Magical Menages 1: Shifters' Captive (6 page)

“Who is this guy? Another one of your pals? I saw him start to change.”

“No. Not one of my clan. He’s a panther shifter. I can smell the cat in him.”

“Like a mountain lion?”

“Yes, but shifters are a lot bigger.” John pulled the belt from his jeans and began to bind the man’s hands behind his back. He’d reverted to human shape when Sherrie had knocked him down. “They’re loners, not pack-oriented like us. They keep to their own territory in the mountains. We have different hunting needs, and the panthers interact with humans even less than we do.”

“What’s this one doing here? What does he want with me?”

“I don’t know, but I intend to find out. Run out to the Blazer and bring me the rope you’ll find in the back. We’ve got to get him tied up before he comes around.” Sherrie ran to obey, becoming aware of her nudity only when the night air chilled her body as she stepped outside of the cabin. The bizarreness of the entire situation struck her, and she fought back a burst of giddy laughter. If she started to giggle, she wouldn’t stop until she’d broken down into tears and ended up curled in a fetal position on the ground, blubbering.

As she carried the rope back to John, she wondered how they could possibly keep their prisoner contained if he shifted again. Could mere cotton rope hold an angry cougar with claws and fangs?

John tied the man to one of the chairs—not the one Sherrie had hit him with, which was broken. She grabbed one of the chair legs, avoiding the splinters, and tore it off, intending to use it as a club if necessary. By the time John had finished binding the stranger, he was wrapped like a mummy and he was beginning to regain consciousness.

Sherrie put on her waitress uniform while keeping an eye on the blond stranger. He was basketball-star tall and muscled like a linebacker. It was a wonder he hadn’t killed John with one swipe of his big hand. She couldn’t help but notice the ridged muscles of his abdomen and his flaccid cock—uncircumcised like John’s, large and framed against tawny hair. A surge of lust shot through her, and she tore her gaze away from his genitals.

After slipping on her shoes, she picked up her makeshift club. The panther-shifter’s amber eyes opened and focused on her. They were almond shaped, giving him an Asian appearance at odds with his Nordic fairness. He stared at her until John punched him in the chest then his gaze narrowed and swung to the other man. A snarl curled his lips, and a growl rumbled through him.

Sherrie’s skin prickled at the bestial sound, and her nipples tightened. As her thighs tensed, she was ashamed of her body’s perverse reaction. Had she become some kind of thrill-seeker, turned on by dangerous strangers and edgy situations?

“Who the fuck are you and what are you doing here?” John demanded.

At first it seemed the prisoner wouldn’t reply. He looked like he’d rather swallow broken glass than give John the satisfaction of an answer, but at last he snapped, “Here for the girl, just like you.”

“How’d you know about her? Who sent you?” John leaned close, but not so close that the prisoner could hit him with an unexpected head butt.

“No one. Followed a dream.”

“What?”

“You know what I’m talking about. I found her the same way you did—dreamed about her. She’s the one.”

“Whoa!” Sherrie interrupted, stepping forward and brandishing her club. “I keep telling you all, I’m not special. I’m just a normal person.”

His eyes looked deep within her as John had done earlier, and he shook his head. “No. You’re not.” John was gazing at her too now. Two pairs of eyes, warm brown and amber ale, stripped her more naked than she’d been without her clothes on.

“Have some of your people died too?” John asked.

He nodded. “People slip into a coma and waste away like something is draining their lives.”

“So you dreamed about Sherrie and tracked her here?”

“Thanks for bringing her halfway. Made it easier for me.”

“If you think I’m going to let you have her, you’re wrong.”

“What are you going to do, kill me and set off another war?” He sneered.

They glared at each other. With that much testosterone charging the air, Sherrie realized she’d have to keep the peace.

“No one’s having me. If you’d both calm down and listen to each other, maybe you’d realize you’re on the same page looking for a solution to this psychic sickness that’s infected your people. You should be working together.”

How calm and reasonable she sounded, as if her legs weren’t trembling and her stomach churning. As if it wasn’t bizarre to be discussing a psychic illness with a pair of shapeshifters. She hadn’t realized she had such cast iron nerve in her—although it had taken quite a lot of that in L.A. to go to countless auditions for parts she never got.

