Nessa's Two Shifters (7 page)

He let Nessa look at him and almost laughed when she realized that his twin, who had curled around her, was just as naked as he was. Her eyes flew wide, her pupils dilating with alarm. Her mouth opened in a small silent
oh
that had his cock jumping at the erotic sight.

Then she seemed to focus on him again and slowly took him in. All of him. He once again remembered that he was covered in scars from his time in captivity. Self-loathing inched its way back inside of him. How could he expect her to be attracted to him with his monstrous appearance? He started to bend down to pick up his jeans and leave her with his brother.

“What happened, Joseph? Who hurt you like that?” she asked.

He saw no pity in her eyes, only sorrow. She didn’t appear the least bit repulsed by the sight of him. Still, he hesitated to say anything. Thoughts of those endless days of pain and hopelessness filled him, overwhelming him for a second. The bedroom dimmed around him as he slipped back into that nightmare that had been his reality.

“Tell her, Joseph. You said we had to be honest with her. She deserves to know what happened to you.” Jessup’s voice jerked him back, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I was held captive in Afghanistan for over a month. I was part of a special unit made up of other shifters. There were three of us who’d been captured when we got cut off from our unit while scouting for our target. They knew we were coming. They knew what we were. We’d been set up.” He looked over her head to stare into his twin’s eyes.

He’d never said anything to his family about being set up. He wasn’t sure why he was telling Nessa and Jessup that now. For some reason, it seemed important that Nessa know how he’d felt betrayal from someone he thought he could trust as well. She would understand how that felt. Her stepbrother should have loved and protected her instead of abusing and using her.

“How did you get away?” she asked, looking up from where his brother had her wrapped in his arms.

“They thought I was unconscious after”—he hesitated to say “they tortured me”—“one of their interrogation sessions and left me there while they took a break. I managed to get up and release the other two men who were still alive with me. We escaped.” He kept his eyes on her face as she listened to him.

The fact that she didn’t wince or cringe only nodded relaxed him for some reason. He abandoned his clothes and climbed into the bed with them. He needed to touch her, hold her. She calmed him, took away some of the persistent rage that dogged his steps like the plague. If being near her was what it took to escape some of that relentless, all-consuming rage, Joseph wouldn’t push her away. In fact, she was fast becoming vital to his emotional and mental well-being.

As he pulled the covers over him, Joseph reached for her. His brother relaxed his hold on her and let him pull her into his arms so that she ended up draped over his chest with her head resting on his shoulder. Jessup wrapped an arm over her back above her wounds, burying his nose in her hair as he once again got comfortable.

“I’m tired. I’m not giving in to your crazy idea that we can all three be together,” Nessa said in a sleep-infused voice.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow when everyone is rested,” his brother assured her.

Joseph looked over her head at his brother. Jessup’s expression was still just as serious as it had been earlier. He had no intentions of letting her go either. Now, his twin would realize by looking into Joseph’s eyes that he wasn’t going to be stepping back once it was finished either. By the slight upward tilt of Jessup’s mouth, Joseph knew that his brother had never planned for him to abandon them and return to his home in the wilds of Montana either.

“We belong together, brother. When things get too intense here, we’ll all go to your retreat and chill for as long as it takes.” Jessup’s quiet voice whispered across their mate’s hair as he spoke.

Joseph merely nodded at him as he thought about how much work needed to be done to accommodate a mate. She would not be shifting and living as her wolf as he had done much of the time. Nessa would need comfortable surroundings. Suddenly, his escape from life wasn’t as perfect as it had seemed once before. He was a little ashamed of the way he’d lived when faced with how Nessa had been forced to live. He didn’t want her to witness his decent into madness.

“Put it away, brother. Sleep. We can worry about everything tomorrow. She’s in our arms and in our bed tonight. That’s all that matters at the moment,” Jessup said.

“And if tomorrow brings even more problems?” Joseph asked.

“We let our family help us solve them like always. Pack protects pack, Joe. You tried to break that law when you wouldn’t let us help you all these years. That comes to an end now. We have a mate to care for, and she will always come first.”

