ROMANCE: Bear Naked Seduction (Billionaire Bear Trio Book 1) (6 page)

Chapter 5

They had no idea what time it was by the time they woke up, but the sun had gone down. Joseph and Steve immediately look towards the clock and saw that it was 11:30PM. They had slept over 8 hours and then they look towards Jasmine to see that she was still sleeping soundly on the bed that they had lifted her onto.

They shook her awake and she fluttered her eyelids and looked up at the two men that had changed everything. She didn’t have to settle for someone that didn’t truly care for her and the marriage was a fraud and needed to be excised from her life.

“Joseph and I have to get going.” Jasmine looked towards the clock and almost jumped out of her skin. She worried that her husband would think something’s wrong, but then he never did pay attention to what she was doing. He probably wasn’t even home and was probably banging whatever little tart that had put that lipstick on his collar.

“Don’t worry about it guys. My marriage is nothing and I don’t really care if he knows that I am sleeping around or not.” They looked panicked and then they turned with their backs completely straight and their heads thrown back with a howl coming out of their mouths that sounded almost animalistic.

“You don’t…understand. We can’t be here…during the change.” She thought they were talking about male menopause, but that would not chart with what she was seeing right now.

They fell to the ground and it was lucky that they were still naked, because their bones were snapping, their faces contorting and hair was spreading all over their body. Their feet and their hands were becoming long jagged claws in front of her confused eyes.

They felt the change happening and they both knew that they weren’t in complete control over the animal, once it was unleashed and taken off the chain. They feared for Jasmine’s safety, because they really did care for her and found themselves not wanting to make this a hit and run.

“What the hell is happening?” Jasmine was holding the sheet against her frame, her considerable girth now quivering, not with pleasure but with complete terror running through her veins.

They finally changed all the way and then they looked towards her with menace in their eyes. They stalked her over to the bed and they jumped up and came towards her with her whole body trembling in fear.

She thought that they were going to attack her, but then their tongues began to lightly lap at her skin like tiny little puppies. She was still scared, but not nearly as much as she was.

The wolves felt connected to this woman, but they still needed the freedom of the open air. They turned and went over to the door, scratching their paws against the wood and then looking over at Jasmine to see if she was going to give them a hand.

Jasmine was still trying to wrap her mind around all of this, while she walked on unsteady legs and opened the door for them. They bolted and before she knew it, they had disappeared within the tree line. She gathered up her clothes, put them on and then looked out the window to see if there was any sign of them.

She left, not leaving a note or any kind of explanation. She needed to get some distance and she drove in a haze all the way home to an empty and darkened house. There was no sign of Brad and she was right, he was probably out banging the little chippy that she had just found out about. It wouldn’t have surprised her in the least if it was Barbara. They always had eyes for each other and if they thought that she didn’t notice, then they were mistaken.

She got undressed and slipped underneath the black silk covers of her sheets. She drew them over her head trying to block out the very memory of what she had seen. She finally found her much needed slumber, but not until she went through a time where she thought that she heard noises outside.

Chapter Five

In the morning, she woke up thinking that it was all a dream, but it seemed so damn real that it was making her skin tingle with excitement and nervous energy. Brad had already left a message to say that he wasn’t going to be home and that he was working late at the office. What the hell kind of excuse was that.

She had decided that today was the day that she was finally going to break the cycle of monotony. She packed up her belongings, not bothering to take any of her jewelry. She knew that they probably cost a small fortune and that she could get a nice little penny for them at the local pawnshop. She just didn’t want anything to remind her of Brad. She would have a lawyer draw up the papers and have it delivered to him in the next couple of days. In the meantime, she was going to have to find someplace else to lay her head.

She had very little money and no job prospects, so maybe this was a knee jerk reaction. She needed to break this hold on her and it was time to pick herself up and start all over again.

She went towards the door with her luggage in tow and opened it to find Steve and Joseph both standing there sheepishly looking at their shoes and trying to not make eye contact.

“What the hell do you both want?” She didn’t mean to be defensive, but it came out in a rush that she couldn’t control.

“We want to apologize and we never meant it to go that far. We always are able to get out of the hotel room before it happens. I don’t know how to explain this to you, but I think you have a reasonable idea that we are werewolves or wolf shifters. We were wondering…I mean…we wanted to ask you….”

Steve couldn’t say what needed to be said and Joseph looked at him and knew that he was the one that was going to have to continue where he left off.

“What my friend is so eloquently trying to tell you is that we would like you to become part of our pack. I guess that’s not exactly the right way to say it. We did bite you and on the next full moon, you’re going to feel things that you have not felt before.” He didn’t mean to pull it off like a band-aid, but there was no use in keeping her in the dark.

“I’m going to be…a werewolf.” That was a statement that she never thought would come out of her mouth. Now that it had, she was taking stock in her life and realized that she enjoyed her time with both men. The sex was something that she would want more of. “I’m going to need some time to adjust to this.”

Steve took her hand and brought her into her own house and knelt down at her feet. They looked at her trying to come to terms with everything and they saw the storm brewing in her eyes. It made them feel like they were 2 feet tall.

“Joseph and I have been wolf shifters since we were in high school. I met my wife and we settled down, but she had no idea what I was. She still doesn’t know and even though we share a son, she still thinks that everything is normal. She doesn’t even know that Daniel is going to be a wolf himself. I have to tell him before his 21
st
birthday and that’s not a conversation that I’m looking forward to.”