John tore his angry gaze away from the stranger long enough to look at Sherrie and listen to her. He gave a grudging nod before glaring at the panther-shifter once more. “All right. Talk.”

“What’s your name?” Sherrie asked, trying to change the tone from a confrontational grilling to more polite conversation.

The almond eyes turned toward her and flicked up and down her body before meeting hers. “Grant Perron.”

“I’m Sherrie Stoltz. This is John Walker.”

“I know who you are and I don’t care who he is.”

“You know my name? How could you possibly know that?” For some reason, that little detail seemed more incredible than the heaping mounds of impossible she’d already swallowed today.

“I told you. I dreamed about you and then I came to find you.” The words sounded like a purr, a velvet-pawed caress that sent warm chills down Sherrie’s back.

John seized the other man’s chin and turned his face back toward him. “How long ago did the comas start for your people?”

“A couple of months. That’s the first I heard about it anyway.”

“So what do your dreams tell you about me? What am I supposed to do?” Sherrie asked. As she moved closer to the two men, the prickling feeling all over her skin increased. Her hair rose as if charged by static electricity, and lust blossomed in her erogenous zones. Her body ached to be filled as if she hadn’t just had a good pounding by John a few hours earlier.

“Find him, face him.”

“Find who?” John shook Grant’s face, trying to pull his focus away from Sherrie.

She could feel the jealousy rolling off him in waves. He didn’t like Grant being around her. He already considered Sherrie “his”. While his possessiveness was flattering and a part of her responded with an aroused thrill, jealousy didn’t help the situation.

“Touch me again and I’ll rip off your face,” the other shifter announced in a velvety rumble. “I’m talking to the girl.”

Sherrie rolled her eyes and repeated John’s question. “Who is this person? What does he want, how’s he doing what he’s doing and how can we stop him?”

Grant smiled, and his dour expression cracked. If his body was athlete fine, his smile was movie-actor beautiful. “I thought you’d be the one with the answers.” She didn’t like how he made her feel all fluttery inside, so she snapped, “Well I’m not. I have no clue about any of this and especially not my part in it.”

John had stepped back from the captive and stood with his arms crossed over his naked chest. He’d slipped into his jeans, but was still distractingly shirtless. “Dreams led you here, huh? How do we know you’re not in league with this guy?”

Grant rolled his eyes, dismissing the suggestion. “Do you think these ropes could hold me if I didn’t want to be held? I’m only talking with you because the girl’s right, we need to share what we know and come up with a solution.”

John pulled up a chair and straddled it, facing the other man. “It’s been a little over a month since the first person in our pack got sick. It took several cases before anyone saw a pattern. Our wisewoman had a dream about Sherrie like you did, and I went to bring her here.” Sherrie continued the story. “Nothing remotely psychic has ever happened to me before, but he showed me a little girl in one of these comas and when I touched her, I saw inside her mind. I experienced everything she did including the being who’s keeping her prisoner. He’s sucking up her energy while keeping her unconscious.”

“Did you see how Liberty came into contact with him?” John asked.

She closed her eyes, trying to recall something more specific than a black, shadowy figure labeled The Bad Man, and she smelled the sharp scent of pine. “In the woods. She heard—no,
felt
someone calling her, and she followed the sound.”

Sherrie’s heart beat faster. A claustrophobic sense of anxiety swaddled her like cotton. She could hardly breathe and wanted to run from the creature Liberty had been drawn to. Images flashed in her mind like quick edits in an art movie.

“A cave, maybe. Someplace dark and rocky. That’s not where she first saw him, but he’s holding her there with him now, holding all of their minds with his. It’s very confused and fragmented.” Sherrie opened her eyes to find brown eyes and gold watching her once more, searching for answers and maybe salvation.

“They’re his prisoners on an astral plane,” Perron said matter-of-factly, as if he dealt with the otherworldly all the time. “But if he has a physical body, we can destroy it.”

“What if killing him doesn’t set them free? What if they die when he dies? We’ve got to be careful.” John rose and paced the room, reminding Sherrie of wolves she’d seen in a zoo habitat walking the perimeter of their enclosure.