Joseph agreed, though he wasn’t sure how he would manage to avoid spilling his shit all over everyone at times. Sometimes the building rage demanded an outlet and he had to give it one or risk losing himself totally. He thought about how Nessa helped calm that massive, boiling pot of madness and wondered if her calming presence would be enough to keep it under control. If not, he wanted her far away when he erupted. He would never want her anywhere near him when he lost it. The thought of accidently hurting her turned his bowels to water and created bloody icebergs in his veins.

Slowly he relaxed, breathing in her calming scent until his heartbeat slowed and his churning stomach settled. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would help convince his precious mate she belonged with them. Tomorrow they would decide how to prevent her stepbrother from ever laying a hand on her again.

* * * *

Nessa woke to warm, firm lips caressing her shoulder where her overlarge T-shirt allowed some of the skin from her neck and shoulder to peek from beneath the material at the neckline. She wasn’t sure if she were relieved that they hadn’t stripped her during the night or not. Something inside of her had shifted, leaving her wondering if just maybe she would now be fighting herself even more than the men.

Someone’s hand slipped beneath her shirt and cupped her waist. She had no idea who was doing what to her, but suspected it was Jessup’s mouth and Joseph’s hand. She needed to move and put a stop to their teasing touches before they grew bolder.

When she tried to pull away from them, Jessup refused to budge where his chest lay almost plastered to her upper back and Joseph tightened his grip at her waist.

“Um, guys? I need up.”

Instead of complying, they seemed even more intent on teasing her now that they were sure she was awake. She squirmed as Joseph ran his hand around her waist to rest against her softly rounded belly where he brushed the callused pads of his fingers back and forth across her skin.

Jessup nipped her shoulder with his teeth then slid his tongue over it before finding a new spot to torment. She wanted to sigh at the wonderful, decadent feeling of their hands on her. She thought that if she were a cat, she’d be purring, but another urge hit her, stronger this time.

“I’ve got to get up. Now! I need the bathroom.” She wiggled between them again.

Jessup groaned at her shoulder where he had his mouth covering a large portion of her skin there. Teeth rasped but he pulled back.

“Let her up, Joseph.”

“If we do, she’ll never allow us this close again.”

She heard the disappointed sigh in Joseph’s voice. It wasn’t something she would have expected. He was so stoic and confident.

“Would you rather she pee all over you?” Jessup asked with a chuckle.

The other man didn’t answer right away, but finally, he eased off the tight hold he had on her, allowing her to slip out of the bed.

“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the damn bed.” His almost whispered words had heat rushing to her face.

Nessa hurried off the bed as she all but ran for the bathroom. After finishing up by washing her hands and brushing her teeth, she eased out and grabbed her bag that held what she needed to take a shower and dress. After locking the door behind her, she turned on the shower and adjusted the water. Seconds later, she stepped into the giant shower and allowed the water to soothe some of the tenseness from her muscles.

She quickly soaped up and rinsed off before pouring a small amount of shampoo into her hair and lathering it up. As she massaged the liquid into her hair, a set of hands held her by the waist as another set took over washing her hair. She gasped but couldn’t open her eyes for fear of the shampoo getting in them.

“What are you doing in here? I locked the door!”

“We were picking locks on doors almost as soon as we learned to walk,” Joseph’s rough voice sounded much like a growl.

“She’s so damn beautiful, brother. I could look at her all day.” Jessup’s voice held a hint of wistfulness in it.

Both men had deep voices, but she’d already figured out that when Jessup became aroused, his grew softer and less growly, though no less intense. Joseph’s voice got deeper and thicker with a growl to it. It sounded a lot like when he was angry, she realized and wondered at the connection there. Again she wondered if she should fear the darker twin but dismissed it almost as quickly. She believed him when he said he would never hurt her.

“This isn’t right, guys. I can’t get involved with both of you. Besides, my stepbrother is going to kill me if I don’t go home soon.”

She immediately felt Joseph stiffen behind her, his hands still in the sudsy mess of her hair.

