplace that she ever saw herself working.  Both Alyssa and Sydney worked in the offices, and all the males had jobs within the gym.  Fade was the only one that wasn’t tied to the gym, because he freelanced as a graphic artist and did work for other businesses.

She hadn’t cared for the gym, and although she didn’t say it outright, her mates knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t going to be happy working there.  It was too bad about the music store closing, but she could find students and begin teaching again.  Not while they were in the apartment, of course, because it was far too small for her to have a music room, but maybe someday she could have a studio of her own.

After several days of staying home with Fade while her other mates went to work, she was feeling a little stir-crazy.  Because she’d felt like she was being followed, they wouldn’t let her go anywhere alone, and right now her car was sitting back in New Jersey, so even if she could have gone somewhere, she wouldn’t have been able to without her own vehicle.  They were going to bring her car back with them when they went to Bliss’s birthday party at the end of the month.

“Hey, sweet love,” Az startled her on Friday morning as she sat at the electronic keyboard and fiddled with a song that had been rolling around in her head.

“Hey yourself.”  She glanced at the clock.  “Not that I’m not always happy to see you, but shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Nah.  I canceled my appointments today.”

She felt bad.  “You shouldn’t do that to your clients for me.  I’m fine.”

“Bored.”

She couldn’t deny that.  “Still.”

He shrugged.  “You think that Nyte and I want Fade to have you all to himself every day?  Besides, he needed to go into the office to get Dante’s approval on the promo stuff and get the mailer off to the printer so it goes out in time.  Put some comfortable shoes on, we’re going for a walk.”

Ten minutes later, she climbed into Az’s truck wearing a sweater, coat, and jeans, along with tennis shoes.  “I thought you said we were going for a walk.”

He wiggled his brows at her as he backed the truck out of the parking space.  “We’ll walk eventually.  It’s pretty warm still, and I thought we could go for a walk in our
baro’s
territory and find a place to build our house.”

A large, soft-sided cooler sat between her feet.  “And eat lunch, too?”

He hummed in agreement.

“I noticed that you all have trucks.  You don’t like cars?”

He chuckled.  “We lived in Tennessee, remember, and our
baro
used to take hunting trips up in the Smokey Mountains.  It’s hard to do that in a car.  Most of our old
baro
had trucks.  I guess we never got over that.  Mine isn’t really practical for our clan, though, so I’ll need to trade it in for something else.”

“Why?”

“No back row, for one.  We can’t all fit in here at the same time.  And eventually we’ll have cubs, and I’d be a pretty freaking bad father if I didn’t have a place to put a baby seat.”

Her heart melted a little bit.  “You think about having kids?”

He pulled the truck to a stop in front of Dante’s house and turned off the engine.  Facing her, he gave her a serious look.  “I’ve always wanted kids, Whisper, but ever since I met you, I’ve craved them.  I want to have cubs with you, to share a bit of myself and a bit of yourself.  Do you…want to have cubs?”

“I never really gave it much thought before I met you, but yeah, I do.”

He touched her cheek with his fingertips.  “We don’t have to plan our family right now, but when we build the den, we’ll build in a nursery so our cubs have a place to stay when we den-in.”

He got out of the truck and came around to her side, opening her door.  After he helped her out, he lifted the cooler, shut the door, and took her hand with his free one.  They skirted past Dante’s home, through the backyard, and into the woods beyond.

As they walked, he told her about the denning-in that they would be doing after they returned from their trip to New Jersey.  They normally would have denned-in already, but because of her they were waiting.  Az stopped, and she did as well; he pulled his cell from his back pocket and opened a GPS program.

“We’ve scouted around the territory before, of course, but we’ve never really settled on a location for a home.  Nyte said he thought it was because we didn’t have you in our lives, so we weren’t making a permanent place yet.”  He smiled at her as he slid the phone back in his pocket and took her hand again.

As they continued to walk, Az told her about his childhood and what it was like to grow up in a
baro
.  His family’s home
baro
in Tennessee was made up of their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

“I guess I always knew that I would be the caretaker of the family.  Nyte’s the oldest, so he’s automatically the leader of the clan.  Fade was always very protective of me and Nyte.  Nyte and I are protective of our clan, too, of course, but not like Fade is.  He started training when he was still in elementary school.  I’d be in the kitchen with my grandma learning how to make biscuits, and he would be in the yard with my grandpas and uncles learning how to fight.”

“Is it always like that?  The oldest is the leader, the middle is the caretaker, and the youngest is the protector?”

“Not always, but usually.  I think there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to matings and clans.  Every clan has to make their own way.”

“You can make biscuits?”  She grinned at him.

“I’ll make some for you tomorrow, sweetheart,” he promised.

He stopped walking again and put down the cooler.  They were in a small clearing, surrounded by tall trees.  “This is about fifty yards from Dante’s home, about seventy-five from Orion’s.”  He gestured to the trees around them and said, “We’d clear the area of course, and make a path that would reach the road, wide enough for our vehicles.  We’re close enough to visit the clans, but far enough away for privacy.”

He walked a few steps away from her and ducked around a tree.  “Here is the kitchen.”

“Very grand,” she laughed.

Nodding, he walked between a few more trees and said, “This is the dining room. We’ll need a big table for all our cubs.”  He walked around her with a big smile, trailing his fingers down her arm, “The family room.  Big-screen TV for Nyte, comfy couch for Fade, fireplace to keep our sweetheart warm.”