“We need to take action. Cut me loose and I’ll handle it.” Grant strained against his bonds, finally showing some impatience. Sherrie didn’t doubt he could break them as promised if he turned into a mountain lion. Although the idea terrified her, a small part of her wanted to see that.

John stopped pacing to glare at him again. “What are you going to do? Your kind is so impetuous.

Taking action isn’t the same as taking the
right
action.”

“And taking
no
action is the wolf way. You have endless councils before you make a decision about anything.”

“I brought her here, which is more than you did.” John pointed at Sherrie, and once more she felt like a prop in their play as they argued about who had the bigger
cojones
.

“Enough. John. Untie him. He’s not our prisoner. He’s an ally. And you, Cat-man, remember you came here for me. Whatever you do, I must be a part of it, so let’s think this through and come up with a solution before you go off half-cocked.”

For a girl who tended toward impetuosity herself, she sounded remarkably like a schoolteacher—
Let’s
work together, class
. The only problem was she had no idea what direction their plan should take.

John turned to Perron. “She’s right. We have to lay our differences aside.” The other man’s lips twisted in a smile that seemed more like a snarl. “Untie me. I’ll be a team player.”

John crouched behind the chair on which Grant Perron sat and loosened the knots he’d just finished tying. Sherrie took stock of the differences and similarities between the two men. They might be night and day as far as coloring and build, but both had a sleek grace and palpable magnetism. If she’d met either of them at a bar, she wouldn’t have known why there was a sense of wildness about them, but would’ve been attracted to it. She
was
attracted to that primal quality in both of them.

Her body vibrated like a violin string tuned too tight, and the desire her interlude with John had slaked began to swell again. She felt as if her body was one raw, pulsing sexual nerve, responding to these men with a mind of its own.

“There’s a network of caves near the peak. We’ll head up there,” Perron announced as he pulled his hands from behind his back and rubbed his wrists.

John grimaced at the other man’s arrogant tone, but held his tongue. He glanced at Sherrie.

She offered him a smile. Locks of his dark hair had fallen over his forehead and she longed to brush them back and kiss him. A fantasy of doing this while Perron watched flashed in her mind, and heat flooded her body. She pictured him, still tied to the chair, erection growing, as she and John fondled and kissed in front of him. He would groan and shift as they stripped and fell on the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. She’d ride John’s cock, breasts bouncing, and meet Perron’s hungry gaze, taunting him with a smile.

Swallowing, she banished her wayward thoughts and darted a glance at the two men, afraid they could read her mind. Perron looked back at her and grinned. Maybe he
could
see into her head—a dream had brought him to her side.

His eyes skimmed over her as if she was still naked, and her nipples tightened. The ropes fell away from his body, and he rose from the chair, his cock bobbing before him.

Sherrie turned to the bed and searched for something to cover his groin. She flung the sleeping bag at him. “Don’t you carry clothes with you when you change?”

“No.” The men answered in unison then exchanged a cold-eyed stare.

“Must make for some awkward moments when you turn back into human form.” Grant let the sleeping bag drop from his hand and stalked across the floor with catlike grace to stop in front of Sherrie. John was right behind him, hackles bristling and eyes narrowed. He looked ready to attack if the other man so much as touched her.

“So you’ve never had a psychic experience before.” Grant studied her and his head moved slightly as if he was inhaling her fragrance. “Where are you from? Who are your people?” She resented the staccato questioning and answered succinctly. “My mom and I never lived in one place long. I don’t know who my dad was.”

He regarded her silently and nodded. “Well, you’re no shifter, but you’re not purely human, either.” He jerked his head at John. “You had sex with him? What was that like? Did you feel anything strange?”

“That’s enough!” John inserted his body between them, standing almost chest to chest with the other man.

Perron snorted. “I’m not asking from curiosity, Balto. She might have latent tendencies only now coming to full maturity. I wasn’t always able to dream travel or experience psychic visions myself. It developed within the past couple of years with no particular trigger, as far as I could tell. Or it could be that Sherrie’s psychic abilities are brought out by contact with our kind.”