“You’re not going anywhere, mate. You’re especially not going back to that bastard who abused you. Why would you even want to?” he asked.

“He’s my stepbrother. I don’t have anyone but him.” She knew it sounded lame, but they would never understand.

They had a handful of brothers and parents to rely on. She only had Derrick, poor excuse of a sibling as he was. What would happen to her when they grew tired of the fact that she couldn’t do anything right? She was a terrible cook and was tired all the time. She could never keep the trailer they had clean despite working on it anytime she wasn’t at the diner. It seemed like she could never get enough rest.

“How did you end up with him?” Jessup asked.

Joseph rinsed the shampoo from her hair, squeezing the excess water from it before letting her rinse her eyes. She looked up at Jessup as soon as she could open her eyes again.

“My father died when I was about eight. My mom remarried Derrick’s father a year later and things weren’t too bad. Derrick never really liked me, but he left me alone for the most part. He didn’t like it that his father liked me.” Nessa sighed and thought about how her stepfather had given her gifts all the time, even when it hadn’t been a special occasion.

She realized now that Derrick hadn’t missed any of that and had built up a serious resentment of her over the years. At the time, she hadn’t realized it though. Like any young girl, she looked up to her big stepbrother despite him not being a blood relative and wanted to tag along with him all the time.

“The older I got, the more he disliked me. Then our parents were killed in a boating accident and he had custody over me, being nineteen to my sixteen. He did and said all the right things to assure that everyone supported him being my guardian. I was too upset over losing my parents and still a little naive as to how Derrick actually felt about me to protest.”

“When did he begin hitting you, precious?” Jessup asked as he and Joseph toweled her dry.

She grimaced. “The day the will was read. They didn’t have much. The insurance policy assured that all the bills were paid, but it didn’t leave much for us to live off of for long without working to supplement it. Derrick’s father left me half of everything that was left over and that pissed him off to no end.” Nessa grimaced at the memory.

“When we got home from the lawyer’s office, he just exploded. He slapped me so hard I fell. Then he tore out of the house and I didn’t see him until the next day. I was so scared that I hid in my room until time to go to school on Monday, then I did everything I could to avoid him. Since he was my guardian, he had control of my part of the money, so he didn’t hit me much until it ran out. Then he took everything out on me.”

She could still remember when he’d had to actually find a job to make ends meet. She’d been working after school all along to have spending money for food at lunch and to buy school supplies. Derrick wasn’t going to give her one cent he didn’t have to. Strangely enough, it was her part of the inheritance that went toward paying their bills.

“Why did you stay with him once you were old enough to leave, Nessa?” Jessup asked.

She sighed. They couldn’t understand being totally alone. How could they? There were eight of them plus their parents. She’d had no one. Not even friends. Derrick had been sure she didn’t have friends by scaring them off.

“I didn’t have anywhere to go and no money to move out. He made sure I never had more than a few dollars at any given time. I tried to hide money from him, but he always found it.”

“He kept you isolated from people so you didn’t have friends, didn’t he?” Joseph said in a soft voice.

“Without friends, I was totally dependent on him for everything. I was supposed to feel grateful that he
took care
of me and didn’t put me out to starve on the streets.”

“Why are you living in that trailer if your parent’s house was paid for?” Jessup guided her over to the bed where she sat down, the towel still wrapped around her.

“Derrick has a gambling habit. We couldn’t pay the taxes on it the second year, and then he borrowed against it to pay back someone he owed, and we lost the house when we couldn’t make the loan payments.”

“All of that is behind you now, baby. You’re family, and you’re pack.” Joseph sat next to her on the bed.

She looked over at him and somehow knew that he had separated himself from his family and his pack until now. She would be the reason he returned. Knowing that her presence in their lives had such a major impact on them scared her. Nessa had never been important to anyone before. For a short while, she was the reason Derrick had access to more money, and now she was a meal ticket because she worked to put food on their table, but she’d never actually had worth outside of money before. It was for that reason that she didn’t tell them that her stepbrother used her for another reason as well. She didn’t want to think about that.