“Stephen I have always been best friends, but things changed that night and our bond became even more than what we could even imagine. We hunted and we killed animals, until we figured out that we could use that excess energy in a more productive way. We found that sex a few hours before the change would keep us a little more docile. It prevented us from hunting to the extreme. It was the best way that we could do it without arousing suspicion from the locals.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know if I can accept this. It’s a little hard to digest.” She needed more than just words and they proved that by touching her shoulder in a reassuring way. There were no words spoken for some time, allowing Jasmine to finally realize that she had never had it so good. These guys treated her like a princess and even if they were wolf shifters that didn’t change the way that she felt.

They talked for some time and they even helped her take her luggage out and over to Steve’s place. It might be awkward seeing her husband every morning from across the street and it was decided that all of them, including Daniel, would move to Phoenix. Instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop from Brad, they left the house vacant, picked up a befuddled Daniel from high school and then took off to the airport. Their new life was waiting 1,000 miles away. She had instant family with two men that loved her and one stepson that did not know what he was. His change would happen on his 21
st
birthday and at that time, she would be there to help guide him with both Joseph and Steve.

They were sitting in the airplane with Daniel and Joseph behind Steve and Jasmine.

Steve took her hand and in a moment of complete chaos, he settled things down by producing two rings. He was proposing on behalf of himself and Joseph. “We want you to be part of our life and this is to seal our bond. We know that we can’t marry in the conventional sense, but this relationship is anything but conventional.” She took the rings; both attached to a necklace and placed it over her head, as a sign of her fidelity and trust.

“I don’t think that I could be any happier, and even though all of this happened very quickly, I don’t think I would want to change anything. Believe me, I’m not looking forward to the change, but I know that both of you would never let anything happen to me. I feel safe in both of your arms and I wouldn’t want to be anyplace else.” The snuggled up together and Jasmine placed her head against his chest and listened to his heartbeat and knew that she was finally where she was meant to be.

THE END

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Some Like It Gruff

Some Like It Gruff

Chapter 1

“You didn’t sign the lease?” Melinda asked her boyfriend, her throat constricting.

They had just finished getting all of their boxes out of the moving trucks and into their new living space in the basement. The lonely, rickety building they were now residing in used to be some kind of fancy inn a century ago—for a few rich folks in the states who wanted to see the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness without actually being within said wilderness. While the architecture itself was beautiful, the windows were coated with dust and cracks, and the wood paneling was splintered. The town was about a mile down the mountain, and although Melinda had been able to see a little bit of the town from one of the building’s windows, she still felt a dreadful weight of loneliness being inside the inn-apartment-place.

Travis chewed his gum and shrugged. Amongst him were their boxes, and in front of him was their peeved landlord.

“Travis?” Melinda said. She tried to sound stern, but she knew her fear had seeped into her tone.

“My credit’s not great. So what?” Travis said. “I knew once you saw this place, you’d be thrilled to live here! Besides, the guy’s still gonna let us live here.” He turned to the landlord and smacked the gruff man’s shoulder. “Right, dude?”

The landlord, Mr. Kane, glared at Travis. “So long as you sign the lease,” he repeated.

Travis turned to her and smiled. “See? It’s fine. You just gotta sign the lease.”

Melinda let out a shuddery sigh. She had thought leaving her stagnant life in Washington and starting a new adventure in Alaska with Travis would be… well, not this—not terrifying, and certainly not leaving her full of regret and doubt. Her chest tightened as she realized she was trapped with this decision; she had nowhere else she could go, and she wasn’t going to ask her judgmental family for help. They never liked Travis’s spontaneous nature, or hers, and they would love to mock her for this latest mistake of theirs.

She tugged on the collar of her shirt, it being too small for her large body. “Yes, fine.” She gave Mr. Kane a tight smile. “I’ll sign it.”

Mr. Kane tilted his head to the side, turning around slowly. “Follow me.”

She did. They went upstairs to the first floor of the building, walked down a few creaky hallways, and then they went up another staircase to the second floor.

The silence between her and Mr. Kane was unpleasant. He never glanced behind him at her—never smiled. He huffed and pouted, as if her presence was hindering him and not paying for part of the upkeep of this creepy home of his.

When he opened a door and hurried through, Melinda stopped on the outside of it. She saw a bed in the room—his room? She took a few steps, nervousness jittering through her.

“Are you coming in or not?” Mr. Kane asked.

“I…I didn’t want to intrude.”

“Just come in, already.”

She pressed her lips together and did as instructed. Taming her irritation, she glanced around. The room looked like it was made of several rooms; the lack of furniture making it all seem even more spacious.

Mr. Kane was standing by the back wall, by a table. On its surface was a pen and a few pages.

Melinda gave a pointed look at his bed, oddly in the center of the room, before she walked over to the table and grabbed the pen.

Mr. Kane spread out the pages and pointed out each spot where she needed to sign her name.

Melinda hesitated, her lungs freezing.

“You doing this or what?” Mr. Kane asked. “I haven’t got all day.”

She glared at him. “Well, I’d hate to keep you from all the lurking in the shadows you need to do today.” Huffing, she scribbled her signature repeatedly on the documents. Panic shot through her, but she ignored it and took a deep breath. “There. Can I go now?”

Mr. Kane cocked an eyebrow. He stared at her for a long moment, making a point.

Melinda continued to glare at him for a few seconds longer. Then she turned around and got the hell out of there.